Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2020: Boiling

It was all a blur to Sylas. He couldn't even remember making this grave, or carving out the obelisk, but his body had suddenly appeared here. It was almost like the folds of spacetime and the Mesh of Reality had conspired to teleport him right here, not giving him the option to forget again.

It felt like those memories he had repressed all those years ago with Cassarae. He hadn't even remembered the incident all that well, convincing himself that they had separated "amicably" as though he hadn't strolled into her life like a raging hurricane and then walked away as though nothing at all had happened.

It wasn't as simple as a teenage love story gone wrong, it wasn't a childhood love gone wrong. He had almost killed someone back then.

No. He thought he had killed someone, and he just didn't care. If not for his parents, that boy would have stayed dead back then.

More memories that Sylas had repressed came bubbling back up again.

Cassarae had been there that day he showed up to school, wrapped in darkness. She had tried to stop him but he snapped in a way that could have only been called demonic.

It was the first time Sylas had ever truly broken the rules, the first time he had truly seen the rules of society and then decided that he liked his own rules better.

He was Lawful Neutral. Following rules was what he did best.

But that day, he had been something else. He had taken the violence he nearly used to harm Cassarae that day and turned it all into fury.

He couldn't remember the number of people who tried to pull him off, but they all suffered that day. Even Cassarae's attempt had ended horribly.

She was flung off of him, her head banging against a wall and her arm landing at an awkward angle that snapped it.

All of it, all of those memories were gone.

He hadn't even just rained down fists. He had kneed that boy's crotch until blood seeped through his jeans, he had stuck a finger through his eye, looking to pull out something more than just flesh, but brain matter itself. He had even tried to rip his tongue out with nothing but his fingers.

He remembered that moment especially vividly because it was then they at last managed to get him off of the boy.

It wasn't because he gave up, but because his mortal body only had so much stamina to it, only so much fury it could expel at once.

He had grabbed the boy's tongue, trying to yank it out, but failing in the end. Realizing he couldn't, he pulled it out as far as he could and propped himself up just so that he could drive his knee into the latter's chin.

Had he succeeded, let alone not having a tongue anymore, the boy would have certainly bled to death right then and there.

Sylas had been nothing short of demonic that day, a whirlwind of chaos he had completely blocked out.

He didn't know where his strength had come from. To push off students and teachers alike, endless waves of them as though they didn't count for anything. He shouldn't have had any special strength back then. It should have only taken one or two robust men at most to hold him back.

Yet he tapped into something else.

Sylas didn't care about the boy. Even if he had killed him that day, it wasn't guilt that he would feel, at least not toward the boy.

But it was proof of something else. Proof that he had been right to leave Cassarae, the only woman who had ever truly seen him.

Sylas had said it before. He had dated many women other than Cassarae, but every time, it always ended the same way.

Those women were always in love with the idea of who he was, not who he actually was.

They saw a successful young professor, someone who had a bit of a cold streak, but someone they thought they could thaw and mold into a man who loved them more than his own ego.

They had been wrong.

Sylas pressed a hand against Nosphaleen's tombstone.

He knew that she was the same. She hadn't loved Sylas Grimblade. She loved the version of him in her head.

Sylas knew exactly when she had first thought the words. It was that day she had fought for him during the gathering. She had been surrounded by enemies, bombarded from all sides.

She was alone like she always had been, broken into pieces by a relentless assault.

And then he had appeared, wiping out her enemies not only entirely, but easily. She saw a knight in shining armor, a man who would always protect her no matter what.

Would she still think that now?

Sylas' claws scraped against the reflective stone, his jaw clenching.

Their very first interaction was him saving her from a prison she never thought she would escape. And then he saved her entire family from the thumb of the Sylphs. Time and time again, he did the impossible for what was from her perspective... her sake.

But was it ever truly for her sake?

She was a Contract, a Gold Beast with endless potential that had been of great value to him. And now her value was in in the end allowing his wife to trust him, to be the Cassarae he remembered from his youth... That girl who had always been a bit abrasive, but was as soft and gentle as any housewife when faced with him.

He hadn't seen that Cassarae in so very long. He missed her.

Cassarae... she was the one woman who had seen into his darkness and accepted it for what it was instead of what she hoped it would be.

Nosphaleen... she was just a case of Stockholm Syndrome.

So why... why was he so damn bothered by this?

Sylas roared and all the oceans of Earth bubbled as though boiling from within.