Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2314: Your Eyes

Iskaleth had never experienced anything like this in her life.

Just moments ago, Fate had been turning in her direction. She could feel it as clearly as the sun's rays, an invisible, warm current shifting beneath everything around her and slowly gathering momentum in her favor.

The Vosskarr methods were perfect for this sort of battle. They didn't need to crush Sylas immediately, nor did they need to overpower Beacon outright. All they had to do was continue refining their interference, one iteration feeding into another until the very ability Sylas relied upon became a detriment.

Given enough time, the Serpentes he called would obstruct one another more than they helped, his Will expenditure would remain unchanged, and the worlds beneath him would slowly stop falling. From there, the Vosskarr could build on their advantage until Sylas was buried beneath it.

Iskaleth had seen that path forming. It wasn't guaranteed, Fate never worked in such clean absolutes, but the current had been strong enough that she had allowed herself to believe she understood where this was going.

Then the Reader died directly in front of her.

There had been no warning she could recognize, no gradual collapse to grasp. One moment the Reader sat across from her, calmly listening as though another million years would pass before anything in this room could disturb her, and the next an emerald spark appeared within her gaze.

A figure in trailing black robes formed behind her, a white-boned scythe pressed against her throat, and then the blade pulled through. The Reader's head slipped from her shoulders before the blood had truly spilled.

Iskaleth remained frozen as the body collapsed against the desk, her tongue slowly flickering between her lips while the Fate she had been reading shattered into so many useless fragments that she couldn't even tell which direction survival lay anymore.

The irony was that Iskaleth had never seen the Reader in the first place.

She was blind. At least in the ordinary sense, which had always been a particularly cruel joke considering how much of the Dancing Lux bloodline revolved around their eyes.

Her Race possessed some of the most captivating gazes among the Serpentes, beautiful enough that weaker creatures could lose themselves inside them before a single deliberate charm was used. Iskaleth had inherited that beauty and almost none of the function beneath it. In her youth, she had been treated much like Dry Mouth had been, another Serpentes born with an obvious defect in the very trait their bloodline treasured most.

The difference was that Dry Mouth had possessed a family willing to protect him.

Iskaleth had not.

Her mother had never known who her father was. Her grandmother hadn't known who her mother's father was either, and if one continued climbing the family tree, the answers became no clearer.

Their line had given itself over to too many men, seduced too many partners, chased too many improvements through mating and attraction until paternity became worthless.

Her mother cared about whether Iskaleth's bloodline was strong, whether her beauty could be cultivated, whether she could continue the path their family had followed for generations. That was all she cared about. The fact her daughter couldn't see only mattered because it represented a flaw.

There had been no warm reassurance, no clan standing behind her while she found another path. Iskaleth had learned early that if she wanted to survive, she would need to find usefulness somewhere else.

So she did.

She couldn't see light, color, faces, or even the beautiful eyes everyone told her she possessed.

But she could see Fate.

At first it had been little more than pressure, vague inclinations that told her one direction was safer than another, or that a person smiling in front of her meant something entirely different from what their voice implied. Then it deepened.

Someone could hide their body, suppress their aura, alter their voice, or wear another person's face, but their future still moved. Their choices still bent what came next. Their true choices, not what they might pretend to do.

That was why Sylas bothered her so much.

She had known he was dangerous from the beginning, and when Gentrixaul's Quest appeared, she had been one of the few Serpentes cautious enough not to blindly chase the inheritance dangled in front of them. Later, after watching the currents around Sylas and seeing how much chaos followed him, she had built what she thought was a foolproof method of benefiting without placing herself directly against him.

Now the Reader's head lay several feet away from its body.

Iskaleth's lips curled into a bitter smile. Had Sylas been hiding his Fate?

No.

She almost laughed when the answer became obvious.

"Of course."

This stream of Fate was too arrogant for that.

Sylas hadn't concealed anything from her. He hadn't tricked her senses or deliberately fed her false information.

He had simply improved faster than she could account for.

Iskaleth lowered her head and a quiet chuckle escaped her. What an absurd answer. Was she simply unlucky enough to encounter someone who happened to experience a breakthrough at the exact moment she needed him not to? Or was that itself part of what it meant to stand against Sylas Grimblade?

Maybe his enemies always reached the same conclusion in the end, staring at some new ability or impossible increase in strength and wondering why their calculations had suddenly become worthless... or maybe when they had.

A C-tier. A mere C-tier.

She had encountered A-tier Rune Masters whose mastery didn't carry the same pressure Sylas' did now, and several of them had come from bloodlines and organizations that should have stood several levels beyond anything available to a man who had only recently stepped onto the Demi-God Plane.

Iskaleth raised her head, feeling the broken paths of Fate around her.

Should she run?

The bitter smile on her lips deepened.

She sighed and slowly shook her head.

Then she turned.

A man stood inside the Vosskarr Archive as though it belonged to him.

Sylas barely acknowledged the corpse of the Reader. His attention wandered across the towering shelves instead, following books, tablets, scrolls and blood-written records stacked through a library so vast that entire sections disappeared beyond Iskaleth's Fate sense.

Only after several moments did his attention finally settle on her.

Iskaleth's body stiffened as Sylas studied her face.

"Your eyes," he spoke calmly. "They're interesting."

Iskaleth's face twisted.

Sylas had been in need of new eyes for a very long time.

What he hadn't expected was to find himself interested in a pair of C-tier eyes instead of upgrading beyond them.