Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2334 Last Path

Iskaleth gasped what felt like her last breath.

Pain had long since stopped feeling like something happening to her body and had become the body itself, a suffocating, endless pressure digging through everything she was.

Sarethvane's tail had torn through her cleanly, but that wound was almost insignificant compared to what came afterward. Death Will pressed down from every direction, the coffins surrounding her existence like walls she couldn't see but could feel closing inward, stripping away layer after layer until even thought became difficult.

Somewhere far away, she knew her body was still twitching, blood spilling into the air, her Living Will fighting to remain attached to flesh that wanted to let go.

But Iskaleth herself had already fallen somewhere else and Fate surrounded her.

An endless sea of paths stretched outward, every possibility her life might still follow shining for only a moment before darkness consumed it. One vanished. Then another. Another after that.

Entire futures disappeared so quickly she couldn't even understand what had once waited at their ends before they were swallowed. It felt like standing before Sylas again.

Back in the Vosskarr Archive, she had watched the same thing happen. Every path she searched for had closed beneath his existence, possibilities collapsing until the only future she could see was her own death. The memory should have brought the same terror with it.

It didn't.

This time was different. This time, she had chosen it.

The thought carried an odd calm with it, something so small beneath the pain that Iskaleth almost missed it. She watched another path toward survival disappear, then another, and although some distant part of her knew she should have been screaming in fear, she couldn't summon the emotion anymore.

Part of that was weakness. She understood that clearly enough.

The pain was so great that dying almost felt preferable. If she simply stopped fighting, stopped holding herself together, all of it would end. There would be no more pressure against her Will, no more fear of what Sylas might do, no more constantly scrambling for another path forward.

It would be easy.

But beneath that weakness was something else, something smaller and quieter.

If she died here, at least she wouldn't die because someone had pushed her into a corner and she folded.

She had chosen this.

She had looked Sarethvane in the eyes and told him to kill her. She had taken control of the only decision left in front of her and stepped into death herself. For once, if these were truly her final moments, she wouldn't have to look at herself with disgust.

'... Chosen.'

The word echoed through her mind and something shifted.

The pathways around her continued to dim and collapse, each one falling away into an abyss so deep even her Fate sight couldn't follow them. Yet every time her thoughts wandered through that darkness, she found herself returning to the same place.

One path remained. It was faint at first, a thin golden thread buried beneath an ocean of black. Iskaleth watched it, expecting it to disappear with the others, but it didn't.

The path dimmed, flickered, then returned brighter. A few moments later it happened again, brighter still.

Iskaleth focused on it. The thread wasn't hers alone, she could feel Sarethvane within it.

His Will pressed against the edge of her fading existence, his senses digging through the layers of Dead Will replacing her Living Will, his control over the coffins straining to keep her trapped at the threshold instead of allowing her to fall fully across it. He was the only thing stopping death from completing its work.

But the path wasn't entirely his either, only half belonged to her.

Iskaleth's thoughts slowed. What was she supposed to do now?

She had offered herself as the experiment. She was the one dying. Sarethvane only had to search through what remained and find whatever secret was hidden inside her Dead Will.

What else could he possibly need from her? But the fact they both shared this path of Fate meant that they both had a part to play in what was coming...

Another wave of pain struck and the golden path dimmed for the first time.

Outside the sea of Fate, Sarethvane's control tightened.

Iskaleth couldn't see him directly anymore, but she could feel something changing through the thread between them. His Death Will grew more frantic, pressing against her collapsing existence as though he had suddenly realized she was slipping away faster than expected.

The path dimmed again.

Iskaleth stared at it.

Maybe that was fine. Maybe she had done enough. She had already put her life on the line. What else was anyone supposed to demand from her?

Her thoughts drifted toward Sylas and she remembered that cold gaze... the way he had looked at her when he called her Will weak.

Anger flared faintly inside her. She hated him for that.

Hated that he could look at everything she had accomplished and dismiss it so easily. Hated that he could force her into situations like this and then sit there meditating while she clawed at death itself.

But anger wasn't an answer. She could rage against Sylas until the last bit of her Will disappeared and it wouldn't magically reveal the Fate Dragon. Pride alone wouldn't solve anything.

The path dimmed further.

Iskaleth's anger disappeared with it, leaving something colder behind.

Emptiness.

She watched the final possibility fade and suddenly noticed something she should have seen earlier.

It wasn't reacting only to Sarethvane, it was reacting to her. Every time she thought of giving up, the path weakened. Every time she accepted death as inevitable, its light thinned. And every time she resisted, every time some stubborn piece of her refused to disappear, it returned.

Iskaleth's consciousness trembled. She was changing Fate.

The realization struck so deeply that for a moment even the pain vanished beneath it.

All her life, Iskaleth had treated Fate like a current she needed to read. Something larger than herself, something she could navigate if she was clever enough and obedient enough to its warnings.

But she wasn't outside of Fate, she was part of it.

Her choices changed the paths, her Will changed the paths, and her personal autonomy itself could brighten one future and smother another.

A shudder ran through her existence.

That was right. She could take control of her own Fate.

The final path exploded.

Golden light burst outward so violently that every remaining shadow around it disappeared, the thin thread becoming a beam bright enough to split the darkness surrounding her.

There was only one path left and only one way she survived. One way Sarethvane could survive.

They had to find the Fate Dragon, that was the only way Sylas would let them live. Then that could only mean that... this path could only lead to one place.

Toward it.

BOOM.

Outside the sea of Fate, Sylas slowly stood.