Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2343 · Ashen White [Bonus]

[Bonus thanks to BobTheEngineer <3]

High above the unfinished bridge between Heavens, a Serpentes drifted through the chaos as though the battle unfolding beneath her had little to do with her.

Her long body was covered in silver scales that caught the fractured light and reflected it back in polished pinks, starry blues, and soft lavender, while translucent wings spread from her sides like the delicate fins of a koi fish.

Her name was Selythra Mesmeryx, one of the leading figures of the younger generation, and yet while countless Serpentes surged toward the Skai Heaven below, her attention remained somewhere else entirely.

Sylas Grimblade...?

Her head tilted slightly as she remembered the conversation she had shared with the Pack Mother, particularly the weight carried by that name whenever it was spoken.

The command itself had been simple enough, find Sylas Grimblade and kill him, but the emotion behind it had been far less simple. Selythra still couldn't understand why the Pack Mother wanted a single human dead badly enough to make it a priority even during something as valuable as the Heavens Clash.

A shriek tore through the air.

An arrow ripped upward from the battlefield below, its shaft wrapped in spiraling bands of wind while layers of golden Rune light condensed around the head until the weapon looked more like a streaking comet than something fired from a bow.

Wherever it passed, the unfinished bridge trembled beneath the pressure, thin fractures spreading through the stabilized reality as the arrow carried enough force to punch through several weaker Serpentes standing in its path without even slowing.

Selythra barely looked at it.

One of her translucent wings moved in a lazy flap, almost as though she had acknowledged the attack only because ignoring it completely would have been rude.

The arrow crossed the remaining distance and tore straight through her skull, exploding bone and blood from the opposite side while fragments of silver scale spun through the air behind her.

And yet, Selythra remained exactly where she was.

Her wings continued beating at the same slow rhythm, her body never dropping so much as an inch, while the ruined half of her head remained open to the wind. Several moments passed before something in her gaze seemed to sharpen, as though she had only just remembered that there was a battle occurring around her.

"Oh, I forgot... right..."

Reality flickered.

The torn flesh, shattered bone, and spilled blood vanished at once, not healing so much as becoming something that had apparently never happened in the first place.

Selythra's pristine silver scales returned without blemish, the arrow itself disappearing from her skull as the world settled around her as though nothing had ever touched her.

She opened her maw and breathed out.

What escaped didn't resemble flame or poison, but a cloud of translucent butterflies that scattered through the battlefield below, each one shimmering with the same pink, blue, and lavender hues reflected across her scales.

A scream echoed from the distance soon afterward, and Selythra glanced down just in time to see a Thryskai archer tearing the skin from his own face with both hands, golden wings thrashing behind him while blood poured over his chest.

The archer was no nameless soldier either, but one of the greatest young geniuses of the Kaervareth Clan.

Selythra frowned and looked away.

"Ugly."

Her wings spread wider before folding again, and her body flickered from the skies so smoothly that even the space she had occupied seemed uncertain whether she had ever been there.

Sylas Grimblade still hadn't appeared, and the people of the Skai Heaven were proving far too weak to require her attention, so she might as well continue doing what the Pack Mother had asked.

She would find the foolish man who had managed to infuriate her.

**

Black fire rolled across another section of the battlefield.

Wherever it touched, flesh, armor, and even the fragments of stabilized reality hardened into stone before crumbling moments later into pale ash. The Serpentes responsible moved through the chaos in a loose pack, their long bodies covered in ashen-white scales while six insect-like wings buzzed from their backs in translucent pairs.

They bore an eerie resemblance to Sylas' Hollow Wing Combat Mount, but the similarities ended quickly upon closer inspection.

These Serpentes had no limbs at all, their bodies remaining smooth from head to tail, and there were no horns crowning their skulls either. They were the Ashen White Serpentes, a bloodline whose black flames petrified everything they touched before reducing the resulting stone to ash.

One figure flew above the rest.

Varkesh had eight wings instead of six, while two small horn stubs rose from his skull as though something within his bloodline had begun pushing toward a form the others had yet to reach.

Four patches of black scales also broke the sea of white along his body, each one positioned exactly where limbs might have formed had his body followed the same shape as Sylas' Hollow Wing.

"What an annoyance," Varkesh muttered as another wave of black fire poured from his maw. "I'm growing tired of killing and killing, these bastards are all weak, so is this really the Thryskai? Where are the real geniuses?"

Laughter rolled in from the distance as another Serpentes swept through a burning section of the bridge, his scales a deep ruby that glowed beneath the surrounding flames. Rathyr of the Cindermaw Clan flew without hesitation through the heat, his bloodline belonging to one of the Beast Heaven's oldest lines of fire-breathing Serpentes.

"We've always known the Will Heaven was the weakest," Rathyr called back. "They were only lucky that crossing between Heavens was too dangerous and too expensive for anyone to bother taking their pitiful resources, but this time, we'll gladly take their Karma."

A third voice came from the darkness between broken sections of the bridge.

"Don't underestimate them."

A Serpentes lingered there, his body almost impossible to see against the void, leaving only a pair of pale eyes floating within the darkness. "There has always been something peculiar about the Skai Heaven, because how else would they manage to infuriate a God badly enough for something like this to happen?"

Varkesh laughed, his eight wings spreading as black fire gathered between his teeth.

"No, no, that wasn't them, it was that coward Sylas Grimblade who still hasn't shown up." His gaze swept across the distant battlefield before a wild grin stretched across his face. "Do you think a human is big enough to make a mount?"

Rathyr barked out another laugh, but Varkesh's grin only widened.

"Maybe not. I suppose I'll just use his spine as floss instead."