Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2455: Sylas’ Answer. (2)

The humanoid’s raised hand came down, and Sylas’ world contracted around the impact. His Grim Blade caught the center of its palm, but there was no longer enough strength behind the scythe to properly turn the strike aside.

Lightning spilled around the blade and wrapped his black skeleton in white-gold currents while Judgment Will passed through the emerald scales covering his bones, scraping at something deeper than his body until Sylas felt the outermost layers of his Will shear away with it.

He fell only a few meters before his crystalline Phoenix wings caught him, but the humanoid was already there, a fist crossing his ribs before another drove into the side of his skull. Sylas brought the Grim Blade around to answer, only for its haft to be knocked aside, and the knee that followed sent him skidding across the invisible dome sealing the heavens above Earth.

His bones survived, and that alone showed just how far he had come. Earlier in the tribulation, a physical blow carrying this much power would have scattered his skeleton across kilometers of sky, but his growing understanding of Dragon had hardened the emerald film coating his bones while Phoenix continuously corrected whatever structures failed.

At the same time, his grasp of Judgment allowed his Runeweaver Eyes to peel away just enough of every attack that what remained could no longer destroy him outright. The problem was that the humanoid had found another way to kill him, one that cared very little about how sturdy his bones had become.

Every impact took something from his Will.

The next strike barely cracked the emerald coating around his forearm, yet Sylas felt as though a piece of himself had been torn loose and crushed beneath an enormous weight. His connection to the Grim Blade dimmed, several facets of the Phoenix wings behind him lost their crystalline structure, and Temporal Delay became harder to sustain as the Judgment hanging over the skies demanded more from him simply to remain himself.

The humanoid didn’t give him room to adjust. Its elbow caught the side of his jaw before a backhand sent him tumbling, then condensed lightning gathered around one leg and crashed down across his spine. Sylas caught portions of the Runic sequence each time and tore them apart before impact, but the margin he could remove continued shrinking while the pressure of the ceiling grew stronger.

Eternal Will held, but even that changed beneath the strain.

Sylas had once understood Eternity as a Will that could preserve itself through change, something that couldn’t be exhausted merely by forcing it to endure.

Judgment wasn’t attempting to exhaust him, though. It stripped definition from him instead, shaving away the edges of what made Sylas Grimblade until eternity itself met its limits. Eternity only had no defined end, but said nothing of the past...

This Will he faced now represented a time before time, and concept that gave time its right to exist in the first place...

It stood beyond Eternity.

When the Grim Blade slipped from his fingers, Sylas caught it with telekinesis before it could fall far, but even that simple act carried strain now. His Aetherborn Will moved sluggishly through the pressure, and when the weapon returned to his hand, the scythe had grown thinner, portions of its Death Seal fading in and out along the edge.

A white-gold hand closed around his throat and drove him against the ceiling.

Lightning spread from the humanoid’s fingers across his skull. There was no flesh left to burn, only black bone wrapped in emerald, yet pain still reached him through every surviving connection in his body while Judgment bore down upon his Will with such force he was made to feel smaller with every passing moment.

Bloodburn attempted to answer and found nothing. The Ruby Ouroboros remained somewhere within him, but the Contract felt impossibly distant, buried behind layers of pressure Sylas could no longer force his way through. Infinite Hunger, Eternal Cycle, Undying Proliferation—all the absurdities that made the creature so difficult to truly kill meant very little when Sylas could barely extend enough Will to touch them.

The humanoid released him only to drive a fist through his chest.

Several ribs separated completely and spun away, emerald coating flashing across their surfaces before Phoenix Will dragged the fragments back toward him. Sylas managed to catch one Foundation in the attacking arm and unravel it, weakening the next blow enough that it only broke his shoulder instead of tearing the entire arm free. That counted as improvement, but the ceiling adjusted almost immediately.

The next strike carried a different Runic arrangement, and Sylas understood it a fraction too late.

His right arm disappeared into a burst of black fragments and emerald light.

The Grim Blade tumbled from fingers that no longer existed while Phoenix Will reached for the missing limb and faltered before reconstruction could properly begin.

Judgment descended through the opening and took another portion of Sylas’ Will with it.

His thoughts had narrowed to small islands separated by growing stretches of silence. Temporal Delay had failed entirely, Astral Stutter surfaced only in brief flickers, and the emerald flames of his Runeweaver Eyes had faded until only traces remained within empty sockets of black bone.

The humanoid struck again, and Sylas couldn’t remember what the blow hit. He only knew that afterward, there was less.

Another piece vanished with the next impact, then another, until even the sensation of being diminished began disappearing alongside everything else.

Eternal Will no longer felt vast or endless. It had become a point buried beneath Judgment, smaller with every passing instant and compressed so tightly that Sylas could no longer distinguish where his Will ended and the nothing surrounding it began.

Then there truly was nothing.

No lightning reached him there, nor did the ceiling press against him. It was a comfort the Basilisks of the past have come to experience as well, a comfort that came in accepting a loss that could never be undone. An acceptance that all there was left to do was to lower you head and press it to the earth.