Chapter 2451: Heaven’s Answer. (2)

The strike began to fall, and Sylas understood almost immediately that his Runeweaver Eyes wouldn’t be enough on their own. White-gold radiance had already consumed most of the heavens, its edges stretching far beyond the horizon while layers of Runes churned inside it in numbers he couldn’t hope to unravel before the lightning reached him.

An older part of his arsenal surfaced in response, one he hadn’t needed to rely upon heavily in a long time. His Progenitor Flame had granted him two abilities rooted in Space and Time, and while his Rune Mastery, Classes, and Will had gradually given him more direct answers to most problems, there had once been a period when those abilities were among the only reasons his mind could keep pace with enemies whose bodies vastly surpassed his own.

Temporal Delay had never truly slowed time, despite how it felt when Sylas first awakened it. It accelerated his perception until fractions of a second stretched wide enough for conscious thought, and after reaching Legendary Grade, it had developed beyond simple processing speed to allow him to read the lags, fractures, and shifting oscillations left behind as one moment transitioned into the next.

Astral Stutter approached reality from the opposite direction, following the marks Runes left upon the Mesh as they moved through space. What had begun as an ability to feel how structures changed eventually allowed Sylas to perceive what a Rune had been, what it was becoming, and even interfere with that process before the transformation finished.

There had been a time when Sylas considered both abilities wells of potential he hadn’t properly learned to exploit.

That had no longer been a problem for a very long time now. He simply hadn’t needed them... until now.

He activated Temporal Delay, and the world opened.

The lightning continued descending with enough speed that anyone watching from a distance would have seen little more than one continuous flash, but Sylas’ perception stretched the movement into discernible stages. White-gold currents shifted and overlapped, broke apart and then fused. Foundations formed and reinforced one another, Strokes bloomed and then evolved. A sea of a jagged microcosm of evolution, chaos, and unbridled violence flashed in small snapshots before his gaze.

His Runeweaver Eyes followed those changes, peeling into the first layer and then the second while pain gathered behind them almost immediately. Heat spread through Sylas’ skull as his mind processed an obscene amount of information every real second, and blood pooled along his lower eyelids before trailing warm lines down his cheeks.

Still, he pushed deeper.

The lightning wasn’t simply moving toward him. Each completed Foundation restricted what could happen after it, some possibilities disappearing as others strengthened until countless possible paths narrowed toward fewer and fewer outcomes. Sylas had felt that sort of pressure before, not inside an attack, but through Iskaleth’s perception of Fate and within the ancient structure of the Fate Dragon itself.

The recognition came without interrupting his focus.

Temporal Delay followed how actions evolved through time, while Astral Stutter followed how their structures changed through space. Will was the force that continuously pushed those changing possibilities toward one conclusion rather than another, and what Sylas had spent years calling Fate was beginning to look less like an independent mystery and more like the shape left behind when all three interacted.

Space and Time provided possibility. Will narrowed those possibilities. Fate became the path that remained.

The realization passed beneath conscious thought and reached his Progenitor Flame first.

Heat spread through Sylas’ chest as the Flame surged, but rather than keeping that power contained within himself, he pushed it down pathways his Will had already carved into the Grimblade foundation. The connection reached Sky Roaming first, where the city answered its Progenitor with a deep vibration that moved through walls, towers, streets, and every foundation Sylas had anchored there.

That vibration didn’t stop at the city.

It travelled into the Grimblade Bloodline and then farther outward, touching worlds, territories, strongholds, and cities scattered across the Galaxy until distant locations began humming to the same rhythm. Living Grimblades felt something stir inside their blood while the accumulated impressions of generations moved through the same Lineage, every connection ultimately feeding back toward the man who had become their Progenitor.

Then the Fate Dragon joined them.

Sylas had already forced its ancient Karma into the Grimblade foundation and made it a backbone for both the Clan and his eyes, stripping away enough of its former identity that its power now answered to something new. When it moved through Sky Roaming, the Bloodline, his Will, and finally his gaze, those previously separate connections closed into one complete structure.

For a moment, Sylas no longer felt as though he was looking at the lightning from a single patch of ruined Earth.

The entire Galaxy became an anchor.

His Progenitor Flame erupted.

—

[Progenitor Flame Abilities Upgraded]

—

[Temporal Delay (Sacred) (Progenitor Flame Ability)]

[Bend perception through the temporal tide and follow the Fate carried within its flow. Read the rhythm between moments, perceive how Will narrows possibility, and trace the permitted paths of the Mesh before the present has fully decided which future will become real.]

—

[Astral Stutter (Sacred) (Progenitor Flame Ability)]

[Feel the evolution of Runes across the Mesh—what they were, what they are, and what their Will may yet allow them to become. Grasp their Astral Echoes through connected anchors, preserving, projecting, and transforming their structure across space before change has finished taking form.]

—

The falling lightning slowed even further beneath Sylas’ perception, its blinding surface separating into rivers of Runes flowing inside larger rivers of white-gold light. He could see histories trailing behind individual Foundations and branching possibilities ahead of them, but the greater clarity exposed a different limitation almost immediately.

There was simply too much.

Blood spilled freely from Sylas’ eyes as pressure built inside his skull, each heartbeat driving another pulse of pain behind his temples while the leading edge of the strike continued closing the distance. His perception had become broad enough to see the problem, but one consciousness still couldn’t organize all of the information quickly enough to solve it.

Sylas swept a hand through the air and folded space.