Genetic Ascension novel Chapter 2315

Iskaleth's limbs went ice cold.

She had spent most of her life ensuring that no one understood what her eyes truly did. She hid when she could, avoided displaying anything unnecessary, and even when she was forced into the open, she let others assume the beauty of her gaze was the extent of what made it special.

Very few people had ever sensed the deeper mechanism beneath it, and fewer still had understood enough to connect it to Fate. Yet Sylas had looked at her once and immediately noticed something was wrong. Not only had he noticed, he had done so with such ease that Iskaleth couldn't even convince herself he had stumbled into the answer by accident.

Part of her wanted to blame his Profession. She could feel something strange around him, a connection that seemed to stretch beyond the Demi-God Plane and toward the God Realm itself.

A Profession like that might explain why his senses worked differently around her, why he noticed things another Rune Master would miss, but the excuse felt hollow the moment it formed. Sylas wasn't the sort of man who needed a treasure to tell him what stood in front of him. The Profession might have helped, but something deep in her instincts told her the conclusion had been his own, or it could have been had he wanted it to be.

Iskaleth lowered her head and slowly closed her eyes. It was a useless gesture in the literal sense, darkness was darkness whether her eyelids were open or shut, but it helped her thoughts settle. She took a measured breath, feeling the broken rivers of Fate around them twist with every passing second.

"Don't take my eyes," she spoke softly. "Let me live."

Sylas continued looking at her. "Why should I?"

The question almost made her laugh, not because it was funny, but because there was something brutally simple about it. There was no hidden mercy in his tone, but there was also no implication that he had already made a decision and was merely making her beg for entertainment.

He was asking for a reason, which meant she had one chance to provide something useful.

"A person can only be good at so many things," Iskaleth began, raising her head just slightly. "My eyes are excellent, that much you already understand, but they grow slowly. Extremely slowly. They aren't some ordinary bloodline organ that becomes stronger simply because the rest of my body does. If you take them, they will be yours, but you will lose the greatest advantage you possess."

Sylas' expression didn't change.

"The system," Iskaleth continued. "You can contract Serpentes and receive its guidance on how to evolve their abilities and how to grow their bloodlines. But you cannot contract yourself. If you take my eyes and make them part of your own body, you lose that guidance. You might be able to improve them eventually, but you would be doing it blind, and even more slowly than I do."

There was a small pause.

Then Sylas nodded, but Iskaleth felt no relief from it.

Sylas wasn't surprised. She had already spent enough time studying him to understand that much. The method used to disrupt Beacon had been hers, not the Vosskarr's. She had understood what he was doing before entering the Archive, and to understand that, she first had to understand why so many Serpentes were moving toward him in the first place.

From there, the possibilities narrowed quickly. There were only so many Professions capable of exerting that sort of authority over their Race, and even fewer that could explain the strange evolutionary changes some of the Serpentes around Sylas displayed. Once she had enough pieces, the rest was only deduction.

Sylas seemed to understand exactly how she had reached the conclusion because he didn't ask for an explanation. Instead, he looked at her eyes again and spoke with the same calmness as before.

"I'm not a normal man. There is nothing I cannot do."

Iskaleth's expression stiffened.

For several seconds, she couldn't think of a response. Then a bitter smile slowly appeared on her lips.

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