Chapter 397 - 404: The First Evolutionary Choice (Part 2)

Then a flame appeared.

It was small at first, no larger than a candle. But it was a color Aether had never seen. It was not red, and it was not gold. It was neither one nor the other nor any blend of the two. It shifted as he looked at it, dawn-bright, then ember-deep, then clear as molten glass. Within it he could see traces of everything that had been there before, the fury of the Inferno, the mercy of the Sunfire, the hunger of the Hellfire. But beneath them, woven through them, was something else.

Something that had never existed.

The Origin Mother had gone completely still.

"It rejected the existing paths," she said. Her voice was almost a whisper. "All three of them. It did not choose among what was offered. It made another."

For the first time since he had met her, she looked shocked.

Aether looked at the strange new flame, and the corner of his mouth lifted.

"Then we’ll make another one," he said.

The Pup turned its head and gave him a look that said, quite clearly, *Obviously.*

"This is not an evolution," the Origin Mother said. "Not yet. It is only the beginning of a possibility, a flame that has not yet decided what it will be. But it has a shape now. It has a name, of a sort."

"What name?"

She watched the flame curl and brighten.

"Sovereign Flame Origin."

The little flame flickered, as if it approved.

It was then that the Spirit Fairy drifted away from his shoulder.

She did not speak. She only floated across the stone, slowly, until she hovered beside Liora and the creature asleep in her arms. The Unwritten Beast had stirred when the flames collapsed. Now it lay with its eyes half open, watching her approach.

The Spirit Fairy laid one small hand against its forehead.

Aether tensed, remembering the marsh lizard. But there was no golden wave this time, no sudden surge. There was only a gentle glow, silver and gold braiding together, passing between the two of them like breath.

"They’re talking," Liora whispered.

"Not with words."

Possibility after possibility, unrolling in the quiet of her mind.

When she opened her eyes, they were bright with tears.

"What did you see?" Aether asked softly.

"Everything." Her voice shook. "I saw myself as a healer. A true one, who could mend a body with a touch. I saw a guardian of souls, standing between the living and the dark. A spiritual monarch, ruling a garden of lights. A fairy of life and death, who could open the door both ways." She drew a trembling breath. "And a being who could restore souls that had been broken beyond repair."

The laboratory was very quiet.

"They were all me," she said. "Every one. They were all beautiful. And I could not choose."

Aether’s heart ached. He knelt in front of her and held out one hand, and she settled into his palm like a leaf.

"I don’t know what I want to become," she said.

It was not despair. It was not fear. It was only a plain, honest confession, and he understood that it had cost her something to say it.

He smiled.

"Then don’t choose yet."

She looked up at him.

The Spirit Fairy was silent. Then she nodded, and pressed her small face against his thumb, and for a while she did not move at all.

Across the circle, the Origin Mother watched them with a look of quiet approval.

"Fallen Succubus," she said.

The Succubus did not move.

"I have not asked you what you want."

The silence that followed was a long one. The Succubus had gone pale, and her violet eyes were fixed on a point far away. When she spoke at last, her voice was unlike anything Aether had heard from her. It was flat and careful, as if each word were being lifted over a wall.

"I have spent most of my existence," she said, "believing that my evolution was already decided."

Nobody interrupted her.

"I was born to a bloodline. It is an ancient one, and it is strong. If I release it, I will recover an immense amount of power. More than I have had in a very long time." She drew a breath. "I know what lies on the other side of that door. I have always known."

"Then what stops you?" the Origin Mother asked, very gently.

The Succubus looked at her hands.

"The person I have become," she said. "Over these months. Beside him." She did not look at Aether. "I think I have a personality now. I think I have preferences, and loyalties, and a sense of what is funny. I did not have those when I woke. I am not sure the old blood would let me keep them."

Aether’s chest tightened. He had never heard her speak this plainly.

"For the first time, I am saying this aloud," the Succubus went on, and her voice cracked, just once. "I am afraid that becoming stronger will turn me back into who I was."

The words fell like water into a deep well.

Liora made a small, stricken sound. Kael looked at the floor. The Origin Mother did not move.

And Aether did not tell her what to do.

He wanted to say that she was stronger than the blood, that she would not lose herself, that he would never let it happen. But those would have been promises he could not guarantee, and worse, they would have been decisions made on her behalf.

So he stepped forward, and stood in front of her, and met her eyes.

"Then we’ll find a way," he said. "A way for you to become stronger without losing yourself."

She stared at him.

"I don’t know what that looks like yet. I don’t know if it’s possible. But I’m not going to ask you to pick between the two." He gave her a small, crooked smile. "That’s a bad bargain. We’ll find a third option."

For a moment she did not breathe. And then, very slowly, the tension went out of her shoulders, and she let out a shaky laugh and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.

"You are impossible," she said.

"I’ve been told."

"You will do," she said softly.

"What?"

"I said you will do." She stepped toward him. "Before you leave, there is one more thing I must give you."

She raised her hand, and a thread of golden light unspooled from her fingertips. It coiled in the air, forming symbols that Aether did not know, and settled gently against his forehead.

Knowledge poured into him.

It was not like reading. It was like remembering something he had always known. A technique unfolded in his mind, intricate and strange, built on principles that did not match any cultivation manual he had ever studied.

"Origin Resonance," the Origin Mother said.

He gasped. "This isn’t a normal method."

"No. A normal method teaches you to share your energy with your beasts. This one teaches you to share something far more precious." She lowered her hand. "It allows a beast tamer to synchronize with the potential of his creatures. Not their strength. Their possibilities."

Aether stood very still, absorbing it.

"With practice, you will understand their Evolutionary Choices as they never could alone. Your synchronization will deepen. You will help them withstand the pressure of their own bloodlines when they change." She hesitated. "And in time, you may even create techniques that none of them could use alone, without ever forcing their bloodlines to merge."

"That’s incredible."

"It comes with a price."

He had been waiting for that.

"If your soul becomes too closely aligned with theirs," the Origin Mother said, "their injuries will become yours. Their pain. Their fear. When they bleed, you may bleed. When they break, you may break."

Aether took a long breath.

"I accept," he said.

"You have not heard the whole risk."

"I’ve heard enough." He looked at the four of them, and his voice was steady. "If I’m going to ask them to carry what they carry, I can carry some of it too."

The Origin Mother smiled, and for the first time, it reached all the way to her eyes.

They were preparing to leave, gathering packs and quietly checking one another’s wounds, when she stiffened.

It was a small movement, almost nothing. But Aether had been watching her, and he saw her head turn, sharply, toward the ceiling. Her eyes went distant. The gentle light along her arms flickered, then steadied, then flared.

"What is it?" Kael asked.

She did not answer immediately. She stood with her face lifted, listening to something that none of them could hear, and the color drained slowly out of her cheeks.

"Not the Evolution Dominion," she murmured. "They have retreated. Not the Perfect Bloodline Society. They are not yet near."

"Then who?"

"Something much older."

The words dropped into the laboratory like a stone into a well, and the temperature seemed to fall with them.

"The third force has noticed the Unwritten Beast," she said.

Aether’s stomach turned. "Who are they?"

The Origin Mother closed her eyes, and when she opened them, the golden depths were shadowed with an old and heavy grief.

"The Bloodline Eradication Order."

The name meant nothing to him. But the sound of it made the Succubus go rigid, and Kael’s hand tightened on his cloak.

"They don’t want to capture it, do they?" Aether said slowly. "Like the others."

"No."

"What do they want?"

The Origin Mother looked at the small, sleeping creature in Liora’s arms. Her voice, when it came, was soft and terrible.

"They want to kill it."

They left the laboratory in silence.

At the top of the ridge, Aether turned.

The Origin Mother had followed them as far as the great doors. She stood on the threshold of the ancient laboratory, small and pale against the vast dark of the hall, her silver hair stirring in a wind that did not touch anyone else.

"I must return," she said. "The seal is weak, but it will hold a little longer. I will be of more use to you if I rest."

"We’ll come back," Aether said.

"I hope that you will." She smiled faintly. "But not too soon. You have work to do."

She turned to go, then paused, one hand on the doorframe.

"Aether."

He looked up.

"Your first true evolutionary battle will not be against a beast."

He stopped. The wind seemed to still around him.

"Then what will it be against?" he asked.

The Origin Mother lifted her eyes toward the distant sky, where the last of the daylight was draining away. For a moment she looked impossibly old, impossibly weary, a woman who had seen the end of many roads.

"A choice," she said.

The great doors began to close. Behind them, in the depths of the laboratory, the broken crystal rose to meet her, shard by shard, and the golden light folded gently inward until there was nothing left but silence.

Far beyond the Ashen Star Wilderness, in a place where no wind blew, the sky split.

A black structure hung in it, vast and silent, its edges cut so sharply that they seemed to cut the light itself. It cast a shadow over a plain of grey stone, and in that shadow stood thousands upon thousands of beast tamers in rank after rank, motionless as statues, their creatures crouched at their sides in perfect, silent order.

At the center of them stood a woman in a white mask.

She was small and straight and utterly still. Before her, suspended in the air, a shimmering image slowly turned. It showed a tiny creature with golden-flecked eyes, curled against the shoulder of a girl in a patched coat. The picture was grainy and distant. It was unmistakable.

She raised one gloved hand.

"The Origin Child has awakened," she said.

A subordinate stepped forward and bowed. "My lady. Shall we capture it?"

The woman in the white mask regarded the image for a long moment.

"No," she said.

The man hesitated. "Then..."

"Erase it." Her voice was flat and level. "Before it creates the thirteenth bloodline."

The subordinate bowed again, deeper this time, and withdrew.

At that moment, in a place beyond sight, the silver clock moved.

Tick.

Another symbol disappeared.

But this time, something answered.

On the ridge above the Evolutionary Graveyard, Aether stopped walking. A sudden heat bloomed between his shoulder blades, sharp and bright, and he gasped and reached back. Liora grabbed his arm. Kael’s head snapped around.

The thirteenth mark on his back had begun to glow.