Chapter 2359: Apex Predator

Sylas didn’t say anything, but Vaelith felt herself growing more uncomfortable with every passing second.

Honestly, she had been surprised when he chose to leave in the first place, because nothing she had seen of Sylas suggested that he was the sort of person to tolerate someone standing in his way, let alone openly arguing over who would earn the right to kill him.

He was too bold for that, too assured of himself, and the Pride hidden beneath that cold exterior was the boldest, wildest, most unafraid-of-consequences sort she had ever seen.

Sylas simply assumed that the world should move when he told it to. When it didn’t, he moved it himself.

That was why Vaelith had found his retreat strange, even if retreat wasn’t quite the right word for what he had done. He had simply decided that the Vaulkyn and Draeven weren’t worth the interruption, turned his back on them, and continued toward whatever destination had drawn him into the Beast Heaven in the first place.

But now they had caught up.

Vaegor and Vaelor descended toward Yamero from above while Kaesha’s enormous ship pushed forward from behind, its formations bending space until it appeared almost directly in their path. Their earlier battle had apparently done nothing to settle the matter, and if anything, the sight of Sylas leaving had only made all three more determined.

Vaelith expression changed as the air shifted.

Sylas had been willing to ignore them once because Nosphaleen mattered more than whatever prideful nonsense had inspired this chase. Apparently, the fools behind him had interpreted that mercy as weakness, or perhaps worse, as proof that Sylas Grimblade had actually run from them.

Sylas stood from Yamero’s back. His expression remained calm.

Then he took a step forward.

**

Somewhere else entirely, a young man strolled across the cosmos with a typewriter balanced effortlessly in one hand.

Two pens rested behind each ear, a backwards baseball cap sat crooked over messy hair, and an old detective trench coat hung from his shoulders with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His fingers danced across the typewriter keys while he walked, each mechanical click carrying strangely far through the vacuum around him.

"This Sylas Grimblade is a fucking hoot, woo, I haven’t written stories this good in forever."

He grinned from ear to ear and typed faster.

"Where’s this Elara Grimblade thread going to go, though? What a mischievous little brat—ah, I shouldn’t talk about her, if Sylas gets angry and comes after me I won’t be able to keep having fun."

His fingers stopped.

The grin widened.

"Oh, but this... this here is interesting."

He leaned closer to the page.

"Hohohohoho, so the little tigress—I mean lioness—is going to team up with who now? Oh this is good, this is too, too good."

A distant star collapsed.

The supernova erupted to his left, swallowing entire stretches of the cosmos beneath light and annihilation, but the young man kept walking as the blast rolled over him. A moment later he stepped out the other side with the typewriter untouched, still reading whatever had appeared across the page.

"I might as well have written it into fantasy myself. What an elegant choice, what a perfect storyline, whoever wrote this is a true genius, a true genius indeed."

The keys began clicking again.

**

Sylas’ foot landed on the Draeven ship.

Kaesha barely had time to grin before he disappeared from her sight.

One of the warriors beside her folded around Sylas’ fist and launched across the deck, crashing through three others before any of them understood what had happened. Sylas didn’t use telekinesis, didn’t manifest Will into some overwhelming construct, and didn’t reach for the scythe on his back.

He used his body.

A Draeven lunged from his flank with hair sharpened into a dozen spears, but Sylas caught the man’s wrist, stepped inside the attack, and drove his forehead into his face. Bone cracked beneath the collision, and before the body could fall, Sylas used it as a shield against another wave of hair before throwing it hard enough to knock several warriors from the deck.

Kaesha’s smile vanished.

Sylas was moving like them. No... worse.

There was none of the careful distance he usually maintained, no attempt to dismantle their abilities through elegant Rune manipulation or crush them beneath the superiority of his Will.

He accepted claws across his shoulders, let hair wrap around his forearm, and used every opening created by those attacks to tear something away in return.

The Draeven fought with sacrifice and wildness, and now Sylas was showing them there was an even more brutal way to battle... especially when it seemed impossible to leave even a single scratch on him.

Vaegor landed behind him with both fists descending, each exposed hand-brain pulsing as four separate thought streams predicted Sylas’ reaction. Sylas stepped toward the blow instead of away, caught one wrist beneath his arm, and drove his claws deep into the ape’s forearm while using the larger body as leverage to swing himself upward.

His heel crashed into Vaegor’s jaw.

Vaelor attacked before his brother landed.

Sylas met him head-on.

Claws tore through white-blue fur as enormous hands hammered into Sylas’ sides, the two exchanging attacks with such brutality that the deck cracked beneath them despite its A-tier construction. Vaelor’s secondary brains adjusted continuously, tracking Sylas’ shoulders, hips, eyes, and breathing, but every prediction kept producing the same impossible conclusion.

Sylas didn’t care about being hit. He only cared that his own attack landed harder.

"Human!" Vaegor roared as he charged back into the exchange.

Sylas’ eyes turned toward him.

Technically true, but incomplete. Human Simioid, to be more accurate. A descendant of the Great Apes.

If these things truly believed they represented some superior evolutionary route, Sylas would educate them in the language they seemed to respect most.

He caught Vaegor by the throat.

His claws sank in.

Vaelor charged from behind, but Sylas twisted and hurled his brother into him before following with a leap that drove both bodies through the deck. Metal bent beneath them as Sylas landed on Vaegor’s chest and ripped downward, tearing through fur and flesh until the enormous ape stopped moving.

Vaelor screamed.

Sylas met his charge with his own.

They collided once, twice, then crashed through another section of the vessel as Vaelor clawed across Sylas’ back only for his claws so snap and break as Sylas buried his hands into the ape’s shoulders. Vaelor opened his jaws to bite, but Sylas leaned forward first.

His teeth closed around the Vaulkyn’s throat. Then he ripped.

Vaelor’s body went slack.

Sylas spat the blood aside with such force a piece of bone shattered Kaesha’s skull into a bloody rain. Then he rose, and casually tossed the corpse across the ruined deck.

There had only ever been one true apex predator here.