Chapter 2395: Even

"Move."

The echo of Sylas’ singular word rolled through the skies, and the Heavenly Serpentes immediately felt the natural Runes across their bodies beginning to slip out of alignment. Feathers trembled without permission, radiant formations flickered at the edges, and for a brief moment it almost felt as though the control they had possessed since birth was being peeled away from them one layer at a time.

Just when the pressure seemed ready to cross some invisible threshold, Sylas’ gaze shifted toward the side.

Tomoe was coming fast.

She cut through the distance like a speeding blade, grey fractures opening in the air behind her while she ignored the all Wills entirely. The sight made Sylas’ expression darken further, since it was obvious she didn’t care about claiming one of the five spots at all, and after seeing how much more he had been hiding, her desire to continue their battle had only become more intense.

Sylas could still feel reserves within her that he didn’t properly understand, especially since she had yet to show the true might of Formless Will.

Her greatest weakness seemed obvious enough, as her Will could grow independently of the system while her other Stats lacked an equally clear path forward, yet Sylas didn’t believe someone like Tomoe would leave such an obvious limitation untouched. More likely, she possessed some method of replacing what the system normally provided and simply hadn’t bothered revealing it yet.

That also meant her Formless Will wasn’t being expressed anywhere near its true level right now, with Charisma acting as the bottleneck in much the same way Sylas’ eyes had once limited how much of his Will he could properly bring into reality.

The moment Tomoe found a reason to display whatever method she had developed to overcome that weakness, her power would rise again, and even if Sylas still believed he could kill her, the delay alone could become disastrous.

Normally, Sylas didn’t care when people stood in his way or even when they tried to kill him. That was the way of the world, and survival of the fittest had never offended him so long as everyone understood the consequences of losing, but what happened here was directly tied to whether Earth survived and whether his family remained safe.

His reverse scale had already been scratched once when his parents were taken from beneath his nose. He wasn’t going to allow it again.

Serion roared before Sylas could act, and Thiel answered him almost immediately, their voices spreading through the surrounding Heavenly Serpentes until dozens of natural Rune formations began resonating together. ℯℯ𝘭.

Their feathered scales flashed with radiant light as space hardened beneath layered authorities, while even the flow of time became sluggish enough that Sylas felt his own Rune Mastery being smothered from every direction at once.

They had prepared for him.

Information about his Path had almost certainly been passed down after Orithrael’s death, since the formation around him wasn’t simply powerful, it was designed to restrict the exact things Sylas relied upon most.

Space resisted his influence, Aether became harder to claim, and every Rune he reached toward felt as though several foreign Wills were already squeezing around it first.

Serion descended from above while Thiel swept in from the side, and the others followed in the same instinctive battle style Sylas had already seen from Orithrael.

Natural Heaven Runes manifested across their feathers without conscious construction, one Serpentes reinforcing the sky while another locked movement, a third tightening the surrounding space, and the rest attacking through whatever gaps remained.

Sylas moved between them.

His scythe redirected one strike while his shoulder rolled beneath another, emerald eyes darting through dozens of Rune relationships as he searched for something he could exploit.

Every opening he created was closed almost immediately by another Heavenly Serpentes, and with one thread of his senses continuously fixed on Tomoe’s rapidly approaching presence, Sylas already knew that time was working against him.

He broke one connection, shifted between two tails, then used the recoil from his scythe to change direction before a wall of compressed atmosphere could trap him. His mind ran through several possible paths at once, but every one of them reached the same conclusion before Tomoe’s presence grew noticeably closer.

He wasn’t going to be fast enough.

The idea of simply running from the encirclement filled Sylas with enough disgust that his expression almost twisted, but before he could settle on another answer, a metallic ringing swept through the battlefield.

Seven distinct tones answered one another and a figure dropped into the formation.

Ekear landed between Sylas and the Heavenly Serpentes with his worn brown trench coat snapping behind him, its sleeves roughly cut away to expose forearms wrapped in bandages and reinforced by metallic bands held together with hexagonal bolts.

Seven strange blades sat horizontally across his back with their hilts alternating from side to side, each weapon looking more like something pulled from a distant future than a sword forged within the Sanctum.

Gralith’s eldest disciple had appeared.

Serion attacked him almost immediately.

Ekear drew the bronze-spined blade first, the gears along its length rotating the instant his fingers closed around the hilt. He didn’t meet the attack head-on, instead turning the weapon at the last possible moment and letting Serion’s momentum slide across its edge before redirecting the entire strike toward Thiel hard enough that the younger brother had to abandon his own attack to avoid being struck.

The first blade had barely returned toward its rack before another came free.

The metallic eye at the base of its hilt rotated once and locked onto three different Heavenly Serpentes, while Ekear’s stance shifted with it from lazy to precise without any wasted motion.

His battle style seemed built around answering every problem with a different weapon, one sword redirecting force, another reading movement, while the remaining blades waited for whatever weakness appeared next.

"I’ll make you an opening," Ekear said, keeping his attention on the Heavenly Serpentes as Serion and Thiel separated. "After this, we’re even."

Sylas looked toward him.

Ekear finally glanced back, his expression still carrying the same half-awake look Sylas remembered from their first meeting. But he didn’t say anything more.

There was no mention of the Thrones or no dramatic declaration about sacrifice. There was no hesitation at all in the way he stepped forward while the Heavenly Serpentes closed around him.

The lack of concern in his voice made the implication of his words clearer than if he had spelled it out. But Sylas was more than sharp enough to understand what he was saying.

By staying here, he was functionally giving up on one of the five thrones. He wasn’t repaying Sylas by saving him, he was repaying him by carving out a path to one of the five.

His Will surged through the battlefield.

Several of the seven blades rose from his back at once, each humming with a different pressure as the suffocating formation around Sylas began to separate along a narrow line.

Serion roared and rushed to close the opening, but Ekear shifted into his path before he could move more than a few meters, one sword already turning in his hand while another hovered behind him.

"Do what you came here to do, youngest disciple brother."

Sylas’ gaze moved toward the opening, then toward the streak of grey tearing across the distant sky. For a moment, though, it was unclear whether he would take the opening given or not.