Chapter 2444: Lust

Sylas returned the Omnimous before doing anything else, reaching through the Void and setting it back into the same room he had taken it from. Alex and Nathan both looked up from their work, then toward the Omnimous, but Sylas was already gone before either could speak.

He had more important things to deal with.

The two could only look toward one another with a wry smile.

**

Cassarae, Nosphaleen, and Xarvenya were together by the time he found them, though judging by the atmosphere, that hadn’t necessarily been by choice. Cassarae sat with one leg crossed over the other while Xarvenya occupied the opposite side of the room, leaving Nosphaleen between the two with a faintly amused expression.

They were clearly not happy. After getting used to having Sylas around all the time, a few days with him being gone left them itching.

"Nice of you to remember your wife," Cassarae spoke first.

Sylas ignored the comment and took out the bundle Weaving Madness had given him.

Their expressions flickered.

Silvery-blue strands had been woven together so tightly that the object looked more like a small bundle of flowing metal than silk, yet every shift of Sylas’ fingers revealed another layer beneath the first. There were no obvious Runes within it, no Aether circulation Sylas could immediately identify, but the Will inside was unmistakably Lust.

Xarvenya’s gaze sharpened. "Where did you get that?"

"Weaving Madness."

None of them knew what that meant, but the weight of the name alone made them shift in their seats.

Nosphaleen leaned closer instead, her curiosity winning out almost immediately. "What does it do?"

Sylas hadn’t known when Weaving first handed it to him, but he had spent enough time studying Lust to understand far more now that the object was in front of him. The Virtue stirred inside him as he touched one of the strands, and the silk responded by loosening beneath his fingers without unraveling the rest of the weave.

"It’s for the children."

Three very different reactions met those words. Cassarae’s amusement disappeared, Nosphaleen’s attention sharpened, and Xarvenya was already standing before Sylas finished speaking.

"What does it do to them?" Xarvenya asked.

"Almost nothing."

Her eyes narrowed.

Sylas pulled one strand free and allowed his Will to sink into it. "That’s the point."

Lust had taken Sylas longer to properly understand than Pride, but not because it was more complicated. The problem had always been that the Sin obscured what existed beneath it, reducing the concept to desire and procreation when those were only consequences of something much more fundamental.

Evolution wanted continuation so that it could trigger evolution once more.

Every time Sylas had undergone a major evolution, his body had answered with Lust so powerful that it became difficult to ignore. He had gone from an ordinary F-Grade Human born on Earth to an A-tier Demi-God Human Simioid in a span of time that should have required generations, and every leap had carried the same underlying demand.

Pass it on.

Genes struggled, adapted, improved, and then sought a way to ensure that improvement survived beyond the individual. That instinct was why Lust had followed every evolution Sylas experienced, and it was ultimately why his understanding had crossed from Sin into Virtue.

The Sin exhausted itself in the act, but the Virtue was the Gift of Life.

Sylas looked toward the three women before him and understood the other half of that truth now. Evolution made an existence more capable of producing exceptional descendants, but the same complexity that made those descendants valuable also made creating them far more difficult.

A child couldn’t simply inherit everything from both parents. Genes, Bloodlines, Race, Will, and countless smaller factors competed before birth, with only portions managing to stabilize into something the developing body could withstand.

The mother bore the consequences of that process.

"You’re all strong enough that carrying them isn’t a problem right now," Sylas explained. "But their Wills will continue developing. Mine especially isn’t something a developing body should be able to inherit cleanly."

Cassarae placed a hand against her stomach almost unconsciously. "That’s comforting."

"If it was going to kill you, I would have fixed it."

"Even more comforting."

Xarvenya gave Cassarae a cold glance, but Nosphaleen covered a smile before it could fully form.

Sylas continued studying the thread. "This doesn’t make the children stronger. It makes the process of inheriting strength less violent."

That was the cleverness of Weaving’s gift.

The thread wasn’t meant to suppress the child’s Will, nor did it reinforce the mother’s body enough to simply endure greater pressure. Instead, it created a woven boundary between the two, spreading the weight of development across the entire womb rather than allowing every change in the child’s Will, Genes, and Bloodline to press directly back against the mother.

At the same time, that boundary wasn’t a wall. It was a bridge.

The mother’s Will could flow through the weave in small amounts, nourishing the developing child without overwhelming it, while the child’s own fluctuations could diffuse outward without directly clashing against her. Neither side was weakened, and neither was allowed to swallow the other.

Sylas finally understood why Weaving Madness had given him silk.

Lust created life and Weaving allowed two lives to occupy the same space without one paying the entire price for the other’s growth.

Sylas crouched before Cassarae and pressed two fingers against her lower abdomen, using his Will to open a path through her body so narrow that not even a drop of blood escaped. The strand followed his control inward, and the moment it reached her womb, the silvery-blue material dissolved into thousands of threads too fine for ordinary senses to detect.

Cassarae stiffened.

Sylas felt it at the same time.

The weave spread around the developing child without touching it, forming overlapping layers that attached themselves to Cassarae’s Will rather than her flesh. Almost immediately, pressure Sylas hadn’t noticed before redistributed itself, revealing that even this early there had already been a faint conflict between the child’s developing presence and its mother’s.

Cassarae exhaled.

"That feels..."

She frowned, apparently irritated that she couldn’t immediately find the right word.

"Lighter," Nosphaleen offered.

Cassarae glanced at her, then reluctantly nodded. "Yeah."

Sylas moved to Nosphaleen next, and the result was similar but not identical. Her connection with Will made the weave respond faster, silvery-blue threads spreading in a pattern that seemed almost eager to incorporate her influence without allowing it to dominate the child.

Nosphaleen’s eyes softened as she sensed the change.

Xarvenya was last.

Her body was incomparably stronger than either of the other women, but that only made what Sylas found more interesting. The child within her had responded to that environment accordingly, its developing foundation pressing against a mother strong enough to tolerate far more.

The strand spread and for the first time, Xarvenya’s expression shifted.

Only slightly.

"So this is what she meant."

Sylas nodded.

No matter how powerful the mother became, the weakness of reproduction remained the same. The child could inherit only what its developing existence survived, while the mother had to endure every failed interaction along the way. But not anymore.

The best part was something he hadn’t even thought of. While the child was growing and the Layers of its body were growing more complex, its would be able to influence the world more, and the world influence it more in return.

The results of that might trigger evolutions even beyond Sylas and his women themselves.

Sylas straightened and looked at the remaining bundle in his palm, then toward the three women carrying his children. Then, he simply put the silk away.

It was a good gift. Even now, he still felt he didn’t understand it fully.