Chapter 2449: Descent

BOOM.

The two empty modes inside Sylas’ body answered at the same time, and the force of it drove cracks through the ground beneath him even though neither Dragon nor Phoenix had truly taken shape yet. What he had built until now was only a vessel, a Race architecture capable of carrying both Wills without allowing either one to overwrite the foundation beneath his existence, and now he needed something worthy of filling it.

That part was almost embarrassingly easy.

Sylas had never seen a true Dragon in his life, and as far as he understood, there might never have been one to see, yet the idea of a Dragon existed almost everywhere he looked. Stories, Bloodlines, Races, ruins, Beast Wills, Karma, and the expectations of countless living beings all carried some version of the same concept, while the Phoenix was hardly different despite appearing through another set of myths.

Neither needed a physical body for Sylas to touch its Will because Dead Will had already done the work of giving both concepts weight. The limitation was that Sylas could only interpret as much of those concepts as his own experiences allowed, meaning his Dragon emerged as dominance, majesty, overwhelming physicality, and authority while Phoenix formed around rebirth, evolution, fire, freedom, and the refusal to allow destruction to become an ending.

Those interpretations weren’t wrong, but they were incomplete, and Sylas understood that immediately.

He had only seen the concepts through his own life, through Earth’s myths, what Iskaleth had taught him, and what he had learned from the Fate Dragon. There might be countless other civilizations spread across the universe that understood Dragons and Phoenixes in completely different ways, but unless those interpretations somehow entered Sylas’ Will, he couldn’t make use of any of them.

Under normal circumstances, that would have been the end of the matter. But how could Sylas not have already thought this through?

Sylas’ attention shifted toward the Grimblade Bloodline flowing through him, and once that connection entered his thoughts, the solution became obvious. A Bloodline wasn’t simply Genes passed from parent to child. Generations left impressions within it, shaping instincts, affinity, temperament, inherited Talents, and even the forms of Will descendants found easiest to comprehend.

More importantly, Sylas was the Progenitor.

If his Will could flow downstream through every living Grimblade, then there was no reason insight couldn’t travel back toward him.

Sylas pushed his incomplete Dragon Will into the Bloodline.

The response spread across every Grimblade almost instantly, not as a command or an attack but as a question buried so deeply into their blood that most of them would never consciously notice it.

What was a Dragon?

The answers returned without words.

A child imagined an enormous beast coiled around a mountain while sleeping on enough treasure to buy kingdoms, while a soldier imagined scales nothing could pierce and claws capable of tearing through any defense. An old woman who had grown up on Earth imagined age, wisdom, storms, and the sort of presence kings bowed before, while others saw monsters, Gods, protectors, tyrants, winged beasts, serpentine creatures, fire, lightning, oceans, and skies.

The Bloodline reached further than the living.

Echoes remained from Grimblades who had died before Earth’s Summoning, people who had known Dragons only through movies, books, games, religion, children’s stories, or half-remembered myths passed down through families. Western Dragons overlapped with Eastern Dragons, winged forms clashed with wingless ones, while divine creatures and calamities stood opposite one another without either interpretation being discarded.

The contradictions weren’t a flaw. That was what made the myth so powerful.

Sylas didn’t need every Grimblade to agree upon what a Dragon was, because if he stripped away the cultural details and isolated the traits that survived across enough different interpretations, the underlying concept became clearer. Power, authority, majesty, a body beyond ordinary limits, and a presence that forced the world around it to acknowledge its existence appeared again and again no matter how much everything else changed.

The Dragon mode inside Sylas stabilized.

He inhaled and his body shifted.

Emerald scales emerged first, not forming like armor over his flesh but growing from it as Selfwrought Emperor reorganized the tissue beneath. His frame expanded without becoming monstrous, muscles tightening and bones thickening while claws extended from his fingers and two horns curved backward from his skull.

When Sylas clenched one fist, the surrounding atmosphere collapsed toward his palm.

The sensation was different from merely gaining Physical stats. His body felt less like flesh producing force and more like physical presence itself had become a kind of Will, something that expected the world to yield before it.

Sylas looked toward the distant skies and, for a brief moment, grabbing one of the stars above didn’t feel impossible.

Neither did shattering those same skies with an open palm.

The thought wasn’t born from empty arrogance. The Dragon Will simply looked at the distance between what Sylas could do now and what he imagined doing later, then judged that distance as something waiting to be crossed rather than a boundary. And then further beyond, allowed him to use his Will to potentially cross that boundary right this very moment at a heavy price.

That alone made Sylas understand how dangerous this path could become.

His representation of Dragon wasn’t static anymore, because every Grimblade born from this point forward would inherit some fragment of the concept and eventually add something of their own. As the Grimblades grew stronger, saw more of the universe, encountered greater Races, and understood more of the forces governing existence, everything they learned could eventually flow back toward their Progenitor.

The stronger the Grimblades became, the more complete Sylas’ Dragon would become.

The same would hold true for Phoenix.

Eventually, there were only two possibilities. Either the accumulated understanding of the Grimblade Bloodline would become great enough that Sylas perfectly embodied both myths through the weight of generations, or Sylas’ own Will would reach that understanding first.

He didn’t need much time to decide which outcome he expected.

The Dragon form receded back into its mode as Sylas sent the second question through the Bloodline, and the returning impressions of Phoenix immediately proved harder to organize. Rebirth, fire, immortality, hope, destruction, renewal, beauty, flight, freedom, sacrifice, and change overlapped until there were more contradictions than answers.

Sylas allowed them to remain that way.

Just as Dragon didn’t need one appearance, Phoenix didn’t need one interpretation.

He filtered away the details and searched for the concept that survived beneath them all, allowing Fathomless Rune Creation to sort through the countless impressions until one principle remained stronger than the rest.

Change that survived destruction.

The Phoenix mode accepted it.

Heat spread through Sylas’ body, but rather than burning, it made every cell feel less fixed, as though his flesh had finally understood that whatever shape it held now was only temporary. His Runes shifted beneath his skin, adjusting around the new Will without losing the central reference Willborne Crown had established.

Then something pressed outward from his back.

Sylas’ eyes narrowed as a pair of enormous wings unfolded behind him, but they looked nothing like what he had expected from a Phoenix. They were radiant, layered, and almost unnervingly elegant, carrying a shape that looked less avian than it did...

Angellic.

The sky rumbled.

Sylas slowly looked up as clouds split apart above him and lightning spread through the opening in wild, branching waves, the pressure gathering beyond the torn heavens so dense that the newly formed Phoenix mode inside his body reacted on instinct.

Something was descending.