Chapter 2477: So Long

Sylas kept watching Cassarae fight, but his thoughts had already moved beyond the necklace. The cracks spreading through his Pride hadn’t come from one mistake anymore. They were beginning to expose a pattern, and the longer he stared at it, the less certain he became that the problem ended with Cassarae.

His grandfather came to mind first. Magnus had spent most of his life choosing restraint where Sylas would have chosen force, bending under the Grimblade family’s pressure after marrying the woman he loved and spending years trying to make up for a decision he had never truly regretted.

That compromise had cost him ten years with Cedric and kept him away when his wife died of cancer. By the time Magnus abandoned the Grimblades and returned, the woman he had made all those concessions for was already gone.

Sylas had learned something even worse much later. When medicine failed his grandmother, Magnus had begun reaching toward something resembling Rune Mastery decades before the Summoning, somehow touching concepts most people on Earth shouldn’t have been capable of sensing at all.

He had gotten close enough to know there was something there, then stopped. The search was consuming the final time he had left with his wife, and Magnus chose to spend those last moments beside her rather than gamble them on a solution he didn’t believe he could complete in time.

At the time, Sylas had understood that decision. Sitting here now with crimson breaking through his skin, he found himself wondering what would have happened if Magnus had been a little more selfish much earlier in life.

What if he had refused to bow his head to the Grimblade family in the first place? What if he had fought for his position, taken the authority that should have been his, kept his wife and son beside him, then used every resource the family possessed to pursue the strange Rune Path he had already begun touching?

Maybe his grandmother still would have died. Sylas had no proof that Magnus could have completed a Rune Path early enough to cure cancer, but he knew enough now to understand just how absurd his grandfather’s natural talent had been.

Magnus had reached toward Rune Mastery on a world whose Runes were barely awake. Give that man decades of preparation, the Grimblade family’s resources, and the refusal to accept anyone else’s decision for his life, and the result might have been completely different.

Another challenge formed around Sylas while Rheos continued speaking somewhere beyond his attention. His thoughts moved to his father.

Cedric had never wanted much. That had always been one of the clearest differences between them. Sylas had grown up watching his father build his life around Isolde, work enough to give his family what they needed, then stop before ambition consumed the rest of his time.

Sylas had once respected the simplicity of it without understanding it. Then his parents were taken, and Cedric was forced into the position he had spent most of his life avoiding: powerless, unable to decide what happened next, left waiting while his wife remained somewhere he couldn’t reach and his son came to save them both.

Their last real conversation returned to Sylas with uncomfortable clarity. Cedric had admitted that sometimes he wondered whether he had listened to Isolde too much, whether accepting the life she wanted had made it too easy for him to stop wanting anything for himself.

If Cedric had demanded more from life, perhaps there would have been more he could do when everything went wrong. He wouldn’t have needed to stand beside Isolde and trust that Sylas would arrive before someone decided to kill them.

Sylas had heard those words and thought he understood them. He had taken them as another reminder that strength mattered, another example proving the philosophy he had followed since the Summoning began.

Now he wasn’t so sure.

Magnus had sacrificed ambition for the woman he loved. Cedric had done the same, and both men had paid for it in ways that clearly haunted them, yet neither had ever spoken about their wives as though the sacrifice itself had been the mistake.

The regret came from helplessness, and Sylas thought he was so very different, yet what was this feeling now if not exactly that?

Sylas looked toward Earth again and watched Cassarae meet Tomoe’s blade with that old rusted sword. For most of their lives together, Cassarae had been doing exactly what his grandfather and father had done.

She had sacrificed pieces of her ambition for him.

The thought came with enough weight that another fracture spread over Sylas’ collarbone. He had spent so long thinking about how much he gave her that he had almost never measured the exchange in the other direction.

How many times had Cassarae stayed behind while Sylas left? How much of her time had gone into Casstle Main, Earth, his family, the people and problems Sylas left in his wake whenever something farther away caught his attention?

She had her own ambitions. Cassarae had never been some passive woman content to wait at home for him, and that made every compromise she had made more obvious now that Sylas finally bothered to count them.

Even the way he thought about staying home more after the babies were born felt different under that lens. Sylas had framed it as something he would do for Cassarae and the children, proof that he understood there were things more important than constantly running toward the next threat or opportunity.

But how much of that was actually for them?

Sylas had already grown bored of most of what lay beyond Earth, bored of enemies who failed to challenge him, bored of systems he understood too quickly, bored of worlds that seemed impressive until he saw the machinery underneath.

If traveling the universe still filled him with the same interest it once had, would he have made the same decision? Would he truly have chosen Cassarae and their children over everything waiting beyond Earth, or had he only decided to stay once the outside world stopped offering enough to tempt him?

Nosphaleen shifted closer when the crimson light beneath Sylas’ skin brightened again. She didn’t interrupt his thoughts this time, but he felt her attention settle on him and knew she was watching every fracture spread.

Rheos mistook the silence for weakness again and started another challenge the instant the previous one ended. Sylas didn’t even look at him. Whatever Rheos thought he was accomplishing had become so far removed from the real problem that answering would have felt pointless.

Sylas had always believed himself different from his father and grandfather. Magnus yielded too much, Cedric wanted too little, while Sylas took what he wanted and built enough strength that no one could tell him otherwise.

Maybe that didn’t make him better than them. Maybe they were simply better men.

Magnus and Cedric had both been willing to place the women they loved ahead of their own ambition, while Sylas had built his entire life around the assumption that everyone he cared for would simply fit somewhere inside his.

Cassarae had done exactly that. She had fitted herself around him again and again.

Sylas had said he loved her first. He had never hidden what he felt, and even during the decade when they barely spoke, she had remained buried deeply enough in his thoughts that seeing her again erased years of distance almost immediately.

Yet somehow, only now was he asking what that love had actually demanded from her.

Cassarae crossed blades with Tomoe again, her Sword Will spreading through Earth with a freedom Sylas had helped suppress without ever knowing it. He watched her and finally understood that the questions tearing at his Pride had stopped being about whether he was strong enough to protect his wife.

He cared about what she wanted. He cared about what she had given up. And for the first time, Sylas wondered why it had taken him this long to realize just how much that mattered to him.