Chapter 1492: Heirs of Exile

For what reason had the Legacy Families been exiled from what was so easily called the World of Power?

The question lingered within Phei’s thoughts long after the last golden brilliance of the setting sun had disappeared beyond the horizon, leaving Hell’s Paradise Island beneath the soft violet embrace of evening.

The exile of the Legacy Families lay so far in the past that even the year of their arrival upon Earth remained unknown. They were seventeen families banished from a place known simply as the World of Power, yet the circumstances of that exile had eluded their descendants for generations.

For all their wealth, influence and extraordinary resources, they could scarcely explain what had happened to their ancestors.

Each family carried the direct blood of a particular Original Progenitor, belonging to races whose origins reached far beyond Earth.

Those ancient beings had inspired reverence and terror across the Realms; their descendants now occupying this world possessed only the sleeping remnants of their magnificent power.

The Heavenchilds carried the blood of the Angel Progenitors, the were the Abram-Mansons, whose descent from the Original Vampire Progenitor, that revelation had given him plenty to think about. Even among the Legacy Families, descent from such an existence could hardly be dismissed.

Danton’s was the J?rmungandr Prince—he had never been much of a mystery.

The bastard was the first World Serpent, an Original J?rmungandr Progenitor whose present strength barely approached the might of his former existence. Phei had witnessed enough of his cunning and infuriating confidence to dislike imagining what he would become once he became for instance an immortal being.

The bastard already enjoyed making himself everyone’s problem; he could bloody well wait for the rest.

The Montgomerys descended from the First Devil himself.

Angels, Vampires, Devils and the World Serpent accounted for only four of the seventeen bloodlines.

Phei was still unaware of what exactly Derek was and what Kyle meant until now.

He knew far less about the Roth-Fairchilds than he would have liked.

Enslaving Kyle had granted him insight, but some of those revelations had only deepened the mystery. He could have pressed further, certainly, though he already had quite enough troublesome ancestors demanding his attention.

His brows drew together as his thoughts turned to the Ashfords.

Everything he had discovered suggested they possessed a Dragon bloodline, which invited questions about his own family that he could scarcely answer.

His Cosmic Dragon Bloodline had become inseparable from his existence, while the Ryujin Tiamats’ origins remained entangled in secrets.

There seemed to be an ancient relationship between the two families, but he had yet to learn who the Ashfords’ progenitor was, much less how it might relate to his own.

Dravenna remained his only certain connection.

She had been close to his family long before he understood the relationships surrounding his birth, and her history with his parents had proved far more intimate than he had once imagined.

Their friendship reached into the years before the accident, into memories of his childhood that had gradually acquired meaning as the truth about his father and mother emerged.

None of that, however, explained the Ashfords’ bloodline.

The answer might lie among the secrets his family had kept, or he might be searching for a relationship that did not exist.

Whatever mysteries surrounded them, these seventeen families descended from a particular group of Original Progenitors.

Countless Progenitors existed throughout the small and the Greater Realms and some hidden; seventeen was merely the number whose descendants had been exiled together to Earth.

For those banished lineages, the hope of reclaiming the power denied them rested upon the Destined Day.

Phei had begun to regard its prophecy as the fair promises of a very old malediction.

Until the appointed day, the descendants were forbidden from awakening their true Bloodlines.

They could gather treasures, preserve ancestral arts and amass enough wealth to command an entire world and some could sneak to cultivate some power, yet the might slumbering within their own veins and souls remained beyond their grasp.

’What consolation could riches offer someone born with a Bloodline capable of shaking the Realms and forbidden to awaken it?’

The Destined Day also marked the promised reincarnation of their Original Progenitors from whom they descended.

Phei knew too little of the seventeen families, their exile or the beings responsible for their exile to understand how that return would unfold.

Nevertheless, he had begun to suspect that the prophecy concealed something crueller than a long-awaited pardon.

Perhaps their enemies had never possessed the power to prevent the Progenitors from returning. Their reincarnation lay beyond stopping, then their rebirth would arrive regardless of anyone’s wishes.

With it would descend the blessing that increased their descendants’ power a thousandfold.

Phei had begun to think of its prophecy as the terms of their curse, dressed in promises grand enough to make the punishment sound bearable. Until that appointed day, the descendants could never fully awaken their true Bloodlines. The same day, however, would also herald the reincarnation of the very Progenitors from whom they descended.

That troubled him whenever he considered the purpose of the exile and the curse.

The more he considered it, the less the Destined Day resembled a pardon for whatever offence had brought about their exile. To Phei, it had begun to look like the inevitable arrival of something their enemies had never possessed the power to prevent.

They could banish the descendants, bind their Bloodlines and deprive them of their rightful might, but they could not halt the reincarnation of the Original Progenitors.

Those ancient beings would return regardless. Their awakening would awaken their descendants as well, bestowing power upon them beyond anything their present mortal lives could suggest.

So how did one contend with an enemy whose return could not be stopped?

Phei could almost follow the reasoning of those who had imposed the exile.]:

{"Leave the descendants free to awaken their unmatched Bloodlines and cultivate throughout the intervening centuries, and the inevitable return would find them already powerful. Suppress them instead, and those same centuries would pass with their greatest powers lying dormant within their veins.

Such restraints could not be imposed upon the Soul of a Progenitor in the same fashion.

The moment those beings awakened, their descendants would awaken too.

But until then, the curse could keep the descendants mortal, denying them the very years in which their strength should have flourished."}

A few centuries might seem a tolerable wait to beings who had lived for millions of years.

To their descendants upon Earth, however, those centuries held entire lifetimes.

Children would grow old beneath the curse, leaving children of their own to await the same awakening.

Some might die believing wholly in the might of their ancestors; others might come to regard it as little more than a promise preserved in fading records. Even descendants of an Original Progenitor could grow accustomed to mortal lives if that was all their children had ever known.