Genetic Ascension novel Chapter 2343

[Bonus thanks to BobTheEngineer <3]

High above the unfinished bridge between Heavens, a Serpentes drifted through the chaos as though the battle unfolding beneath her had little to do with her.

Her long body was covered in silver scales that caught the fractured light and reflected it back in polished pinks, starry blues, and soft lavender, while translucent wings spread from her sides like the delicate fins of a koi fish.

Her name was Selythra Mesmeryx, one of the leading figures of the younger generation, and yet while countless Serpentes surged toward the Skai Heaven below, her attention remained somewhere else entirely.

Sylas Grimblade...?

Her head tilted slightly as she remembered the conversation she had shared with the Pack Mother, particularly the weight carried by that name whenever it was spoken.

The command itself had been simple enough, find Sylas Grimblade and kill him, but the emotion behind it had been far less simple. Selythra still couldn't understand why the Pack Mother wanted a single human dead badly enough to make it a priority even during something as valuable as the Heavens Clash.

A shriek tore through the air.

An arrow ripped upward from the battlefield below, its shaft wrapped in spiraling bands of wind while layers of golden Rune light condensed around the head until the weapon looked more like a streaking comet than something fired from a bow.

Wherever it passed, the unfinished bridge trembled beneath the pressure, thin fractures spreading through the stabilized reality as the arrow carried enough force to punch through several weaker Serpentes standing in its path without even slowing.

Selythra barely looked at it.

One of her translucent wings moved in a lazy flap, almost as though she had acknowledged the attack only because ignoring it completely would have been rude.

The arrow crossed the remaining distance and tore straight through her skull, exploding bone and blood from the opposite side while fragments of silver scale spun through the air behind her.

And yet, Selythra remained exactly where she was.

Her wings continued beating at the same slow rhythm, her body never dropping so much as an inch, while the ruined half of her head remained open to the wind. Several moments passed before something in her gaze seemed to sharpen, as though she had only just remembered that there was a battle occurring around her.

"Oh, I forgot... right..."

Reality flickered.

The torn flesh, shattered bone, and spilled blood vanished at once, not healing so much as becoming something that had apparently never happened in the first place.

Selythra's pristine silver scales returned without blemish, the arrow itself disappearing from her skull as the world settled around her as though nothing had ever touched her.

She opened her maw and breathed out.

What escaped didn't resemble flame or poison, but a cloud of translucent butterflies that scattered through the battlefield below, each one shimmering with the same pink, blue, and lavender hues reflected across her scales.

A scream echoed from the distance soon afterward, and Selythra glanced down just in time to see a Thryskai archer tearing the skin from his own face with both hands, golden wings thrashing behind him while blood poured over his chest.

The archer was no nameless soldier either, but one of the greatest young geniuses of the Kaervareth Clan.

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