Wings, scales, horns, new limbs, additional eyes; all of it.
The many mutations and physical oddities Uriel had seen across the settlent weren’t random, nor were they costic.
They were signs of humanity’s growing power, but also proof that his sacrifice had not been in vain.
How else could nearly everyone have achieved a Greater Evolution if not for the rewards he had secured for them?
In any other tiline, Greater Evolutions stood as the highest peaks, while Subli Evolutions were little more than myths whispered by the desperate.
In this tiline, however, things were... different. For better or for worse.
And then there were Uniquenesses.
These were the true grails of each Major Evolution, the most coveted boons of all.
They were exactly what the na implied: unique.
Uniquenesses were abilities that ca with physical and spiritual mutations, born from the fusion of the subject’s ancestry and the awakened’s lineal origins itself.
A blending of lineages, instincts, and latent potential, birthing a form greater than the sum of its parts.
Random and unpredictable were the only words that could define them. No two were ever alike. Yet all shared one immutable truth; their overwhelming strength.
More often than not, a Uniqueness stood as the most powerful tool in an ascendant’s arsenal.
Lineal Spark Talent, Spark Characteristic, and Uniqueness—These were the three boons any ranker had the opportunity to gain during this first step, one at each rank.
Lesser Evolution, Greater Evolution, and Subli Evolution—These were the three grades of Major Evolutions, each demanding increasingly vast resources and ever more complex thods.
Beyond the first step of each rank, matters grew far more complicated. Layers of depth, refinent, and danger awaited, layers Uriel would soon unravel.
But for now, his mind was elsewhere.
...
Uriel was lost. Entirely.
After extracting the spark and forming the new creature through Ayah’s class, he had received sothing unexpected from the system.
A perfected thod.
One that did not rely on his abilities, nor on Ayah’s, to replicate what they had just achieved.
With this thod in hand, he vanished into obsession.
Enoch rushed out imdiately, spending the following hours buying hundreds of eggs, weapons, plants, raw materials—anything awakened commonly used for evolution.
He nearly emptied their funds.
And Uriel went to work.
Spark after spark was pulled free. He wove them together, fused them, dissected them, spliced them apart and blended them into twisted, unseen creatures that defied any known taxonomy.
To his shock, raw materials held no sparks at all.
Forged weapons and plants, however, did, though their sparks bore shapes utterly alien when compared to those of living beings.
That revelation only deepened his trance.
He extracted the sparks of swords and shields, weaving them together before threading them into the sparks of doves, lizards, horses, and dozens of creatures that had never existed on their planet.
He wove plants bearing conflicting elents and affinities into weak beasts, warping their nature at its root. Then he stirred the fundantal structure of those creatures, forcing them into the molds of legendary entities of old, only to collapse them again monts later and pursue a different idea.
Experint followed experint.
And with each success, it was as though the system stood beside him, actively refining every confird theory, perfecting every viable structure.
It wasn’t rely observing. It was assisting.
The system evolved his technique in real ti.
Runes were introduced. Then spell circles. Aether flows. Formations. Feedback loops.
The process grew endlessly complex, branching outward in ways that should have taken lifetis to map.
Uriel’s grin only widened.
His mind expanded. His core widened with it. The system beca a constant echo in his thoughts, guiding his hands, correcting inefficiencies, sparing him what would have amounted to hundreds, no, thousands, of years of blind experintation.
The growth was fulgurous.
He felt... alive.
...
Six days passed after the announcent of the barrier’s fall.
Only a week, and a handful of crumbs, remained before all hell would be unleashed upon the world.
Ayah still lay within her cocoon of chains. Enoch had used his Lie Eaters to transport her into her room, where he had layered dozens of safety asures in preparation for anything that might go wrong during her advancent.
Enoch himself sat in the living room.
Cross-legged. Facing Uriel.
The sight of him made Enoch shudder.
Uriel had lost all the fat and weight he had only recently begun to regain. He was thinner now than he had been in the prison.
Yet his aura had never been more potent.
His gaze was sharper, deeper, piercing straight through the soul. And the radiant curve hanging from his lips was pure, joyful enough to burn away doubt, hesitation, and fear alike.
Between them floated a large green crystal.
Arcs of athyst lightning danced and coiled around it, accompanied by thick, violent gusts of aether that warped the air.
"Are you ready?" Uriel asked, his eyes fixed on Enoch.
Enoch inhaled deeply.
Then nodded.
This was the final step.
Failure did not an injury, it ant death. This path of evolution was new, forged in a way the world had never witnessed.
But Enoch was willing to take the risk.
Uriel nodded in return.
With a simple wave of his hand, the gem condensed. It shrank rapidly, compressing until it was no larger than an average pill, before floating gently into Enoch’s open palm.
For this new evolutionary path, Uriel had removed the need for any specific assimilation thod or external materials.
Everything was woven directly into the crystal creature itself.
Either both of them would die, or Enoch would achieve a Subli Evolution.
There was no third outco.
KAH!
Enoch tossed the crystal pill into his mouth, bit down, and swallowed.
[You have cons—...assimi—...[?]!]
[...?!...?!....error...!]
A deafening, almost crushing boom erupted from Enoch’s stomach.
A wave of purple fire and green lightning exploded outward from his body.
Uriel didn’t flinch.
A mantle of thick natal aether wrapped around him instantly, shielding him completely. After days of relentless experintation, calling the leap in his aether control "significant" would have been a severe understatent.
’...Co on... co on...!’
Enoch’s body began to shatter.
Bones collapsed inward. Flesh tore apart. Blood sprayed violently through widening gaps in his skin.
A roar of agony tore from his throat, yet his focus never wavered.
His hair fell away. His skin burned to nothing, leaving behind only a blood-soaked sack of raw flesh.
Then, a blinding glow burst forth from his stomach.
His core.
It expanded once. Then twice.
Then it ballooned outward violently before compressing in an instant, collapsing into a bead so small it nearly resembled a singularity, bending the surrounding aether toward it.
Uriel hadn’t even seen Enoch’s spark.
But he could feel it. It was growing. Evolving.
Body and spark advancing in perfect synchrony.
’It’s working!’
PAH! PAH! PAH! PAH!
Scales erupted across Enoch’s ruined fra—tallic, dark purple-silver, etched with deep runes that linked together, forming a massive formation spanning his entire body.
He grew taller.
Muscles swelled briefly before the scales pressed inward, refining his shape into a slender fra of dense, coiled power.
Aether surged, transmuted, and reford his skin, wrapping tightly around his body as though tailored by intent itself.
But it was only the beginning.
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