Ancestral Lineage

The ground was no longer merely earth—it had turned into molten stone and fractured crystal, glowing from the pressure of unleashed Saint-tier energies. Ethan's eyes shimmered with multiple hues—deep blue from the Psyche-Eye, crimson from Blood Magic, golden from Creation, dull grey from Curse, and so on. His tattoos pulsed like living conduits of ancient power. He stood with one knee down, breathing heavily, his aura still expanding.

Across from him floated Queen Ashtora, her form now a silhouette of brilliant, fluctuating light. Her body had become intangible—a humanoid shape of pure psychic plasma, her eyes twin novas of will. The horns on her head had grown longer, now spiraling and pulsing with dimensional static. The ten spikes on her tail had expanded outward like psychic antennae, reaching into unseen dimensions.

They had reached a stalemate, but it was the kind only demigods and sealed titans could understand—one blow away from oblivion, one breath from ascension.

High above the floating mountain peaks where time itself often slowed, a flock of Aeon Vultures stirred. These ancient, long-lived avians, with feathers made of silver wind and eyes that saw the past and future, broke their silence for the first time in decades.

An elder among them looked toward the horizon, his voice a whisper of time, "The Will Plane trembles… The Mind Queen has awakened the Rite."

They watched in reverence as the clouds themselves parted in a spiral, like an eye opening over the distant battlefield.

...

Beneath the shimmering lakes of the southern Beast Plane, glowing aquatic creatures known as Singing Leviathans emerged from the depths. Their luminous fins flared in resonance with the surging Psychic energy.

The matriarch Leviathan, larger than a fortress, opened her psychic field to her children, "Two pillars clash… One ancient, one ascending."

The water rippled upward toward the sky as the Leviathans sang a deep, mournful tone that echoed even into the skies—felt by birds, beasts, and men alike.

In the depths of the jungle, the Grove Lords—colossal tree-entities with faces of bark and voices of roots—awoke. One, older than many mountains, creaked as it turned toward the Will Planes. Leaves fell like snow.

"A struggle of realms. We remember such wrath… We remember such birth."

Animals, predators and prey alike, paused in submission. The Grove Lords' roots began to hum, subtly enhancing the psychic leylines across the forest in response to the battle.

...

Ethan's breathing slowed. For a brief moment, his body stopped resisting. His mind entered stillness, amidst the chaos—a rare clarity surfacing.

He could hear every beat of the Will Plane. Every strand of psychic tension.

A crack echoed inside him.

A seal—not external, but ancient and internal—shattered slightly like an old lock twisted halfway open. His power surged—still within the Partial Saint form—but now radiant, calmer, and denser.

Ashtora noticed.

"You…" she said, her voice layered in harmonics. "You broke something. But not your limit."

"I gained something," Ethan replied, lifting his hand. "Understanding."

He stepped forward, and the very air obeyed him—not out of force, but will. The earth rose to greet him. Light bent around him. Sound harmonized with each movement.

Ashtora's answer was to invoke her Ancestral Rite.

A massive glyph of E'Sheril origin appeared behind her—spanning the sky itself. It pulsed once, and suddenly, the battlefield folded inward.

A second dimension opened beneath them—a psychic crucible known only to E'Sheril royalty. It was where thoughts screamed and emotions became blades. Ethan grunted as his mind strained.

A thousand voices—ghosts of ancient queens—screamed at him.

He bled from the ears. His tattoos flickered. His Psyche-Eye throbbed.

And yet, he didn't fall.

...

Even the reclusive Flame Titans of N'Duram paused their eternal forging, their anvil-rings silenced for the first time in centuries. From their volcanic thrones, they turned their gazes to the east.

"Warring stars," one Titan said. "This war is not just theirs… something older stirs."

...

Ethan roared.

His six affinities surged out—Alchemy etched new laws into the dimension, Earth stabilized the fragmented reality, Necromancy raised the ghost-voices as allies, Curse inverted their effects, Sound collapsed the harmonic barriers, and Blood tied them to him.

Then came Creation and Psyche, which rewrote the battlefield's logic entirely.

Ashtora faltered for a moment—but only a moment.

Then, glowing with the wrath of ten thousand minds, she unleashed the Crown of Will—a final ability allowed only through the Rite.

It clashed with Ethan's Enlightened Psyche, and the world split for miles.

...

The T'Shalari felt the tremor. Their elders gathered, hands clasped, heads bowed—not in fear, but in awe.

"It has begun," one whispered. "The Day of Minds."

The battle raged on—no victor yet, no defeat in sight.

But for the first time, Queen Ashtora hesitated.

And Ethan… smiled.

The broken battlefield had become a bleeding canvas, streaked with raw psychic scars, rivers of semi-molten earth, and patches of distorted time. The ground pulsed as though the land itself was struggling to endure the divine clash.

Ethan stood within the storm, no longer gasping, no longer bound by the tension in his limbs. His breathing had grown silent—controlled. Still partially cloaked in his Partial Saint Form, but now deeper, refined—not louder, but more focused. His body crackled with awakened harmony, a deeper resonance between his hybrid core and the powers he had painstakingly trained.

Blood and Creation.

The seal had cracked.

Not shattered. But just enough.

Just enough.

A wound that had stretched from his shoulder to his rib began to close—no regeneration spell or healing art, but his blood itself reweaving sinew, flesh, and bone. The red of it shimmered with divine light, no longer merely fluid, but a living force of intent. Each drop that fell hissed as it struck the ground, burning holes through psychic mist and fractured stone alike.

Ashtora hovered above, still in her pure psychic form, radiating power enough to rend souls. Her eyes, burning halos of will, narrowed. "You're healing," she said, low and sharp, "despite the Rite. That wound should have broken you."

Ethan looked up, and his voice came with a depth unnatural even among saints.

"I am Dwarven blood, forged in mountains. I am Vampire, born in death. I am Will, awakened through battle.""Your Rite… bends minds.""But my blood remembers. My creation defines."

He raised his hand—and the sky broke.

Not with lightning or flame. But with threads of red and white—streams of primordial blood laced with light of creation, emerging from his very veins. It was not a spell. Not a technique. It was expression.

A spiral of power wrapped around him. Blood Magic weaved through Creation threads, each strand infused with his essence, shaped by intent. From the center, a circle emerged beneath his feet—a rotating seal of radiant, blood-forged glyphs, ancient and perfect.

Ashtora's psychic field lashed out violently. A thousand spears of thought—each honed to puncture minds, dreams, and memories—rushed at him.

Ethan stepped forward—and the moment his foot touched ground, the world around him obeyed.

The spears shattered mid-air.

He raised his left hand, and a blade of crimson crystal formed—dense with ancestral force. His right hand molded a shield of living light, wrapped in veins of golden-red. Both artifacts were conjured, not crafted—willed into being by Blood and Creation.

"Then let it end," Ashtora said.

"No," Ethan replied. "Let it begin."

She surged.

A comet of radiant will, ten spikes of psychic force spread wide behind her, her form stretching into blinding light, mind layered over mind—millions of echoes of herself embedded in one strike.

Ethan didn't move until the last second.

Then, he was everywhere.

His Sound affinity warped the space around him with thunderclaps.

His Curse magic infected the mind-paths she created.

His Alchemy rewrote the composition of her attack mid-flight.

And when she finally reached him, she met his blade.

They clashed in a single strike that flattened the terrain for miles—a crater forming instantly, swallowing black trees, shattering stone, collapsing the mountains ringing the Groves.

But Ethan did not fall back.

He pressed forward.

His blood-fused blade cracked against her glowing limbs, shoving her backward. Every motion of his was purposeful. Every breath was power.

Ashtora's radiant body flickered for the first time—her psychic form distorted.

Her tail spikes flared, trying to compensate, trying to lock Ethan's mind in place with Will Domination.

Ethan answered with Necromancy, summoning ghost-versions of himself from past echoes—each one not illusions, but forged from the echoes of blood and time. They surged with him in synchrony, not striking randomly, but working in harmony.

Ashtora fell back, her form flickering, eyes wide.

"You shouldn't… have reached this height…"

Ethan walked through her collapsing force fields. "You pushed me to it."

With one final step, he drove the crimson blade through the edge of her psychic chest. It didn't pierce flesh—because she had none—but it drove into her core projection, the locus of her thought-form.

There was a great flash of white and red. And then stillness.

Ashtora hovered there, wavering—until Ethan withdrew the blade, and she stumbled, catching herself midair. Her form dimmed slightly.

They didn't speak.

Not yet.

She clutched at the wound, light spilling from it like leaking thoughts, her gaze locking with his.

Ethan stood tall, blood and creation still spiraling around him, face unreadable, eyes glowing in a quiet, terrible calm.

The stalemate had broken.

But the war of will was not over.

Not yet.