I Can Assimilate Everything

"It's been purposefully engineered so that its genetic components could never express themselves in the Adrastia line. Generations of lock upon lock, seal upon seal, making it dormant beyond any natural awakening."

She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice carried quiet confidence.

"But I would be able to unlock it."

…!

The shock of the undertaking rippled through the garden.

This wasn't going to just begenetic manipulation.

This was going to be the archaeological excavation at the molecular level, uncovering something that had been deliberately buried in the genome for countless generations.

Adras processed this for a long moment, his expression cycling through surprise, concern, and finally decisive acceptance.

"Okay," he said simply, understanding that sometimes the only way forward was through the impossible.

Achilles and Rose moved to the center of the garden, their forms creating a study in contrasts…his solid stellar matter against her fluid water existence, purple-gold meeting blue-green in patterns that painted impossible colors in the air between them.

Rose's water form shifted, becoming more human-like in shape if not in substance, as she faced him with an expression that mixed professionalism with deep affection.

"My Little Fatty," she said, using the pet name that never failed to make him smile, "you trust me to mess around with the very makeup of your existence?"

Instead of answering with words, Achilles reached out and brought Rose closer into an embrace that should have been impossible- solid matter holding liquid form, but somehow worked perfectly. "You know the answer to that," he said against what would have been her ear if she had been fully corporeal.

Rose smiled, the expression visible through her translucent features, and brought her forehead to touch his. The contact point between them glowed with soft light as she closed her eyes and began.

The abilities she would use were profound in their implications. Through Genome Reconstruction, she could rebuild patterns from the faintest traces.

Through the Empress's Genetic Mandate, she could issue commands to willing genetic material, awakening what had slept. And through Genetic Weaving Sight, she could perceive the hidden sequences that evolution or deliberate engineering had discarded.

As Rose's consciousness dove into Achilles's genome, her perception shifted to a scale both microscopic and vast.

She found herself observing countless massive pillars of helical strands…DNA enlarged to the size of architecture in her perception, each strand a tower of information spiraling through dimensional space.

Most of the pillars blazed with purple-gold light, the active Adrastia heritage that defined Achilles's existence.

Some showed traces of other influences, the stellar adaptations, the assimilated Regulations, the countless small changes that had accumulated through his journey.

But there, buried beneath layers upon layers of genetic obscurity, she found it.

One pillar stood surrounded by murky multicolored light, wrapped in countless layers of what looked like genetic static- junk DNA that had been purposefully accumulated around it like camouflage.

It wasn't just dormant; it had been engineered with deliberate, methodical precision to never awaken. Generation after generation of additional locks had been added, each Adrastia Emperor King unknowingly contributing another layer of suppression through their natural genetic evolution.

Rose focused on this pillar with the intensity of stellar cores focusing light. Her power as the Primordial Genome Empress manifested not as force but as authority…she didn't break the locks so much as convince them they had never existed!

HUUM!

The masking capabilities shattered like glass made of probability.

The moment the true genome beneath was exposed, reality itself seemed to hiccup.

In a show of glorious progression, something unfsthomable occured!

Behind Achilles, space twisted and writhed as an illusion…no, a genetic memory made visible- manifested with terrible clarity.

A massive butterfly materialized, but this was no earthly creature.

Its wings were platinum shot through with veins of every color that had ever existed and several that hadn't. Its body was simultaneously there and not there, existing in multiple dimensions at once, each one showing a different aspect of its impossible nature!

The butterfly's wings spread wide enough to encompass the entire garden, and their movement caused existence itself to shudder.

Not space, not time, but existence…the fundamental fact of being, trembled in recognition of something that operated outside its normal parameters!

Achilles's eyes erupted with tendrils of platinum light that reached out in all directions like searching fingers.

His existence felt something unlocking, and boundless flows of information coursed throughout him!

His body remained solid, but something within him was awakening…not power in any conventional sense, but understanding.

Genetic memory flooded through him, carrying with it knowledge that the Adrastia line had been designed to forget.

The Outsider genetics weren't just present…they were fundamental to who they were!

And yet they knee nothing of it.

The First Adrastia Emperor King hadn't just been involved with an Outsider; the lineage itself was a hybrid creation, a bridge between the Star Seas and something that existed outside normal reality.

"My son…" Adras breathed, watching his son's transformation with awe and concern in equal measure. "What is this…?"

The platinum butterfly's wings beat once, and the sound that reached them wasn't sound at all but pure narrative force…

Achilles felt nee understanding thst shocked him as this was…

The power to reshape stories…to alter the fundamental dramatic structure of reality itself?

It was still confusing.

He had to sit down to take some time to understand it!

This was what had been locked away, the inheritance that the Outsiders had never intended the Adrastia line to access.

Achilles stood at the center of this revelation, his form crackling with potential. He was still himself, still the Ninth Adrastia Emperor King, but now he was also something more…a being with legitimate claim to powers that existed outside the normal structure of the Star Seas!

The butterfly began to fade, but its presence had marked him. Platinum threads now ran through his purple-gold existence, visible only to those who knew how to look.

Rose pulled back from the genetic awakening, her water form trembling with exhaustion from the effort. But her expression was triumphant as she looked at what they had accomplished.

"The locks are broken," she said simply. "That genetics is now part of your active genome..."

Achilles's eyes…now showing flecks of platinum among the purple-gold…turned toward the sky.

In his mind, a word rose up!

Nar'Thyss!

Weavers of Fables, Shepherds of Stories!