Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Ryu’s smile was gentle and filled with care. Eska’s, however, narrowed the moment she saw him. Sizing him up, she immediately felt something she couldn’t fathom. What she understood the least, though, wasn’t Ryu’s power, but the care and affection in his eyes.

However, she had long become used to ruling the Zu Clan. The burden of it all had always rested on her shoulders.

She could feel the end of their time coming, the same struggle that all powerful clans went through. It was the inevitable fall of everything.

When you reached the peak, there was nowhere else to go but down. That was the irony of reaching that goal Ryu had been chasing after all his life.

“You’re tired,” Ryu said with a gentle smile.

Eska’s pupils trembled. “You… who are you…”

Her heart was beating rapidly, so hard that she couldn’t control it. There was a longing deep within her that she couldn’t describe.

Ryu wasn’t surprised by this. Of all his wives, Eska was the one who had become the most powerful without his help. She could feel the stream of Fate far clearer than the others. Even though she had no memories of him, she knew her husband when she saw him.

What was peculiar was that Eska in this timeline should have been raised in Sacrum, and because of that, the concept of Dao God shouldn’t exist at all. Because of that, though she was technically the most powerful, she shouldn’t have been able to feel it so clearly.

Things had obviously changed. But he also took credit for that.

Time was a complicated thing. Where he started, and where he ended. What version of himself came back and which one died. Did he die at all? Was he even still living?

These were things that mere mortals weren’t meant to wrap their heads around when they couldn’t even comprehend what the universe was like before their little Big Bang.

What did it mean for there to be nothing? If your only concept of nothingness was the absence of something… then maybe the plane of thought Ryu had reached simply wasn’t for you.

“Let me carry the burden for you.”

Eska’s hand gripped her throne’s armrest tighter with a subtlety she didn’t even notice herself.

Ryu extended a hand and she found herself warped toward him. She stumbled, her eyes widening.

At that moment, the roar of several Zu Clan members came from the surroundings, but Ryu simply waved a hand, putting a stop to it all.

“Come with me.”

Taking Eska’s small hand, he pulled her along, crossing the stars.

Eska didn’t know why, but she couldn’t find the will within herself to resist at all. This should have been the first time she ever even held a man’s hand… so why did it feel so natural and yet so foreign at the same time?

Ryu came to a stop, and Eska barely registered that they had crossed several worlds in the blink of an eye.

High above, there was a Silver Star slowly rotating, and down below…

There was Hope’s World.

“This race is very interesting, don’t you think? They have a fascinating cultivation system that relies on Stars. One of their techniques, [Domain], is a truly special and impressive movement technique that relies on memorizing Star Charts… I remember relying on it once. But like most things… I never realized that it was actually my own creation.”

Eska’s lips slowly parted, but she couldn’t understand what was happening, so she fell into silence once more.

“It’s cruel of me to do this. My wife Yaana tried to save me from this Fate, destroying their path herself so that I wouldn’t have to carry the guilt around with me. Or rather, so that Hope wouldn’t hate me.

“But this is something that I have to do myself. I’ve tried to think of other methods, but it seems that this is the only one that I can take.”

“… What do you have to do…?” Eska softly asked, wondering why it was she cared at all.

“I used a Mountain to forge the Earth Gate. I need a Star to finish the Heaven Gate. But this world spontaneously formed beneath the Star I crafted for you all.”

Eska’s eyes widened. “You…”

She looked up at the star, her heart skipping a beat.

“You, you’re my Ancestor!”

Ryu sputtered with laughter. “No. I don’t have a fetish for marrying those related to me. I just helped you all out a bit and left this Star here to be nurtured by the Fate of the Zu Clan. When it was ready, I planned to finish the final steps of the refinement process.

“I used the connection the Shrine Mountain had with the people to forge the Earth Gate, and I needed another natural phenomenon strong enough to forge the Heaven Gate and also have its own strong connection with as many people as possible.

“What I didn’t calculate well enough was how the decline of the Zu Clan would cause my Star to be lost and shine down on this world… creating this race.

“Now, I have to take it back, but that will cause their Path of Reincarnation to crumble. This world here shouldn’t exist at all, but now I need all of their Fate.”

“Doesn’t that mean that… you planned to do this to our Zu Clan…?”

Ryu smiled and looked at Eska.

“The natural decline of your Zu Clan would have made this process seamless. But they… they are still at their peak right now. Plus, your Zu Clan existed already without me, I just helped. But in this case, I created them. The weight is different.

“In the end, I still can’t escape Karma completely. I’ll have to hurt my wife in order to protect her.”

Eska lowered her head, falling into silence.

Ryu raised his palm and his Fate Star trembled. Down below, it was as though they were watching a planet die in real time, foliage turning from vibrant greens to dull browns, oceans drying up, and earth splitting at its seams.

…

Millennia later, Ryu rose up from a dead planet, a grieving woman cuddling in his arms. She held onto him as though he was the only one that mattered in the entire world.

Ryu bent down and kissed her forehead.

He hadn’t killed anyone he cared much for, he had even managed to save his master and Hope’s parents, but her pain was written into her very name.

Of his wives, Hope had always been the most fragile. He still remembered the mental breakdown she had when she realized that his Fate Star didn’t spin. If he could have helped it, he wouldn’t have put her through this at all.

But as much as he had tugged on Fate and the Heavens, there was only so much rope left on the other side.

“… I’ll help you build a life full of happiness. Everything you’ve lost… I’ll give it back to you tenfold…”

Hope tucked into his arms tighter, the bundle of a little hint of joy squirming in her arms.

Ryu’s eyes became especially tender as he looked down at the two of them… his wife… and his son.

He reached out a hand and took Eska’s.

“I only have one more thing to do. Then… Heavens be damned,” Ryu said to the two of them before crossing the vastness of time once more.

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