The birth of evolved beings took longer than usual for a reason—simply put, from the moment they took their first breath, they were already evolved.
Newborns born under the influence of the Existential Game didn’t need to go through any process of self-acceptance or adjustment to their evolved state.
They were naturally accustomed to everything from the start.
While they weren’t yet intelligent enough to speak, they could fly and had full access to their powers from birth.
— Nyx drifted in the open sky as a tiny infant, her little fingers wrapped securely around her mother’s larger hand while they hovered together above what remained of the Unos Clan’s heart.
Below them, the valley sprawled in utter ruin…
With craters still smoldering with thin trails of smoke, the stone halls and wooden bridges reduced to charred splinters, and the bodies lying still and silent in the endless amounts of ash.
‘This…
shouldn’t have turned out like this.’ The Matriarch thought to herself as her face carried a pain so deep it seemed to age her in an instant.
Everyone she’d promised to protect—the cousins she’d trained with as a child, the elders who had steered the clan through past troubles—every person and piece of her world now lay shattered beneath her.
After a few moments, her thoughts began to drift into darker territory.
‘No… maybe this is perfect,’ she mused.
‘Maybe… this is what I’ve needed all along.’ It wasn’t that she truly wished for her clan’s destruction—no, that was something she could never have foreseen.
But in this moment, she was starting to view it as something inevitable, even necessary.
A small sacrifice… for the greater good.
And the greater good, she knew, demanded sacrifices that no ordinary heart could bear.
She turned her gaze to the infant floating beside her and, despite everything, managed a small smile.
“Nyx,” she murmured, her voice low and tinged with vulnerability.
She didn’t yet know the exact abilities tied to her daughter’s Path, but the single rank “Mythic” was enough to spark a fierce hope…
That somehow the pieces would fall into place, and the child she had carried for over a year might become the pivot on which Raeth’s future could still turn.
In that quiet moment, as the Matriarch placed an unhealthy amount of hope into a mere child—a mere infant—Nyx instinctively let go of her mother’s hand.
It wasn’t because she felt her mother’s turmoil, but rather because the moment felt perfectly aligned with her Existential Path.
She was the Eternal Daughter, a figure who embodied Legacy, Preservation, and Continuity in many ways.
To her, Death was simply a gift that continued to give.
As her newborn eyes remained calm, she activated one of her Path Abilities.
[Unfinished Lines (Mythic)] HUMMMMM!!!!!
In that instant, a pure whitish-black aura burst from the infant’s tiny body, rippling outward in a soundless wave that washed over a hundred kilometers of shattered land.
Within that radius, exactly one hundred illusory clocks shimmered into Existence, each one a perfect, translucent construct of light and shadow that drifted downward and sank into the chests of one hundred fallen members of the Unos Clan.
The surge stopped as suddenly as it had started, the whitish-black aura curling inward until only the familiar red-tinted light of Raeth’s sky remained.
For several long heartbeats the ruined valley held its silence, broken only by the faint crackle of lingering fires.
[100 Beings now live on through you.
] —- In that moment, Nyx lacked the comprehension to grasp, or even recognize, the magnitude of her actions; everything she had done was driven purely by instinct.
Unbeknownst to her, the ability she had invoked did not reverse Death.
Had that been the case, she could have saved far more than a mere hundred beings.
Instead, this ability merely allowed the Existence of any life—be it person or creature—to continue, but only if such continuation was possible.
If an individual’s body had been annihilated, there was no means for her to restore them.
Moreover, these revived beings did not return whole and independent.
From that moment forward, they were irrevocably bound to Nyx, tethered to her as their sole Anchor.
Should she perish, so would they.
In this state, they remained incomplete—alive and physically sound, yet devoid of a Path and stripped of all power.
As the status faded from her view, one by one, the chosen dead began to stir.
It began with the faintest of movements…
A lone finger stirring in the dust, a chest lifting in a fragile, hesitant breath, an eyelid flickering open as if the mere act of looking demanded deliberate will after such an absolute conclusion.
Ashen color spread across their skin with the slow inevitability of a second life, beginning at the center of each chest where the illusory clocks had entered and flowing outward in soft, grayish waves that erased the pallor of true Death.
The transformation carried no pain, only a profound strangeness, as if the body itself were remembering how to be alive while the mind lagged several steps behind.
Eyes fully opened to the blood-red sky and immediately filled with pure, uncomprehending shock.
“What… what happened?” the man rasped.
He pushed himself up on shaky arms, ash drifting from his shoulders in a fine gray dust, and stared at the cratered earth beneath him.
“The lightning…
Wait, it definitely struck me.
How am I still alive?” A woman a short distance away clutched at her own chest with both hands, fingers digging into the newly ashen fabric of her clothing as if she was trying to confirm she was still alive.
Her voice rose in disbelief that bordered on fear.
“Did the Matriarch protect us?” she murmured, then quickly shook her head.
“No… impossible.
The Matriarch is no healer.” All around the shattered valley, people began to speak again, their voices hesitant and uneven, as if waking from a long, heavy nap.
Here and there, some softly spoke the names of loved ones they had seen collapse at their side, each word carrying the weight of grief and disbelief.
Some sat in the ash and stared at their own hands, turning them over and over as the gray color settled into their skin.
High above them, the Matriarch still held the newborn Nyx and watched the first quiet miracle of the Eternal Daughter unfold across the ruins of everything they had once called home.
In that moment, before the Matriarch could even express the emotions building up inside of her, Nyx erupted again, this time, however, with a surge of pure Authority…
HUMMMM!!!!!
The Matriarch’s eyes widened in pure shock.
“Has she earned a title already?” While the Matriarch found the floating Nyx, who was now covered in a golden aura much more than a hopeful child, before Nyx were words she couldn’t quite understand in this moment.
[Existence has taken notice of your actions.] [You have acquired a new title: Clan Savior (Legendary)] [+1,000 Authority] [Clan Savior: This title is earned for successfully rescuing an entire clan from an existential omen, ensuring they don’t vanish into obscurity.
Title Aura – You instantly know the moment anyone you have previously saved dies.
Effects: Passive – All members within your “clan” are fully immune to harm or Death inflicted by entities with lower Authority than you.
Active – You can restore any “clan” member to their optimal condition for twenty years.
Conditional – The twenty-year “gift” applies only to those clan members you originally saved.] [You have acquired a new title: The Last Light (Legendary)] [+1,000 Authority] [The Last Light: This title is earned for preserving the lives of a group of beings destined for certain Death.
Title Aura: Everything aside from enemies within the range of your senses takes longer to finish dying.
Effects: Passive – You can tell when a life is about to end.
Active – You can nullify the effects of a single killing blow.
You are still wounded and injured, but the attack itself can’t kill you.
Conditional – If several people are dying at once in the same moment, the title’s aura and passive extend towards one hundred beings of your choice.
It grants the ability to extend the Existence of any person, group, bloodline, or legacy—untouched by you before—on the brink of ending, for an additional twenty years.
You must have equal or more Authority than your targets.] HUMMMMMM!!!!
—- As the statues faded from Nyx’s sight, she closed her eyes and drifted into a light slumber, floating gently in the air.
For a moment, the Matriarch just stared at the infant who had done something she had truly never seen before.
Then, a laugh escaped her lips.
She reached out, pulling little Nyx into a tight embrace and holding her daughter close to her chest.