The pillar of ancient golden light that engulfed Pip in the center of the vault didn’t burn. It sang. It was the packed genetic marrow of the Nine-Sun Golden Crow, preserved for a hundred million years within the stellar iron core of Vault Three, now returning to the sole surviving legitimate heir of the solar pantheon.
Suspended three miles above the vault floor, Pip’s body underwent an astonishing, violent cellular spreading.
The living transformation of an apex beast into a True Mythic divine ancestor was a process that defied mortal beast-doctor understanding. In the textbooks of Ironfang Academy, evolution was described as a gradual, generational buildup of elemental mana that hardened bones and broadened muscle fibers over decades of training.
What Arthur was witnessing through his magnifying glass was not training. It was the total, miraculous unspooling of ancient living memory.
Pip’s genetic code, suppressed for ten thousand ages by genetic degradation and slum cull pens, was being fully overwritten by the pure old family aether of the Jinwu feather-vault. Every cell in the raptor’s body was undergoing rapid, hyper-body-energy metamorphosis. His bone marrow, once simple avian bone webs, was recrystallizing into hollow tubes of zero-pushback carbon-silver-steel composite capable of containing sun-hot fusion.
