Chaos' Heir

Khan lingered in the scene as that sad realization took root inside his mind. The scars were hideous, turning his arms into a patchwork of tiny pieces of skin clinging together through sheer stubbornness. Their mere sight could cause disgust and fear, and no one would possibly welcome their touch.

'Not that I have anyone to touch,' Khan thought. 'Not that I plan to touch anybody.'

Khan's left hand joined the second, hovering before his glowing eyes. He almost expected the scars to be symmetrical, but the eerie events ended there. Those closed wounds were simply that, zigzagged injuries that had turned into permanent marks on his arms.

'How fitting,' Khan mocked himself. 'Maybe they will work as a warning, keeping people away from me.'

The scars had deeper implications that Khan acknowledged but didn't bother wasting brain matter thinking about. His element was breaking him. His power had exacted a physical price sooner than expected, but he didn't care. Khan was okay crumbling as long as he saw his journey to its end.

After all, Khan could only lose himself now, and that was a sacrifice he was willing to make.

The thinking session wasn't over, but the growing discomfort updated Khan on its prolonged nature. He couldn't track the passage of time from his position but felt that a few minutes had passed and that his body could handle much more.

Still, that wasn't the time to test limits. Khan had far more important matters to handle, and many didn't involve his recent transformation. He had just subjugated the White Mouse crew and defeated the Great Old One, leaving him with new workers, a whole planet, and a gargantuan corpse.

Khan shot downward, reentering Coravis' atmosphere before slowing down. He had planned to fly directly to the sea's surface, but touching the air again reminded him of the previous oddities. His discomfort immediately receded, making room for other glaring differences.

Khan had never mastered true flight. His technique was a poor imitation of that technique, relying on the symphony and other ethereal surfaces to obtain similar results. Khan simply walked over the air, but the transformation had brought a qualitative change.

The symphony remained a viable foothold, but Khan felt off using it. It wasn't actual discomfort, and the technique worked just fine, but his instincts labeled it wrong.

Being Tainted by the Nak had been comparatively easier in that regard. The mutations brought better overall strength and a superior connection to the mana, but nothing Khan could actively control.

Instead, the Great Old One's tainting seemed to come with proper abilities, which Khan didn't know how to activate. He only had his instincts warning him when something felt wrong.

Khan stopped mid-air, rechecking his arms. He disregarded his scars now, searching for something beyond his fragmented skin. That odd feeling came from inside him, so he tried to follow it to find its source.

The deeper Khan went, the stranger the feeling became. Things didn't end there, either, since an unfamiliar sense of control joined those emotions. Khan was new to all that but also experienced an instinctive mastery of things he couldn't even name.

It was like breathing or walking. They were abilities Khan didn't need to think about to perform since he had learned how to do them in his infancy. However, his body seemed to hold more of those now, and he didn't know what they were.

Blindly exploring would take too long, so Khan used the only comparison he knew about. The Great Old One had shown some of its unique skill set during their battle, so Khan tried to replicate the obvious one of its moves.

'Up?' Khan thought, calling upon that strange sense of control, and his body magically came alive.

Each of Khan's cells awakened, seemingly possessing a will and power of their own. They echoed Khan's thoughts and worked to fulfill them, which led to a shocking development.

Khan didn't do anything with his mana or feet, but his body suddenly rose, levitating through the air. The ability was so unfamiliar that he lost his balance, ending up horizontal while his legs and arms tried to swim through the air. That didn't solve anything, but he never fell, either.

"Woah," Khan couldn't help but gasp, using his mastered techniques to return straight. He was about to rely on them to float, too, but eventually decided otherwise.

Usually, Khan would fall at that point. Except he didn't. His body hovered in the sky on its own, kept afloat by the unfamiliar power running through his cells.

The process wasn't exactly tiring. It was no different from walking or running, which Khan could almost do endlessly with his evolved body. Still, it depleted some of his seemingly bottomless stamina to work, using another energy source to remain active.

Khan had seen similar abilities in the past. The Scalqa's muscles sort of were like that, acting as mana containers they could tap into to release quasi-spells.

Khan's body seemed to have obtained similar traits, but his flesh didn't rely on mana to unleash them. His cells used a different, intrinsic type of energy, which he could only connect to his stamina for now.

'I really was never meant to be human,' Khan realized before testing that newfound ability a bit longer.

Calling upon the cells' power was quite easy. There was no barrier between them and Khan's mind. He only had to will it, and his body would comply.

The feeling was similar to steering a ship. Except Khan was the ship and the control desk, and each of his cells was a whooshing engine.

Khan could push himself forward, backward, downward, and upward without summoning or relying on any mana. His brain slightly itched after multiple tests, but the feeling was familiar. It was similar to learning to use new muscles, which Khan had to get used to.

After Khan felt partially satisfied, he resumed using his normal abilities to stand in the sky. His new Tainted status showed much promise, and its other side was easier than the Nak's.

The Nak's mutations had been light on the body but heavy on the mind. They had brought the nightmares, the greatest curse in Khan's life, and the source of his desperation. Countless Tainted humans had gone crazy because of them, but the new transformation carried opposite traits.

The Great Old One's mutations were physically profound but didn't carry anything as mentally invasive as the Nak's nightmares. Khan knew what the distant echoes in his mind were. They were memories the ancient snake had accumulated for millennia, which now belonged to him.