CHAPTER 438: ROSE ADRIAN! II

Without further preamble, Kythara’s primary hand sank into Rose’s chest.

It was not violently, not with any tearing of flesh or breaking of bone. Instead, her hand phased through the physical to grasp something deeper, something more fundamental.

Rose gasped from the sensation of someone holding the very core of her existence, cradling it with infinite care while preparing to reshape it entirely.

"I’m grasping your essential pattern," Kythara explained, her voice maintaining its professorial tone despite the significance of what she was doing. "Think of it as the blueprint that defines not just what you are, but what you can be. Every being has one...a core template that remains constant through all transformations. I’m going to... edit it."

...!

The waters of Thalassara began to rise around them as an embrace.

Streams of liquid light flowed upward, defying gravity to spiral around Rose’s form.

Each droplet contained within it the genetic memory of countless aquatic species...from the simplest single-celled organisms that first gave water consciousness, to the vast leviathans that swam through stellar cores, to beings of pure liquid thought that existed in dimensions where water was the only stable form of matter.

"The transformation begins with dissolution," Kythara narrated, her hands now glowing so brightly that they seemed to be made of stars. "Your current cellular structure must be convinced to let go of its rigid form, to accept fluidity as its natural state."

Rose felt it beginning...a sensation like every molecule in her body suddenly remembering it had once been part of an ocean. Her skin tingled, then burned with cold fire, then went numb as nerve endings reorganized themselves into something that didn’t require traditional sensation to perceive the world.

The Architects moved closer, their exposed nervous system wings creating a containment field that would prevent any loss of essential self during the transformation.

The Memory Weavers increased their processing speed, their bodies now strobing with data flows that looked like lightning trapped in jellyfish flesh.

"Now comes the dangerous part," Kythara said, and for the first time, strain entered her voice. "Your consciousness must maintain coherence while your physical form undergoes complete restructuring. Think of who you are...not what you are, but who. Hold onto your memories, your emotions, your connections to others. Think of him. The Taboo. The Adrastia Emperor King! These will be your anchor while your body transforms..."

Rose closed her eyes and thought of Achilles...his purple-gold hair catching starlight, his smile when he looked at Arya, the way he held her as if she were simultaneously the strongest and most precious thing in existence.

She also remembered him in their small apartment. Before all the craziness.

She thought of their daughter, of the family they were building against impossible odds.

She thought of her own journey from dying woman to stellar being, each transformation making her more herself rather than less.

As she thought of all this...

BOOM!

The pain came then...not physical pain, because her nervous system no longer existed in any configuration that could process traditional pain signals.

This was deeper, more fundamental. The pain of every cell screaming as it dissolved, of DNA unraveling like cosmic thread, of existence itself questioning whether it should continue.

Through it all, Kythara’s hands remained steady, guiding the transformation with the skill of someone who had reshaped life itself countless times.

The waters of Thalassara flowed into Rose...not filling her, but becoming her. Each droplet integrated into her dissolving form, carrying with it new possibilities, new patterns, new ways of existing.

"Cellular walls dissolving," one of the Architects reported in a voice like grinding glass.

"Genetic template holding," a Memory Weaver pulsed. "Consciousness coherence at acceptable levels."

Kythara’s insectoid eyes...all of them, narrowed in concentration as she reached the critical moment. "Now," she breathed, and pushed with her power, her will, her absolute authority over biological matter.

Rose screamed...or tried to. No sound emerged because she no longer had vocal cords.

Instead, the Sea itself rippled with her voice, waves spreading outward in perfect circles that carried the echo of transformation’s agony and ecstasy combined.

Her fair skin, already touched by stellar transformation, began to change. The soft pink and cream tones dissolved like watercolors running in rain, replaced by something that defied easy description!

Stellar cerulean was too simple a term for the color that emerged...it was the blue of deep ocean trenches where pressure created new forms of matter, the silver of moonlight on still water, the green of bioluminescent tides, all flowing together in patterns that never quite settled into one shade.

Her body, which had maintained human shape despite all her transformations, began to flow. Not melting. nothing so crude. Instead, she became liquid that remembered shape, water that understood form.

Her hair transformed into streams of liquid starlight that moved with tides only she could feel. Her eyes remained, somehow, those same emerald points of light, but now they floated in a face made of conscious water, their glow reflecting and refracting through her new form in ways that created aurora patterns with every movement.

"It’s working!" Kythara cackled with the pure joy of a mad scientist whose impossible experiment was succeeding beyond all reasonable expectations.

"Oh, this is magnificent! Look at the quantum coherence! The molecular bonds! You’re not just water...you’re living water, conscious water, water that exists across multiple dimensional states simultaneously!"

The transformation reached its crescendo. Rose’s form pulsed once, twice, three times...each pulse sending waves through the Sea of Thalassara that made every creature within a thousand miles take notice. Then, suddenly, it was complete!

Silence fell across the waters.

Rose opened her eyes...or performed the equivalent action in her new form, and sat up.

The movement was liquid grace personified, her body flowing from horizontal to vertical without any of the mechanical requirements of muscle and bone. She looked down at herself, raising hands that were perfectly formed yet obviously composed entirely of stellar water.

Every movement created ripples within her form, internal tides that caught and reflected the light of the Sea around them.

"How do you feel?" Kythara asked, her cackling subsided into genuine scientific interest mixed with concern.

Rose stood...and the action was both familiar and completely alien. She maintained human shape because that was what her consciousness expected, but she could feel the potential for so much more.

She could become a stellar wave, a mist, a rain of stellar droplets. She could exist as ice or steam or something between all states of matter!

Her new form buzzed with glory, with possibilities she was only beginning to comprehend.

"I feel..." Rose began, and her voice emerged as the sound of distant waterfalls mixed with tidal songs, "alive. Alive in ways I didn’t know were possible.

...!

Not just alive.

Powerful.

Unbelievably powerful!

A Champion of the Cosmic Singularity, Ethemia. Granted the Limited Assimilation unique only to the Adrastia Emperor King.

And now...an interchangeable genetic code to become another species entirely!

...!

There were an overabundance of species and lineages across the Star Seas.

The Adrastia Emperor King Lineage was one such a unique species as there mere existence caused many things to occur.

Now, another Lineage- another species was rising to try and match it!

To be with it..

To stand alongside it!

Rose gazed down at her transformed existence, stellar water flowing in patterns that defied physics yet felt more natural than breathing ever had.

As she studied her new form...the way light refracted through her liquid body, creating miniature rainbows with every movement, something unprecedented occurred.

Information began flowing into her mind, not through any sensory organ or neural pathway, but directly from existence itself. The knowledge materialized in her consciousness as blue-bordered text prompts, each one hanging in her vision with crystalline clarity!

|After a series of unfathomable transformations, your innate changes initiated by the unique lineage of Adrastia Emperor King, the changes initiated by the Cosmic Singularity, and the changes initiated by the Genetic Hive Queen, you have attained a lineage undocumented across the Parallel Star Seas.|

...!

Rose’s emerald eyes widened within her water-form face, the shock causing ripples to cascade through her entire being.

The words hung there, impossible to dismiss or ignore, carrying weight that pressed against her consciousness like the pressure of oceanic depths. But they kept coming, each prompt materializing with the inevitability of tides.

|You have become the Primordial Genome Empress.|

|Your existence now transcends traditional biological limitations, operating on principles that rewrite the fundamental regulations of genetic possibility.|

...!

The prompts continued to cascade through her consciousness, each one revealing capabilities that shouldn’t exist!

|Primordial Genome Empress Capabilities Unlocked:|

|Metamorphic Existence Cycling: Once per lunar month, you are capable of altering the entirety of your Existence to become a different Species of Existence. This transformation is complete and fundamental, a true species conversion. You may become a new, undocumented species based on any material you imprint upon, creating forms that have never existed in any Star Sea as all abilities of species you become are retained across your existence|

...!

BOOM!