The Blackwood estate did not sit upon the land; it haunted it. The house was a sprawling gothic nightmare of rotting oak and weeping stone, surrounded by a forest of cypress trees that seemed to lean inward, as if trying to overhear the secrets kept within.

Silas was the last of the Blackwoods, a man born into a legacy of madness and occult ambition. He spent his youth in the library, pouring over grimoires that spoke of the 'Sovereign Flesh'—the ability to evolve the human body into a vessel for cosmic energy.

He began the rituals in the cellar, amidst the smell of sulfur and old blood. The process was not a sudden leap, but a series of agonizing increments.

The first gift was Sight. Silas could see the flow of energy in the air, the shimmering ghosts of the past. But the cost was his skin. It began to harden, turning into a translucent, crystalline glass. He could see his own organs pulsing beneath the surface, a clockwork of meat and vein. He was beautiful, in the way a frozen corpse is beautiful.

The second gift was Strength. He could crush granite with a single grip. But the cost was his voice. His vocal cords calcified, and his speech became a series of high-pitched, infantile shrieks. The master of the house could no longer command his servants; he could only cry like a newborn.

The third gift was Omniscience. He could hear the thoughts of every living thing within a mile. But the cost was his touch. His fingertips became needle-sharp shards of diamond, so keen that he could no longer hold a book or touch a flower without shredding it to ribbons.

Silas stood before the mirror in the grand ballroom, a shimmering, glass-skinned monster who screamed like a baby and bled liquid silver. He was the most 'evolved' being in the history of the Blackwood line. He was a masterpiece of biological irony.

He looked at the portrait of his grandfather, a man of flesh and blood who had died in a bed of silk, surrounded by people who loved him. Silas had achieved the Sovereign Flesh, but he had lost the ability to be a man.

He reached out to touch the canvas, and the painting tore.

He began to laugh, but the sound that came out was a piercing, infantile wail that echoed through the empty halls of the estate. He was a god of glass, trapped in a world of velvet, waiting for the first stone to be thrown.

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