Adam was now 885 years old.
A century had passed since his time in K’un-Lun, and the world around him had continued changing even when he was not directly involved in it.
Humanity had begun making use of the opportunities he had given it in ways he had never completely predicted.
The ability to cultivate chi, the growing compatibility with Mana, and the gradual spread of both systems had produced people whose abilities were increasingly varied.
Some were born with only a Mana heart, some with only a chi brain, some with both, and some developed affinities only after years of training.
Adam had spent most of that century watching those developments from a distance rather than trying to force them in a particular direction.
Remus, however, had never been particularly good at leaving a new ability alone.
Since Adam had given her a Mana heart, she had gradually learned to use magic in ways that had never been available to her before.
At first, she had treated Mana as another enhancement to her existing abilities, using it to reinforce herself and improve her regeneration.
Eventually, she began learning actual spells.
She discovered that her regeneration could be accelerated and directed through incantations, allowing her to replenish damaged tissue with considerably less effort than relying solely on her body’s natural healing.
One evening, Adam watched as Remus cut the palm of her hand, then calmly recited an incantation.
Mana gathered around the wound and the damaged tissue closed rapidly.
Adam leaned forward.
“You’re making the healing faster.”
“Yes.”
“How much faster?”
Remus looked at him.
“Do you want me to demonstrate?”
“Yes.”
She cut her arm again.
Adam sighed.
“You really enjoy doing that.”
“You gave me the ability to do it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
She cast the spell again.
The wound vanished almost immediately.
Adam smiled.
“That’s useful.”
Remus grinned.
“That’s what I’ve been telling you.”
She had learned that magic did not have to replace her natural abilities.
It could reinforce them.
An incantation could accelerate her regeneration, strengthen an action, create protection, or provide an effect her body could not produce on its own.
Over the century, she accumulated a growing collection of spells, and her relationship with Mana became increasingly natural.
What had begun as something Adam had given her became a discipline she had built herself.
Adam’s own development was considerably stranger.
His ability to connect with natural phenomena had initially seemed straightforward.
Wind gave him speed.
Fire gave him heat.
Ice gave him cold.
Storms gave him their force.
But as his understanding expanded, Adam discovered that the word element did not necessarily have to mean a physical substance that was currently present.
He began experimenting with phenomena that had already happened.
One of his most unusual discoveries occurred near an old volcanic region.
The volcano had been dormant for generations.
The eruption was long over, the lava had hardened, and the smoke had vanished from the sky.
Adam nevertheless felt something when he stood there.
Remus looked at him.
“What?”
“I’m still connected to it.”
“There’s nothing here.”
“I know.”
Adam closed his eyes.
He reached toward the remains of the volcano and felt the smoke that had once filled the air.
Not the smoke itself.
The phenomenon.
The memory of its physical properties.
He stepped forward.
His body began to change.
The edges of his form seemed less substantial, almost as though the material world had become less capable of holding him.
A stone thrown toward him passed through the portion of his body that had taken on the properties of smoke.
Remus stared.
“That is new.”
Adam looked down at his hand.
“Very.”
He moved through the smoke-like form and then returned to normal.
“So the phenomenon doesn’t necessarily have to exist anymore.”
“You connected to what already happened.”
Adam nodded.
“I think so.”
That discovery expanded Adam’s understanding of his X-gene tremendously.
He had assumed that he could only connect to natural forces that were currently occurring, but now he understood that his power could sometimes reach into the remaining influence or properties of a phenomenon that had already disappeared.
A long-dead volcanic eruption could still provide him with aspects of smoke.
The aftermath of a natural disaster could potentially contain characteristics he could recognize and temporarily inherit.
It was another step away from simply controlling elements.
Adam was beginning to connect to what nature had been.
His sons were developing in equally unusual directions.
Cain and Abel had long since moved beyond their first simple expressions of light and death.
Their abilities had begun branching into other natural forces, though even these new abilities remained unmistakably tied to their original natures.
Abel discovered ice first.
It happened during a winter journey when he became frustrated that his skeletal animals moved more slowly in the freezing weather.
He raised one hand without really thinking about it, and frost spread across the ground.
Cain watched.
“You did that.”
Abel stared at the ice.
“I think I did.”
He moved his hand.
The frost thickened.
Ice formed around his fingers, creeping upward in pale patterns.
Yet Abel’s ice did not look ordinary.
It had the same dead, unnatural quality as his skeletal summons.
The surfaces were a pale black, and when he created larger structures, faint violet tones could sometimes be seen within them.
Adam studied the phenomenon.
“Your power is still expressing itself through you.”
Abel looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
“It means your ice isn’t just ice.”
Cain walked over.
“It looks dead.”
Abel smiled.
“Everything looks better in black”
Cain rolled his eyes.
His own development went in the opposite direction.
Cain discovered fire.
Unlike Abel’s cold, Cain’s fire was brilliant.
It burned with intense golden and white light, almost indistinguishable from the luminous energy of his summoned creatures.
And halos of light could appear around particularly powerful manifestations.
The first time Cain created a large flame, Abel stared at him.
“That’s cheating.”
Cain laughed.
“You have ice.”
“Mine is better.”
“Mine is warmer.”
Adam watched them argue.
“You realize you’re both doing the same thing.”
They looked at him.
Cain frowned.
“How?”
“You found something that belongs to your opposite.”
Neither understood.
Adam did.
The brothers had become increasingly difficult to classify as simply light and darkness.
Their abilities were taking on a broader pattern.
Cain could summon radiant creatures and manipulate fire, while Abel could summon the dead and manipulate ice.
Their powers reflected their contrasting natures even when the actual abilities overlapped in unexpected ways.
The more Adam studied them, the more he wondered whether their powers were deliberately balancing one another.
Cain’s fire was bright.
Abel’s ice was cold and pale.
Cain’s creatures were radiant and feathered.
Abel’s creatures were skeletal and decayed.
Yet both could produce abilities that affected the physical world.
Adam did not try to force an explanation.
He had learned better.
Instead, he watched.
He watched his children discover themselves.
He watched Remus become increasingly skilled with Mana.
He watched humans learn to combine Mana and chi.
He watched people develop abilities that would have been impossible generations earlier.
And eventually, he met the man who had spent his entire life chasing those same possibilities.
-.
Grail met Adam only a few months after his first renewal.
To anyone passing by, there would have been nothing remarkable about the boy sitting beneath a tree with three books, a bundle of herbs, and a small wooden board covered in writing.
He looked somewhere between seven and ten years old.
His clothes were slightly too large, and he had the unmistakable appearance of a child who had been traveling for too long without anyone responsible enough to stop him.
The problem was that Grail had been traveling for a hundred years.
His first century had been spent learning.
His second was beginning much the same way.
Adam found him because of the energy coming from him.
He noticed the chi first.
It was unusually organized.
Not simply strong, but organized in a way Adam had rarely encountered.
Grail’s body seemed to understand the circulation of chi almost instinctively.
Then Adam noticed the Mana.
It wasn’t merely surrounding him.
It was being drawn into his body through a structure that Adam immediately recognized as unusual.
Adam stopped a few steps away.
Grail looked up from his book.
“You’ve been standing there for twenty-seven seconds.”
Adam smiled.
“You’re counting?”
“I count everything.”
“That’s probably exhausting.”
“It can be.”
Adam walked closer.
“Grail.”
“Adam.”
“I know.”
Adam raised an eyebrow.
“You know me?”
“I’ve heard stories.”
“Most of them are probably wrong.”
“Almost certainly.”
Grail closed his book and looked at him more carefully.
Adam could tell immediately that this was different from being looked at by most people.
Most people looked at him as a person.
Grail was looking at him as a problem.
“Your body’s strange,” Grail said.
Adam laughed.
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“No. I mean, at the lowest levels, it is different”
That made Adam stop.
Grail stood up and walked around him.
Adam let him.
“You have a very unusual energy structure,” Grail said.
“Your body doesn’t seem to fight against chi. It accepts it completely.”
“I’ve been practicing for a while.”
“How long?”
“A very long time.”
Grail frowned.
“That’s not a useful measurement.”
Adam shrugged.
“Several centuries. Mana more so.”
Grail stopped.
“Several?”
“Yeah.”
Grail stared at him.
Then he looked down at his book and wrote something.
Adam leaned over.
“You writing about me?”
“Yes.”
“Already?”
“You’re interesting.”
Adam smiled.
“Thanks.”
Grail continued studying him.
“You’re human.”
“Yes.”
“Completely?”
Adam thought about that.
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“I’ve never had a reason to call myself anything else.”
Grail frowned again.
That answer bothered him more than it should have.
“You’ve never studied yourself?”
“Of course I have.”
“Then you know you’re not ordinary.”
“I know I’m different.”
“Different how?”
Adam gestured vaguely.
“Stronger. Harder to kill. I don’t age normally. My body does things other humans can’t do.”
Grail nodded.
“That’s not what I mean.”
Adam smiled.
“I figured.”
Grail sat back down.
“Show me your hand.”
Adam gave it to him.
Grail examined the palm, the fingers, the joints, then placed his own hand against Adam’s.
The moment they touched, Grail felt something he had not expected.
There was no single strange trait.
There were layers.
Human physiology.
Chi.
Mana.
Something connected to the X-gene.
Something else beneath that.
And beneath all of it, something that made the rest look secondary.
Grail became completely still.
Adam noticed.
“Something wrong?”
“No.”
Grail looked up.
“You really are human.”
Adam smiled.
“I told you.”
“No. I mean you’re the reference.”
Adam’s smile faded slightly.
“What?”
Grail took his hand away.
“Everybody else is a variation.”
Adam looked at him.
Grail started thinking aloud.
“The human body develops within a range. Stronger or weaker. Healthy or unhealthy. Different populations develop different traits. Mutants have the X-gene. Inhumans have their own alterations. Other human-adjacent species have different structures. Even people with Mana or chi are adapting themselves around systems that were not originally part of baseline humanity.”
He pointed at Adam.
“But you don’t look like you’re adapting.”
Adam said nothing.
“You look like everything else is adapting from you.”
Adam stared at him.
Grail continued.
“You’re not an improved version of humanity.”
He paused.
“You’re the starting point.”
Adam finally spoke.
“I’ve always known that humanity came from me in some way.”
“How?”
“I can tell when something isn’t human.”
Grail nodded.
“Your senses.”
“Partly.”
“And when you change?”
Adam looked at him.
“What do you know about that?”
“Enough.”
That answer made Adam laugh.
“You’re very confident.”
“I’ve had a hundred years to study.”
Adam blinked.
“Right.”
Grail picked up his book again.
“I need to ask you something.”
“Go ahead.”
“Did you create humanity?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
Adam sat beneath the tree.
“I don’t know.”
That answer surprised Grail more than anything else had.
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“You’ve been alive for centuries.”
“Yes.”
“You can examine a human body”
“Yes.”
“You can alter it.”
“Yes.”
“You can recognize what humans are derived from.”
“Yes.”
“And you still don’t know where you came from?”
Adam smiled.
“I’ve had other things to worry about.”
Grail stared at him for several seconds.
Then he laughed.
Adam looked amused.
“What?”
“I think I’ve finally found someone who has an even worse habit of answering only the question he feels like answering.”
Adam laughed.
“That’s probably fair.”
Their conversations continued after that.
At first, they were simple exchanges.
Grail asked Adam about the ways he had changed humanity.
Adam explained the stronger bones, muscles, connective tissues, improved cellular maintenance, disease resistance, environmental adaptation, sensory changes, and all the other alterations he had introduced over the centuries.
Grail listened carefully.
Then he started asking about the changes Adam had not consciously made.
That was where their conversations became much longer.
“You said the changes spread through humanity?”
“Usually.”
“How long?”
“Depends.”
“Your fastest?”
“About thirty years.”
“And the slowest?”
“Sometimes longer.”
Grail nodded.
“So you’re not simply modifying individuals.”
“No.”
“You’re modifying the species.”
“Yes.”
Grail immediately wrote that down.
Adam laughed.
“You really like writing.”
“I like remembering.”
“You’ll never remember everything.”
“I know.”
That was one of the first things Adam liked about him.
Grail knew the limits of knowledge without being discouraged by them.
Over time, Grail began asking Adam to demonstrate things.
Adam showed him how his chi moved.
He showed him Mana.
He explained the X-gene and how his own abilities had emerged from humanity’s highest potential.
He demonstrated his ability to connect with natural phenomena.
Grail would watch, ask questions, and then spend days thinking about the answers.
One evening, Grail finally asked the question that had been slowly forming in his mind.
“When you change humanity, what happens to you?”
Adam looked across the fire.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you get stronger?”
“Not particularly”
“Do you change with them?”
“Yes.”
“Then when humanity develops something new, you can develop it too?”
“Quite the opposite”
Grail looked into the fire.
“And when humans are damaged?”
Adam was quiet for a moment.
“My body is connected to them.”
“How?”
“I don’t have a good explanation.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“The pain doesn’t really stay with me.”
Grail frowned.
“Where does it go?”
“Humanity.”
Grail slowly looked up.
Adam explained the strange relationship he had with the species.
The way damage could be distributed across humans.
The way his body was connected to people he had never met.
The way his own existence seemed tied to humanity itself.
Grail did not speak for a long time.
Finally, he said, “You’re not just the source of the body.”
Adam looked at him.
“You’re connected to the whole population.”
“Apparently.”
“You’re their template.”
“Yes.”
“Their original pattern.”
“Yes.”
Grail stood.
Adam watched him.
Grail walked back and forth a few times.
Then he stopped.
“I need a word.”
“A word?”
“For you.”
Adam smiled.
“You’ve decided I need a title?”
“I think everyone does.”
“I’ve survived this long without one.”
“Because you never had to classify yourself.”
Adam tilted his head.
“What does that mean?”
Grail looked at him.
“Everyone you’ve ever compared yourself to has been different from you.”
Adam nodded.
“Inhumans. Mutants. Eternals. Kree. All of them are variations on something.”
Adam smiled.
“Not all of them.”
“Close enough.”
Grail sat down.
“You’ve never met anyone who could look at all of that at once.”
Adam did not answer.
Grail continued.
“So you’ve never needed a definition that was bigger than ‘Adam.'”
Adam thought about that.
It was true.
He had spent centuries learning about humanity, helping humanity, changing humanity, fighting for humanity, and occasionally running away from humanity.
But he had never needed to explain himself to another person who could actually understand the full picture.
Grail picked up his book and wrote two words.
Human Prime.
Adam read them.
“Human Prime?”
Grail nodded.
“The prime human.”
Adam considered it.
“That sounds important.”
“It is.”
“I don’t think I want people calling me that.”
“They probably won’t.”
Adam laughed.
“Then why bother?”
“Because the name isn’t for them.”
Grail turned the book around so Adam could see the page.
“It’s for me. I need a way to distinguish you from everything derived from you.”
Adam looked at the words for a moment.
Then he smiled.
“Human Prime.”
“Yes.”
“I kind of like it.”
Grail smiled.
“I knew you would.”
From that point onward, the term became part of their conversations.
Adam still called himself Adam.
Nobody began introducing him as the Human Prime.
But Grail did.
And because Grail was the first person Adam had met who could understand the full structure of what he was, Adam gradually started using the term himself when speaking with Grail.
Not as a grand title.
Not as a claim of superiority.
Adam was the Human Prime.
The biological reference from which the rest of humanity had diverged.
And Grail was the person who had finally given that fact a name.
Their conversations became more frequent after that.
Grail wanted to know everything Adam knew.
Adam wanted to know everything Grail had discovered.
Grail showed Adam how far he had taken the combination of chi and Mana.
He explained that the two systems could be treated as complementary rather than competing forces.
He demonstrated spells, martial techniques, and eventually the early stages of the cultivation practice he had developed himself.
Adam was fascinated.
“You really figured all of this out by yourself?”
“Not entirely.”
“How much?”
“I learned from everyone I could find.”
Adam smiled.
“That’s more honest.”
“I still figured out most of the combinations myself.”
“I believe that.”
Grail looked up at him.
“You created the conditions for me to do this.”
Adam shook his head.
“I changed humanity.”
“And I benefited from it.”
“That’s different.”
“Maybe.”
Grail thought for a moment.
“But you know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think you’re going to keep changing.”
Adam smiled.
“I probably am.”
“No.”
Grail pointed at him.
“I mean humanity.”
Adam’s expression changed.
Grail continued.
“The more you learn, the more you change yourself. The more you change yourself, the more humanity changes with you. Then people discover new things, and you change again.”
Adam nodded slowly.
“That’s how it seems to work.”
Grail smiled.
“Then I want to see where it goes.”
Adam laughed.
“You realize that could take a very long time.”
Grail looked down at his childlike hands.
“Good.”
He smiled.
“I intend to keep learning.”
Adam looked at him for a moment and laughed.
“You’re going to be trouble.”
“Probably.”
And for the first time in centuries, Adam had found someone who did not simply see him as an immortal man, a healer, a teacher, a legend, or something mysterious.
Grail saw him as a beginning.
And Adam, who had spent most of his life believing that nobody could understand what he was, finally had someone who could look at the impossible things surrounding him and simply ask another question.