POV Adam, Age 10
I always knew that, on some level, I was strange.
Unordinary.
Different from everyone else.
But there was only one person around whom I had ever felt completely free to be myself.
My mother, Zakiti.
I could say whatever came to mind, move however I pleased, and pursue whatever strange curiosity caught my attention.
She would accept me regardless.
Not because she understood everything I did, but because she was my mother.
She loved me, and that was enough.
That was why, the moment I realized I could make her stronger and allow her to live as long as I would, I did it without hesitation.
I didn’t want to lose her.
And if I had the ability to prevent that from ever happening, why wouldn’t I?
I think my ability to connect with all humanity had something to do with what happened to her afterward.
Somehow, she gained the ability to connect with me in return.
I don’t know whether that was an intended consequence of my nature or simply another strange property of the power I possessed.
Either way, I was happy with the result.
My mother would remain with me.
And I would never have to face eternity alone.
POV Adam, Age 10
From the very first time I realized I could make someone stronger, or alter their body in a way that could benefit or hinder them, I understood what I wanted to do.
Deep down, I knew it was good.
I couldn’t explain why.
I didn’t have a philosophy or some grand understanding of the universe to justify it.
I simply knew that if I could improve something, I should try.
So I began with myself.
Physical exercise came first, followed by basic combat training.
Initially, I had very little idea what I was doing.
I knew that I wanted to become stronger, but wanting something and understanding how to achieve it were two different matters.
I experimented with different movements, stretches, and exercises, gradually learning which positions allowed me to condition my muscles most effectively.
My body seemed remarkably receptive to the process.
Once I understood the purpose of an exercise, I could quickly recognize the adjustments that made it more effective.
Combat, however, was a different matter.
Whenever someone struck me, the impact seemed to disappear before it could truly reach me.
A fist would connect, a weapon would land, and yet I would feel almost nothing.
It was like a gust of wind passing over my skin.
At first, I thought I was simply unusually resilient.
Eventually, I asked my mother about it.
She consulted Thena, who explained what she knew of my connection to humanity.
Apparently, the damage I received was not mine alone.
Every injury was shared across the human race.
The more I thought about it, the more curious I became.
There were humans beyond Babylon.
Beyond the lands I knew.
Beyond the places my mother had ever visited.
Somewhere out there, people were living entirely different lives, speaking languages I had never heard, and experiencing things I could scarcely imagine.
I wanted to see them.
I wanted to see everything.
Fortunately, I also discovered something rather convenient about myself.
I didn’t seem to need food.
As long as there was at least one human being in the world who wasn’t hungry, I could continue without eating.
I couldn’t explain the exact mechanism, but I could feel the connection between my own needs and those of humanity.
My mother, unfortunately, still needed to eat.
Her Eternal physiology allowed her to survive for approximately six weeks without food under ordinary circumstances.
However, because of the way her power worked, that endurance increased dramatically when she was close to someone she had marked.
Within three feet of me, her endurance could be multiplied by as much as twenty-five times.
In an emergency, she could potentially survive for three years without food while remaining near me.
That made planning our journey considerably easier.
We decided that the most efficient arrangement was for me to sit on her shoulders while she ran.
It was purely a matter of optimization.
Nothing else.
Naturally.
There was just one small problem.
My mother was worried about getting lost.
As we prepared to leave, her anxiety triggered another change in her powers.
Her cosmic energy responded to her desire to find her way home, allowing her to mark locations as well as people.
There was a limit, however.
She could mark only three locations.
And because she was unfamiliar with this new ability, she couldn’t immediately distinguish one marked location from another.
Fortunately, she had already marked our house.
No matter how far we traveled, she could always find her way back.
With that reassurance, we left Babylon.
My mother ran from settlement to settlement, carrying me on her shoulders as we searched for the largest population centers we could find.
I began learning to read.
It took three days to master the language well enough to use it.
I had expected learning to be difficult.
Instead, the moment I understood the underlying structure of the written words, everything seemed to fall into place.
My mother taught me everything she knew during our brief rests.
Sitting on her shoulders while she traveled, I would ask questions, listen to her explanations, and absorb whatever knowledge she could offer.
And because of the way our connection worked, her own ability to comprehend information improved dramatically when she was near me.
Her mind could process and understand knowledge at roughly twenty-five times her ordinary rate under the right conditions.
Together, we were learning far faster than either of us could have managed alone.
For two years, we explored.
And then, when I was twelve, something called to me.
POV Adam, Age 12
We were eating beside a small pond when I felt it.
A pull.
It wasn’t like an ordinary desire or a passing curiosity.
It was a certainty that I needed to be somewhere else.
I didn’t know where.
I didn’t know why.
I only knew that I had to go.
I immediately told my mother.
She didn’t question me.
She never really did when it came to these things.
Whatever was waiting for us, it was far away.
At least, it would have been for anyone else.
My mother, however, was not anyone else.
At her maximum speed, the distance of approximately 1,289 miles took her only three seconds to cross.
She could have gone faster, but she had learned that moving too quickly had consequences for the humans around us.
Even when I wasn’t directly considering them, my connection to humanity made their suffering difficult to ignore.
And so she restrained herself.
We arrived in a forest.
Something was tearing through the air.
A green line split the space before us, widening into a rift.
Through it emerged a man wearing a striking green-and-black robe.
He had slicked-back hair, a goatee, and an expression of smug satisfaction.
Sickly green energy pulsed from his hands.
He looked around at the forest, apparently unaware of our presence.
Then he began speaking to himself.
“I’ve done it! Strange, you have to use Cosmic Treasures to travel the tapestry of time, whereas I can do it with magic alone. I truly am the superior sorcerer!”
He laughed, clearly delighted with himself.
Then he reached into his clothing and produced a silver, circular object attached to a chain.
A watch, of sorts.
He opened it and examined its face.
His expression changed immediately.
“Damn it! I must have miscalculated. I’m at least six hundred years too early for what I intended to accomplish!”
I stared at him.
There were several things about this man that caught my attention, but the strangest was something I couldn’t quite explain.
My connection to humanity was reaching for him.
Or, more accurately, it was trying to.
The man was human.
I could feel that much.
Yet the connection I shared with every other human being didn’t seem to include him in the same way.
It was as though the connection existed, but something about him placed him outside its ordinary reach.
Even stranger, I could sense that he was connected to something else.
Something beyond humanity.
I couldn’t identify it, but the sensation was unmistakable.
Curiosity won out over caution.
I stepped out from behind the trees.
“Are you certain you’re human?”
The man spun toward me.
I continued before he could answer.
“I can’t sense anything that should allow you to do what you’re doing.”
For a moment, he simply stared.
Then his expression sharpened.
He was speaking a language that, as far as I knew, did not exist yet.
It would not be invented for centuries, perhaps longer.
And yet I understood him perfectly.
The man studied me from head to toe, suddenly much more wary.
“What is your name?”
I was surprised by the question.
Names had never seemed particularly important to me.
They were useful for identifying people, but I had never considered that mine might mean something to a stranger.
Still, I answered.
“Adam. Why?”
The man’s face went pale.
Green energy began to swirl around his hands.
Then its color shifted.
The sickly green became an opaque gold, and the energy around him grew increasingly unstable.
He took a step backward.
“Witness of a thousand turning points! Why must I run into you of all legends?”
His voice rose into a shout.
“Please die!”
The sky changed.
A vast cloud formed above the forest, stretching nearly a mile across.
Green and golden lightning twisted through its depths, illuminating the trees beneath it.
Then the entire cloud discharged.
It wasn’t quite lightning.
The energy descended like a beam, a concentrated column of power that swallowed the place where I stood.
For a moment, I could think of nothing but the sensation.
‘This is strange.’
‘It feels like lightning, but it isn’t lightning.’
Then everything went quiet.
When the light faded, I was still standing.
I looked down at myself.
Nothing appeared to be wrong.
The forest around me, however, had suffered considerably.
I turned toward the man.
He was exhausted, barely able to remain upright.
I walked over and offered him a hand.
He stared at it as though I had offered him something far more frightening than an attack.
Still, he accepted.
As I helped him stand, I finally understood what I had been sensing.
He was no different from an ordinary human in his underlying nature.
His body was human.
But he was connected to something beyond humanity, something that allowed him to wield the energy I had just experienced.
I could feel the connection.
And because I could feel it, I understood that I could change myself to accommodate it.
I could take that energy for myself.
I didn’t know what it was called, and I didn’t understand its full nature.
But I knew that it offered possibilities my body had never possessed before.
So I reached for it.
The moment I did, my understanding of my own body changed.
I began making the smallest adjustments I could manage.
Not enough to transform myself into something else entirely.
Not enough to replace what made me human.
I changed only what was necessary.
A microscopic alteration to my body’s ability to store this unfamiliar energy.
That was all.
And yet, the moment I succeeded, I felt something I had never experienced before.
Joy.
Pure, overwhelming joy.
I had improved myself.
More importantly, I had improved the human template.
I had discovered a way for humanity to store a form of energy that its ordinary biology could not previously accommodate.
It was a tiny change.
Almost insignificant in isolation.
But I could already feel the possibilities it opened.
If humanity could learn to store this energy, then perhaps one day it could learn to use it.
If it could learn to use it, then perhaps it could develop entirely new abilities.
And if those abilities could be incorporated into the human template, they could eventually become available to the entire species.
I had spent two years exploring the world because I wanted to understand it.
Now, for the first time, I understood what I truly wanted to do with the knowledge I found.
I wanted to improve humanity.
Not simply to make individual people stronger, but to change what humanity itself was capable of becoming.
I wanted to make it better.
And I wanted to keep doing so for as long as I existed.
The stranger’s energy continued to flow into me.
I absorbed what I could, gradually taking the power that had allowed him to cross the boundaries of time and space.
I didn’t yet understand everything I was doing.
But I understood enough.
My first improvement had been made.
And it would not be my last.
POV, Zakiti
My name is Zakiti, and today marks the thirteenth year I have watched my son grow.
Adam has always been strange.
Wonderful, certainly, but strange.
I noticed it almost immediately after his birth.
Within his first two months, I could have sworn he understood everything I said to him.
By four months, other people began noticing it as well.
He listened to conversations with an attention that no infant should have possessed.
By eighteen months, he could speak in complete sentences.
And then there was the matter of Thena.
My son had touched her and somehow understood that she was an Eternal.
He understood what made her different from other people, and he somehow knew that he could change himself to become like her.
Of course, Adam had no idea what the consequences of his actions might be when he decided to make me immortal as well.
But I never questioned him.
He was my son.
My greatest treasure.
And I don’t think that will ever change.
As he grew older, his curiosity about the world only increased.
By the time he was ten, he wanted to see everything.
And so we traveled.
For two years, I ran from settlement to settlement, carrying my son on my shoulders as we explored the world.
We rarely returned home, and I discovered that I enjoyed the journey far more than I had expected.
My son had always possessed a remarkable curiosity, and somewhere along the way, it began to infect me.
I wanted to see the world, too.
I wanted to know what lay beyond the places I had spent my life inhabiting.
And with Adam beside me, I felt that there was very little I couldn’t accomplish.
Then we encountered the man in the forest.
I still remember the moment he attacked my son.
The sky filled with strange energy, and a tremendous beam descended upon Adam.
For a moment, I thought I had lost him.
I didn’t think.
I simply acted.
I struck the man with everything I had.
The force of the blow was so great that his body was destroyed almost instantly.
There were no bones left to speak of.
Only blood.
I had never seen anything quite like it.
Apparently, being twenty-five times stronger than my ordinary Eternal baseline had consequences I had not fully appreciated.
I would have expected his bones to remain.
They did not.
Fortunately, Adam was barely conscious by then.
He had been overwhelmed by the unfamiliar energy he encountered in the forest, and he never saw what happened to the man.
I made certain of that.
While Adam remained unconscious, I retrieved the man’s strange silver watch and carried my son away from the scene as quickly as possible.
The forest had become a place I did not want him to remember.
For the better part of a week, Adam remained in a state of semi-consciousness.
I carried him from place to place, caring for him as best I could and waiting for him to recover.
I tried not to worry.
That was easier said than done.
Thena had explained that Adam was connected to every human being, and that the damage he suffered could be shared across the entire species.
It was a strange thing to learn about one’s child.
But if it meant he could survive dangers that would destroy anyone else, I was grateful.
Still, I worried about the energy he had encountered.
I didn’t understand it.
I didn’t know what it had done to him.
And I couldn’t be certain what would happen when he finally woke.
All I could do was remain beside him.
As I always had.
As I always would.
-_-
Author Note
I wanted him to be introduced to Magic very very early
Not as in magic spells but as in the ability to wield energy because as I’ve said before he is the template for all Humanity and just the ability to wield even the smallest amount of energy could alter the course of history which I felt was the first step he could take after making his mother’s ability I thought it would be good to make a connection wise because of Adam but then I did the multiplicative thing and I made the Max 25 as long as she’s like 3 feet away from him and it gets to like 20 if she’s like 8 ft and like 15 if she’s 30ft and it remains at 10 up till like 14 miles away and it correspondingly goes down but it gets correspondingly further but I didn’t understand how strong that would make her