Adam walked inland with Zakiti beside him, following the strange pull that had brought them across an entire ocean.
The settlement they encountered was small compared with the great cities Adam had known in Egypt and Babylon.
Yet something about it immediately felt wrong.
There were far too many houses for the number of people living among them.
Entire streets sat empty.
Doors stood open with no one inside.
The few people they did see moved quickly and quietly, as though they were trying not to draw attention to themselves.
Adam slowed.
“There are supposed to be more people here.”
Zakiti glanced around.
“Much more.”
The pull inside Adam’s chest had not weakened since they had reached the island.
If anything, it had become stronger.
But now its direction had changed.
It was no longer pulling him west.
It was pulling him down.
Adam stared at the ground beneath his feet.”Something is below us.”
Zakiti tilted her head.
She had heard it before he did.
At first, it was faint enough that Adam could not distinguish anything from the ordinary sounds of the settlement.
Then Zakiti’s expression changed.
Thousands of voices.
Thousands of footsteps.
Thousands of heartbeats.
They overlapped one another beneath the earth in such a way that an ordinary person would have mistaken the noise for the earth itself moving.
Adam could not hear all of them individually, but he could feel them.
His connection to humanity told him what his ears could not.
There were people beneath them.
Thousands of them.
“How do we get down there?” Adam asked.
“I don’t know,” Zakiti answered.
Adam stepped toward one of the streets.
He never made it.
A tremendous roar tore through the sky.
Adam looked upward.
Something enormous was falling.
Fire spread across its surface as it descended, trailing smoke behind it.
It slammed into the ground only a short distance outside the settlement, sending dirt and shattered stone into the air.
Adam immediately summoned his horse.
The creature appeared beneath him.
But his mother was already running.
Adam kicked the horse forward.
When he reached the crash site, he found Zakiti standing beside what remained of the vessel.
It was burning.
Yet the people inside were alive.
Adam slowed.
Blue skin.
Human proportions.
Human faces.
But not humans.
He studied them carefully.
There were ten heavily built warriors at the front.
Behind them were smaller figures carrying strange weapons.
In the center stood a young human girl.
Adam’s connection to humanity brushed against the blue beings.
He could feel it.
He could connect them.
Whatever these creatures were, they were sufficiently close to humanity that he could draw them into his growing web of life.
But something inside Adam warned him not to.
He did not yet understand why.
Whatever these people were, forcing that connection upon them would have consequences.
The blue-skinned warriors began moving toward the settlement.
They marched in formation.
The strongest stood at the front.
Those carrying unfamiliar devices remained behind them.
And in the middle walked the girl.
Zakiti disappeared.
Adam barely saw her move.
Three of the warriors collapsed before they even realized she had entered their formation.
Adam’s eyes widened.
The remaining warriors turned.
That was when Adam acted.
He raised his hand.
A hippopotamus appeared.
Its enormous body slammed onto the ground.
Then, before the Kree could understand what had happened, an octopus appeared directly inside its mouth.
The creature emerged through the hippopotamus’s open jaws, its tentacles extending outward.
Two warriors were seized.
There was a terrible crunch.
Adam watched carefully.
The technique had taken years to develop.
His summons did not always have to obey the physical rules governing ordinary matter.
They could choose whether to interact with one another or simply pass through each other.
It allowed him to create combinations that no natural ecosystem could ever produce.
The Kree never had the opportunity to appreciate the absurdity of what they were seeing.
The girl screamed.
A glowing orange layer began spreading around her.
Adam immediately noticed it.
A barrier.
The remaining Kree were generating it around themselves as well.
Zakiti saw the strange weapons in the hands of the rear warriors.
She moved.
She lowered herself almost to the ground.
Then she launched forward.
The speed was so great that Adam’s eyes could not follow her.
The weapons disappeared from the Kree’s hands.
Zakiti stood several meters away holding them.
They had not even had time to react.
Adam smiled faintly.
“They aren’t trained for close combat.”
The orange barriers continued expanding until they completely surrounded the Kree.
Zakiti looked at them.
Then she stepped forward.
She struck one of the warriors.
The punch hit the barrier.
Nothing happened.
The warrior remained standing.
Zakiti’s expression did not change.
She had expected that.
For years, Adam had believed that his mother occasionally held back because she was protecting him.
He had been wrong.
Zakiti had never truly fought Adam at full strength.
Not because she pitied him.
Because she simply didn’t need to.
She had never needed to.
Zakiti lowered herself.
Her breathing slowed.
For the first time in years, she stopped restraining herself.
Her right fist moved.
The air exploded.
The sound arrived after the punch.
The warrior’s barrier failed to protect him.
His body was reduced to blood.
Adam stared.
He had always known his mother was strong.
He had not understood how strong.
The remaining Kree raised their weapons.
Adam dismissed the ruined combination of summons.
Three cheetahs appeared.
Then a silverback gorilla.
The hippopotamus charged forward first.
The Kree tried to counterattack.
It did not stop.
The gorilla moved behind it.
When it reached the Kree, its fist struck the center of one warrior’s chest.
For a moment, the man looked perfectly fine.
Then his back exploded.
The force had traveled through his body and erupted from the opposite side.
The remaining warriors began retreating.
Their only advantage was the orange barrier.
Adam looked at the hippopotamus.
Its eyes gleamed with something that did not belong in any natural world.
It charged again.
The barrier held.
The cheetahs attacked.
They moved so quickly that Adam could barely follow them.
Again, again, and again.
Their attacks came roughly ten times every second.The barrier began to crack.
Then it shattered.
The gorilla struck.
Another warrior fell.
Zakiti moved.
The final Kree barely had time to look at her before she reached them.
Within moments, there was nothing left standing.
Silence returned.
The hippopotamus disappeared.The gorilla disappeared.
The cheetahs disappeared.
Only smoke remained.
Zakiti’s expression immediately softened.
The terrifying woman who had just annihilated the Kree vanished.
In her place stood Adam’s mother.
She approached the little girl slowly.
“Little one.”
The girl recoiled.
Zakiti crouched.
“They won’t hurt you anymore.”
The girl’s eyes filled with tears.
“But how?” Her voice trembled.
“Without the medicine, I’ll die.”
Adam froze.
He had been examining the girl ever since the battle ended.
Now he stepped forward.
“Let me see.”
He gently placed a hand against her shoulder.
His perception moved through her body.
What he saw shocked him.
Not because of what had been done to her.
Adam had spent the last fifty years altering humanity.
He had seen genetic defects and inefficiencies.
He had seen unstable mutations.
He had seen attempts at biological enhancement that would have been considered impossible generations earlier.
These were only remnants, but they were still more advanced than these.
This was none of those things.
The Kree’s work was simply…bad.
To Adam, their genetic modifications looked like crude scratches made by a child.
There were unstable genes everywhere.
Artificial dependencies.
Poorly integrated modifications.
Biological systems forced together without properly accounting for how they would interact.
He almost couldn’t believe it.”Who did this to you?” The girl didn’t answer.
Adam continued looking deeper.
Then he began repairing her.
One instability at a time.
He corrected damaged genetic sequences.
He stabilized artificial systems.
He repaired biological pathways the Kree had simply ignored.
And then he saw something remarkable.
Her barriers.
Adam understood them.
He understood how they were generated.
How they interacted with energy.
How they formed around her body.
He could improve them.
But he would need something more.
He reached into his own understanding of the energy systems he had spent decades developing.
The mana heart.
Adam carefully introduced the principle into her body.
The reaction was immediate.
The girl cried out.
Zakiti looked at him.
“Adam.”
“I have to put her to sleep.”
“Will she live?”
Adam nodded.
“She will live.”
He gently touched the girl’s forehead.
Her eyes closed.
The tension in the air slowly disappeared.
Then they heard footsteps.
This time they were not Kree.
A group emerged from the settlement.
They wore armor unlike anything Adam had ever seen.
He stared.
It was unmistakably made by humans.
Yet it was centuries ahead of anything he had seen in Egypt or Babylon.
Adam’s expression changed.
Humans.
Advanced humans.
A line of armored guards approached.
One stepped forward.
Their voice was solemn.
“Presenting Prince Agon of the Inhumans.”
A small boy emerged from behind the guards.
He had black hair and the appearance of an ordinary human child.
Adam stared at him.
A prince.
An Inhuman.
Adam had never heard either word.
The boy looked past him toward the wreckage.
Then toward the bodies of the Kree.
His expression was strangely composed for someone so young.
“Thank you,” he said.
Adam raised an eyebrow.
“For what?”
“For protecting my people from the Kree.”
Adam looked at Zakiti.
She seemed just as confused as he was.
He turned back toward the boy.
Then, with complete sincerity, he introduced himself.
“No worries. My name is Adam.”
He gestured toward the boy.
“You must be Prince Agon.”
Agon nodded.
“I am.”
Adam looked past him toward the quiet settlement.
Then he looked downward.
He could still feel them.
Thousands upon thousands of people beneath the city.
And now Adam understood one thing.
The little settlement they had walked into had never been a settlement at all.
It was a disguise.
Whatever civilization existed beneath it had been hidden from the world.
And somehow, after sixty years of living in Babylon and Egypt, after crossing an entire ocean because of a feeling he could barely explain, Adam had just stumbled into one of the greatest secrets humanity had ever kept. The source of this chapter is novelping dot com.
Adam still did not understand the pull.
That was what bothered him most.
After everything that had happened, after crossing an ocean he had never known existed, after discovering a hidden civilization beneath what appeared to be an insignificant settlement, he still could not explain why he had been brought there.
The sensation had disappeared.
It remained deep inside him, the sensation, always pointing him toward something he could not yet identify.
Yet Adam had stopped trying to solve the mystery immediately.There were people here who needed him.
So he stayed.
The city of Avolon became his home.
At first, Adam simply intended to remain until he was certain the Kree would not return.
One year became ten.
Ten became fifty.
3rd pov Zakiti
While Adam devoted himself to the Inhumans, Zakiti found a purpose of her own within Avolon.
She had never possessed Adam’s fascination with altering humanity or uncovering every mystery hidden within the body.
Her priorities were much simpler.
Her son needed protection, and she intended to make herself capable of providing it no matter what kind of danger eventually came for him.
She studied the healing practices of the Inhumans, learning their understanding of anatomy, medicine, surgery, herbs, energy manipulation, and the strange biological effects produced by their transformations.
She learned how to stabilize severe wounds, stop bleeding, recognize internal injuries, repair fractures, treat burns, identify poisons, and combat infections.
She learned how to keep someone alive when their body was barely functioning, giving Adam the time he needed to do what only his abilities could accomplish.
She studied their fighting styles, their weapons, their methods of dealing with enhanced opponents, and their techniques for fighting enemies who possessed abilities of their own.
She then combined everything she learned with the instincts and strength she had developed over ninety years of life.
-Adam Age 99
Eventually, he realized he had no reason to leave.
For the first time in his life, Adam did something he had never truly done before.
He chose a people.
Normally, Adam thought of humanity as a whole.
His experiments, discoveries, and countless improvements over the previous fifty years had been designed to benefit humanity universally.
He had never considered one population more deserving of his attention than another.
Avolon changed that.
The Inhumans were already extraordinary.
Their bodies could endure things ordinary humans could not.
Their potential was enormous.
But their power came with a price.
Instability.
Some Inhumans developed abilities they could scarcely control.
Others experienced mutations that damaged their bodies.
Some powers emerged in forms their users could not survive.
Adam could not accept that.
So he began his work.
He studied them.
Not simply as a scientist, but as someone who had come to care for them.
He learned their biology, genetics, energy systems, transformations, and eventually the mechanisms behind their powers.
He discovered patterns that even the Inhumans had never recognized.
Then he began changing them.
He did not make them into something they were not.He made them more stable versions of themselves.
Lifespans increased.
Diseases became rarer.
Genetic instability diminished.
The probability of an Inhuman dying because their own power had developed incorrectly dropped year after year.
Some changes were so subtle that people never noticed them.
Others transformed entire families.
Children born generations later would possess abilities their ancestors could never have imagined controlling.
And yet Adam refused to rush.
He had lived only sixty years when he first arrived.
For the first time, he was working on a scale measured not in individual lives, but in generations.
Thirty years passed.
The people of Avolon changed.
Adam changed with them.
He remained physically young, but his mind accumulated centuries of experience.
He became one of the greatest scholars the Inhumans had ever known, though he rarely thought of himself that way.
He preferred teaching.
And no one received more of that teaching than Agon.
When they first met, Agon had been a child.
Adam watched him grow.
He taught him biology, energy manipulation, combat, history, mathematics, philosophy, and everything Adam himself had learned during his years in Egypt and Babylon.
But eventually, the relationship stopped being simply that of teacher and student.
They became friends.
Agon would sit beside Adam for hours discussing the future of Avolon.
Sometimes they argued.
Sometimes they laughed.
Sometimes they simply sat together in silence.
Adam had never expected to become attached to someone who could grow older while he remained unchanged.
Yet Agon was different.
Agon understood him.
He understood that Adam was not simply some immortal who happened to possess impossible abilities.
He understood that Adam was still learning what it meant to live.
There was another person who remained close to Adam throughout those decades.
Aran.
She was the little girl Adam had found inside the wreckage of the Kree ship.
The frightened child who had believed she would die without the medicine the Kree had given her was long gone.
The woman who emerged from Adam’s care became one of the most remarkable Inhumans of her generation.
The modifications Adam had made to her body had not merely saved her life.
They had stabilized her powers.
The barriers that had once required constant maintenance had become second nature.
What had once been a weakness became one of her greatest strengths.
Adam watched her grow.
He watched her become confident.
He watched her learn.
And as the years passed, he noticed something else.
She and Agon had grown close.
At first, Adam saw it simply as friendship.
They had grown up together within Avolon, had trained together, studied together, and shared the enormous burden of eventually leading their people.
But over the years, that friendship became something deeper.
Thirty-five years after Adam had first saved Aran, Agon and Aran were married.
Adam stood among those who celebrated with them.
For him, the moment carried a strange significance.
He remembered Aran as a frightened little girl standing beside the wreckage of a Kree ship, convinced that she would die without the medicine her captors had given her.
Now she stood beside Agon as his wife.
Adam couldn’t help but smile.
Agon caught his eye from across the celebration.
For a moment, neither said anything.
They didn’t need to.
Adam had saved Aran’s life.
He had taught Agon since childhood.
And now, somehow, the two people he had come to care for most within Avolon had found each other.
Adam was not the center of their lives.
That was exactly how he preferred it.
He remained their teacher.
Their friend.
Their protector.
And, in many ways, part of their family.
Eventually, Agon became king.
Adam stood beside him when it happened.
There was no grand ceremony for Adam, nor did he want one.
He simply watched his closest friend ascend to the throne.
Agon looked toward him afterward.
“You’ve spent your entire life teaching me.”
Adam smiled.
“And you’ve spent yours making sure I remembered that I still have things to learn.”
Agon laughed.
“Then I suppose we’re even.”
For the next two hundred years, Adam protected Avolon.
He improved the Inhumans rather than humanity as a whole, carefully extending their lifespans and reducing the instability that had once made their powers so dangerous.
After both Agon and Aran died, leaving their kids behind, Adam wanted a fresh start so he headed in a random direction to continue his journey.
Authors Note
Adam is now around 300 years old.