The first thing Will noticed was the smell.
Green. Wet earth. Something flowering underneath it, sweet and slightly wrong, like perfume left out too long. He lay still for a moment, his brain needing a second to catch up with the fact that he was breathing at all.
He opened his eyes.
Sky. Pale blue, enormous, crossed by birds he didn't recognize. They moved in formations that seemed almost deliberate, banking left in unison, gone.
He sat up.
The street was still there. Mostly. The asphalt had cracked, the sidewalk completely reclaimed, the curb just a suggestion under decades of green. A traffic light lay on its side, a fig tree growing straight through its housing. Thirty feet away a car chassis sat rusted to the color of dried blood, so thoroughly consumed by oxidation and vine it had become abstract.
His body worked. He checked methodically—fingers, wrists, knees, neck. Everything moved. Nothing screamed. He looked down at his right hand. The fingers he had completely shattered crushing that beast's windpipe were flawless. The Server Transfer must have forced a full systemic heal. Which, considering he had been facing down a necrotic horde thirty seconds ago by his internal clock, felt like a damn miracle.
Reflex pulled up the stat screen before he'd consciously decided to check it.
[PLAYER: Will Wit]
[TITLE: The Anomaly (Mythic)]
[LEVEL: 1]
[STRENGTH: 10/20]
[DEXTERITY: 10/20]
[INTELLIGENCE: 15/20]
[LUCK: 30/20 <-- ERROR]
[SKILLS: None unlocked]
[BLOODLINE: Mongol Founder (Mythic)]
That Luck number sat there breaking the interface. The system had stopped putting warning symbols next to it. Will wasn't sure if that meant it had accepted the situation or simply given up.
He stood and patted himself down, checking his gear. Bow across his back. Quiver empty. Short sword gone—he'd handed it to Zeraya and she'd gone through a portal with it, and he was absolutely not thinking about that right now.
Belt pouch—two tutorial rations, a water skin at a third capacity, flint and steel, a folding knife.
Nothing else. He frowned. The System had explicitly promised an [Origin Artifact].
Right as the thought crossed his mind, a heavy, golden pressure settled into the absolute center of his skull, and a new prompt flared to life in his vision.
[Origin Artifact Bound: The Sovereign's Network (Mythic)]
[Type: Soul-Construct / Ability]
[Passive Effect: Absolute Mental Fortress. Grants flawless, instantaneous telepathic communication with bound entities. Distance and systemic interference ignored.]
[Current Network Capacity: 1/1 (Will expand with Warlord Authority)]
It wasn't a sword or a piece of armor. It was a radio. An unjammable, instantaneous mental link wired directly into his soul.
He turned in a slow circle and let himself see the world properly.
The city was still here. Under the green and the silence, the city was still here. He could see it in the grid, the way the trees lined up in rows slightly too regular, following roads that no longer existed. Buildings still stood, their steel bones too stubborn to fall.
The 405 freeway was a river. Wide and clear and completely unbothered.
He was looking south when he saw the sign.
Most of it. Three letters gone, the remaining ones wearing decades of accumulated green, tilted on a hillside quietly reclaiming its original slope. But still legible. Still, against all reasonable expectation, there.
HOLL W OD
Will stared at it longer than he meant to.
He'd been about to say what the hell out loud when the voice arrived.
It didn't echo in his ears. It flooded perfectly through the newly established [Sovereign's Network], the meaning arriving complete before the syllables had even finished forming.
"Out of all my children," it said.
Will stopped walking.
"Across all my bloodlines. Across eight centuries of sons and daughters and their sons and daughters and all the generations their sons and daughters produced in all the corners of the world I put them in."
A pause. Vast and deliberate.
"...The universe sends me you."
Will stood in the ruins of Los Angeles and considered his response carefully.
"Are you real," he said aloud, his voice rough, "or did I hit my head."
"Both are possible. Only one is true."
"That's not an answer."
"It is an answer. It is simply not the one you wanted." A pause. "You do this frequently. I have seen your memories. You ask questions to which you already know the answer because the answer is uncomfortable."
"You went through my memories."
"I have been in your blood since the entity placed me here. I had time."
"That's incredibly—"
"Invasive, yes. I find this response interesting from someone whose bloodline I rebuilt from its component parts. Your concept of privacy is charming. Like a child who believes closing their eyes makes them invisible."
Will started walking because standing still felt worse than moving while being psychologically dismantled.
"Okay," he said. "You're Genghis Khan."
"I am Temujin. Genghis Khan is a title. A declaration. What men called me when they needed a word for what I had become. You may use it if you require the reminder of what you carry."
"Great. You're Genghis Khan and you've read my diary."
"You do not have a diary."
"It was a metaphor."
"I know what a metaphor is, boy."
Four steps of silence. Will was beginning to understand that four steps was approximately how long Khan allowed silences before filling them with assessments.
"You gave away your sword," Khan said.
"I know."
"To a girl you had known for the length of a tutorial. Before confirming she had any means of defending herself beyond the weapon you had just surrendered."
"She had her own—"
"The point is not the sword." Shorter pause. "You have spent your entire life solving immediate problems with no architecture for what comes after. Your father writes letters. You hand over swords. Both are gestures. Gestures do not build anything that lasts. You feel better for making them. The problem continues."
Will walked. The moss was soft under his feet.
"Are you saying I shouldn't have let them through the portal."
"I am saying that a man who intends to be powerful needs to begin thinking like one before the power arrives. You had nothing. You should have had contingencies."
"I was twenty and facing a monster horde."
"I was twelve when I was taken captive by the Tayichi'ud. Thirteen when I escaped. I had a plan."
"Good for twelve-year-old you."
"Yes," said Khan, with complete sincerity. "It was."
Will walked in silence, turning the words over. He was quickly learning that the things Khan said sounded like cruelty, but might be something else entirely.
The list was growing faster than expected.