# GOD Seed: Awakening of Manohata
## Chapter 23 – What the Soul Remembers
The second week of Soul Consumption calibration began on a Tuesday.
I had developed a routine for the forest sessions — same departure time, same general direction, different specific locations within the western quadrant to avoid establishing a pattern that the Nine-Star City's patrol circuits might begin to track and report. Not because I was hiding from my mother, who knew exactly where I was and why. Because pattern discipline was something worth building regardless of current necessity.
*You practice habits in safe conditions,* I had read somewhere in the historical archives. *So that when conditions are not safe, the habits are already there.*
The calibration was progressing well.
By the end of the first week I had mapped the full percentage range with sufficient clarity that the feel of each level — from full extraction to the minimum detectable five percent — was distinguishable with reasonable confidence. The gap between twenty and fifteen percent had tightened. The gap between ten and five was now cleaner than I had expected given where it had started.
The second week was for refinement and stress testing.
Not just clean conditions in a quiet clearing. Calibration while moving. Calibration while maintaining True State perception simultaneously. Calibration on faster-moving targets, on targets exhibiting defensive behaviors, on multiple targets in sequence.
The coordination between the blood skill and the Soul Consumption function was the most technically demanding part.
Both drew from different sources — True State from the soul energy reservoir, Soul Consumption operating through the God Seed. Different mechanisms, different internal pathways, but they needed to function simultaneously for the actual operation to work. Looking at the true state of a Covenant operative's soul while extracting the information from it required both systems active at the same time.
I practiced that specifically on the sixth day of the second week.
In a section of forest where a Six-Star territorial predator had established a hunting range — intelligent enough to have actual strategic behavior, fast enough to test moving-target calibration, complex enough in its soul architecture to provide meaningful information retrieval data.
I tracked it for forty minutes first.
Not hunting it. Studying it. The way it moved, where it chose to position itself relative to terrain features, how it adjusted when it detected potential prey versus potential threat. Behavioral data that the True State perception could then overlay with structural data when I applied both simultaneously.
When I finally engaged — a targeted partial extraction at twenty percent while maintaining the True State perception of its movement — the coordination held.
Imperfectly. There was a half-second lag between the two systems that I hadn't experienced when running them separately. The lag was manageable for a stationary target but would be a problem against a Covenant operative who noticed something happening and had the cultivation level to act on that notice in the available window.
I needed to reduce the lag.
I spent the next two days on nothing else.
---
On the ninth day of the second week, Mother came to the forest.
Not for an inspection — she wasn't that kind of presence. She simply arrived, walked to where I was working, and sat on a fallen tree at the clearing's edge with the composure of someone who had decided this was where she was spending the next several hours.
I was running coordination calibration on a Four-Star beast that had been giving me the most consistent results for lag measurement.
I finished the current repetition, released the target — it shook its head and wandered away with the mildly confused energy I had come to associate with twenty-percent extractions — and turned to her.
"You didn't have to come out here," I said.
"I wanted to see the coordination work in practice," she said. "Reports from Cael about your departure and return times tell me you're progressing but not how."
"The lag is down to a quarter second," I said.
"From half?"
"From half." I sat on the ground across from her. "Still present. Working on eliminating it."
She nodded. "What's causing it?"
"The systems use different internal pathways," I said. "The True State perception routes through the soul energy reservoir. The Soul Consumption routes through the God Seed's architecture. When I initiate both simultaneously, there's a handshake delay while the two pathways establish their operating state."
"Can the handshake be pre-established?" she said.
I looked at her.
"What do you mean?" I said.
"When you breathe," she said, "your respiratory system and your circulatory system operate simultaneously without a handshake delay. Because they're both running continuously — one doesn't need to wait for the other to initiate because neither is ever fully off."
I sat with that.
"If I maintain both systems at a low continuous engagement level," I said slowly, "rather than initiating from a cold state —"
"The handshake delay disappears," she said. "Because there's no handshake. They're already running."
I looked at my hand.
Tried it.
True State perception at its minimum — not off, not reading anything specific, just barely present. Below the level of conscious attention. Running like a background process.
And Soul Consumption at its equivalent minimum — not extracting, not targeting, just — open. Available. Warm.
Both systems. Simultaneously. Low continuous engagement.
The cost was — measurable but not significant. The soul energy reservoir dropped at a rate I estimated at perhaps two percent per minute under this dual-idle state. Not sustainable indefinitely, but sustainable for the duration of any realistic operation.
I extended targeting toward a passing Three-Star bird beast — fast, small, difficult — and engaged both systems from the idle state.
Zero lag.
The coordination was instant.
I released the target immediately — barely a five-percent extraction, it didn't even break flight — and looked at my mother.
"That works," I said.
She looked at me with an expression I had learned to read as satisfaction that she was declining to make obvious.
"You have a Nine-Star City's worth of cultivation masters available," she said. "You've been working this problem alone in a forest."
"I didn't think to ask," I said.
"Ask next time," she said.
"I'll ask next time," I said.
She stood, smoothed her outer robe, and looked around the clearing.
"The zero-lag coordination," she said. "How long can you maintain the dual-idle state?"
"At current soul energy capacity — approximately fifty minutes before I need to consciously restore the reservoir," I said. "In a high-energy environment like this city, passive recovery keeps pace with the drain if I'm not doing anything else simultaneously."
"Which means," she said, "in this city's ambient energy field, you can maintain the dual-idle indefinitely while stationary."
"Yes," I said. "Under movement and active engagement the drain increases, but —"
"Fifty minutes of active operation," she said. "More than sufficient for any realistic extraction scenario."
"Yes," I said.
She nodded once.
"Come back to the palace," she said. "There's a development."
---
The development was a message from her network contact in the eastern territories.
The Covenant operative from the diplomatic delegation — not the entire delegation, one specific individual — had established a temporary stationary position. A rest stop outside a small Three-Star City in the eastern region. Scheduled to remain for three to four days based on observed supply acquisition patterns.
"They're restocking," my mother said. "Extended travel preparation. They're planning to move deeper into the eastern territories after this stop."
"How far is this Three-Star City?" I said.
"Six hours by fast beast transport," she said. "Three hours by Phoenix."
I looked at the location data on the rendering.
The Three-Star City sat approximately forty kilometers from the nearest confirmed ancient site marker — Vael Point twenty-three, based on the network map I had built. Close enough that the operative's travel route probably passed near it. Consistent with the Covenant's pattern of operating along the network.
"What do we know about this individual?" I said.
"Field operative," she said. "Mid-tier within the Covenant structure based on their observed authority level during the delegation interactions. Not a senior leader — but not a new recruit either." She paused. "Someone who would have been through full initiation and multiple operational cycles."
"They'll carry the full methodology," I said.
"If your grandfather's assessment is correct — yes," she said.
I looked at the location data for another moment.
"Three weeks of calibration," I said. "I've been working fourteen days."
"I know," she said.
"The window is three to four days."
"I know," she said.
I looked at her.
"My grandfather said three weeks to be safe," I said. "Two weeks minimum."
"Yes," she said. She wasn't pushing. She was giving me the information and waiting for me to process it.
I sat down and thought carefully.
Fourteen days of calibration. The precision was at a level I hadn't expected to reach until day twenty-one. The zero-lag coordination had just been achieved. The percentage control was cleaner than it had been on day seven.
Accelerated development, because I had been working seriously.
But fourteen days was fourteen days. Not twenty-one.
"I need to contact my grandfather," I said.
---
My grandfather listened to the situation with his characteristic stillness.
When I finished presenting the information — the operative's location, the window, the current calibration status — he was quiet for a long moment.
Then he said: "Walk me through the calibration progress in detail."
I did. Every measurement, every test result, every session outcome I had recorded mentally across fourteen days. The starting point, the development curve, the zero-lag coordination achieved today.
He listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he was quiet again.
"The development curve is faster than I projected," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Why?" he said.
"The dual-bloodline soul architecture," I said. "The God Seed already operates through it continuously. The Soul Consumption function routes through the same architecture. Less resistance to calibration refinement because the pathways were already conditioned by the Seed's constant operation."
He looked at me.
"That is the correct analysis," he said. "I should have factored that into the initial timeline." A pause. "I didn't because there's no prior case to reference."
"No," I said.
He was quiet for a moment.
"What percentage control are you currently achieving at the five-percent level?" he said.
"Clean," I said. "Consistent. I ran it thirty-two times across six different soul architectures of varying complexity in the last three days. The feel is clear and distinguishable from both four-percent and six-percent."
"And the information retrieval from complex animal souls?" he said.
"Detailed," I said. "More detailed than I expected at the animal level. Territorial range, threat hierarchies, behavioral decision trees — all readable in general terms."
"The general readability at animal level suggests the human soul retrieval will be more precise than we estimated," he said. "Human soul architecture is more ordered. More structured. The information will arrive in a more organized format."
"Yes," I said.
He looked at me steadily.
"My recommendation was three weeks to be safe," he said. "The standard development curve for this class of ability would require three weeks." He paused. "You are not on the standard development curve. You are on a curve I have never observed before." Another pause. "My three-week recommendation was based on incomplete information."
"Is fourteen days sufficient?" I said directly.
He looked at me for a long moment.
"For a careful, controlled extraction at low percentage from a mid-tier operative who is not expecting any interaction," he said. "With zero-lag coordination between the blood skill and the Soul Consumption — yes." He paused. "It is sufficient. With conditions."
"What conditions?" I said.
"Low percentage extraction only," he said. "Not the soul-level deep retrieval — not yet. The information retrieval at lower percentages will be less complete but still sufficient for our primary objective, which is identifying the control methodology structure." A pause. "The deep retrieval — above forty percent — I want you to wait another week for. But below twenty percent is executable now."
"And the control methodology will be retrievable below twenty percent?" I said.
"If it was a significant enough experience — a formal initiation, a demonstrated application — it will be in the accessible layers even at moderate extraction depth," he said. "Soul-level memory associated with high-impact experiences is encoded more deeply and is accessible at lower extraction percentages than routine memory."
"Initiation into a three-century-old secret organization qualifies as high-impact," I said.
"Yes," he said. "It does."
He made a decision I could see forming across his expression.
"Go," he said. "With conditions. Your mother travels with you — not to intervene, but to be available if something unexpected arises. You conduct the extraction in the way we've discussed. Fifteen percent maximum. Information retrieval only — no soul damage, no visible physical effect on the target." He paused. "And the moment you have the information, you withdraw. You don't pursue further data. You come back and we assess what was retrieved before deciding next steps."
"Understood," I said.
"One more thing," he said.
"Yes?"
"The target does not know what happened," he said. "Not because deception is desirable in principle — but because the moment the Covenant knows their operatives are being accessed at soul level, they will modify their initiation process to add soul-level detection. We lose the ability permanently." He looked at me steadily. "This works only as long as it is invisible."
"I know," I said.
"Then go," he said. "Be careful. And contact me the moment you're back."
---
We left before dawn.
Mother's Phoenix — the Nine-Star Ice Phoenix — was too conspicuous for this kind of approach. She traveled instead on a Four-Star beast transport that her network maintained for operations requiring lower visibility. Still fast. Still far above what most people on this planet could access. But not — immediately identifiable as belonging to the Guardian Star lineage.
We traveled without the normal escort formation.
Just the two of us, and a single trusted network contact who knew the eastern territories well and had confirmed the operative's current location.
Three hours.
The Three-Star City came into view just after dawn — small by the standards of what I had been living in, but a real city nonetheless, with walls and markets and the ordinary texture of people going about lives that had nothing to do with ancient conspiracies.
The operative was staying at a mid-tier residential block on the city's eastern side. Not a high-quality establishment — chosen for low visibility, presumably. A field operative on a long eastern run wouldn't want to be memorable.
Smart tradecraft. It just hadn't accounted for soul-level perception.
We positioned in a tea house across the street.
Mother ordered breakfast with the ease of someone who had done exactly this kind of thing before — probably many times, I was beginning to realize, in the years of managing the Guardian Star network.
I sat across from her and watched the entrance to the residential block.
"How long?" she said.
"They'll come out for morning food," I said. "Field operatives on extended travel don't cook in their rooms. Too much setup for a temporary stay."
She nodded. Drank her tea.
Twenty minutes later, the operative emerged.
---
Mid-thirties, I estimated. Unremarkable appearance — the kind of deliberate unremarkability that was itself a professional choice. Medium height. Neutral clothing. Movement that was efficient without being conspicuous about its efficiency.
But the True State perception — which I had maintained at low idle since before we landed — showed me the structure beneath the surface.
A soul architecture that had been through significant experience. Patterned in ways that ordinary lives didn't produce — the specific organization of someone who had operated under sustained high-stakes conditions for years. And underneath that —
A layer I recognized even from across the street.
Covenant initiation.
The True State perception didn't give me the content — that required closer proximity and the Soul Consumption function active. But the structural signature was unmistakable. A specific imprint on the soul architecture that matched what I had theorized an organizational binding would look like.
*There,* the God Seed said — wordlessly, in confirmation.
*Yes,* I thought back.
I looked at Mother.
"Confirmed," I said quietly. "Full initiation. I can see the structural signature from here."
She didn't visibly react. Just nodded, once, and returned her attention to her tea.
The operative walked to a food stall three buildings down from the residential block. Ordered. Sat at the small outdoor table there with the practiced ease of someone comfortable eating alone in unfamiliar cities.
I stood.
"I'll be back shortly," I said.
---
I walked to the food stall.
Ordered something simple from the stall operator — occupied my hands, gave me a reason to be standing in the same general area.
The operative glanced at me as I moved into the space near their table. Standard situational awareness — assessed, catalogued, dismissed. A young man with unusual hair. Not a threat profile.
I sat at the adjacent table.
Maintained the idle dual state — True State at low background, Soul Consumption open and available, neither actively engaging.
The operative ate.
I ate.
Normal morning at a food stall. Two people having breakfast near each other in a Three-Star City while the day began around them.
At the four-minute mark, I engaged.
Fifteen percent extraction. Targeted. Clean initiation from the idle state — zero lag, exactly as the coordination practice had produced.
The operative paused for a fraction of a second.
Slightly longer blink. The most minimal physical tell. Something that read, from the outside, as nothing — the kind of micro-pause that happens when someone's attention briefly catches on an internal sensation they can't place.
Then they continued eating.
The information arrived.
Not all at once — it came in the ordered format my grandfather had predicted for human soul architecture. Structured. Layered. The high-impact experiences near the surface, the routine memories deeper.
And there — immediately accessible at fifteen percent — the initiation.
I kept my face completely still and absorbed what came through.
The Ashen Covenant's initiation process.
The organizational structure — partial, from this operative's level, but real.
And the control methodology.
I understood it in the space of thirty seconds of sustained extraction.
It was — not what I had expected.
Not a binding. Not a soul-level imprint of loyalty or compulsion.
Something more elegant and more disturbing.
The control methodology operated through the God Seed itself.
The Covenant had, over three centuries, developed a specific resonance — a vibrational pattern that interacted directly with the God Seed's structure. Not controlling the host. Controlling the Seed. Adjusting its hourly requirement in real time — accelerating it, making the one-soul-per-hour demand become one soul per minute, then one per second, until the host either complied with whatever was demanded or died.
The God Seed's feeding requirement — the one condition that could kill me regardless of my power level.
That was their lever.
Not control. Extortion.
*Comply or starve. Starve in seconds.*
I released the extraction.
Stood. Gathered my food. Left the stall at the same unhurried pace I had arrived.
Walked back to the tea house.
Sat down across from my mother.
She looked at my face.
"You have it," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"What is it?" she said.
I told her.
She was very still while I explained.
When I finished, she was quiet for a long moment.
Then, very quietly, she said:
"They can accelerate the feeding requirement."
"Yes," I said. "From hourly to per-second if they push the resonance to full intensity."
She looked at me.
"That would kill you in seconds," she said. "Regardless of stored souls. Regardless of your power level. Regardless of the God Seed's own capabilities."
"Yes," I said.
"They built in a kill switch," she said. "Not for control. A kill switch. If you don't comply — they kill you. If they can't control you — they kill you. The operation still succeeds because the Vael Point network activation is already complete."
"Yes," I said.
She looked at the table.
Something moved across her expression — rapid, complex, controlled almost instantly.
"Rohan," she said.
"I know," I said.
"This changes —"
"I know," I said. "But we have it now. We know the mechanism. And knowing the mechanism means we can counter it before they try to apply it."
She looked at me.
"The God Seed," she said carefully. "If the resonance interacts with the Seed's structure — can the Seed itself recognize the resonance and reject it?"
I reached inward.
Connected to the God Seed.
And asked it directly — in the wordless way our communication worked — whether it had heard what I just learned.
The pulse that came back was —
Different from anything I had felt from it before.
Old. Very old. The quality of something remembering.
*I know this resonance,* it said — without words, completely.
*I have always known it.*
*It was built into me when I was made.*
I went still.
*Built into you,* I thought. *By who?*
The pulse that came back was complex and layered — not evasive, but deep. The kind of answer that required more context than I currently had to fully receive.
But one part of it was clear.
*The ones who made me,* it said, *and the ones who built the network — they are not strangers to each other.*
I looked at my mother.
"We need to contact my grandfather," I said. "Now."
She looked at my face and didn't ask why.
"Come," she said, and stood.
---
We left the Three-Star City within minutes.
The return journey passed in silence — not the comfortable silence of familiar company, but the dense silence of two people processing information that had just changed the shape of everything.
I sat in the transport beast's carrying space and stayed connected to the God Seed.
Asking it, carefully, about what it had communicated.
*The resonance was built into you,* I thought. *When you were created — someone built in a mechanism for controlling a vessel that carried you.*
*Yes,* it said.
*Who?* I thought.
The response was long and layered and I absorbed it slowly, piece by piece, as the eastern territories passed below us and the Nine-Star City grew ahead.
What the God Seed told me — in its wordless, complete way — was this:
It had not been made by one entity.
The consciousness I had spoken with in the white void — the one that called itself God — was real, but incomplete in its account. The God Seed's creation had involved multiple parties. Multiple entities operating above this world's ceiling, with different objectives and different relationships to what the Seed was supposed to become.
The resonance control mechanism had been built in by one of those parties.
Not as a gift to the Ashen Covenant — the Covenant was too recent, too human-scale, to have been the intended user. The mechanism had been built in before the Seed compressed itself to survive in this world. Before it fell. Before any of the structures currently operating on this planet existed.
The Covenant had discovered it. Learned to use it. But they hadn't made it.
Someone — something — much older and much larger had.
And that something, the God Seed communicated with the clarity of very old memory finally surfacing —
Was still there.
Above the ceiling of this world.
Watching.
*Who?* I thought. *What are they?*
The God Seed pulsed — complex, careful, the quality of something deciding how much to reveal.
*Not yet,* it said.
*When you are ready.*
*But know this — the resonance that can kill you was not built to kill you. It was built to call you. To bring you back to where I came from.*
*The Covenant discovered it. They learned to weaponize it.*
*That was not its original purpose.*
I sat with that for the rest of the journey.
---
My grandfather was waiting when we arrived.
He had received my mother's advance message and was already in the communication room when we reached the palace.
He looked at my face.
"You have the control methodology," he said.
"Yes," I said. "And something else."
I told him everything.
The extraction. The information. The resonance mechanism. What the God Seed had communicated on the return journey.
He was very still throughout.
When I finished, the room was quiet for a long time.
Then he said — and his voice had something in it I hadn't heard before. Not alarm. Something older than alarm.
"The entity that built the resonance into the God Seed," he said carefully. "Did the Seed give you any indication of its nature?"
"No," I said. "It said I wasn't ready for that yet."
"It's right," he said. "You're not." A pause. "But I am." He looked at me directly. "This is information I have been searching for a very long time. Longer than you have been alive. Longer than your mother has been alive."
"You know what's above the ceiling," I said.
"I know some of what is above the ceiling," he said. "There are things up there that even the Guardian Star lineage's full accumulated knowledge can only partially see." He paused. "What the God Seed is telling you — about its creation, about multiple parties, about something still watching —"
He stopped.
Looked at the planet rendering that floated above the table. The forty seven red points.
"The Vael Points," he said slowly. "I told you they were places where the boundary between this world and what exists above it is thin." He looked at me. "I did not tell you that the boundary being thin means it works in both directions."
"Things from above can reach through," I said. "And things from below —"
"Can be seen from above," he said. "The network being fully active doesn't just allow something to reach down. It allows something above to see this world completely. Every point simultaneously. Full visibility."
"The entity watching," I said.
"Has had that visibility since the forty-seventh ritual completed," he said. "Since the moment you walked out of the altar alive."
Silence.
"They've been watching me," I said. "Since the beginning."
"Since the beginning," he confirmed.
The God Seed pulsed.
Slow. Deep. The quality of confirmation.
*Yes,* it said.
*Watching.*
*Waiting.*
*Not with hostility.*
That last part arrived with a clarity that was unusual — the God Seed emphasizing it specifically.
*Not with hostility.*
I sat in the communication room of the Nine-Star City's palace complex and looked at the planet rendering with its forty seven red points.
The Ashen Covenant below. A three-century conspiracy with a weaponized kill switch.
Something above the ceiling. Ancient. Watching. Patient. In possession of an original purpose for the resonance that was different from the Covenant's weaponized version.
And in the middle — the God Seed. Made by multiple parties with different objectives. Fused to a soul that had come from a different world entirely and had chosen this existence with the specific certainty of someone who had already decided what they were.
*One problem at a time,* I had been telling myself.
I looked at my grandfather.
"The Covenant's resonance," I said. "You said knowing the mechanism means we can counter it. The God Seed recognized the resonance — said it has always known it." I paused. "If the Seed knows the resonance — can it be taught to reject it? To filter it out of its own structure before it can be activated?"
My grandfather looked at me for a long moment.
"That," he said carefully, "is the question I was hoping you would ask."
"Can it?" I said.
He was quiet.
Then:
"Ask the Seed," he said. "Directly. It has been telling you things in stages as you became ready for them. It told you about the resonance being built in. It told you the original purpose was different from the Covenant's use. Ask it whether it can reject the resonance."
I looked inward.
Connected to the God Seed.
*Can you reject it?* I thought. *The resonance — if the Covenant tries to apply it — can you filter it out? Refuse it?*
The pulse that came back was long and complex.
Not a simple yes. Not a simple no.
Something that felt like — conditional.
*Alone — no,* it said. *The resonance is built into my structure. It cannot be removed from inside.*
*But —*
A pause. The quality of something considering how to explain a complex truth.
*With the blood skill active — with True State perception looking at the resonance in the moment it engages — you can see exactly where in my structure it operates. You can see the pathway it uses.*
*And if you can see the pathway —*
*You can interrupt it.*
*Not remove it. Interrupt it. In real time. While it's trying to engage.*
*But only while the True State perception is maintaining the view of that pathway.*
*You would need to hold the perception on that specific internal structure while everything else is happening.*
*It requires —*
*Complete focus. Divided no other way.*
I opened my eyes.
Looked at my grandfather.
"I can counter it," I said. "But it requires the True State perception focused entirely on the Seed's internal structure while the resonance is engaging. I can't be doing anything else simultaneously."
"You would need to be in a position where you don't need to fight," he said.
"Or where the fight is already decided before the resonance is applied," I said.
He looked at me steadily.
"The God Seed's devouring ability," he said. "At its current development level — how fast does it work?"
"Instantaneous on anything below Six-Star," I said. "Effective but not instantaneous on Six and Seven-Star. Eight-Star and above I haven't tested."
"The Covenant operative who carries and applies the resonance," he said. "They would need proximity to apply it. Proximity means they're within the God Seed's devouring range."
I saw where he was going.
"If the fight is decided before the resonance is fully engaged," I said. "If the operative is devoured the moment they attempt application — the resonance never reaches full activation."
"The True State perception sees it beginning," he said. "The Soul Consumption identifies the specific operative carrying the resonance function. The God Seed devours that operative in the window between resonance initiation and full activation."
"And I hold the True State perception on the Seed's internal structure to interrupt any partial activation that occurs in that window," I said.
"Yes," he said.
We looked at each other.
"That's the counter," I said.
"That's the counter," he confirmed.
Mother had been silent throughout this exchange. I looked at her.
She was looking at the planet rendering.
"The entity above the ceiling," she said quietly. "The one watching. The one whose original purpose for the resonance was something other than what the Covenant is using it for." She paused. "When the counter is executed — when the Covenant's plan fails — that entity will know. They have full visibility through the active network."
"Yes," my grandfather said.
"And their response to the Covenant's plan failing —" she said.
"Is the next problem," my grandfather said. "After this one is solved."
She nodded slowly.
I looked at the rendering one more time.
Forty seven points. A conspiracy three centuries old with a kill switch built from something even older. An entity above the ceiling watching through the network. A God Seed that was older than the world it currently lived in.
And me.
Three weeks into a four-month preparation.
With a counter that was real and executable.
With a soul-level information retrieval ability that had just delivered the most important intelligence of the entire preparation in thirty seconds at a food stall.
With a blood skill that could see the true state of everything.
And a partnership with an ancient consciousness that had just told me, clearly and completely, that it was ready to fight.
*One problem at a time,* I thought.
*But the problems are becoming clearer.*
The God Seed pulsed.
Deep. Steady. The warmth of something that had been alone for incomprehensible ages and had finally found — in a broken boy from a different world who had decided to trust only himself — something worth partnering with.
*Together,* it said.
I looked at my grandfather. At my mother. At the planet with its forty seven glowing points.
*Together,* I thought back.
*Let's finish this.*
---
*To be continued…*