Something came around the corner.
It had been a coyote once. Will could see the origin in the shape of the skull, the set of the shoulders. But 100,000 years of mana exposure had been creative with the concept. It stood shoulder height to his chest. Its eyes were pale gold, almost luminous, and they moved with a calculation that animal eyes weren't supposed to contain.
It wasn't hunting on instinct.
It was thinking.
That was the part that made Will slow down. He'd killed plenty in the tutorial — faster things, bigger things, things that hit harder than anything had a right to. But they'd all moved on instinct. Hunger or territory or fear. This thing was doing something different with those gold eyes. Weighing him. Running numbers.
It had heard him talking and come to investigate.
"Don't run," Khan said. "It reads flight as weakness."
"I know." Will already had the folding knife open. Small blade for something this size but he'd worked with worse. His bow was across his back and empty which was annoying — at range this would have been straightforward. Up close it was more interesting. "It's smarter than the tutorial mobs."
"Yes. Everything out here will be. The tutorial was a nursery." Khan's voice had shifted into something flatter and more precise — the tone of someone who had directed more hunts than Will had eaten meals. "Watch the shoulders. When they drop it commits. That is your moment."
"You want me to hunt it. In a street. With a folding knife."
"I want you to stop thinking about what you don't have and start using what you do." A pause. "You have fought. I have seen it in your memories. But you fought reactively — waiting for the attack, responding, surviving. That is good. That kept you alive in the tutorial. Out here it will eventually get you killed."
The creature circled left. Will turned with it, keeping his weight low, giving it nothing easy.
"A hunter does not wait to be attacked," Khan continued. "A hunter decides the animal is already dead and completes the formality. There is a difference in the body when you decide that. The creature will feel the difference."
Will looked at the gold eyes.
Decided.
He moved left as it lunged — not back, left — the knife coming up in a thrust not a slash, angled toward the throat the way his hand found the angle without being told, and he felt the resistance and then the give, the creature's momentum carrying it past him and down, its legs scrabbling briefly on the moss-covered asphalt before going still.
He straightened. Checked himself — no damage. Rolled his shoulder where the thing had clipped him going past. Bruised maybe. Fine.
"The angle was correct," Khan said.
"I've done throats before. Different shape on this one." Will crouched next to it, already thinking about what was usable. The teeth were dense, the claws longer than a normal coyote's, the hide thick. Tutorial instinct taking over — you killed it, you take what it offers, you move. "The intelligence is new though. It thought about me."
"Everything out here has had a hundred thousand years to think. Respect that without fearing it."
"Wasn't afraid. Just noting it."
"Good."
Then the notifications came.
⚔ FIRST KILL
Evolved Coyote [Mana-Touched]
Threat Level: Common
EXP GAINED: +120
LEVEL UP: 1 → 2
STRENGTH: 11/20 (+1)
DEXTERITY: 12/20 (+2)
INTELLIGENCE: 15/20
LUCK: 30/20 ← ERROR
NEW SKILL UNLOCKED:
🗡 PREDATOR'S INSTINCT [Passive - Rank F]
Heightened threat awareness in combat.
Reaction time slightly increased against
telegraphed attacks.
Will stared at the screen for a moment.
"Two points in Dex from one kill."
"You moved well. The system rewarded the movement." A pause. "The skill is useful. Rank F is not impressive but it is a foundation. Everything starts at F."
"Even you?"
"Everything," Khan repeated, with finality.
Will worked quickly — teeth, claws, a strip of hide. Tutorial instinct. You killed it, you take what it offers, you move. Khan offered periodic commentary, mostly technical, once a comparison to a hunting trip in 1203 that Will found both vivid and unhelpful.
He stood up with two long teeth wrapped in hide hanging from his belt and a slightly different relationship to the word adequate.
They moved toward the hills.
The walking helped. Movement helped. It gave his hands something to do and left only part of his brain free to process the fact that he was home and home was gone and his mother was somewhere under a hundred thousand years of healed earth and he was not doing that math right now.
Khan clocked the shift in his silence. Khan clocked everything.
"Land does not mourn its rulers," he said, without preamble. "Only its people do. You are looking at this city like it owes you something. It does not. It is land. It became something. It will become something else. That is the nature of territory."
"That's very comforting. Thank you."
"It is not meant to comfort you. It is meant to correct you. There is a difference."
Will filed it.
The hills rose ahead of them, wild and enormous. Halfway up the nearest slope, houses were now just suggestions under vine and root, chimneys standing alone where their buildings had surrendered around them.
To the north — smoke. Thin and grey, rising straight in the still morning air. Three, maybe four miles.
Something that made fire.
Will stopped.
"That smoke."
"Yes."
"Something intelligent enough to make a controlled fire."
"Or something magical enough not to need intelligence for it. Either way it is the most important thing within your current range of observation. Which means—"
"It's where we're going."
"You are learning."
They walked. After a minute Will asked the question he'd been assembling since he woke up. Quietly, the way you ask things you actually want answered.
"Why me? Seriously. Out of everyone with your blood — why did the Watcher pick me?"
Khan was quiet for three full steps. Will counted them.
"I did not choose you, boy. I chose the sacrifice. You simply happened to be attached to it."
Will walked in silence for a moment.
"That's either the most insulting thing anyone's ever said to me or the nicest."
"Yes," said Genghis Khan.
The hills rose ahead. The smoke climbed into pale blue sky. Will's new skill sat quietly in the back of his awareness like a light left on in another room, and the coyote teeth knocked softly against his hip with every step, and for the first time since he woke up something that felt almost like momentum was building in his chest.
Then the scream cut through it.
A woman's voice. Distant — half a mile, maybe less, somewhere in the green tangle of the hills ahead. High and sharp and then cut off in a way that was worse than if it had continued.
Will stopped walking.
Khan said nothing.
Will looked at the hills. Looked at the smoke, further north. Two directions. One choice.
He was already moving toward the scream before he'd finished making it.
End of Chapter 2