Ethan Cross woke up tasting copper.
Not blood. Not vomit. Something green and metallic, like a mouthful of pennies rinsed in plant sap. He swallowed once—automatic—and regretted it immediately.
Wrong.
His tongue felt dry. Too dry. Like he'd been chewing on paper.
He opened his eyes.
Grey sky. Smoke. The kind that sits low and stubborn, like it doesn't plan on leaving.
Concrete under his back—warm in patches, cold in others, cracked and blackened like it had been cooked and then forgotten.
He tried to sit up. His body obeyed, but late. Like a delay in the signal. Like his muscles were waiting for permission.
"Okay," he whispered, because speaking meant he was alive, and he needed proof.
His voice sounded normal.
His mouth did not.
He wiped his lips with the back of his hand.
Green.
Not paint. Not a trick.
It glowed faintly in the shadow of his own fingers.
He stared for a second too long.
Then his brain caught up with where he was supposed to be.
Brooklyn Botanical Garden.
The greenhouse.
The fire.
Ethan turned his head, expecting wreckage.
He got absence.
Not "collapsed." Not "burned." Gone. A crater where the tropical wing had been—fifty feet across, maybe more—edges ragged, glass melted into glossy lumps, steel beams twisted like someone had grabbed them while they were hot.
No one should've survived being this close.
Ethan's pulse spiked.
He pushed himself to his knees. The concrete scraped his palms. He didn't feel it right away.
That part scared him.
Sirens wailed somewhere beyond the trees. Not close. But moving.
Someone screamed, distant and high. Another voice yelled something that sounded like "containment," but the wind chopped it up.
Ethan looked down again.
His hands.
In the shade they looked… mostly normal. Pale skin, dirt under nails. But when he leaned forward and a slash of light hit his forearm—
Green veins. Not bruises. Not reflection.
Veins.
He jerked his arm back into shadow like that would fix it.
It didn't.
The green stayed. Fainter. Still there.
A blink.
Then the text appeared.
Not on a screen.
In his vision.
Letters that looked like they'd been carved into wood grain and lit from underneath.
[VERDANT SYSTEM INITIALIZING…]
Ethan flinched hard enough to tip sideways. He caught himself, palms slapping the concrete.
"What the—"
[Compatible host detected.]
[Genetic match: 97.3%]
[Neural integration: COMPLETE]
[Welcome, ETHAN CROSS.]
His stomach dropped at the precision of it. Not just his first name. Full name.
"No," he said. Louder. "No. I'm not doing this. I'm not—"
More lines slid into place as if his denial was background noise.
[Life Essence (LE): 47/500]
[Status: CRITICAL]
[Estimated time until host failure: 14 minutes.]
Fourteen minutes.
He stared. Counted it like numbers would behave if he stared hard enough.
Fourteen.
Then his eyes flicked to the corner of his vision where the text pulsed faintly with his heartbeat.
The text pulsed.
Text doesn't pulse.
Wait.
Text doesn't pulse.
His ribs weren't broken. Should've been. He remembered heat, screaming metal, the greenhouse alarms, people running—he remembered running too, then smoke swallowing everything, then the baobab trunk splitting open like—
Nothing.
He pressed his palm to his chest.
Just bruising.
Deep.
But not shattered.
A laugh crawled out of him, ugly and short.
"Okay," he whispered again. "So I'm hallucinating."
[You can call it that.]
The font changed.
Same chlorophyll-green glow, but now the letters looked… handwritten.
Like ivy script.
Hi! I'm Sylvara. Your assigned guide.
Congratulations on not dying immediately.
Most compatible hosts faint, cry, or pee themselves.
You did… two out of three. Efficient. 😤
Ethan's mouth opened and shut like he'd forgotten how language worked.
"You're—what are you?"
[A feature.]
"You're in my head."
[Correct.]
"I didn't consent to—"
[Correct again.]
His hands shook. Not from cold. From too much happening with no time to process it. He tried to stand, failed halfway, forced his legs to lock.
His world tilted. The crater swayed.
Somewhere in the wreckage, something moved.
Ethan's gaze snapped.
A sapling.
Oak. Small. Half its leaves were curled black. Its trunk oozed sap from a split that looked fresh, like the damage had happened minutes ago.
It was dying.
He knew it was dying the way you know you're about to vomit. Not from sight. From a pressure behind the eyes. A tug in the chest.
He felt the roots.
Not metaphorically.
He felt the sapling's roots touching soil that was too hot, too poisoned, too dry, searching for anything usable and finding nothing.
It hurt.
Not his body.
But it still hurt.
Ethan staggered a step closer without meaning to.
"Stop," he told himself. "Stop. This is insane."
[Yes.]
[Also: you have 12 minutes.]
The sapling's leaves trembled in a wind that wasn't there.
Or maybe it was there and Ethan just hadn't noticed.
He was noticing too much. The smoke smelled like burned plastic and wet dirt and something sharp—chemical. The air tasted like ash. His skin felt tight, like it didn't fit right. His heartbeat sounded louder than it should.
He reached the sapling.
He didn't kneel. He fell.
His palms wrapped around the thin trunk.
It was warm.
Too warm.
He felt a throb under the bark—slow, weak, stubborn.
A heartbeat pretending it was a heartbeat.
Ethan's throat tightened.
His mother's voice slid into his mind without asking permission.
Even one tree matters, Ethan.
He hated that the memory was clean. Like his brain had saved the line because it was useful.
"Don't," he whispered to the sapling, as if it could hear him. "Don't die. Not this one."
[QUEST TRIGGERED: Save the oak sapling.]
[Reward: +100 LE]
[Failure: Host failure + local biomass loss.]
[No pressure. 😊]
Ethan's hands started to glow.
The green under his skin brightened, spread, threaded up his wrists like living circuitry. He felt something move behind his sternum, like roots waking up.
He tried to pull away.
His fingers didn't listen.
"What are you doing," he said through clenched teeth.
[Emergency override authorized.]
[Dispensing: +300 LE (Primordial seed bonus)]
Ethan's lungs seized.
Not pain.
Drain.
A tug like something biting down inside his chest and pulling.
Life Essence didn't feel like "mana." It felt like blood being siphoned through invisible tubing. It felt like losing weight from the inside.
Green light poured from his palms into the sapling.
The sapling drank.
It didn't hesitate. It didn't "accept." It took.
Leaves unfurled like someone hit fast-forward. Charred edges knitted back to green. The split in the trunk tightened, sealed, then vanished under new bark.
Roots punched downward hard enough to crack the concrete. Ethan felt them dig, dig, dig—finding cooler soil, finding moisture, finding something alive under the dead.
Ethan's vision went white at the edges.
His mouth filled with that copper-green taste again.
Too much.
Too fast.
He wanted to vomit and couldn't decide if that would help.
He tried to pull his hands away.
His muscles shook. His joints felt wrong. Like his tendons were cables being rewired.
He heard himself make a sound—half gasp, half laugh, half whimper.
"Okay—okay—okay—"
[You're stabilizing.]
[Try not to panic. Panicking wastes calories.]
"Shut up," Ethan said, because he couldn't do anything else.
[Rude.]
The light dimmed.
The sapling stood taller now. Six feet, maybe. An oak that should've taken years to get there.
And then it did something that made Ethan's blood go cold.
It bloomed.
Cherry blossoms. On an oak.
Pink petals shaking loose in the smoky air, drifting down like a joke in bad taste.
Ethan stared up at it.
"What did I just do?"
[You completed the quest.]
[+100 LE rewarded.]
[Current LE: 447/500]
Ethan's knees hit concrete again, hard.
The impact finally registered. Pain bloomed up his shins.
Good. Pain meant his nerves still worked.
He looked down at his hands.
In shadow: human.
In sunlight: green.
Not subtle. Not "maybe."
Green.
A siren dopplered closer.
He heard boots on pavement beyond the trees. Shouting. Radios.
The city was waking up to whatever had happened.
Ethan's phone buzzed in his pocket like it had been doing it for hours.
He fumbled it out.
Cracked screen. Too many notifications. His thumb slipped on sweat.
Mom: ethan please call me back the news is saying people are having seizures are you ok
His chest tightened in a different way.
He almost hit call.
Almost.
Then another message appeared.
Unknown Number: Mr. Cross. This is Mira. Answer. NOW.
Ethan stared at the leaf-shaped icon next to the unknown number, and something in his stomach sank again.
"How does she know my name?"
[Because you're not invisible.]
[Also: you're standing next to a miracle oak that's raining cherry blossoms.]
Ethan's eyes flicked up. The petals were landing on scorched concrete and not burning. They glowed faintly, too bright for their color.
"Okay," Ethan whispered. "So I'm not hallucinating. Great."
He lifted his phone.
Answered.
A woman's face filled the screen. Late twenties. Hair pulled back tight. Eyes like wet stone. Expression that didn't waste time on warmth.
"Ethan Cross," she said, like she'd practiced it. "Stop standing in the open. Fire department has thermal scanners. You'll be tagged in under a minute."
"What—who are you?"
"Verdant Concord. Mira." She didn't blink. "You just awakened with a Primordial-grade signature. That means three things: you're valuable, you're trackable, and you're going to die if you stay where you are."
Ethan's mouth went dry.
"Awakened?"
"You don't have time for definitions." Her gaze flicked somewhere off-screen. "Listen. Move east. There's a service gate. Get out of the Garden. Now."
"I can't just—my mom—"
"Do not call your mother," Mira said, and for the first time her voice sharpened into something close to anger. "If you call her, someone else will answer. Do you understand?"
Ethan stared at her.
His throat bobbed.
He understood without understanding why.
He heard a drone overhead. The buzz was wrong—too close, too steady.
Mira's voice kept going. "When you leave, do not look back. Do not touch anything metal. Do not go into crowded streets. Stay under trees if you can. You need cover."
Ethan's hands tightened around the phone.
"Why are you helping me?"
Mira's eyes held his through the screen. Flat. Honest.
"Because Thorne Corporation will take you apart for what's in your blood."
Ethan's stomach rolled.
"Thorne is a pharma company."
"Was," Mira said. "Now move. I'll send you coordinates. You have maybe seventeen hours before they confirm your identity."
"Seventeen—"
"Go."
The call ended.
Ethan stood there for half a second longer than he should've.
The oak's petals kept falling.
The crater smoked.
Somewhere nearby, someone screamed again—closer this time.
Ethan's phone buzzed with another notification. His fingers shook as he looked.
[TUTORIAL MODE AVAILABLE.]
[Lesson 1: RUN.]
Ethan laughed, a short sound that didn't match his face.
"Yeah," he said, and his voice cracked on the word. "Fine. Tutorial Mode."
[Excellent choice!]
[Also: don't die.]
Ethan turned and ran.
Behind him, the oak continued blooming out of season.
And deep under the concrete, something vast and patient—something that didn't care about consent—stretched, tasted the air, and remembered his name.