Next day, he was woken up by the bright sunlight stabbing through the cracks in the roof like a dozen nosy fingers poking his face.
He tried to ignore it and sleep again, but it was like a nosy neighbor that didn't understand the concept of privacy. He groaned, rolling onto his side, eyes half-open.
He groaned, rubbed his eyes, and sat up slowly. The makeshift fur and hay bed creaked under him. He suddenly noticed that this place was quiet, like a bit too quiet.
He looked around and found that Arelia, Verya and Liora weren't here. And Lyra herself was crouched by the doorway, tying a bundle of woven vines around her waist, and busy checking the edge of a jagged stone knife.as if ready to leave too.
She looked up when she noticed him awake. "You're up," she said, voice soft but hurried.
"Where are the others?" he asked, his voice rasping with sleep.
"They have already gone foraging," Lyra explained, tightening the knot.
"There's fruit in the bowl. Eat something before it spoils. I have to go…the others are waiting."
He nodded.
Her lips curved into her signature faint, gentle smile before she turned and disappeared through the doorway, the sound of her footsteps fading into the distance.
He was all alone.
He looked at the wooden bowl sitting on the floor near his bed. It held breakfast... small yellowish orbs, soft-skinned and slightly sticky, a few with tiny bite marks.
"Breakfast, huh," he muttered, grabbing one.
He bit into it and instantly juice exploded across his tongue… sweet, but not like anything from Earth. There was a faint spice under the sweetness, almost smoky, and the texture was strange… fleshy like a mango but fibrous like sugarcane.
But it was good, really good.
"Damn," he said to himself, chewing slowly. "Nature still got it."
He sat there eating for a while, watching dust specks float in the sunbeam. The silence was loud enough to make his ears ring. For the first time since waking up in this strange world, he felt the crushing weight of it. No phone. No hum of a fridge. No background noise, no civilization. Just… quiet.
And only quiet.
Honestly, he would be lying if he said he wasn't missing the modern life, phones, internet, delicious foods. But there was no use thinking about it now, he had been reborn into a new world, it was new beginning. whether he liked the difficulty setting or not.
He leaned back against the wall, chewing slowly, letting his eyes wander across the room. The walls were plastered with a mix of mud and grass. A few bone hooks stuck out, holding dried herbs, necklaces, and a clay knife.
No furniture. No luxuries.
Just what you needed to survive.
He ate three in rapid succession, the hunger inside him feeling less like an empty stomach and more like a starving beast waking up.
He finished the last fruit and held the hard, fibrous seed in his palm. He was thinking about this strange world, about the fragility of this life. Unconsciously, his fingers tightened around the seed.
CRACK.
Sol froze.
He looked down. The seed... hard as a walnut... hadn't just cracked. It had been pulverized. reduced to wet splinters and pulp in his grip.
"What the..."
He stared at his hand. It didn't look like a warrior's hand. It was still the pale, slightly thin hand of the old Sol. But the power that had just surged through his forearm felt... electric.
He pushed himself up. He expected his legs to wobble, to buckle like a newborn deer.
Instead, he shot up with a force that nearly sent him stumbling forward. He felt light. Too light. The gravity seemed to have loosened its grip on him.
He took a deep breath, rolling his shoulders. The muscles stretched, not with the tight pain of injury, but with the satisfying snap of a loaded bowstring.
He felt around his body, the weakness was gone. Replaced by a humming warmth beneath his skin that made him want to run, to hit something, to move.
He frowned, rolling his shoulders. "That's weird," he muttered. "Bodies don't just fix themselves like that, at least not this fast." It was like the body had skipped the recovery stage and jumped straight to "ready to fight bears again."
He rolled his shoulders further, stretched his arms to absolute limit, even squatted a little too wide, but still he felt the body, light and flexible.
And that brought up the question he'd been avoiding…what the hell even injured the old him?
Like really what the heck happened that day, because his memory of that day was still fragmented mess, he remembers going outside looking for some small prey.
But afterwards he doesn't remember what happened, how he was injured, or even how or what even injured him, and what the fucking injury was because, looking at his skin now, he didn't had scar or anything like that.
Honestly whole situation didn't make sense. Unless this body had some serious mutant DNA, or something else was helping him
He didn't like either option.
And finally, what the hell was this world, anyway?
Sure, it looked primitive… the huts, the rough clothes, the stone tools … but which primitive? Caveman? Tribal? Ancient civilization knockoff? He couldn't tell.
And that monster from his memory… the Thornomow…. that thing with teeth like daggers and a body that looked ripped straight from a paleontology fever dream… yeah, he didn't remember Earth ever having something like that. Unless he'd missed a Discovery Channel special titled "When Evolution Gave Up and Made Nightmares."
Either this was a different world, or the timeline was so far back it had gone full prehistoric DLC mode.
He rubbed his temples. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made.
He had too many damn questions.
Where was he?
What time was this?
What rules did this world play by?
And, most importantly, how the hell was he supposed to survive here without ending up as monster lunch?
Still, "Sitting around won't give me answers," he decided.
He needed to go out. He needed to get a feel for the place, map the layout, maybe catch a clue or two about what kind of prehistoric mess he'd landed in.
But, before that, his eyes landed on the empty water jars near the door. Massive, heavy clay vessels that usually took two hands to lift when full.
"Right. Water first." he decided.
Before his injury, fetching water had been his morning duty. Everyone in the tribe had a role. The men usually hunted, the women gathered, the older ones crafted, and the unlucky bastards who were neither strong nor experienced… like him… got stuck with chores.
After he'd been injured, Lyra had taken over that too, fetching water after dusk once she was done foraging. Dangerous as hell, but what choice did she have? They needed water.
He walked over to the largest jar. Before his injury, dragging this thing to the river was a morning-long torture session.
Sol gripped the handle with one hand and heaved.
The jar flew up into the air as if it were made of paper. Sol caught it against his chest with a dull thump, blinking in surprise.
A slow, feral grin spread across his face.
"Okay," he whispered, feeling the power hum in his veins. "Now this is interesting."