The chaotic battle raged for what felt like an eternity—perhaps only half an hour, perhaps subjective centuries.
When the last Paoxiao finally dragged its broken body into the concealing depths of the forest, its retreating wail thick with venomous hatred, the small tribal camp had been utterly transformed into a living hell.
Severed limbs lay scattered like grotesque offerings. Broken stone tools and shards of bone littered the ground alongside torn fragments of hide.
A sickening slurry of mud, viscera, and blood—the dark red of humans mingled with the viscous green ichor of the Paoxiao—painted the clearing in terrifying patterns.
The painful moans of the grievously wounded, the heart-wrenching keening of those mourning freshly lost kin, and the desperate, hitching gasps of survivors struggling to draw breath into exhausted lungs intertwined, composing the cruel dirge of Survival itself.
Steven remained slumped in the mire, his stomach churning violently, bile burning the back of his throat.
He forced himself to look, to truly see the two distinctly different youths nearby.
Mason, the stone-axe wielder, was attacking a Paoxiao carcass with near-maniacal fury, hacking and chopping as if trying to obliterate its very existence, his eyes blazing with raw ferocity and an almost ecstatic lust for destruction.
Nearby, the other one—the calm one, still unnamed—had already set aside his obsidian-tipped spear.
He moved with quiet efficiency among the survivors, assessing injuries, murmuring low words of command or comfort.
Steven watched him direct others to apply poultices of chewed leaves and mud to gaping wounds, using strips torn from cleaner hides as crude bandages.
He saw him take stock of the few remaining intact weapons, gesture towards the scattered remnants of gathered roots and berries, and dispatch warriors—their faces grim but resolute—to establish a perimeter watch.
His every action radiated a preternatural sense of order and responsibility utterly at odds with his apparent youth.
And as he watched them—the embodiment of primal fury and the avatar of nascent order—a cold, hard certainty finally crushed the last vestiges of Steven's denial.
He, Steven Miske, self-proclaimed twenty-first-century techno-elite, armchair political commentator, spoiled scion of a corporate dynasty, was well and truly, royally, irrevocably… fucking stuck here.
Moreover, this world… this reality… was infinitely more dangerous, more savage, more steeped in blood and primal fear than he could ever have conceived, far exceeding the cold, abstract descriptions in those historical datasets he'd so arrogantly downloaded.
The very air felt heavy, imbued not just with the sickening stench of death and decay, but with an invisible, crushing weight—a spiritual oppression radiating perhaps from the land itself, or from forces operating on a scale utterly beyond human comprehension.
It pressed down on his soul, suffocating him with the raw truth of human existence in this dawn age: fragile, ephemeral, caught like insignificant insects in the crosscurrents of titanic, indifferent powers, constantly facing the whim of being snuffed out or devoured.
He unconsciously touched the smooth, familiar interface port at the base of his skull.
The faint warmth still emanating from the chip was his sole remaining tether to everything he had known.
He glanced again at his bare wrist. No smart hub. No time display. No biometric readouts.
And absolutely no connection to the boundless ocean of the datasphere.
Well, at least… language doesn't seem to be an immediate problem anymore?
The thought felt like finding a single dry match in the middle of a hurricane.
Thanks, Cecil… and this NeuraSync chip… however long you actually last.
He could almost hear Cecil's voice droning on in his memory, analyzing the very air he breathed: "…over thirty distinct species of unknown airborne microorganisms detected… abnormal low-frequency energy fluctuations registered, source indeterminate…" The memory brought a fresh wave of despair, and for the first time, staring at the bloody reality before him, a sliver of genuine doubt, cold and sharp, pierced the armor of his lifelong faith in the omnipotence of technology.
"…soul of another world… one of the keys…" The whisper, phantom-faint, echoed again in the depths of his battered consciousness, a memory from the very edge of oblivion before he woke in this nightmare.
Key? What key? What the hell is actually going on?!
Just then, amidst the wreckage of the camp, the calm youth straightened.
He surveyed the devastation—the weeping figures huddled over the dead, the grim-faced warriors leaning heavily on their spears, the blood-soaked earth.
A flicker of profound sorrow crossed his dark eyes but was instantly subsumed by a harder, more resolute light.
He drew a deep breath, and began to chant. His voice was low, yet resonant, carrying an uncanny power that seemed to rise not just from his throat, but from the wounded earth itself:
"Stone Forge the Soul!"
The single line cut through the cacophony of grief. The surviving warriors, even Mason who was still panting beside a mangled Paoxiao corpse, froze, their attention arrested.
The calm youth chanted again, his voice rising slightly, imbued with an unyielding spirit:
"Heart Claim the Sun!"
A few warriors nearest him, those still steady on their feet, instinctively struck their chests with clenched fists.
Their hoarse reply ripped through the heavy air:
"STRIVE!"
The youth's gaze swept over the faces before him—faces etched with sorrow, numbness, exhaustion.
His voice rang out again, stronger now, fiercely resolute:
"Guard the Den and Kin!"
More voices joined the response this time. Rough, low, some thick with unshed tears, yet beneath the grief, a spark was rekindling from the ashes of despair:
"ENDURE!"
The youth raised his spear high, its obsidian tip pointing towards the oppressive, indifferent sky.
He gathered all his strength, all the tribe's flickering will, into a final, defiant cry:
"Spirits Watch Above!"
And then, every survivor—man, woman, child, wounded or whole—seemed to draw upon some hidden reservoir of strength.
They lifted their heads. They straightened their spines, even if only to tremble upright.
And with every ounce of breath left in their battered bodies, they joined their voices in a single, primal roar that seemed to shake the very trees of the surrounding jungle:
"WE SURVIVE!"
It wasn't a shout of triumph. It was a declaration hammered out on the anvil of loss, a raw assertion of existence hurled into the teeth of a cruel, indifferent cosmos. It was the first, defiant heartbeat of a people refusing to be extinguished.
Steven watched, utterly transfixed. He saw these "savages," clad in rags, wielding primitive tools, fresh from a slaughter that would have shattered any modern psyche. He saw them stand amidst the corpses of their kin and their enemies, and with nothing but raw voices and ancient words, forge anew the will to live, the will to continue.
Suddenly, all his earlier contempt, his cynical complaints about their "primitive" ways, felt profoundly… shallow. Absurd. Embarrassingly inadequate.
Something deep within his carefully constructed modern worldview fractured, leaving a small, uncertain gap.