A guttural roar ripped through the night. Not from Rhys. From the tribe. Their chant snapped, a broken bone. Faces contorted. Eyes, once glazed with ritualistic fervor, sharpened. They were chips of obsidian, fixed on him. Rhys froze. Every muscle screamed from the Skitter-wolf fight. Blood caked his face, matted his hair. He still clutched the improvised spear, its tip glistening.
He was a beast. He looked the part.
He felt the surge of primal fear, hot and cold. But beneath it, a scholar’s analytical eye spun. Sixty-seven individuals. Mostly adult males, but several women, some elderly. All armed. Crude spears, stone axes. Their bodies were scarred, etched with a lifetime of brutal survival. Their scent was a mix of smoke, sweat, and something musky, animalistic.
The pulsing core fragment, nestled in the earthen hollow, throbbed brighter. Its low hum vibrated through Rhys's bones. He remembered the descriptions from his data-scrolls. Wildlander rituals. Primitive energy worship. He was interrupting it.
A hulking figure detached from the crowd. Broader than Rhys, if such a thing was possible. A mountain of muscle and scars. His head was shaven save for a single braid, adorned with bone beads. His eyes were not obsidian, but molten gold. A leader. Rhys knew it instinctively.
“*Karr-nah!*” The word was a growl. It scraped across Rhys’s mind, a language he shouldn’t understand. Yet, he did. *Outsider? Foe?* The meaning was fluid, but the intent was clear.
The leader took another step. The ground trembled with his weight. He held a massive stone club, rimmed with jagged obsidian flakes. It looked heavy enough to crack a synth-steel panel. Rhys’s heart hammered against his ribs. He felt the cold touch of fear, sharp and immediate.
He had two choices: fight or submit. Submission felt like death. Fighting felt like a slower, more painful death.
His Wildlander body, however, had its own instincts. It straightened. His shoulders squared. The spear lifted, not aggressively, but defensively. A silent challenge. A statement of self-preservation.
Another voice, a woman’s, cut through the tense quiet. Less a growl, more a sharp command. “*Dakk-en-kah! Ma-voth!*” She was older, her face a roadmap of ancient wrinkles, her eyes piercing. Rhys understood again. *Wait! He lives!*
The leader, ‘Ma-voth’ perhaps, hesitated. His molten eyes raked over Rhys’s wounds. The blood. The fresh tear in his hide trousers. The jagged gash on his arm. Evidence of battle. Evidence of survival.
Rhys stood his ground. He didn't speak. He couldn't. His throat felt like sandpaper. He could only radiate the raw, untamed presence of the body he now inhabited. A predator, wounded, but still dangerous.
Ma-voth lowered his club, an inch. It was enough. He gestured with his free hand, a complex series of movements. Rhys, relying on the body's embedded knowledge, interpreted it as an invitation. Or a demand to approach.
He moved, slowly. Each step was a gamble. The tribe’s eyes tracked him. He felt their judgment, their suspicion. He reached the edge of the hollow. The core fragment pulsed, a soft, internal hum now almost a whisper in his ear. He could practically feel the data radiating from it, a ghost in the machine. He knelt, mirroring the others who had been in mid-ritual. It was an act of deference. Or a tactic. He wasn’t sure which.
---
The ritual resumed. The chanting started again, a low drone, building in intensity. Rhys watched. He listened. The words were mostly nonsense, rhythmic sounds designed to induce a trance. But every now and then, a familiar syllable, a fragment of meaning, would surface.
He recognized elements from his historical archives. The ‘Stone of Whispers.’ A central artifact in many primitive Wildlander belief systems. Described as a ‘shimmering heart of the earth,’ said to hold ‘the spirits of the ancestors.’ He always dismissed it as tribal superstition, a primitive explanation for natural phenomena. Now, it was a literal piece of his shattered reality.
The core fragment. It pulsed. Not randomly. It had a rhythm. A complex pattern of light and sound. Rhys focused. He saw the subtle fluctuations, the minute variations in its glow. It wasn't just energy. It was data. Raw, unfiltered data, bleeding into the physical world.
The Wildlanders passed their hands over the fragment, chanting. Their eyes were distant, fixed on something beyond the firelight. They seemed to absorb something from it. A current of energy. A sense of peace. Or perhaps, a shared delusion.
Ma-voth, surprisingly, knelt beside Rhys. His molten eyes fixed on the fragment. He placed a hand, calloused and massive, on Rhys’s shoulder. The weight was immense. A question, unspoken, hung in the air. *Do you feel it?*
Rhys nodded, a slight, almost imperceptible movement. He *did* feel it. A dull thrum, a vibration in his bones. But his mind was already processing. The fragment was a locus. A data point. If he could understand its output, he could understand *how* the simulation had broken. And perhaps, how to fix it. Or, more realistically, how to survive in its aftermath.
Hours passed. The moon climbed, a sliver of white bone against the velvet black sky. The fire dwindled to embers. The chanting softened, then ceased. The tribe dispersed, melting back into their crude hide shelters scattered around the hollow.
Rhys remained. Ma-voth stayed too, a silent sentinel. He handed Rhys a piece of dried meat – tough, gamey, but nourishing. Rhys devoured it. His body craved sustenance. He felt a strange kinship with the hulking Wildlander. A shared burden of existence in this brutal world.
“*Rhys-nah?*” Ma-voth grunted, the question rough. He pointed to Rhys, then himself. “*Ma-voth.*” He pointed to the fragment. “*Stone. Speaks.*”
Rhys understood. Ma-voth was asking for his name. And explaining the Stone. Rhys looked at the fragment, then at Ma-voth. He had to be careful. He couldn’t reveal his true identity. Not yet. He had no idea what their reaction would be. His body, his Wildlander body, had no name. Or at least, no known one.
He pointed to himself. He tried to force out a sound. A Wildlander sound. Something guttural, short. He remembered the Skitter-wolf fight. The roar he had made. He tried to replicate it. “*Rhh-ysshh…*” It came out as a gravelly rasp. Close enough.
Ma-voth considered it. “*Rys. Sky-borne.*” He pointed to the sky, then back to Rhys. *Sky-borne?* Rhys’s mind reeled. Was it a coincidence? Or did they sense something in him? The scholar, ripped from his academic tower, falling into this reality.
Rhys didn't correct him. *Rys. Sky-borne.* It suited the new persona.
Ma-voth pointed to the fragment. “*Stone. Dreams.*” His eyes were serious. “*Many dreams.*” He then pointed to Rhys. “*Your dreams now, Rys.*”
Rhys felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air. *His dreams?* What did that mean? Was the fragment a conduit? A projector? He needed to get closer to it. Alone.
---
The next day was a blur of exhausting activity. Rhys was put to work. Chopping wood. Hauling water from a brackish stream. Repairing hide shelters. His muscles, though powerful, ached with unfamiliar strain. He learned the rhythm of Wildlander life: ceaseless struggle, constant labor.
He watched Ma-voth. The leader was fair, but stern. His commands were obeyed without question. The tribe was a tight-knit unit, bound by shared hardship and fierce loyalty. Rhys, the scholar, observed their social structure, their hunting techniques, their crude tools. Every detail was filed away, a new entry in his living database.
He learned the few words they spoke beyond grunts and gestures. *Grol* for food. *Kah* for water. *Vor* for enemy. *Esh* for tribe. Basic, functional. Communication was minimal, built on unspoken understanding.
At dusk, the ritual began again. This time, Rhys was expected. He sat among the men, chanting. He mimicked their movements, their hand gestures over the Stone of Whispers. He allowed the low hum to wash over him. He focused, trying to discern patterns, meaning.
The hum intensified. It started to feel less like a vibration, more like a pressure in his skull. His mind, the scholar's mind, fought to maintain clarity. He closed his eyes. Images flickered. Not his memories. Not exactly.
They were fractured, distorted scenes. A vast, gleaming city, spires reaching for a sun Rhys had never seen. Figures in sleek, bright armor. Then, a sudden, blinding flash. A rupture. And then darkness. A roaring wind. Chaos.
He gasped, his eyes snapping open. The images were gone. Just the pulsing core fragment, the firelight, the chanting faces. No one seemed to have noticed his momentary lapse. They were deep in their own trance.
Was that what Ma-voth meant by 'dreams'? Was the fragment projecting residual data from the simulation’s collapse? If so, it was more powerful, more dangerous than he imagined. It was a memory-keeper. A wound in reality itself.
He spent another night in the cold, near the dying fire, near the Stone. Ma-voth had assigned him a place, a crude bed of furs in a shared shelter. But Rhys couldn't sleep. The images haunted him. The hum of the Stone called to him.
He waited. Until the last ember died. Until the last Wildlander snored in their shelter. He moved silently. His new body was clumsy, but effective. He crept towards the Stone. It glowed faintly now, a soft pulse in the darkness.
He reached out a hand. His skin tingled. He hesitated. What if it was too much? What if it overwhelmed him? Or worse, what if it was a trap?
His scholar’s curiosity, however, overrode his Wildlander caution. He had to know. He pressed his palm against the rough, crystalline surface of the core fragment.
The hum roared in his ears. Not a sound, but an internal vibration that shook him to his core. The faint glow intensified. Images flooded his mind, not fractured flashes this time, but a continuous stream. He saw complex schematics, data streams scrolling at impossible speeds, lines of code he half-recognized from his archival studies. He saw the Sundered Marches, not as a brutal land, but as lines of exquisite, intricate programming.
Then, a voice. Not a spoken voice, but a thought, clear and resonant, echoing through the core of his being.
*“Breach. Imminent.”*
The core fragment pulsed violently. A jolt, like lightning, shot through Rhys's arm, searing his nerves. He cried out, a raw, involuntary sound that ripped through the quiet night. His hand recoiled, scorched and tingling.
Before he could recover, before he could process the voice, the warning, a shadow detached itself from the deeper darkness beyond the fire pit. It was faster than a Skitter-wolf, silent as falling snow. A figure. Clad in dark, segmented armor that seemed to absorb the minimal light. Not Wildlander. Not Hegemony.
It moved with impossible grace, its weapon, a long, curved blade, already clearing its scabbard. It lunged, not at Rhys, but at the pulsing core fragment. Its intent was clear: destruction.
Rhys, still reeling from the Stone’s feedback, saw the blade arc down. He saw the impossible speed, the lethal precision. He had only a fraction of a second. His Wildlander body, driven by instinct, moved. He threw himself forward, a primal scream tearing from his throat, straight into the path of the descending blade.