Broken branches propped against a fallen log, covered by threadbare animal skins that let in more light than they blocked. Orphaned children of the Silverglade Tribe sprawled across the dirt floor, seeking relief from the oppressive heat.
One girl slept directly under the largest hole in the roof. Her animal skin wrap had slipped during the night, leaving her shoulder exposed to the sun.
Arin's eyes snapped open.
Something was off. Her body felt disconnected, like wearing clothes three sizes too small. Every muscle ached, and the hard ground pressed against unfamiliar bones.
She lifted her hands into the shaft of sunlight and stared. Small hands with golden-brown skin and calluses dotting the palms stared back at her. These weren't her hands. She flexed her fingers, watching tendons move beneath skin that didn't belong to her.
"This can't be real." Her voice came out higher, younger.
A lock of hair fell across her face. Not the straight black she'd seen in mirrors her whole life, but wavy, dark brown tangles that felt coarse and thick between her fingers.
'I'm going insane. That's the only explanation.'
She pushed herself up. Dirt clung to her skin, and sharp pebbles bit into her palms. The air reeked of sweat and smoke and something rotten that made her stomach turn.
"This isn't Tokyo." She barely breathed the words.
She looked down at herself. The animal skin wrap barely covered anything, rough hide scraping against skin unused to such primitive clothing. Every adjustment she made only seemed to make it worse.
'Transmigration. Like those light novels.' Her hands trembled as the reality sank in. 'But this is real. This is actually happening to me.'
She needed to see outside to understand where she'd landed and what kind of world this was.
Arin stood on shaking legs and stumbled toward the exit. The crooked branch serving as a door frame felt too solid under her palm, bark digging into soft skin.
She pushed through the flap.
Sunlight slammed into her. Arin threw up her hand, eyes watering as the world gradually came into focus around her.
"What the..."
Crude huts dotted the clearing, their construction barely more sophisticated than her own shelter. Cooking pits smoldered between dwellings, sending thin streams of smoke into the air. But beyond the village, trees stretched upward impossibly high, their trunks wider than any she'd ever seen. Something screeched from the canopy overhead, definitely not any bird she recognized from Earth.
A woman passed by carrying a woven basket. She glanced at Arin but kept walking, her attention focused on whatever task awaited her.
Arin's gaze drifted toward a grove of trees at the village edge. Strange fruits hung from branches in colors that shouldn't exist in nature. One seemed to shimmer and shift between hues as she watched.
'Is that even safe to eat?'
Movement caught her eye. Something with too many legs skittered across a nearby hut before disappearing into the shadows between structures.
"Nope. Absolutely not."
Arin backed up quickly and nearly collided with someone scraping animal hides. The person muttered something she couldn't quite catch as their tool scraped harshly against the leather.
People moved everywhere around her, wearing similar primitive wraps and speaking that strange language she somehow understood. Stone tools clicked rhythmically against bone implements.
"This is completely insane." Arin pressed both hands to her temples, trying to stop the spinning sensation.
Her stomach growled loudly.
A child ran past, waving a bright fruit above their head. "The hunters are back!"
The entire village seemed to mobilize at once. Bodies surged past Arin toward the forest edge, and she stood frozen as the chaos unfolded around her.
GONG!
The sound resonated deep in her chest, vibrating through her teeth and bones.
People shouted in excitement, their words blurring together in the rush. Someone nearly knocked her over in their haste.
Bodies pressed against her from all sides. The surge carried her forward whether she wanted to go or not. Someone's elbow caught her ribs, and another person stepped on her bare foot. Arin stumbled and grabbed someone's arm to steady herself.
The person didn't even notice, too focused on whatever was happening ahead.
Arin's skin prickled. The air itself seemed to vibrate with anticipation and excitement.
Movement appeared at the tree line. Hunters emerged from the shadows, dragging something massive between them with thick ropes.
"No way." Arin's jaw went slack. "That's impossible."
Blue fur rippled in the sunlight. Crystal spikes jutted from massive shoulders that bunched with corded muscle. The creature was easily twice the size of any bear, with features that belonged in nightmares rather than in any natural ecosystem. Even dead, power radiated from its corpse.
An old man near Arin sobbed openly, tears streaming down weathered cheeks. "Two months! Two months!"
A hunter raised his bloodied spear to the sky, voice ringing out across the gathered tribe. "The Azure Terror falls! The Silverglade Tribe lives!"
The crowd erupted into celebration. Someone nearby grabbed their companion in a crushing embrace. Children jumped and screamed in delight. Arin stood rigid among them, staring at the impossible beast.
'What kind of world is this?'
The tribe danced and sang around her, celebrating their hard-won victory. But all Arin could see were those eyes—still open and staring, even in death..
The instinct hit without warning. Arin's legs moved before her brain caught up, weaving through celebrating villagers who barely noticed her departure. The crowd's noise faded with each step until only the sound of her own breathing filled her ears.
The forest edge beckoned ahead, dark and ancient. A distant howl echoed from somewhere deep within those shadows. Arin's steps faltered at the tree line as sense tried to reassert itself.
'Going in there is stupid. Probably deadly.'
She went anyway.
The massive trees towered overhead, their shadows stretching across the forest floor. Strange calls echoed through branches high above. Every instinct she possessed screamed danger, but she needed space to think.
A huge trunk caught her attention. Spiraling patterns covered its bark, beautiful and inexplicable in their complexity. She was close enough to still hear the village celebrations but far enough to finally breathe.
Arin slid down against the bark until she sat on the mossy ground. The trunk felt warm against her back, almost alive. Her fingers traced the swirling patterns absently while her mind raced.
A child's laugh drifted over the distance, somehow reassuring in its normalcy.
Arin hugged her knees to her chest and tried to control her breathing.
"At least they sound happy."
A laugh bubbled up from her chest without permission. She tried to hold it back, but it spilled out anyway.
"I missed my morning meeting." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Pretty sure this counts as calling in sick."
The absurdity crashed over her. Here she was, trapped in some prehistoric fantasy nightmare, and she was thinking about office work and meeting schedules.
She took a shaky breath and tried to organize her thoughts. "Okay. Let's think rationally. Stone Age technology, primitive tools and shelter, weird fruits and that blue monster—definitely not normal Earth."
Could this be some alternate timeline where history had taken a different path? A parallel dimension with different physical laws? Evolution gone completely sideways? Or maybe she'd finally cracked from overwork stress and this was all an elaborate mental breakdown.
She pinched herself again, hard enough to leave a mark. It still hurt just as much as before.
"Too real for a hallucination."
Cheers rose again from the village as the celebration continued. They were preparing the impossible creature, turning nightmare into dinner.
"No going back." Her laugh cracked on the words. "Unless someone's got a spare dimensional portal lying around somewhere."
"Who am I now?" she whispered to the empty forest. "What happened to whoever lived in this body before me?"
No answer came back except wind through leaves and distant forest sounds.
Panic swelled in her chest, threatening to overwhelm her completely. She was just an office worker who lived alone and worked too many hours. She didn't know how to survive in the wild. She could barely keep houseplants alive back home.
But then, gradually, the panic receded. Arin focused on her breathing, counting each inhale and exhale.
"Okay, Arin." Her voice came out stronger this time. "Step one: Don't die. Step two: Figure out the rest later."
Not much of a plan for survival, but it was something to hold onto.
She stood up slowly, and for just a second, the forest seemed to shift around her. Faces appeared in the bark patterns, eyes watching from the knots in the wood.
Arin blinked hard. Normal trees stared back at her, unchanging and solid.
'Right. Don't start seeing things that aren't there. That's when I'll know I've really lost it.'
She looked up through the canopy overhead. The light had changed while she sat there, turning golden with approaching evening. Time to head back before full dark fell and whatever prowled these woods came out to hunt.
Arin walked toward the village, hyper-aware of every sound in the darkening forest. The woods woke around her as day faded into dusk with new calls echoing through the trees and rustles in the underbrush as night creatures stirred from their daytime rest.
"Just a squirrel." Arin picked up her pace, nearly jogging now. "Probably only has a couple extra legs. Totally normal for this place."
Her bare feet found the path between roots through muscle memory that wasn't hers.
Arin stepped out from beneath the trees' shadow and back into the village. The celebration continued, and firelight had begun to flicker as someone lit the cooking pits for the feast ahead.