The sun had broken through the mist.
For the first time in what felt like millennia, its rays no longer scorched a dead land.
They touched a world that lived.
Not just surviving — breathing, growing, dreaming again.
The trees had become titans.
Their branches twisted toward the sky like ancient arms.
The forests were dense jungles, almost impossible to cross, where light slipped through in strange, pale beams.
The creatures that roamed there no longer looked human.
Their shapes drifted between myth and mutation, between beauty and terror.
And I,
I still walked.
Alone.
Always.
But that morning, something changed.
She was there.
The same figure I had seen once before.
A young woman, clothed in skins, adorned with bone and stone.
Thick braids whipped in the wind.
Her eyes were bright, sharp, cautious.
And deep within them,
a spark.
Something that couldn't be explained.
A glimmer of humanity.
She watched me, frozen among the tall grass.
Then she turned and ran.
I followed.
Not to catch her.
Not to trap her.
Just… to understand.
We ran for a long time.
Through trees, over rocks, across roots and broken hills.
She ran like a hunted animal — but without panic.
Her steps were fast. Controlled.
She disappeared between two cliffs, hidden by vines.
When I reached the gap, I saw it:
Below —
a village.
A refuge.
A community carved into the rock.
Thin figures moved through it, marked with mud and painted symbols.
They lived inside the cracks of an ancient cliff, among the ruins of a lost world.
Collapsed towers.
Broken steel melted into stone.
Buildings, highways —
hard to tell.
But they were there.
Humans.
Still.
They painted the walls with black and red signs.
They prayed under the stars.
They told stories with their hands.
Their scarred faces looked beyond the horizon.
And at the heart of this living cave,
bones.
Old skulls set into the rock.
Maybe ancestors.
Maybe… remains of the world I had seen fall.
I climbed down.
I didn't call out.
I didn't lift my arms.
I simply showed myself.
They saw me.
And fear did its work.
Screams.
Shouts.
Stone blades, bone clubs, wooden spears.
They charged at me like I was a monster.
I didn't fight back.
I fell under their blows.
My skull cracked.
My bones shattered.
My flesh broke apart.
Blood spread at my feet.
But I didn't scream.
I didn't beg.
I waited.
And, as always,
my body began to heal.
Slowly.
Bone after bone.
Tissue after tissue.
They stepped back.
Panting.
Terrified.
Their fear had changed.
They stared at me,
their eyes full of confusion.
I stood up.
Without a word.
I tried to speak.
But nothing came out.
No word.
No name.
Even my own tongue felt foreign.
So I sat down.
Facing them.
Hands open.
No threat.
She returned.
The young woman.
She came closer.
No sudden moves.
No words.
She handed me a piece of dried fruit.
A simple gift.
But it was a pact.
A beginning.
I took it.
I ate.
And around us, the silence changed.
They tolerated me.
First from afar.
Then, slowly, a little closer each day.
I slept at the edge of their camp,
beneath a rock beaten by the wind.
They didn't speak to me.
But they didn't drive me away.
One day, a child threw a stone at me.
Not to hurt me —
just to see if I was real.
I threw it back.
He ran off, laughing.
The next day, he returned
with a smoother, more beautiful stone.
So I found one too,
and gave it to him.
Days passed.
I watched.
I copied.
I learned.
They wove —
I wove.
They carved —
I carved.
They hunted —
I followed.
I didn't speak.
But I did.
Everything they did,
I did.
And sometimes more.
My body never weakened.
So I carried more weight.
Stayed longer in the rain, in the mud, in the cold nights.
They started giving me tasks.
Then tools.
Then children to watch over.
They still didn't speak to me.
But they accepted me.
One evening, I heard a word.
Short.
Rough.
Passed from mouth to mouth,
pointing at me.
I didn't understand it.
But it stayed.
A word carved in their language of stone and fire.
Maybe a nickname.
Maybe something more.
I accepted it.
Because it came from them.
Little by little,
I entered their circle.
They gave me fish.
Honey.
Salt.
They touched my shoulder.
I became a tool.
Then a face.
Then a presence.
I carried their dead into the caves.
I mended their broken totems.
I watched over their children.
And one night,
a woman gave me a necklace —
a simple thread,
strung with teeth and shells.
She pointed at me.
And they all repeated the sound.
Not as a threat.
Not as a warning.
As a name.
Not my true name.
But a beginning.
And that night,
for the first time in an eternity,
I slept among men.
Not at the edge of the world.
Not in the shadows.
Among them.