Caelan woke to the sound of something chittering near his face.
His eyes snapped open, and he found himself staring at a creature no larger than his hand. It had six legs, crystalline wings that refracted the bioluminescent light into rainbow patterns, and multifaceted eyes that regarded him with what seemed like innocent curiosity. The chittering came from mandibles that clicked together in a complex rhythm.
He remained perfectly still, afraid that any sudden movement would either scare it away or provoke an attack. The creature tilted its head—a remarkably vertebrate gesture for something so insectoid—and extended a delicate antenna to touch his nose.
The contact sent a small shock through him, but not painful. More like… recognition. The creature's antenna withdrew, and it made a satisfied chirping sound before spreading its wings and taking flight, disappearing through a crack in the tree hollow that served as his shelter.
Caelan sat up slowly, his body protesting with a dozen new aches. Yesterday's escape and experimentation had taken more out of him than he'd realized. His muscles felt like they'd been worked beyond their limits, and there was a deep fatigue in his bones that spoke of more than just physical exhaustion.
But beneath the discomfort, there was something else. A warmth in his chest, a sensation he couldn't quite name. It felt like… potential. Like something inside him had shifted, aligned, become more than it was before. He couldn't explain it, couldn't point to what had changed, but he felt it nonetheless.
*Is this what growth feels like in this body?* he wondered. *Or am I just imagining things?*
He pushed the thought aside and focused on more immediate concerns. The moss beneath him was damp from his sweat, and his mouth felt like he'd been chewing on tree bark. Water. He needed water desperately.
Crawling to the entrance of his hollow, he peered out at the forest beyond. The canopy rain had stopped, but everything still dripped with moisture. The morning light—if it was morning; he had no real way to tell time here—filtered through the massive trees in shafts of gold and green, illuminating a world that seemed even more alien in daylight than it had in the bioluminescent darkness.
The forest floor was alive with movement. Insects buzzed and clicked. Small creatures scurried between patches of undergrowth. Something that looked like a cross between a deer and a mantis moved gracefully between the trees on four impossibly long legs, its head crowned with antennae that swept the air like divining rods.
And everywhere, *everywhere*, there was color. Not just green, but blues and purples and reds and golds. Plants didn't just grow here—they performed. Flowers the size of his head tracked the light like solar panels. Vines pulsed with internal rhythms that might have been heartbeats. Even the moss seemed to breathe.
It was beautiful. Overwhelming. And utterly incomprehensible to someone who should have found this terrifying but instead felt a strange sense of… belonging?
*No,* he corrected himself. *Not belonging. Recognition. Like some part of me was always meant to be here, even if the rest of me is screaming that this is wrong.*
He shook off the philosophical musings and focused on survival. Water first. Then food. Then he could worry about understanding his place in this world.
Water turned out to be easier to find than he'd expected. Many of the larger plants had evolved cup-like structures at the base of their leaves, natural reservoirs that collected the canopy rain. He approached one cautiously, remembering the pod plant's trap, but this plant seemed content to simply exist. The water it held was cool and clean, with a faint sweetness that suggested dissolved minerals or plant sugars.
He drank deeply, feeling strength return to his limbs. As he did, he studied the plant more carefully. The cup structure was fascinating—perfectly angled to catch water, with a waxy coating that prevented evaporation, and what looked like tiny hairs along the rim that might filter out debris. It was elegant engineering, refined over countless generations of evolution.
Could he use this?
The question came naturally now. Every organism he encountered was a potential tool, a possible improvement. The thought should have disturbed him, but it didn't. It felt… right.
He touched the plant's cup structure, focusing the way he had with the fungus yesterday. Information trickled into his mind—slower than with the data crystal, but present nonetheless. He understood the cellular structure of the waxy coating, the way the plant directed resources to maintain the reservoir, the chemical composition that kept the water fresh.
But taking this ability wholesale would require significant modification to his skin, and he wasn't sure that was practical. Instead, he filed the information away. Perhaps later, when he understood his capabilities better, he could adapt elements of it. For now, knowing where to find water was enough.
Food proved more challenging. He found several plants bearing fruits that looked edible, but his instincts—or perhaps inherited memories from this body—warned him against eating anything he couldn't identify. Poison was probably a significant survival pressure in a forest this diverse. One wrong meal and he'd be joining the pod plant in decomposition.
He needed protein anyway. His body was recovering from trauma and adapting to new modifications. That required more than just plant sugars.
The thought of hunting made him uncomfortable. Not because of any moral qualms—survival trumped philosophy—but because he had no idea how to hunt. The bone blade at his waist was a weapon, yes, but he'd never used it for anything other than hacking at plant tendrils. Could he actually kill an animal with it?
*One way to find out,* he thought grimly.
He spent the next hour observing the forest's smaller inhabitants, looking for something that seemed slow or unaware enough for an inexperienced hunter to catch. Most of the creatures he saw were either too fast, too well-armored, or too alert. The mantis-deer things could apparently sense vibrations through the ground—he watched one freeze and then bound away when he accidentally stepped on a dry branch thirty feet away.
But there were nests. Dozens of them, built into the crooks of branches and hidden in the undergrowth. Most were empty or contained adults that would be too dangerous to approach. But one, built low in a bush with leaves that sparkled like they'd been dusted with diamonds, held something different.
Eggs. Four of them, each about the size of his fist, with shells that had a faint iridescent sheen.
He approached slowly, watching for the parent. Minutes passed. No creature appeared to defend its nest. Either the parent was away foraging, or—more likely—they'd been killed or driven off. The forest was dangerous, after all.
Caelan felt a pang of guilt as he reached for one of the eggs, but pragmatism won out. He needed food. The unborn creature inside would provide that. And if he was very fortunate, it might provide something more.
The egg was warm in his hands, and he could feel something moving inside. Still alive. Still developing. He hesitated, then made his decision. One egg for food. One egg for study. The other two he would leave, giving whatever species this was a chance to continue.
He carried his prizes back to the hollow, his mind already working through possibilities.
-----
Cracking the first egg revealed a partially developed creature that looked like a hybrid between a bird and a reptile. It had scales that shimmered with the same iridescence as the shell, but also soft down feathers around what would have been wings. The eyes, even undeveloped, were disproportionately large—suggesting a species that relied heavily on vision.
He ate quickly, trying not to think too much about what he was consuming. The flesh was tender and had a flavor he couldn't quite place—something between chicken and fish. It wasn't pleasant, but it was sustenance, and his body welcomed it eagerly.
The second egg he handled with more care. He cracked it just enough to see inside without killing the occupant immediately, though he knew the creature was doomed regardless. What he needed was information, and the more intact the organism, the more he could learn.
He placed his hands on either side of the cracked shell and focused.
The flow of information was different this time. Richer. More complex. This wasn't a plant's simple chemical processes or a fungus's basic bioluminescence. This was a developing animal, with organs and systems and specialized cells that had evolved to solve problems his transmutation ability had never encountered.
The eyes. Those massive, multifaceted eyes. He could see how they were constructed, understand the specialized photoreceptors that could detect a broader spectrum of light than his current vision allowed. The creature—he thought of it as a shimmer-bird, for lack of a better term—could see into the ultraviolet and infrared ranges. In a forest where so much communicated through light and heat, that would be an incredible advantage.
Could he adapt that?
He spent the next two hours in deep concentration, carefully deconstructing the shimmer-bird's ocular biology in his mind. He couldn't simply copy the eyes wholesale—that would require reshaping his entire skull and optical nerves, changes that seemed far beyond his current ability. But he could adapt elements of it. Add new photoreceptors to his existing eyes. Modify the structure of his retinas to process additional light spectrums.
The changes, when he finally attempted them, were uncomfortable rather than painful. His vision blurred, and for a terrifying moment, he couldn't see anything at all. Then, gradually, the world came back into focus.
And it was different.
Colors he couldn't name bloomed in his peripheral vision. The plants around him, which had seemed merely bioluminescent before, now revealed complex patterns of light and heat that had been invisible to him. He could see the thermal signature of the moss, slightly warmer where water had pooled. He could see UV markers on flowers that probably guided pollinators. He could see the faint heat trails left by creatures that had passed through his hollow hours ago.
It was overwhelming and magnificent and more than a little disorienting.
He had to close his eyes and breathe deeply, forcing himself to adjust to the new sensory input. When he opened them again, he focused on filtering out the excess information, learning to see normally while keeping the enhanced vision in reserve.
Another hour of practice, and he had it mostly under control. He could switch between normal vision and enhanced vision with a thought, though doing so too quickly gave him a headache that suggested his brain wasn't entirely happy with the modifications.
But it worked. He'd given himself a genuine advantage, using nothing but the biology of a creature that hadn't even been born yet.
The warmth in his chest intensified, and for just a moment, he felt… more. Clearer. Stronger. Like he'd crossed some invisible threshold and been rewarded for it in ways he couldn't articulate.
*There it is again,* he thought. *That sense of progression. Like I'm leveling up in some kind of game, except there's no menu, no notification, just this feeling of growth.*
He filed the observation away. It might be important later. For now, he had new capabilities to test.
-----
The afternoon—and he was more confident it was afternoon now, having watched the light shift through the canopy—was spent exploring the area around his hollow. With his enhanced vision, the forest revealed secrets he'd been blind to before.
He could see the chemical trails left by insects, glowing lines that marked paths between food sources. He could spot hidden creatures by their thermal signatures, even when their camouflage made them invisible to normal sight. He could read the forest in ways that would have taken months or years to learn through pure observation.
But the most significant discovery came when he spotted heat signatures that didn't belong to the forest's wildlife.
Footprints. Dozens of them, forming a well-worn path through the undergrowth. The heat had faded enough that they were at least several hours old, but they were clearly there—evidence of regular traffic through this area.
His heart quickened. This was it. A path to civilization, or at least to other people.
He followed the trail cautiously, using his enhanced vision to avoid the more obvious dangers. Twice he spotted predators waiting in ambush—creatures with too many teeth and not enough mercy. Once he nearly stepped on something that looked like a snake but had six heads, each scanning a different direction. His new vision saved him each time, allowing him to see the telltale heat bloom of a living creature before he got too close.
The path led through increasingly familiar territory—he recognized several landmarks from his panicked flight yesterday—and eventually opened into a clearing that took his breath away.
There was a village. Or at least, that's what he thought it was at first glance.
A dozen structures rose from the forest floor, but calling them buildings seemed inadequate. They were grown rather than built, formed from living trees that had been coaxed into specific shapes over what must have been decades or centuries. Walls of woven vines, thick as his arm, created rooms and corridors. Roofs of interlaced branches formed perfect thatch without a single dead leaf. The entire settlement pulsed with life, literally part of the forest rather than imposed upon it.
People moved between the structures—his species, tall and iridescent, going about tasks that seemed almost primitive from his vantage point. He saw someone weaving what looked like rope from plant fibers. Another was grinding something in a stone mortar. A group of children played a game that involved tossing a seed pod back and forth, their laughter carrying through the humid air.
It seemed… simple. Rustic. A tribal village, barely beyond stone-age technology.
But then he noticed the details.
The grinding stone wasn't just a rock—it had been shaped with impossible precision, its surface marked with patterns that might have been decorative or might have been functional. The rope being woven wasn't simple cordage—it glowed faintly, suggesting it had been made from plants specifically cultivated for bioluminescence. And the seed pod the children were playing with left small trails of light in the air as it flew, tracing complex mathematical curves that seemed far too sophisticated to be accidental.
This wasn't primitive. This was different. A civilization that had taken a completely alien path from anything he remembered, building with biology instead of metal, growing instead of forging.
He watched for over an hour, hidden in the undergrowth at the clearing's edge, his enhanced vision letting him observe details that would have been invisible from this distance.
The people moved with purpose and grace, their actions coordinated in ways that suggested either extensive practice or some form of silent communication. He saw them touching the living structures, hands pressed against bark and vine, and the structures responded—branches shifting to provide shade, walls parting to allow passage, flowers blooming to provide light.
They weren't just living in the forest. They were part of it. Connected to it in ways that went far beyond his current understanding.
And he was separate. Outside. An observer to something he couldn't yet comprehend.
A voice behind him nearly stopped his heart.
"You watch them like a hunter watches prey, stranger. But your stance speaks of fear, not hunger."
Caelan spun around, his blade suddenly in his hand though he didn't remember drawing it. An old man stood there—ancient, really, his iridescent skin faded to a pale shimmer, his body bent with age but his eyes sharp and clear. He wore simple clothing woven from the same living material as the others, but marked with complex patterns that might have been signs of status.
The old man's language was familiar—the same dialect Kael and Lyris had spoken. Caelan could understand him perfectly, though his own throat felt tight with panic.
"I… I'm not a threat," Caelan managed to say, his voice rough from disuse and fear.
"No," the old man agreed, tilting his head in a gesture that reminded Caelan of the insect that had woken him that morning. "You are not. But you are also not *right*. Your scent is wrong. Your stance is wrong. You wear the face of the People, but you move like one who has forgotten how to be what they are."
Caelan's mind raced. How did he explain? How did he tell this man that he wasn't crazy, that he was genuinely confused about everything because he'd woken up in this body with fragments of memories that didn't match reality?
"I was… lost," he said finally, settling on a truth that wasn't complete but wasn't quite a lie. "I don't remember much. The forest nearly claimed me."
The old man's eyes narrowed, and for a long moment, he said nothing. Then he stepped closer, and Caelan resisted the urge to back away. The old man's hand reached out, gnarled fingers pressing against Caelan's forehead.
The sensation was immediate and intense. Not painful, but invasive. Like someone was reading him, looking past skin and bone to see something deeper. Caelan felt exposed, vulnerable in a way that had nothing to do with physical danger.
Then the old man withdrew, his expression unreadable.
"The Life Current is… turbulent in you," he said slowly. "Like a river that has been diverted from its proper course. You are not lying, stranger. You truly do not remember. But that raises questions more troubling than answers."
"Who are you?" Caelan asked, his voice steadier now that the immediate threat of violence had passed.
"I am Keeper Torvath," the old man replied. "I tend the Life Current for the Singing Grove tribe. And you… you are an anomaly. A break in the pattern. Perhaps a sign of the changes that have been foretold."
"Changes?"
Torvath gestured toward the village. "Come. You cannot remain in the wild forest—it will kill you, confused as you are. And I would have answers from you, such as you can provide them. The Warden will want to know of this."
Caelan hesitated. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to stay hidden until he understood more. But he was out of food, out of water, and out of options. And more than that, he was curious. This old man had mentioned the Life Current—the same term Lyris had used. Perhaps here he could start finding real answers.
"I don't want to cause trouble," he said.
"Too late for that," Torvath replied, but there was no malice in his voice. "You exist. That alone is trouble enough in times like these. But perhaps you will be useful trouble rather than merely destructive. Come."
The old man turned and began walking toward the village, not looking back to see if Caelan would follow. After a moment of internal debate, Caelan did.
As they approached the village, people stopped their work to stare. He felt their eyes on him, curious and wary in equal measure. Children pointed and whispered. Adults exchanged glances that he couldn't interpret.
He was an outsider walking into a world he didn't understand, guided by an old man who had somehow seen through his confusion to something deeper and more troubling.
But at least he wasn't alone anymore.
And in a forest full of creatures that wanted to eat him, that was something.
-----
Torvath led him to one of the larger grown structures near the center of the village. Inside, it was cool and dim, with walls that filtered the external light into a soft, comfortable glow. Cushions of woven moss provided seating, and the air smelled of something sweet and slightly medicinal.
"Sit," Torvath commanded, lowering himself onto a cushion with a grace that belied his age. "We will speak, and I will decide what to do with you."
Caelan sat across from him, acutely aware of the blade still at his waist and the dozens of ways this conversation could go wrong.
"You say you do not remember," Torvath began. "Tell me what you *do* remember. Leave nothing out."
So Caelan told him. Not everything—he didn't mention his previous life, didn't try to explain the concept of reincarnation or transmigration. But he told him about waking in the pod plant, about the data crystal, about his ability to modify himself using other organisms. He showed Torvath his enhanced vision, demonstrated the subtle changes he could make to his hands.
Torvath listened without interruption, his expression growing more troubled with each revelation.
"This should not be possible," the old man said finally. "The Life Current connects all things, yes, and the Gifted can shape it to various ends. But what you describe… this is not shaping. This is becoming. You are not borrowing from other creatures—you are making their nature your own."
"Is that wrong?" Caelan asked.
"Wrong?" Torvath shook his head. "I do not know. It is unprecedented in my experience, and I have tended the Life Current for three full cycles of the Blooming. But unprecedented is not the same as wrong. Merely… concerning."
"You mentioned changes," Caelan said, seizing on the earlier comment. "What changes?"
Torvath was quiet for a long moment, his eyes distant. When he spoke, his voice was heavy with something that might have been fear or might have been awe.
"The world is waking," he said simply. "The Life Current grows stronger, more active. Creatures behave in ways they never have before. The very forest seems to pulse with intention. And now you appear, with abilities that should not exist, claiming no memory of who or what you are. These things are connected, stranger. They must be. The question is how, and to what end."
"I don't know," Caelan said honestly. "I'm just trying to survive."
"Perhaps that is enough," Torvath replied. "For now. But survival in the Singing Grove requires contribution. We do not support those who cannot support the tribe. Can you hunt? Gather? Tend the growing-homes?"
"I can learn," Caelan said.
"Then you will. Tomorrow, you will be assigned a mentor—someone to teach you the ways of the People, to help you remember what you have forgotten. Tonight, you will sleep here, where I can ensure you cause no trouble." Torvath's gaze was sharp. "Do not mistake hospitality for trust, stranger. You are an unknown element, and unknown elements are dangerous in times of change."
"I understand."
"Good." Torvath rose, his body creaking like the trees outside. "Rest. Eat. Regain your strength. And tomorrow, we will see what use you can be to the Singing Grove. If any."
The old man left, and Caelan was alone with his thoughts in a structure that hummed with life and possibilities he couldn't begin to fathom.
He'd made contact. He'd found civilization. He'd taken the first steps toward understanding this world.
But he'd also revealed himself as an anomaly, a break in the pattern of a world that seemed to run on rules he didn't know.
Outside, he could hear the sounds of the village settling into night. Voices singing in complex harmonies. The crackle of fires—or what passed for fires in a world where even flame was cultivated rather than conjured. The eternal whisper of the forest, alive and watchful.
Caelan lay back on the moss cushions and stared at the ceiling, where bioluminescent patterns formed constellations that meant nothing to him.
He was inside. He was safe, for now. And tomorrow, he would begin learning what it truly meant to be one of the People.
But tonight, as sleep claimed him, he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd just stepped onto a path that would lead him far beyond this small village, far beyond the peaceful forest, to something vast and incomprehensible and absolutely inevitable.
Tomorrow would bring answers.
He hoped he'd be ready for them.
-----
*End of Chapter 2*