The golden object in the ape chief's hands pulsed with a deep, steady glow. Oval in shape, its surface was impossibly smooth, as though polished by divine hands. At its tip was a small natural hole, through which a blackened chain looped, forming a broken ring—its other half torn apart by the chief's earlier pull.
Chen Xu stared at it, his breath caught somewhere between disbelief and awe. Every rational part of his mind screamed that such an object couldn't exist in this primitive world. Yet the cold sting of pain, after he pinched himself hard, told him otherwise.
It was gold.
Real gold.
He lifted the gleaming oval toward his eyes, its glow washing over his face like sacred light. His heartbeat quickened. The texture was unmistakable—dense, metallic, heavy. A smooth golden pebble, carved by skill far beyond anything that could have been forged in this Stone Age wilderness.
The chain looped through it was black and hard, its clasp split into two interlocking halves—an intricate mechanism that required metallurgy, precision, and craftsmanship. Chen Xu exhaled slowly, his worldview trembling at its core.
This was impossible.
"No… not impossible," he muttered. "Just… wrong."
Nature could never have birthed such a thing. Not even with a million years of erosion and chance. This—he was sure—was made. Crafted. Refined.
By someone.
The realization hit him like lightning.
This artifact didn't belong here.
Even the simplest clasp alone was centuries beyond anything the ancient dynasties of his previous world could produce before the Industrial Revolution. This was not a relic of evolution—it was a relic of civilization.
Chen Xu's thoughts raced.
Was this really the Stone Age?
Or… had he landed somewhere else entirely?
Another world? Another timeline?
He raised a hand and gestured for the ape chief to stand. Pointing to the gold, he commanded, in the crude imitation of their language, that the chief explain its origin.
The former leader—whom Chen Xu now mentally dubbed "Ape One"—blinked a few times, then nodded with surprising comprehension. There was intelligence, faint but growing, in those dark eyes.
As it turned out, the story of the golden relic had been passed down for generations. From one leader to the next. Each new chief received it from the fallen one, along with a tale—half myth, half memory. None knew when the custom began. None dared question it. It had simply always been so.
Chen Xu dismissed the other apes, ordering them to tend the fire and prepare food for the morning hunt. He remained alone with Ape One, the crackling flames casting long shadows across the cave walls.
What followed was a grueling test of patience. Ape One babbled, growled, gestured, scratched symbols into the dirt. Chen Xu, straining every mental muscle, began to decipher the meaning hidden in those primitive syllables.
Ten days of crude communication and guesswork had given him the barest foundation in the "language" of the apes—if it could even be called that. Still, through tone, rhythm, and gesture, he pieced together the truth.
The world he stood in was not solitary. Across the vast forests and plains existed other tribes, other primitive clans like this one. Each had a leader—and each leader possessed an identical golden oval. The relic was their mark of authority, their symbol of legitimacy.
Without it, a chief was nothing.
There were places—strange trading grounds deep within the wilderness—where only those bearing the golden emblem were allowed to enter. There, the chiefs bartered goods and knowledge. Any who entered without the relic would be hunted down by unseen horrors.
The gold was both symbol and safeguard.
But beyond that, Ape One knew little. The details of its making, its true purpose, had long been lost. Their words were too crude, their minds too limited to preserve such meaning.
Still, Chen Xu gleaned one more revelation: when tribes clashed, the victors did not merely seize territory or slaves. Their first act was to merge the gold.
Two relics would be placed together. If they belonged to compatible tribes, they would fuse perfectly, becoming one. This was the ritual of unification—the merging of bloodlines, power, and heritage.
Ape One's clan had been defeated once, their relic saved in secret by survivors who fled into the forest. The golden oval Chen Xu now held was the last vestige of that fallen tribe's glory.
Chen Xu's eyes narrowed.
A tribal insignia.
A key.
A symbol of civilization hidden in the Stone Age.
He dismissed Ape One with a wave. The ape bowed clumsily and shuffled off toward the fire, soon shouting orders of his own—once again a common tribesman under his new leader's rule.
Chen Xu watched him go and allowed himself a faint smile.
"How curious," he murmured. "In theory, primitive chiefs had no power—only duty. Yet even here, instinct recognizes hierarchy. Authority built on fire and fear."
He chuckled quietly, glancing toward the glowing embers where his new tribe gathered.
"If I hadn't kept the fire alive, they wouldn't have followed me so easily."
His gaze turned outward, beyond the cave, to the rising dawn bleeding across the horizon. In his hand, the golden relic glimmered faintly beneath the light.
"If that scientist's theory was right…" he whispered, "then I'm still on Earth."
"Judging by the species and the environment, this must be the Paleolithic era. But early, middle, or late…?"
His fingers tightened around the relic.
"This thing—this gold—shouldn't exist here. Nor should the chain. Which means…"
He paused, breath trembling.
"…this wasn't made by apes. Not even by humans."
A shiver crept down his spine as the only remaining explanation unfurled in his mind.
"If time folds and space bends as that theory claimed…" he murmured, eyes reflecting the golden light, "then there's only one possibility left."
He looked at the relic again, its surface glowing like a captured sun.
"Aliens," he whispered. "They were already here."