Conner dreamed of white light and black teeth.
He was back in the lab, the reactor core humming in its cradle. The glow rose, pure and clean. Instead of exploding, it opened like an eye. On the other side, he saw the village wall, the pits, Rava laughing, Dorn's spear, Tal bleeding out.
The light reached for him like a hand.
Then the hand filled with claws.
He jerked awake.
The hut was dim. Pale morning light bled through seams in the hide. His heart raced, sweat cooling on his neck. For a second, he did not know which world he was in.
Then he heard the village sounds.
Voices arguing somewhere outside, low and rough. The thump of a stake being driven deeper. A child's quick laugh. The distant crack of bone against stone as someone broke down last night's kills.
He exhaled slowly.
Primordial, not modern. Claws, not concrete.
The system hovered patiently at the edge of his vision.
Rest complete.Fatigue: LowPoints: 7
Seven. More than when he had arrived, less than he wanted. It felt like he would never have enough.
The memory of the strange glow at the horizon slid back into his mind. That sharp, unnatural flicker. The way his gut had twisted the moment he saw it.
He sat up and scrubbed a hand over his face.
"Alright," he muttered. "One thing at a time. Do not sprint at the weird shiny hole. Try not to get eaten first."
He checked the Community menu again.
Community: Stonefang ClanPopulation: 57Defense: Low+Food: ModerateShelter: Basic
Available Upgrades:– Food Preservation (Tier 1): 5 Points– Simple Training Routines: 3 Points
Training routines. He thought of Dorn slamming him into the dirt over and over. The wild, messy fights he had seen so far. Raw power, but not much structure.
He also thought of Skyroot and Redwater. Names whispered near the fire. Rival tribes that might not be friendly. In a fight like that, little edges would matter.
He tapped Simple Training Routines.
Points: 7 → 4.
The change was strange. Not a sudden flash like a blueprint, more like a quiet shift. He felt something settle into place in the patterns of the village outside. A tug in the way drills could work. Sets, repeats, rhythm.
He saw Dorn correcting someone's stance in his head, not just by hitting them, but by explaining, even if "explaining" was three words and a grunt.
The system chimed softly.
Simple Training Routines acquired.Stonefang warriors will adopt more structured practice.Community average combat ability will rise slowly over time.
He smiled despite himself.
"Enjoy the squats, guys."
He left the remaining four points alone for now. Maybe he would need another stat boost later, or a new blueprint if the system offered one.
He crawled out of the hut into the cool morning air.
The sky was bright but hazy, a pale blue washed by high clouds. The wind carried the smell of smoke, meat, and damp earth.
The wall looked different already. The new trenches and angled stakes had settled into the ground. Drying blood from last night's kills darkened patches of dirt near the pits.
Two young warriors were at the far side, taking turns stabbing at a stuffed hide full of sand hanging from a tripod. They counted blows in a rough rhythm. One, two, three, pause, reset. Practice, not just play.
Training routines were working faster than he expected.
Rava spotted him first. She was already sweaty, her braids tied back tighter than usual, a thin cut on her forearm where some rough tool had slipped.
"Konner!" she called, waving him over with her free hand.
He walked to her, stretching his arms to work out the sleep.
She stood with Dorn and Garr near the armored plates they had propped against the wall. Tal leaned nearby, still bandaged but more mobile today. His color had returned, and he kept poking his side like he could not believe he was still in one piece.
When Conner arrived, Garr's eyes fixed on him. The clan leader's expression was serious. He pointed toward the eastern forest, the direction where Conner had seen the strange light. Then he mimed a rising glow with his hand, fingers spreading, and his lips drew into a thin line.
So he had seen it too.
Or he had heard about it.
Conner's throat went dry.
"You saw it?" he asked quietly. "The… sky thing? Light?"
Garr did not answer the words, but his eyes sharpened. He tapped his temple, then the side of his neck as if talking about a feeling, a sense. He pointed east again.
Rava cut in, rattling off words, gesturing wide. She traced a circle in the air, then pointed upward, then closed her fist.
Tal added a few sharp syllables of his own, miming a sudden burst of light. His face folded into a scowl.
They had a word for this. Not just the glow, but things like it.
Garr finally spoke a single word, slow, as if teaching a child.
"Rift."
Conner's chest clenched.
He repeated it. "Rift."
It sounded almost the same in his mouth.
The system flickered, as if waking up to the conversation.
Phenomenon recognized: Spatial RiftRelation to user arrival: High probabilityLocal effects: Unknown
New Quest: Investigate the RiftObjective: Reach the rift site and gather information.Reward: Blueprint unlock / System evolution / Unknown factors
Garr pointed at Conner, then at Dorn, Rava, Tal, and three other warriors nearby. He dragged his hand through the air, a line out and back, then spread his fingers. Scout group.
Hunt and recon, bundled together.
Rava grinned, all teeth. Tal straightened, ignoring the pain in his ribs. Dorn just nodded once, accepting already.
Conner swallowed.
Every part of his rational brain knew this was a bad idea. Walk toward weird spatial anomalies that might be vomiting dinosaurs into the world. Great plan.
Every part of him that still remembered the lab, the reactor, the way his old life had ended, knew he had no choice. If he wanted to get home someday, if that was even possible, the rift was a clue. Maybe the only one.
He nodded, slowly, deliberately.
"Alright," he said. "I am in."
Garr grunted once, like a seal on a contract.
Preparations started immediately.
Rava brought out a bundle of leather straps and tied Conner's bone token tighter around his neck so it would not swing too much if he had to run. Tal checked his knife, sharpening it with slow, careful strokes along a stone. Dorn selected spears, testing each by flexing the shaft and tapping the point.
Conner checked his own gear.
Backpack. Multitool. Tape. Wire. Notebook and pencil. Water bottle, now refilled from the clan's main water source, a spring-fed pool just outside the village that smelled clean and tasted better than anything he had ever gotten from a tap.
He threw in a few strips of dried meat wrapped in a hide scrap that Rava handed him. She mimed eating and pointed to her stomach, then made a chopping motion at the air.
"Food, then fight," she said in her language.
"Always," Conner answered.
He strapped the reinforced spear to his back for now and kept a simpler one in his hand. Overkill did not exist out there.
When they were ready, Garr stepped into their path one more time.
He held out his spear horizontally.
Each of them placed a hand on it.
He spoke low and low, a few sentences that carried weight. Conner did not understand the words, but the meaning pressed into him anyway.
Return alive. Bring back what you learn. If you die, make it cost the world something.
He nodded.
Then they left the safety of the village wall.
The forest swallowed them quickly.
The air under the trees was cooler and heavier, carrying damp and the sharp tang of resin. Light filtered down in patches between branches. The ground was a mix of fallen needles, decaying leaves, and patches of thick ferns.
The hunting party moved like they had done this all their lives. Dorn led, his steps silent, spear low but ready. Two lean hunters named Var and Kesh flanked him, both with bows that looked rough but lethal. Rava walked near the middle, eyes scanning. Tal stayed slightly back, near Conner, his limp more a stiff hitch now.
Conner fell in line where Dorn pointed, toward the rear, but not all the way. Close enough to see, far enough not to trip anyone.
His new Perception level paid off quickly.
He could pick out distant noises more easily. The distant hoot of some huge bird. The rustle of something small darting away under bushes. The faint crack of branches breaking under a heavier step far away.
He told himself it was fine. Most of those sounds had nothing to do with him.
A few had everything to do with him.
The system offered a quiet tip.
Tip: You can highlight party members mentally to track their positions.
Faint outlines appeared around his companions when he focused. Dorn's outline was heavy and solid. Rava's was a quick, sharp shape. Tal's flickered a bit when he moved wrong and pain flared.
Conner adjusted his pace to stay in their shadow.
They did not talk much.
When they did, it was in short bursts. Hand signals carried most of what mattered. Dorn would flick his fingers twice to slow. Rava would tap her club lightly against her thigh to signal caution. Tal would whistle once in a tiny, high tone when he spotted something interesting, like a set of tracks.
It was like watching a living, breathing machine built out of people and habits.
He realized, with a small flicker of strange pride, that his traps and wall were already part of that machine now.
The forest thinned gradually as they went east. Trees grew farther apart. The ground sloped down gently into a wide, open stretch.
The first herd came into view.
Conner stopped dead.
Dozens of lumbering shapes grazed in a broad valley. They looked like bison, if bison had been crossbred with woolly mammoths and somebody had adjusted their scale slider too far to the right.
Each one stood taller than a truck. Brown shaggy fur hung in thick curtains along their sides. Their horns were long, sweeping arcs, some split at the ends like old, gnarled branches. Their heads swung as they grazed, tearing up clumps of primordial grass.
The air vibrated faintly with their movements.
Tal saw his face and grinned like a kid seeing a good joke hit.
He whispered something that sounded like "Stoneback" and mimed a horn with his hand.
Conner swallowed hard.
"Stoneback," he repeated, eyes wide.
Rava tapped his shoulder and then tapped the ground, pointing to where they stood. Her eyebrows lifted in a way that said very clearly: Do not even think about going down there.
He nodded fast.
They skirted the herd at a distance, staying near the tree line. Even so, a few of the massive animals lifted their heads, snorting, watching the small cluster of humans. One shook itself all over, sending dust and loose fur into the air like a brown cloud.
Conner glanced back at the herd now and then.
He could see future projects already. Harnessing that much muscle. Using bones that big for support. Crafting armor from hides that thick.
He knew how insane that sounded.
He also knew the system would pay out like a slot machine if he pulled something like that off.
They moved on.
By midday, the trees grew stranger.
Some were twisted into spiral shapes, their bark rippling as if frozen mid-wave. A few had leaves that glowed faintly blue at the edges, even in the sun. The air felt charged, like the moment before a static shock.
Conner's skin prickled.
The others felt it too. Rava's grin faded. Dorn's shoulders tightened. Tal's hand drifted to the knife at his belt.
The system flashed a small notice.
Ambient spatial distortion detected.Proximity to Rift zone: Increasing.
"Good," Conner whispered to himself. "And also extremely bad."
They came across the first sign of something terribly wrong in a small clearing.
It took him a moment to understand what he was looking at.
The ground in the center had turned to glass.
Not melted gravel, not smooth ice. Glass. Clear, thick, warped, as if someone had poured molten window panes into the dirt and let them cool.
Leaves, branches, and even part of a fallen tree trunk were frozen inside, partially visible, distorted by bubbles and ripples. A small animal skeleton lay halfway embedded, its bones twisted, its skull crushed in.
The air above the glass hummed faintly. It made Conner's teeth ache.
Rava spat on the ground and made a quick, sharp gesture with her fingers, some kind of warding sign. Dorn stopped everyone at the edge of the clearing and scanned the tree line.
Tal crouched, eyes inches from the glass, fascinated and wary at once.
Conner's heart pounded.
This looked like the aftermath of an experiment gone wrong. Not his, exactly, but close enough that guilt crawled up his throat.
He stepped closer, carefully. His boots crunched on normal dirt until he reached the very edge of the glass.
Heat radiated from the surface, not enough to burn, but enough to feel.
He crouched and touched it with two fingertips.
His skin tingled.
The system howled.
Warning: Energetic residue contact.Source: Unstable Rift FluxDuration of safe exposure: Brief
Analysing pattern…
A flood of information that was not words washed through his head. For a second, he smelled ozone and heard the high whine of the lab reactor. Shapes flashed behind his eyes. Circles. Lines. A design he almost recognized.
Then it was gone.
He snatched his hand back with a hiss.
Rava grabbed his shoulder and yanked him a step away, her eyes wide and furious. She rattled off a string of angry words, ending with something that felt very much like "idiot."
Conner held up his hands in surrender.
"Yeah, yeah, you are right. Not my smartest move."
Dorn said a single word in a low growl, pointing at the glass and then at Conner's fingers.
Conner flexed them. They tingled, but they still worked.
"The thing that brought me here did this," he said quietly, half to himself. "Or something like it. Maybe not exactly, but close. It is punching holes, leaving scars."
The Stonefangs did not understand, but the system did.
Rift signature partially matched to the event that caused temporal displacement.Likelihood of connection: 82 percent
New Blueprint Path Unlocked: Energetic Conduction (Tier 0)Requirements: More data, safer samples
Blueprint path. Not an actual design yet, but a direction. A promise of future projects, maybe a way to harness this energy instead of letting it burn random holes in the world.
Conner's mind raced.
He was still thinking when a low, ugly growl rolled through the clearing.
Not from in front of them.
From behind.
The group spun as one.
Shapes emerged from the underbrush, slipping between twisted trunks and glowing leaves.
They moved low and quick. Six of them, maybe seven. Their bodies were long and sleek, covered in dark feathers that shimmered oily in the strange light. Their heads were narrow and tooth-filled, eyes gleaming yellow. Each forelimb ended in a sickle-shaped claw that made his skin crawl just to look at it.
Smaller than the huge predator from his first day, but faster. Built for pack hunting.
The system named them.
New Hostiles: Razorflock Stalkers (Pack)Threat Level: HighBehavioral note: Coordinated pack tactics
Dorn shifted his stance, spear coming up. Rava snarled, baring her teeth in answer. Tal drew his knife, his face going flat and focused.
Conner's mouth went dry. His reinforced spear suddenly felt very light and very inadequate.
The stalkers spread out, bodies weaving in and out between each other. Their claws clicked softly on stone and roots. One hissed, jaws open, strings of saliva stretching between its teeth.
They were circling.
"Back," Dorn barked, one of the few words Conner had learned to recognize on tone alone.
They moved as a unit, tightening their formation, backs toward each other, gradually shifting until their backs were closer to the glass patch. Not ideal footing, but better than letting the stalkers get behind them.
Conner took the spot Dorn waved him to, slightly behind the leader's broad shoulder but still exposed enough that he would be part of this whether he liked it or not.
His heart thundered.
He had seen monsters die from traps and pits. He had watched warriors kill beasts with practiced ease. He had not yet stood in a circle with or against something that actively wanted his throat.
No time to freeze now.
The stalkers tested the line, feinting in and out, snapping their jaws, flicking their claws.
One darted too close.
Rava stepped forward and swung.
Her club smashed into the side of its head. Bone cracked. Feathers flew. The stalker flipped, legs kicking, and did not get back up.
The others shrieked in some awful, shared language.
They surged all at once.
Dorn roared and met them head-on, his spear flashing, shaft spinning. He skewered one through the chest and kicked it off the point, turning the motion into a sweep that knocked another aside.
Var and Kesh loosed arrows at close range, shafts sinking deep into necks and shoulders. Two stalkers tumbled, screeching and thrashing.
But there were still too many.
One darted between Dorn and Rava, a narrow gap that would not have existed if Tal had been able to move as quickly as usual. It went straight for Conner.
Time slowed.
He saw the way its muscles bunched. The line of its jaws. The angle of its claws is reaching for his stomach.
Every self-defense drill he had ever half paid attention to scrambled for a foothold in his brain.
His Perception and Tactical Insight finally earned their keep.
He stepped sideways instead of straight back.
The stalker overshot by inches. Its claw raked across his jacket instead of his belly, tearing fabric and leaving a burning line along his ribs instead of ripping them open.
He brought his spear up at the same time, not with a clean, practiced motion, but with pure panic behind it.
The point met the beast's throat at the base of its jaw.
Momentum did the rest.
The stalker impaled itself.
Hot blood sprayed across his hands, his chest, his face. It was thick and salty and smelled like iron and rotting meat.
The creature thrashed, almost wrenching the spear from his hands. He held on with everything he had, teeth clenched, arms locked. His upgraded strength screamed in his muscles.
He jammed his foot down on its foreleg to pin it, then shoved the spear deeper.
The tip punched out the back of its neck.
The stalker convulsed once, then went limp.
The system exploded in his vision.
First direct kill achieved.Enemy: Razorflock StalkerPersonal combat performance: Acceptable
Crafting / Combat Points: +6Total Points: 10
New Skill: Adrenal Focus (Lv. 1)In moments of acute danger, your perception and decision speed increase briefly.
The world snapped back to full speed.
Pain flared along his side where the claw had scraped him. The cut was shallow but vivid.
Another stalker slammed into him from the side.
He went down hard, the breath punched out of his lungs, spear twisted from his grip.
Teeth snapped where his face had been a second earlier. Claws raked the ground, throwing dirt.
Rava's club descended from nowhere.
It hit the stalker along the spine with a sickening crunch. The beast spasmed, its claw slicing a shorter, shallower line across Conner's shoulder instead of his throat.
He scrambled away, panting, hands searching for his spear.
Tal stepped into the gap he had left, knife flashing. He drove the blade into the wounded stalker's eye and twisted. The creature went still.
Blood soaked the ground around them, mixed with feathers and dirt.
The last two stalkers, seeing half their pack dead, faltered.
Var's arrow took one in the chest. Kesh's second shot missed, skimming feathers, but Dorn was already there, spear thrusting low and cruel.
Silence slammed down on the clearing.
Conner knelt in the dirt, chest heaving, hands shaking so badly he almost dropped his spear when he finally grabbed it.
His heart tried to tear its way out of his ribs.
He stared at the dead thing at his feet.
He had killed something with his own hands.
Not by digging a hole. Not by building a wall. By sticking a pointy stick in its neck until it stopped moving.
The blood dried tacky on his fingers.
The system waited, giving him a moment.
"Konner."
He looked up.
Dorn stood over him, spear tip dripping red. The big man's chest rose and fell in heavy breaths, but his eyes were steady.
He held out his free hand.
Conner took it.
Dorn hauled him to his feet, then thumped his fist once against Conner's chest, just above the bone token.
He said a short phrase, voice low and rough.
Conner did not understand the words, but something in Dorn's eyes did the translation.
You stood. You did not run. You killed and did not freeze.
Rava slapped him on the back so hard his teeth clicked.
"Konner!" she barked, grinning wide. She mimed his earlier kill with exaggerated drama, stabbing at the air and screeching like a wounded stalker. Tal laughed, even though the movement made him groan.
Conner managed a weak grin.
His legs still felt like jelly.
The system slid one more note into his vision.
Bond: Dorn (Respectful) established.Future combat training efficiency increased.
He breathed out slowly.
The bodies were dragged toward the edge of the glass patch, away from the center. They would be butchered later, their meat and hides and claws put to use. Nothing wasted.
First, though, they attended to wounds.
The old woman was not here. The group had to make do.
Rava inspected the cut along Conner's ribs, poking it with a finger. He sucked in a hiss.
"Easy," he snapped.
She rolled her eyes and mimed whipping, then tapped her own leg where a long, faded scar ran. Her point was clear. This was nothing compared to what it could have been.
She tore a strip from a spare piece of hide and wrapped it around his torso, tying it tight. It was not pretty, but it held.
Tal's bandage had opened slightly in the rush. He grimaced as Rava checked it, but the wound itself looked okay. The old woman's herbs had done their work.
Once everyone could move again, Dorn gestured toward the glass patch.
Enough distractions. Back to the reason they had come.
Conner wiped his hands on his already ruined hoodie and stepped carefully closer to the warped glass again, this time giving it more respect.
The surface still hummed, but softer now. Like a battery running low.
He did not touch it this time.
Instead, he walked slowly around the edge, mapping the shape. Rough circle, maybe ten meters across. The distortion faded out near the edges, the glass fraying into melted, hardened rubble.
In one spot, the glass rose into a short, twisted pillar where something had jutted up during the freezing moment. The top of the pillar was cracked, shot through with tiny veins of milky white.
He crouched to look more closely.
The system gave a quiet, curious ping.
Analyzable material detected.Category: Rift-touched GlassPotential: Unstable, but useful for research.
His fingers itched to break off a piece. He could imagine shaping it, seeing how it behaved, maybe uncovering a safe way to redirect whatever energy it held.
He did not want to die from holding it wrong.
"Okay," he murmured. "We do this smart."
He dug into his backpack and pulled out his notebook. The paper felt almost ridiculous here, like a luxury from another life, but it was useful.
He sketched the shape of the glass patch, the pillar, the skeleton inside, and the way the trees twisted around it. Simple lines, rough measurements based on his stride.
Rava watched from a few feet away, arms crossed, club resting against her leg.
"Konner," she said, tipping her head toward the drawing. She seemed to like the way the lines captured the shape.
He added a few notes only he could read. Estimated radius. Heat is still present. Residual hum.
He tore out one page and held it up with both hands.
Rava leaned in. Her eyes widened slightly.
She jabbed a finger at the glass on the page, then at the real thing, then back to his notebook. A small, impressed sound slipped from her throat.
Artists had status here, too. Builders of any kind did.
When he had filled a few pages, he turned to Dorn and tapped his own chest.
"Konner," he said. Then he tapped the glass. "Rift." Then he mimed the explosion he remembered from the lab, spreading his fingers wide and then pointing to himself again.
He knew it was clumsy. He did not have words yet. But he wanted the idea in their heads.
This thing. Me. Connected.
Dorn's jaw tightened.
He looked at the glass again, then back at Conner.
He said something under his breath, a short string of words. His hand made a cutting motion between the glass and Conner, then a circle over Conner's head.
Tal muttered something snide. Rava elbowed him hard.
Conner could guess the tone.
You came from something like this. You are part of the problem, or part of the answer, maybe both.
He shrugged.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I know. That is why I am here."
They did not stay long.
The longer they lingered near the rift-touched glass, the more the hair on Conner's arms stood up. The forest felt wrong around this spot. Sound bounced oddly. The light seemed to flicker, even when the sun hid behind a cloud.
Dorn finally gave a sharp whistle, the sound high and commanding.
They withdrew.
On the way back, the world felt sharper and more fragile at once.
Every movement in the underbrush was a possible predator. Every shadow held teeth. Yet the sight of the pits near the village, the thicker wall, the smoke from cooking fires, felt more like safety than they had that morning.
When they walked back into the clearing, Garr was waiting near the gate, spear in hand.
His eyes swept over each of them, checking for missing heads and extra holes.
They had wounds, but they had returned.
Tal lifted his knife high with a grin, blood still crusted on the blade. Rava dropped a stalker's claw at Garr's feet like a trophy. Dorn walked straight to the elder and met his eyes, no words needed.
Garr turned to Conner.
Conner held up his notebook, open to one of the sketches of the glass circle.
Garr took it carefully. His big, scarred fingers smudged the charcoal lines a little, but he did not tear the page.
He studied the drawing in silence.
The elder's face, already lined, seemed to grow older in that moment. Whatever he had feared when he saw the distant light, the sketch confirmed it.
He said one word.
"Rift."
The way he said it, the way the crowd around them flinched, the way mothers pulled children a little closer, told Conner that this was not the first time the Stonefangs had dealt with this.
Maybe the first time it had appeared this close.
He thought of more glass patches scattered across the world.
He thought of Skyroot and Redwater. Of how they might be dealing with their own wounds in the earth. Or not dealing at all.
The system whispered quietly.
Quest Update: Investigate the RiftProgress: Initial site observed, data gathered.Next: Analyze gathered information. Seek patterns or older knowledge.
New Option: Research Node (village)Spend points to deepen understanding of Rift behavior using community observation and your own skills.
Conner felt the weight of the bone token on his chest.
He was not just surviving here anymore. He was tangled up in whatever was breaking this world.
He stepped back, letting Garr speak to his people.
The elder raised the notebook higher, showing the rough circle of glass to the clan.
He spoke low and slow. His words rolled through the clearing like stones in a river, heavy and smooth.
Some faces hardened. Others went pale. A few glanced at Conner with something like suspicion.
He did not blame them.
He had dropped into their lives on the same kind of wave that had melted that patch of forest into glass. For all they knew, the next rift would open right under their huts because he breathed wrong.
When Garr finished, he handed the notebook back, gently.
His eyes met Conner's.
For the first time, Conner saw something in them besides sharp calculation and clan weight.
He saw tiredness.
The weight of someone who had held a fragile line against monsters, rival tribes, and now holes in reality for years.
Garr tapped the spine of the notebook.
He said Conner's name and the word "Rift" in the same sentence.
To the clan, those two things were now tied.
Garr lifted his spear and thrust it once into the air, a small, defiant gesture toward the sky that had birthed this trouble.
The crowd answered with a rough shout.
Conner's chest tightened.
He stepped aside, out of the center of attention, and found a quiet spot near one of the pits.
The smell of dried blood drifted up. The stakes at the bottom were dark and stained.
He opened his system menu.
Points: 10
Ten points from the kill, the fight, the investigation. Enough to matter again.
He thought about throwing them all into his body. Becoming faster, tougher. Making sure the next time a stalker jumped at him, he would not nearly die.
He also thought about the Research Node option.
He tapped it.
Research Node: Stonefang Knowledge HubCost: 5 PointsEffect: You and key clan members will more easily gather and interpret patterns related to Rift activity, monster behavior, and environmental changes.Unlocks hints toward higher-tier blueprints.
He sucked on his teeth.
"Invest in brains or brawn," he muttered.
He looked back toward the center of the village.
The old medicine woman sat on a stool near the fire, grinding something in a stone bowl, eyes on him. Tal sat at her feet, listening to her mutter. Rava was describing the fight to a cluster of children using wild gestures. Dorn was already correcting a young hunter's spear grip, jabbing his shoulder when he dropped it.
This world did not need another pure fighter as much as it needed someone to see the patterns behind the chaos. They already had plenty of muscle.
He was the weird one who saw graphs and loops where others saw only teeth.
He breathed out.
"Alright," he whispered. "We go with brains."
He tapped Research Node.
Points: 10 → 5.
No flash, no hum.
Instead, when he looked at the forest beyond the wall, he saw faint lines in his mind, connecting the glass patch east with the path they had taken and the place in the sky where the light had flared. Threads, not yet clear, but present.
When he turned his gaze west, toward distant hills he had not seen yet, he felt a faint tug, like the hint of another knot in the world's fabric.
The system clarified.
Research Node established.You will more easily notice anomalies and connect them.Clan memory related to strange events will surface more readily.
He used two of his remaining five points on Endurance Lv. 3.
Points: 5 → 3.
More warmth in his chest. The soreness from the fight eased. The cut on his side still hurt, but it throbbed less sharply. He felt like he could stand through another training session without collapsing.
He left the last three points unspent, for emergencies.
The sun had started to set by the time he pushed himself up from the pit's edge.
He walked to the old medicine woman.
She watched him approach, never stopping her grinding. The smell of what she was working on was sharp and bitter.
He sat cross-legged across from her and opened his notebook to the sketches of the glass and the stalkers.
He tapped the drawing of the glass.
"Rift," he said.
Then he pointed at her, at her head, then spread his hands like opening a book.
She studied him for a moment.
Then she laughed once, a short, dry sound, like bark cracking.
She reached out and flicked his forehead with a knobby finger.
He blinked.
She pointed at herself and said a name for the first time.
"Sura."
He repeated it. "Sura."
She nodded, then reached up and touched the bone totem at her neck, different from his but carved in the same style. She tapped it once, then tapped his.
Knowledge keepers, marked in similar ways.
She took the notebook from his hands, surprisingly gentle, and began to speak.
Her words were slow, her tone rising and falling like a long story often told.
Conner caught only a handful of actual words. "Rift." "Sky." "Burn." "Gone."
But the system, pulling from the Research Node, helped fill in gaps, giving him impressions more than perfect translations.
Flashes of past events flickered in his head.
A river turning to steam overnight. A stand of trees turned to ash without flame. A rain of stones falling from a clear sky. A creature of pure bone stepped out of a hole and killed ten before it vanished in smoke.
Not just dinosaurs and overgrown predators.
The world had been breaking slowly for a long time.
He sat there, listening, until the light faded and firelight painted Sura's face in deep shadows and gold.
He realized then how small his first shelters, pits, and spears really were, how big the problem he had dropped into might be.
And yet.
Each trap that killed a predator bought a night.
Each wall was bought a week.
Each bit of understanding he carved into his notebook might buy them a path through whatever storm the rifts were building.
He closed the notebook gently when Sura's voice finally faded.
The night wind carried the distant howl of something big, far off.
The wall stood a little stronger.
The sky was dark, hiding its thin wounds for now.
Conner touched the bone token at his chest and felt its weight and warmth.
"Alright," he whispered to himself and to the silent Crafting System. "We survived the first hunt. We saw the first scar. Next time, we come back with something better than just spears."
The system answered with a final quiet line.
Path chosen: Builder of Fortresses, Student of Rifts.The world has noticed.