10,000 years ago
A young boy sat at the edge of a cliff, legs dangling over the drop as he watched a group of hunters surround a mammoth. Their spears were nothing more than sharpened stones tied to sticks. He muttered to himself, half amused and half confused.
"What are these guys even doing… Using rocks to hunt a mammoth? Are they all insane?"
He wasn't exactly normal. He had already lived longer than any elder in any tribe. Every sunrise looked the same. Every winter felt recycled. And every year he watched people repeat the same reckless mistakes.
---
100 years later
The boy was now a young man in appearance, about twenty-one years old, though his real age was far beyond counting. His name was Rael.
He sat by a riverbank, letting the cold water run between his fingers.
"I've really lived a long time," he whispered. "People age. They grow weak, they die… but I stay like this. I watched humans learn to make fire. I watched them fight with it. And still, I don't change."
Rael had grown tired of wandering. If he was cursed to outlive everyone, then he might as well build something that would last. So he gathered nearby tribes from the plains, forests, and hills. With patience and guidance, he convinced them to unite.
Together, they began building the first true city the region had ever seen.
---
1,500 years later
Rael stood atop the walls of a grand capital, an empire he had shaped with his own hands. His domain stretched from the Horn of Africa all the way down toward the great southern lands. Stone roads, fortified towns, granaries, irrigation canals… all built under his watch.
His people called him a king, a sage, a spirit, a god. But he knew the truth. He was simply a man who refused to die.
Still, every few decades he changed his identity. Otherwise, the whispers would start.
"Why doesn't the king age?"
"What creature walks among us in human skin?"
So he moved from city to city, ruling from the shadows, always guiding, always building. While much of the world still housed scattered tribes, he gathered early humans and forged them into organized societies. His empire became the seed of civilization in the southern continent.
But the world around him was changing too.
To the north, two new civilizations emerged along the Nile. Lower Egypt in the delta, Upper Egypt in the south. For years they clashed, struggling for power, until eventually a single ruler united them. A new kingdom was born.
Far to the northeast, in the lands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, people began farming in settled villages. Those small villages grew into towns. Those towns grew into the first cities of Mesopotamia. Writing, farming, trade, and culture began to bloom like never before.
Rael watched all of it unfold from afar. Empires rose. Kingdoms fought. Civilizations awakened one by one.
And through it all, he remained the same.
Immortal. Patient. Observing humanity crawl, walk, and finally begin to rise.