The ground beneath him was pale violet not painted, not lit from above, but inherently luminescent , as though the soil itself carried a charge. He pressed his palm flat against it and felt warmth, and the warmth felt real, which meant his body felt real, which was the most useful fact he had processed since waking.
He sat up slowly.
Forest, if you could call it that. The trees , structures that performed the biological role of trees . were black barked and enormous, their canopies spreading a hundred metres above him in layered platforms of luminescent violet leaves that filtered the light of a sun he could not directly locate. The air tasted of iron and something sweet beneath it like fruit left too long in warm air Thick Breathable.
He checked himself. Full body. Two hands, ten fingers, both checking out. He was still wearing the standard issue black jumpsuit from the Voidgate mission, though it was torn at the left sleeve and stained with something he chose not to examine. His identification tag was gone , His comms device was gone His entire technological interface with civilisation was gone.
What remained was him, And the sound.
The pulse, The Echo, Still there, deep behind his sternum, steady and patient, like a second heartbeat that had always been there and simply never introduced itself.
He explored for three days before he encountered another person.
By the end of the first day he had established that the physics here were mostly analogous to the universe he came from gravity worked, fire worked, water flowed downhill. By the end of the second day he had found edible vegetation through careful observation of what the small six-limbed creatures that populated the forest floor ate without dying. By the end of the third day he had constructed a basic shelter and begun to understand that this civilisation ,whatever it was existed at approximately a pre-industrial technological level, which meant he was several centuries ahead of them in theoretical knowledge and potentially in significant danger if they found him first and decided to worship or dissect him.
They found him.
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They chose neither worship nor dissection. They chose suspicion, which he respected as the most rational option.
There were four of them: bipedal, recognisably humanoid, with pale grey skin and eyes that were entirely dark no whites, no iris distinction, just deep glossy black from edge to edge. Their clothing was layered and practical. The one in front carried a long tool that was either a walking staff or a weapon and held it in a way that suggested the answer could change quickly depending on his next move.
Kael raised both hands, palms open.
The universal gesture, apparently, was in fact universal. The lead figure's weapon-staff dropped three inches.
They communicated through a clicking, tonal language he did not know. But over the following days during which they kept him in a structure at the edge of their settlement, fed him, and watched him with enormous unblinking black eyes he began to learn.
And while he learned their language, he began, slowly and very carefully, to explore what lived behind his sternum.
The first time he touched the Echo deliberately, he was alone in the storage room they had given him, and he managed to reverse approximately three seconds.
He dropped his clay water cup. It fell, hit the floor, shattered. He stared at the pieces. Then without understanding how, he reached for the pulse and the cup reassembled itself. Shards drew back together. The water unspilled. The cup returned to his hand.
He stood very still for a long time.
Then he set the cup down, sat on the floor, and began to think very carefully about what he was and what this meant and what the rules were. Because in physics, there were always rules. Everything had a cost. Everything had a boundary. Nothing, nothing was without conditions.
He just had to find them.
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