Late Summer, 10,000 BCE — The Taurus Foothills, Cilicia

  Pain dragged him up from sleep, rough and sudden.

  Wrong. Everything was wrong.

  His bones felt shaken loose and dropped back into place at angles that didn’t fit. Pressure sat behind his eyes, making blinking feel pointless. Heat clung in patches whilst cold bit in others. The air scratched going in—gritty and warm—and the first thing on his tongue was smoke.

  Not car exhaust. Not the clean, distant smell of a campfire viewed from safety.

  This was thick, greasy smoke. Animal fat turned acrid over flame. Unwashed bodies. Damp hide. Breath that had slept too close to other breath.

  Where the fuck am I?

  Low light. A ceiling that wasn’t a ceiling—stretched hide, stained dark with soot, sagging between bent poles. The smell hit harder: smoke and sweat and something rancid, all of it pressing down like a weight on his chest.

  This isn’t real. This can’t be real.

  Bodies lay around him in a sprawl that left no gaps. A heel pressed against his calf through something that felt like fur but rougher, stiffer. A child’s back rose and fell close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from small ribs. Someone’s hair lay across his wrist—coarse, unwashed, smelling of smoke and something else he couldn’t name.

  Jason tried to sit up and came forward too easily. His body moved wrong—springy, light, like he weighed half what he should. His hands hit packed earth. Dirt. Actual dirt floor, cold and hard.

  No. No no no.

  He stared at his hands.

  Small. Too small. Fingers thin and wiry, nails packed with dirt, skin darker than it should be and covered in calluses he’d never earned. These weren’t his hands. These weren’t—

  His stomach lurched sideways.

  Breathe. Just breathe. You’re hallucinating. Carbon monoxide. You’re still in the car. Thomas is driving. You’re—

  But the smell didn’t fade. The cold earth under his palms stayed solid. Real. The smoke kept filling his lungs with every breath.

  He pressed his nails into his palm until the sting made his eyes water. The pain was sharp and immediate and undeniable.

  Real.

  A voice came out of the darkness beside him, speaking words he shouldn’t understand but somehow did. The language felt wrong in his ears—too guttural, too clipped—but the meaning slid into his mind anyway as it belonged there.

  “You’re awake.”

  Jason’s head snapped to the side.

  A boy lay there, maybe thirteen or fourteen, face turned towards him. Hollow cheeks. Eyes bright in the dim light. Fur pulled up to his chin. He looked at Jason like this was normal, like waking up in this nightmare was just another morning.

  The boy grinned. “I was about to poke you. Make sure you weren’t dead.”

  Jason’s mouth opened. No words came out. His throat felt tight, stuffed with cotton and smoke.

  Who is this? Where am I? What language is he speaking? Why can I understand him?

  The boy’s grin widened at Jason’s silence. “Because you slept like you were gone.” He rubbed his nose with two fingers, smearing soot. “And because it’s funny when people wake angry.”

  Jason’s fingers flexed against the dirt without him meaning to. Two knuckles cracked—sharp pops that sounded too loud.

  The boy’s eyes flicked to Jason’s hands. “That noise again.”

  Again? What does he mean again?

  Jason stared at him, panic rising in his chest like floodwater. He didn’t know this person. Didn’t know where he was. Didn’t know why he understood words that sounded like no language he’d ever heard.

  The boy kept talking, oblivious to Jason’s internal collapse. “The little pops. You do it when you’re thinking too hard. Sounds like green wood on a fire.”

  He thinks he knows me. He thinks I belong here.

  Jason’s thumb rubbed over his forefinger—an anxious habit, his habit, but the texture was wrong. These hands had calluses he’d never built, scars he’d never earned.

  The boy studied him with open curiosity. “You’re quiet today.”

  Say something. Anything. Play along until you figure out what’s happening.

  “I’m always quiet,” Jason heard himself say. The words came out in that same guttural language, his mouth shaping sounds he’d never learned.

  The boy snorted. “You’re quiet when you’re sulking. You’re quieter when you’re scared.”

  Scared doesn’t even begin to cover it.

  Jason’s shoulders crept up before he could stop them. His gaze slid away, landing on details that made no sense: hide walls stitched with sinew, smoke stains spreading like oil across the ceiling, bundles of dried plants he couldn’t name, a bone needle stuck through leather.

  Bone needle. Leather. Dirt floor. No electricity. No cars. No—

  Where the fuck am I?

  Past the boy, the shelter came into sharper focus. More bodies, all sleeping, pressed so close together there was no privacy, no space. A child coughed somewhere—wet and small, the sound of sick lungs. A woman shifted, adjusting furs over the child without fully waking.

  The boy followed Jason’s gaze. “Too much smoke. Varek says it makes the lungs thick.”

  Varek. That’s a name. Store it. Learn it.

  At the mention of this Varek person, someone else stirred. A shape pushed up from Jason’s other side—an older boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen. He moved with eerie silence, scanning the shelter with eyes that assessed threats like it was second nature.

  This new boy looked at Jason’s hands first. Then his face. Then up at the smoke-stained ceiling. His expression gave away nothing.

  The first boy sat up, whispering too loudly. “See? He’s awake.”

  The silent boy offered no greeting. Just that steady, weighing stare.

  They’re waiting for me to do something. To be someone.

  Jason shifted, trying to make space, and his head bumped against the hide wall. Warmth radiated from it—the shelter sat too close to a fire outside. He could hear it crackling, feel the heat seeping through.

  Hunger cramped his stomach. Not the kind from missing lunch. Deep hunger, the kind that spoke of days or weeks of not enough food.

  Whose body is this? Why am I here?

  The first boy leaned closer, breath sour. “You’re going to the fire today. Varek said.”

  Varek again. Someone important, clearly.

  Jason’s heart hammered against his ribs. “What did Varek say?”

  He was fishing for information, trying desperately to understand the rules of this place without revealing he had no idea what was happening.

  The boy’s grin widened, sensing a story. “He said you’ve got weak thinking because Raisa keeps you where she can see you.” His voice shifted, mimicking someone else’s tone. “‘Raisa lets him sit there with his dreaming eyes, and one day the wolves will take him because he didn’t learn to move.’”

  Wolves. Raisa. Weak thinking. Dreaming eyes.

  They think I’m someone else. They think I belong to this body.

  Jason’s hands started to shake. He gripped his sleeve, pinching fabric between thumb and forefinger to hide the tremor. Heat rose behind his ears—panic, not anger, but it must have looked the same.

  The silent boy made a low sound. Warning.

  The talkative one ignored it. “And what did you say?”

  What would this person—whoever I’m supposed to be—what would they say?

  Jason took a guess. Kept his voice flat. “And what did you say?”

  The boy blinked, caught off guard. “Me? I didn’t say anything.”

  Good. That landed right.

  Jason held his gaze, trying to project confidence he absolutely didn’t feel. “You should’ve. If you like eating.”

  The boy’s cheeks flushed. “I wasn’t— I mean—”

  It worked. I said the right thing. But I have no idea what I’m doing.

  The boy shut his mouth, scowled, then tried to grin again. “You are angry today.”

  I’m not angry. I’m terrified. I’m in someone else’s body in some kind of pre-industrial nightmare, and I don’t know how I got here or how to get back.

  A woman near the entrance muttered in her sleep. A baby whimpered. Someone coughed—deep and wet, the kind that came from chest infections.

  No medicine. No hospitals. Just smoke and dirt and—

  The talkative boy stood up. “Come on. Camp’s waking up.”

  Jason’s legs moved on instinct, muscle memory that wasn’t his carrying him upright. He felt too light, too springy, like gravity had lost half its grip.

  The three of them edged towards the shelter opening.

  Cold air slapped Jason’s face when they pushed through the hide flap.

  And the world outside was worse.

  No buildings. No roads. No power lines, cars, or any sign of civilisation.

  Just a crude camp: hide shelters arranged in a rough circle around a fire pit. Smoke rising from multiple points. People moving in furs and leather, carrying bowls and tools made from bone, wood and stone. Dogs that looked half-wild nosing through ash. Children with hollow faces hover near fires.

  This isn’t Alaska. This isn’t anywhere I know.

  This is—

  His mind couldn’t finish the thought. Couldn’t process what his eyes were showing him.

  A man was splitting wood near the central fire. Each swing of the axe is precise and economical. Jason watched the motion and something deep in his muscle memory recognised it, knew it, but he didn’t know it. This body did.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  I’m wearing someone else’s life like a stolen coat.

  Another man stood nearby, older, using a stick to point at piles of supplies whilst speaking in that same guttural language Jason understood without understanding how.

  The talkative boy nudged him. “There. See? Alive.”

  The man with the stick noticed them. His eyes—sharp, assessing—landed on Jason and didn’t soften.

  He lifted his chin. “Marked you yet?”

  Marked? What does that mean?

  Jason’s face stayed blank. “No.”

  He had no idea what he was saying no to.

  The man’s mouth curled. “We’ll see.”

  See what? What’s going to happen?

  The camp moved around him. People carried water in hide bags. Women poured it into bowls mixed with ash for washing. A child reached for the water and got slapped away, then pushed towards it again to scrub their hands.

  Everything was wrong. Everything was alien. And everyone looked at Jason like he belonged here.

  A woman appeared—grey-haired, worn face, walking with authority. She stopped near the man with the stick. “The boy needs to learn fire-keeping.”

  Me. They mean me. But I don’t know anything about keeping fires alive in a place like this.

  The man nodded. “He can start today.”

  “Not the central fire,” the woman said firmly. “He’s too green. Give him one of the smaller ones. Let him learn what happens when you feed it wrong.”

  Oh God. They’re going to expect me to know what I’m doing.

  The man pointed his stick at a smaller fire pit near the camp’s edge. “That one. Keep it fed. Not too much, not too little. Watch how it breathes. If it smokes heavily, you’re feeding it wrong.”

  Jason’s mouth opened. “How do I—”

  “Watch,” the man cut him off. “Then do. Questions come after.”

  He turned away, dismissing Jason completely.

  The talkative boy appeared at his elbow. “Could’ve been worse. Could’ve given you the cook fire. That one bites.”

  This is insane. I can’t do this. I don’t know how any of this works.

  Jason walked towards the fire pit anyway, legs carrying him forward whilst his mind screamed. He crouched down beside it, staring at embers and half-burnt wood, trying to remember anything useful from camping trips or survival shows.

  The fire was low. Mostly embers. A few small flames.

  Okay. Fire needs fuel and oxygen. Basic chemistry. I can do this.

  He reached for a stick from the pile nearby.

  The moment his fingers closed around the wood, pain lanced through his skull.

  Not physical pain. This was different—sharper, deeper, like someone had cracked his head open and started pouring information directly into his brain.

  Images flooded in.

  Not his images. Someone else’s.

  A younger version of this body, maybe ten years old, crouched beside a fire whilst an older man—scarred hands, patient voice—showed him how to layer wood, how to read smoke, how to know when flames wanted feeding and when they needed air.

  These aren’t my memories.

  More poured in. Learning to balance a spear. Learning to track deer by the way the grass bent. Learning which plants healed and which ones killed. Learning to move through the forest without sound. Learning to read the weather by the way birds flew. Learning the names of stars. Learning to skin rabbits. Learning to weave cord from plant fibres. Learning to chip obsidian without shattering it. Learning to tie knots that hold under strain.

  Stop. Stop stop stop—

  But they wouldn’t stop. Fourteen years of life crashed into Jason’s mind all at once. A childhood spent in this camp. A mother who died when he was seven. A sister, younger, who’d been taken by fever last winter. Friends who’d grown up beside him. Hunts that had gone wrong. Hunts that had saved them. Nights spent hungry. Nights spent warm and full.

  Languages. This language wasn’t foreign. It was his language—Teshar’s language—and now it was Jason’s too, settling into neural pathways as it had always been there.

  Names. Faces. Relationships. Status. Debts. Promises.

  All of it flooding in whilst Jason tried desperately to hold onto himself, to stay Jason, to not disappear under the weight of someone else’s entire existence.

  His nose felt wet.

  He touched it.

  Blood.

  Bright red, running fast, dripping onto the frozen ground where it steamed.

  No. No, this is—

  More memories. More information. The cognitive load was too much, his brain wasn’t built for two lifetimes at once, something had to give—

  “Teshar?”

  That’s not my name.

  “Teshar!”

  But it is. It’s this body’s name. It’s—

  The world tilted violently. Jason—Teshar—both of them—tried to focus but reality kept sliding sideways like a drawing left in rain.

  Hands grabbed his shoulders.

  Another surge: learning to gut fish, learning to read tracks, learning why you never stepped beyond the torches at night, learning the names of all the children who’d died, learning what hunger felt like when it went on too long, learning that wolves could smell fear, learning that—

  Too much.

  Too fast.

  The ground came up.

  He hit it hard, tasting blood and earth and smoke.

  Voices shouted. Feet pounded. Someone rolled him onto his side so he wouldn’t choke on blood.

  I’m Jason Valentine. I’m twenty-six. I’m from London. I study plants. I was in Alaska. I was in a car. Thomas was driving. I—

  I’m Teshar. I’ve seen fourteen winters. I’m going to see fifteen. I know how to track. I know how to survive. I know these people. I know—

  I’m both.

  I’m neither.

  I’m—

  The last thing he heard before everything went black was a woman’s voice, sharp and clear:

  “Get him to my shelter. Now.”

  Consciousness returned in pieces.

  Firelight. Warm furs. The smell of bitter herbs cuts through the smoke.

  His head felt like someone had taken an axe to it. His nose ached, swollen and crusted with dried blood.

  But the worst part—the truly disorienting part—was that he knew things now.

  He knew the woman crouched beside him was called Siramae. Knew she was the camp’s healer, respected but not quite trusted because healing walked too close to magic for comfort. Knew she’d lost two children to the same fever that had taken his—Teshar’s—sister.

  He knew without looking that the bundles of plants hanging from the shelter poles were yarrow, willow bark, nettle, and sage. Knew what each one did, how to prepare them, and when to use them.

  He knew the boy who’d been talking to him was Naro—fourteen winters, gatherer and fisherman, couldn’t keep his mouth shut to save his life, but loyal to the bone. The silent one was Kelon—fourteen winters like them, already showing the quiet intensity of someone who watched more than he spoke, better with animals than people.

  He knew all of this.

  But he was still Jason.

  Somehow, impossibly, he was both.

  “Don’t sit up.”

  Siramae’s voice. Firm. Not unkind.

  Jason—Teshar—both names felt equally true now—stayed flat, staring up at the high ceiling. The smoke stains were lighter here. She kept her shelter cleaner than most.

  I know that. How do I know that?

  “What happened?” His voice came out rough, scraped raw.

  “Your nose bled.” Siramae moved into view. Clay bowl in hand. Something green and pungent steams inside. “Badly. You lost enough that I thought you might not stop.”

  He remembered now. The flood of memories. The cognitive overload. Two lifetimes trying to occupy one skull.

  “I saw—” He stopped. How did you explain this? I’m not from here. I used to be someone else. I think I still am.

  But even as he thought it, Teshar’s memories supplied context: spirit-sickness. The elders spoke of it sometimes. People who were touched by something else and came back wrong. Saw things. Knew things they shouldn’t. Spoke in voices not their own.

  They usually didn’t last long.

  Siramae’s eyes narrowed. “Saw what?”

  “Nothing.” The lie came easier than the truth. “I don’t know. Everything went… strange.”

  She studied him with the careful attention of someone who’d seen enough death to recognise its early warning signs. Then she reached for a small clay pot and a brush made from bundled plant fibres.

  “You’re marked now,” she said simply.

  “Marked?”

  “For the sickness.” She dipped the brush into the pot. Dark paste. Charcoal mixed with something else—ochre and pine resin, Teshar’s memories supplied unhelpfully. “Nosebleeds like that mean the body’s fighting something. Could be fever coming. Could be spirits in the blood.”

  Spirits. Right. Because that makes as much sense as anything else right now.

  She leaned forward and drew a line across his forehead—slow, deliberate, the brush cool against his skin.

  “There. Now everyone knows to watch you.” She set the pot aside and picked up the steaming bowl. “Drink this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Medicine.” She pushed the bowl towards him. “Willow bark for the pain. Feverfew for the head. Nettle for the blood.”

  I knew that. Before she said it, I already knew.

  He struggled to sit up. His head swam, but he managed it. The bowl smelled like concentrated bitterness mixed with old earth.

  He drank.

  It was worse than it smelled. His throat tried to reject it, but he forced it down, grimacing.

  Jason would’ve gagged. Would’ve asked for water to wash it down. But Teshar’s body knows this taste. Has drunk worse.

  Siramae’s mouth twitched. “Good. Now rest.”

  “I need to—”

  “Rest,” she said again, firmer. “The fire will keep without you. Naro’s watching it.”

  Naro. Who can’t keep a fire alive to save his life? Who’ll overfeed it and smoke out half the camp?

  How do I know that?

  “Sleep,” Siramae said, adjusting furs around him. “When you wake, we’ll see if the bleeding’s truly stopped.”

  She moved away to tend other work—grinding plants, mixing pastes, the quiet efficiency of healing.

  Jason—Teshar—whoever he was now—closed his eyes.

  His mind felt too full. Like trying to fit an ocean into a cup. Jason’s twenty-six years of life pressed against Teshar’s fourteen winters, neither one willing to yield space. Memories tangled: learning to drive a car overlaps with learning to balance a spear. Grant proposal anxiety is mixing with gathering-day nerves. London accents blurring into this guttural language that felt native and foreign at once.

  I’m losing myself.

  Or finding myself.

  I don’t know anymore.

  Sleep pulled at him anyway, dragging him down into darkness where Jason and Teshar twisted together like roots through soil, impossible to separate, impossible to say where one ended, and the other began.

  When he woke, the light had changed. Late afternoon.

  His head still ached, but the crushing weight had eased. The memories had settled—still there, still overwhelming, but organised now. Sorted into something he could navigate.

  He sat up slowly. No dizziness. No fresh flood of information.

  Just the strange, disorienting reality of being two people at once.

  Siramae glanced over from her grinding stone. “Better?”

  “Better,” he confirmed. Both versions of himself agreed on that much.

  “Good.” She set the pestle aside. “You’re still marked. Don’t try to wash it off. Three days.”

  He touched his forehead. The paste had dried, cracking slightly.

  Jason wanted to ask why three days specifically. Teshar already knew: three days for spirits to settle or move on. Three days to see if the fever took hold. Three days, because that’s how it was done.

  “Can I go back outside?”

  Siramae considered this. “If you must. But stay away from the fires for now. If you start bleeding again, come straight back.”

  “Understood.”

  She waved him towards the entrance. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  He pushed through the hide flap.

  The camp looked different now. Or rather, he saw it differently. Jason’s eyes catalogued the primitive conditions—no sanitation, no medicine, subsistence living. Teshar’s eyes saw home, saw family, saw the careful organisation that kept them alive.

  Both perspectives were true. Both were real.

  It was nauseating.

  Naro spotted him immediately and came running. “You’re alive!”

  “Seems like it.”

  “You scared me half to death.” Naro looked at the mark on his forehead. “Siramae marked you. That’s…” He trailed off, clearly not wanting to finish the thought.

  Not good, Jason’s mind supplied. People who get marked often don’t recover.

  Kelon appeared beside them, silent as ever. He looked at the mark, then at Jason—Teshar—both of them—and gave a small nod.

  You’re alive. That’s something.

  They stood there, an awkward cluster of boys.

  And Jason heard himself speak with Teshar’s voice, using Teshar’s knowledge but Jason’s observation:

  “The smoke. In the shelters. It’s too thick.”

  Naro blinked. “What?”

  “The smoke. It’s choking people. Especially the children.” The words came from somewhere between his two selves—Jason’s scientific understanding filtered through Teshar’s practical knowledge. “We need vents. Slits in the roof. Near the top. Small ones, just big enough to let smoke out without letting too much cold in.”

  Jason knew about convection, about how hot air rises. Teshar knew how to work with hide and wood, knew what the camp would accept.

  Together, they might actually be able to help.

  Kelon’s eyes sharpened. Really listening now.

  “That might work,” Naro said slowly. “But who’s going to convince Varek?”

  Jason—no, Teshar—both of them—took a breath.

  “I will,” he said.

  Because Jason knew it would work.

  And Teshar knew how to survive long enough to prove it.

  The camp moved around him. Fires crackled. Children played. Life continued, brutal and beautiful and utterly alien.

  Except it wasn’t alien anymore.

  It was home.

  And that terrified him more than anything.