Shao Xuan agreed to the archaeological trip for one reason, he needed a break from the disappointments waiting back in the city. An old classmate had invited him to visit a newly uncovered cave, saying the murals inside might rewrite parts of human history. Shao Xuan listened more out of courtesy than belief. Ancient tribes, shamans, forgotten civilizations, it all sounded interesting enough, but hardly life-changing.
The strange stone lying near the cave entrance seemed even less remarkable.
He picked it up almost absentmindedly, and that simple action became the last thing connecting him to the world he knew.
When he opened his eyes again, his body no longer belonged to him. He had become a young orphan struggling to survive in a land where childhood offered no protection from hunger or danger. At first glance the world looked like Earth’s distant past, forests stretched farther than the eye could see, people hunted with crude weapons, and tribes fought over food and territory. The similarities ended there.
The warriors of this world could outrun wild beasts, split rocks apart with brute force, and treat creatures that should have been impossible as little more than prey. Strength decided almost everything, yet even the strongest people spoke with respect whenever shamans or tribal totems were mentioned, as though those old beliefs carried a truth everyone accepted without question.
With no way home and no explanation for what happened, Shao Xuan settles into life among the Flaming Horn Tribe. His knowledge from another life helps in small ways, though it never replaces experience, and more than once he learns that guessing wrong can carry a painful price. A young wolf named Caesar gradually becomes his closest companion, turning lonely hunts and dangerous journeys into something neither of them has to face alone.
As the seasons pass, surviving stops being his only goal. The stories told around tribal fires begin matching fragments of the murals he once saw inside that cave, old symbols appear where they should not exist, and questions he thought had been left behind start following him again. The stone may have carried him into another world, but the deeper Shao Xuan digs into its forgotten past, the harder it becomes to believe that his former world and this one were ever truly separate.
