Age 761.
The silence of the wilderness was often louder than its roars. For two more agonizing days, Jack remained pinned in the back of his limestone crevice, listening to the rhythmic, heavy breathing of the monster outside. The giant tiger didn't just want a meal; it seemed to possess a malicious, vindictive patience. It would occasionally scrape a claw against the stone, a screeching reminder that it was still there, waiting for Jack to either rot or emerge.
On the tenth day since his arrival, the scratching stopped. Jack waited another full cycle of the sun, his heart drumming a slow, hollow beat against his ribs. The hunger was no longer a sharp pain; it had become a dull, all-consuming void that made his vision swim with dark spots. Thirst had turned his throat into a tunnel of sandpaper.
Finally, driven by the primal realization that he would die in this hole if he didn't move, Jack crawled toward the light.
The world outside was a chaotic tapestry of prehistoric violence. As he moved through the dense, over-sized ferns, the earth beneath his feet shuddered periodically. In the distance, the canopy of the jungle swayed like grass in a breeze, parted by the passage of creatures so large they ignored the very concept of a forest.
Jack found a massive, bowl-shaped leaf filled with shimmering morning dew. He didn't care about parasites or predators; he plunged his face into the water, drinking with a desperate, choking intensity. "Cough... God..." He wiped his mouth, his hands trembling. He quickly fashioned a makeshift container out of broad leaves and vines, filling it with what remained of the water.
He needed food. His eyes scanned the horizon, eventually settling on a cluster of trees laden with heavy, purple fruit that smelled like fermented honey. It was an orchard of giants. Just as he prepared to dash toward the prize, the sky was swallowed by a gargantuan shadow.
A deafening, reptilian shriek tore through the air. From the clouds, an ancient dragon, a winged titan with scales the color of oxidized copper descended. Its wingspan was easily sixty meters, and the downdraft from its wings snapped trees like toothpicks. But it wasn't alone.
From the heart of the fruit forest, a roar of pure, mammalian rage answered. A Great Ape, standing twenty meters tall with fur as dark as obsidian, rose from the foliage. It reached down, uprooting a withered redwood tree with a single, massive hand, and hurled it skyward with the force of a ballistic missile.
The air hissed as the projectile tore through the sky. The dragon flapped its wings in a violent burst, creating twin tornadoes that caught the tree mid-air, splintering it into a cloud of lethal shrapnel. A jagged section of the trunk, the size of a telephone pole, slammed into the earth barely ten feet from Jack's hiding spot. The resulting shockwave nearly threw him off his feet.
Jack didn't stay to see who won. He didn't care about the fruit anymore. He turned and ran, his legs moving with that same unnatural, desperate speed he'd discovered during the first chase. He felt like an ant scurrying between the feet of battling gods. By the time he reached the safety of his cave entrance, his makeshift water skin was gone, lost somewhere in the panicked flight.
He collapsed against the cold stone, his chest heaving. He had nothing. No food, no water, and his strength was fading.
"I can't... I can't do this again," Jack wheezed, his eyes glazed with tears of frustration. He spent the next few hours in a daze, watching the shadows lengthen across the cave floor. The "ember" in his chest was no longer warm; it was starting to burn, an angry, restless heat that demanded action.
As the sun began to dip below the purple mountains, Jack stood up. There was no more fear left in him, only a cold, crystalline madness. He walked toward the entrance, his footsteps steady despite his emaciated frame. He didn't sneak. He didn't crawl.
The moment his foot touched the grass outside, the air pressure shifted.
A massive shadow detached itself from the rocks above the cave. A blur of orange and black, accompanied by a localized hurricane of predatory intent, descended upon him. The giant tiger had never left. It had been perched on the ledge above the entrance for days, masking its scent, waiting for the exact moment its prey felt a flicker of hope.
The tiger didn't strike immediately. It landed gracefully, blocking the cave entrance with its five-meter-long body. It bared its fangs in what could only be described as a human-like sneer, its golden eyes mocking Jack's frailty. It began to pace, slowly closing the distance, savoring the scent of Jack's terror.
But Jack didn't scream. He didn't run.
"Why?" Jack's voice was a low, guttural growl that seemed to vibrate in the air. "Why are you still here? I just wanted to live. I hid. I starved. I gave you every chance to go find something else."
The tiger paused, sensing a change in the atmosphere. The tiny human wasn't cowering anymore.
"If you won't let me live," Jack looked up, his eyes suddenly burning with a fierce, starry depth, "then I'll make sure you die first!"
BOOM!
A visible shockwave of translucent white energy erupted from Jack's body, flattening the grass in a ten-foot radius. The "ember" had become a furnace. The starvation, the heat, and the sheer, unadulterated will to survive had finally shattered the mental shackles holding back his latent potential.
In a flash that defied the tiger's predatory instincts, Jack vanished.
He reappeared directly beneath the beast's massive jaw. His arm, thin and pale, was now corded with bulging veins that pulsed with a white light. He swung a haymaker with every ounce of his soul behind it.
BANG!!!
The impact sounded like a cannon shot. The tiger's head was snapped upward with such violence that its pupils rolled back, leaving only the whites of its eyes. Its massive body, weighing several tons, was lifted nearly a foot off the ground by the sheer force of the blow.
Jack didn't stop. He dived under the beast's belly as it fell, his fists becoming a blur of motion. He wasn't thinking about techniques; he was a machine of survival. Each punch landed with the weight of a sledgehammer, tenderizing the tiger's soft underbelly.
The tiger, driven by its own survival instincts, regained consciousness and lashed out with a desperate claw. Jack sensed the movement before it happened. He leaped, his body feeling weightless as he soared thirty feet into the air.
Looking down at the confused predator, Jack tucked his knees and plummeted. He drove his heel into the center of the tiger's skull with a "Thousand-Pound Drop," the impact creating a small crater in the earth.
The beast's head was driven into the dirt, its spine popping with a sickening crunch. Jack didn't give it a chance to recover. He straddled the monster's neck and began a relentless, savage assault. His fists rained down like falling stars - left, right, left, right, each strike accompanied by a spray of hot, copper-smelling blood.
He hammered until his knuckles were raw. He hammered until the white aura around him flickered and died. He hammered until the giant tiger beneath him stopped twitching, its skull reduced to a ruined mass of fur and bone.
As the last of his strength evaporated, Jack slumped backward, falling onto the cooling flank of the predator. He was covered in blood, his clothes were rags, and his muscles felt like they were melting. But as he looked up at the first stars appearing in the night sky, he let out a jagged, triumphant laugh.
The hunter was dead. And for the first time in ten days, Jack was going to eat meat.