Hours late, time had become slippery in the dark—Jorka woke.
Not with the groggy crawl of a man pulled from near-death, but with a sudden, electric snap of awareness. His eyes opened to the same dim cave, the same slow drip of water from stalactites, the same cracked, spent stone lying inert beside him. But everything else was different.
He stood.
No stiffness. No lingering ache in his skull or ribs. His body felt… remade. Lighter, yet denser. Muscles coiled with a strange, humming vitality beneath his skin, as though someone had replaced his mortal sinew with something forged from storm and iron. He flexed his fingers; they moved with fluid precision, each joint singing with newfound power. The blue-black veins that had traced his arms earlier had faded to faint, shimmering lines—visible only when he turned them just so in the faint glow filtering through the cave mouth.
He drew a breath. Deep. Clean. The air tasted sharper, every scent amplified: wet stone, moss, distant pine, the faint copper tang of old blood on his own torn hides.
Jorka stepped toward the cave entrance. Each footfall felt deliberate, grounded, as if the earth itself acknowledged his weight differently now.
Outside, the forest greeted him with late-afternoon gold slanting through the canopy. The Blackfang Ridge loomed somewhere to the east; he could feel its direction in his bones, a compass he hadn't possessed before. The river that had nearly killed him chuckled innocently downstream, its rapids tamed to a murmur here in the lower gorge. He stood for a moment, orienting himself, mind already turning to the long trek back to the clan—and to Dorag.
The betrayal burned hotter now, sharpened by survival. He pictured the other man's smug grin, the axe haft cracking against his temple, the mocking laughter as the current took him. Jorka's hands clenched. He would find Dorag. He would beat the shit out of him—slowly, methodically—until the rival begged for the mercy he had never intended to grant.
A low, earth-shaking roar tore through his thoughts.
Jorka turned.
From the thick undergrowth across the narrow clearing charged a nightmare made flesh: a white-horned bear.
It was monstrous. Twice the height of a man at the shoulder, its fur the color of fresh snow streaked with ash-gray, massive horns curving forward like ivory scythes. Each paw was the size of a shield, claws black and hooked. Its eyes burned red with primal fury. When it opened its maw to roar again, Jorka saw fangs longer than his forearm.
The beast lowered its head and charged.
Instinct took over.
Jorka didn't think. He didn't reach for a weapon he no longer carried. He simply stepped forward and swung.
His right fist connected with the center of the bear's massive skull.
The impact was catastrophic.
A wet, crunching crack echoed through the trees—like a tree trunk splitting under an axe. The bear's head snapped sideways, momentum carrying its body forward even as its neck broke. Four hundred stone of muscle and rage cartwheeled through the air, crashed into the ground in a boneless heap, and slid another ten paces before coming to rest against a fallen log. Blood poured from its shattered snout. The red eyes glazed over in an instant.
Silence.
Jorka stood frozen, fist still extended, breathing steady.
He stared at the corpse.
"What… the fuck?"
He hadn't swung with full strength. He knew that much. It had been a reflexive, almost casual strike—yet it had pulped bone and brain like dry clay. His knuckles weren't even split. No pain. No blood.
He looked down at his hand. The faint blue-black lines pulsed once, brighter, then settled.
A pebble near his boot trembled.
Then another.
Then a dozen.
Jorka's gaze lifted. Small stones—fist-sized, then head-sized—rose slowly from the forest floor. They hovered, spinning lazily in the air around him, drawn into a loose orbit like planets around a dark sun. Larger rocks followed, groaning as they lifted free of moss and root. A fallen branch drifted upward, leaves still fluttering.
He felt it.
A pressure behind his eyes, cool and vast, like staring into deep water. A second heartbeat—not in his chest, but in his mind. Raw. Limitless. He flexed that invisible muscle, and the stones accelerated, whipping faster in their circle until they blurred into a humming ring.
Jorka laughed.
It started low, a rough bark of disbelief.
Then louder.
Then wild, unrestrained, echoing off the gorge walls.
He laughed harder—head thrown back, teeth bared—because the sound felt good, because the power felt good. After all, for the first time in eighteen cursed years, the High Goddess's punishment had cracked open, and something better had spilled out.
Esper.
The word rose unbidden from some buried fragment of his old life—Alex's life. Telekinesis. Mind over matter. Whatever the blue-black liquid had been, it had rewritten him from the inside out. Not magic—not the fairy-tale sorcery this world lacked—but something colder, sharper, more personal. A weapon born inside his skull.
He clenched his fist.
The orbiting stones detonated outward in a perfect sphere of shrapnel. They punched through tree trunks, splintered bark, and buried themselves in earth. The forest shuddered, leaves raining down.
Jorka lowered his hand. The pressure eased. The stones fell still.
He grinned—a feral, dangerous thing.
Dorag had no idea what was coming for him.
A second roar rolled through the trees—deeper, angrier than the bear's. Somewhere ahead, higher on the ridge, another predator had caught the scent of blood and death. Whatever it was, it was big. It was coming.
Jorka tilted his head, listening.
The new power stirred eagerly in his veins, hungry to be used again.
He started walking toward the sound.
No hurry, no fear.
Each step felt like a promise.
The forest had always been a place of survival—eat or be eaten, kill or be killed.
Now it had a new apex.
And he was laughing still, soft and low, as he moved into the green dark.
The roar answered—closer now.
Jorka cracked his knuckles.
"Come on, then," he muttered to the unseen beast. "Let's see what you've got."
Behind him, the white-horned bear's corpse lay cooling, flies already gathering.
Ahead lay the rest of his life—changed, sharpened, unbound.
And somewhere in the clan's camp, Dorag would be boasting of his victory, the tiger's pelt across his shoulders, believing Jorka dead.
Jorka's smile widened.
He was going to enjoy proving him wrong.