(A Glimpse Beyond the Fracture)
The jungle did not sleep.
Not in this part of the world.
Cicadas screeched from the canopy. Branches swayed without wind. Something massive, somewhere far off, let out a territorial roar that shook the treetops like drums.
Zuberi crouched in the shadows beneath a twisted baobab, fur slick with sweat and blood. He was still four-legged, still feral, still more beast than boy. His thoughts were raw instincts—images, scents, flashes of heat and fear—but something in him stirred with… curiosity.
The stone had not been there yesterday.
It jutted out from the roots of the tree like a wound in the earth. Black. Cold. Not natural. Not jungle-born. Runes shimmered faintly across its surface, curved like claws but aligned like language.
He bared his teeth.
And yet he could not look away.
Zuberi crept closer.
There was a pull—not hunger, not threat. Something deeper. Like remembering a dream he never had. His paws trembled as he touched the stone with his nose.
The world blinked.
All sound fell away.
He saw… stars. Fractured. Spiraling. A tower of obsidian bleeding light. A man—tall, pale, hollow-eyed—casting himself into a rip in the sky. Words not spoken but carved into the air:
"If knowledge breaks the world, let my soul be the seal."
The image shattered.
Zuberi staggered back, panting, eyes wild. The stone was gone. In its place: a single object lay in the dirt.
A shard of glass, fogged and rimmed with silver. Etched along its edge was a glyph. Not from this land.
He picked it up in his jaws and ran.
Something had changed in him. A sliver of thought had crystallized.
He didn't know what it meant.
Not yet.
But he would.
One day, he would walk on two legs.
One day, he would speak.
And when he did… he would seek the man who fell from the sky.
Even if that man was no longer there to be found.
✧ The Fractured Lens — one of Seven Relics left behind
✧ The seal holds… for now.
✧ The wild awakens.
To be continued in
Book II: I Was Just a Beast—Now the Jungle Bows to Me