Fire...he needed fire.

  With no flint, he’d resorted to scraping his sword edge against the iron rim of his shield. It worked, barely. A few sparks danced off the clash, but the jungle’s thick humidity smothered nearly everything dry enough to catch. Bark crumbled damp in his hands, leaves clung to moisture like lifelines...everything here resisted flame.

  Still, he persisted.

  He had found two trees spaced just right, sturdy, wide-rooted, with thick limbs that curved overhead. Between them, he worked quickly with vines torn from the undergrowth, he lashed branches into place, layering them into a sloping lean-to. At the back, he wove a patchwork of leaves and sticks into a crude wall, stitched together by will and desperation.

  It wouldn’t keep out predators, if any...but it might keep out the rain or the worst of the wind.

  Then he climbed.

  Using the same vines, he pulled himself slowly, silently up one of the trees. The bark scratched his palms, and the sweat on his back stung as it slid into old wounds. Near the top, the canopy opened into the light, from there, he tied several finger-thick sticks into a loose bundle and wedged them into a forked branch, hoping the sun would dry them in time.

  He sat there a while, breathing slowly, gaze sweeping the horizon.

  From above, the jungle revealed itself in full a living sea of green, endless and layered, thick with time and silence. The trees were ancient untouched and undisturbed, nature had claimed this land long ago and forgotten the world beyond.

  But to the west…he narrowed his eyes.

  Among the waves of trees, there was a break, a faint clearing, circular, unnatural in its precision. Perhaps one hundred maybe one hundred fifty meters wide it shimmered faintly, like water, but the canopy obscured any detail.

  A lake?

  Or something else?

  It would take him nearly a week to reach it...maybe longer, if the terrain turned against him, and if it was only a lake, he’d have wasted precious time detouring from his northern path...time he didn’t have.

  He exhaled slowly, the weight of the decision pressing on his shoulders.

  Then he turned his gaze south, retracing the path he’d come. There barely visible through the jungle veil was another clearing smaller, ragged but unmistakable, white fragments glinted among the green: stone scattered like teeth across the earth. The ruin. The shattered tower. The place he’d awakened.

  It felt distant now like a dream swallowed by sunlight, but it was real, and seeing it from above gave him a strange perspective, the impact had left a clear mark in the jungle, something, or someone, had dragged that structure here.

  He narrowed his eyes...the two openings were similar.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Had he truly come alone or was there another?

  Was someone else also thrown into this place, torn from the same battle, the same magic, the same world?

  He couldn’t know...not yet but the thought lingered.

  Not now, he had other things to do, shelter came first then fire, traps and food.

  He had time to decide after.

  He descended the tree in silence, every step cautious, every vine tested...the light above dimmed slightly and the jungle was already shifting again preparing for nightfall. He returned to his crude shelter and crouched near the dirt where he’d try again to coax a flame.

  There was no time for fear, only preparation, and somewhere in the distance, far beyond the whispering trees, the clearing waited silent and unknown.

  Before sunset, he managed to set up three small traps simple noose loops strung with vine, anchored between low-lying branches and roots crude, he hoped they might catch something if there was anything to catch.

  As he moved through the undergrowth, searching for places to set them, he began paying more attention to the jungle itself. He studied the bark, turned over stones, sifted through the loam in search of something edible...anything.

  But the more he searched, the more a quiet dread took hold.

  There were no berries.

  No fruit-bearing vines.

  No soft roots or edible shoots, not even mushrooms or insects under the logs. The jungle was lush, green, thriving and yet utterly barren. All the leaves, the roots, even the bark itself seemed alive, yet he could not shake the suspicion that they were not. His hands came away clean when he tore at them, no sap, no moisture, no hint of sustenance. It was as though the forest wore a mask of life, each blade and branch shaped to deceive. They had the texture of real things, yet gave nothing back, as if carved from wax…only they were not. They bent and swayed in the wind, they breathed mist into the air, but beneath it all, they felt hollow, counterfeit. A jungle without food, without prey, a place that promised abundance and delivered only hunger.

  And with that thought came a second, colder realization.

  If the plants didn’t offer food, then the herbivores would starve and if there were no herbivores… the carnivores would starve, too, this was not an ecosystem but a crude copy of one , like someone painting a jungle they have never seen before .

  It was too quiet.

  Too still.

  Too wrong.

  That same knot of urgency twisted in his gut, deeper now, no longer a vague unease, but something closer to panic, it had to do with the Forest, Jungle whatever this was. The memory of purpose still eluded him, like a word stuck on the edge of the tongue. But whatever it was he’d been pulled from…he needed to get back, he wasn’t meant to be here.

  He looked to the west again...the clearing, the possible lake.

  Then to the north to the mountains.

  Time was his enemy, not just the jungle, not just the hunger.

  Something was off about this place.

  He returned to his shelter in silence, keeping his hand close to the hilt of his sword as the last light of the sun bled through the canopy like dying fire. The jungle whispered softly in the wind, a wind that carried no answers.

  Tonight, he would wait.

  Tomorrow, he would choose.

  But already, the question was no longer if he would leave this jungle.

  It was whether he could escape it before it changed him.