Dawn came in hard squares of light, cutting the dark like a giant pixelated blade. It spilled into Steve's tiny shelter and painted the wooden walls in bright lines. For a long moment he just lay there, listening to the world wake.
No memories, No name, Only the steady thrum of new knowledge pulsing under his skin.
He pushed himself up. His hands still trembled from the night's fight, but the fear had changed into something else, a restless curiosity, hungry and impatient.
Outside the cave the world looked different in daylight. Colors were clearer. The grass had a soft emerald sheen, and the sky looked impossibly blue. Steam rose from a small pool nearby where the night had chilled the air. Birds, little cube-shaped things, hopped on blocks and scattered at his approach.
He had survived the night. Now what?
Find food, Gather stone, Make better tools.
The instincts were slow and steady, like a tutor speaking in short commands. He moved.
Hunting & Learning
A pig grazed in a nearby clearing, unaware. Steve watched it for a moment, then remembered the way his hands could make things: the memory of crafting the wooden sword and torch still echoed in his mind, but no personal memories surfaced to explain who he was. That absence didn't frighten him now, it only sharpened his focus.
He crept closer, heart thumping. The pig squealed and bolted, three quick strikes with a wooden sword ended it. The meat that appeared in his hands felt both foreign and necessary. Instinct nudged him toward the camp and the crafting table.
He placed the raw meat on a makeshift stone slab. Fire came to mind, he had made torches before. He rubbed sticks with flint and struck sparks until a tiny flame caught. He roasted the meat and ate it, warmth and strength filling his muscles. The world felt a little less alien.
First Tools of Stone
Wood had served him well, but the instincts now whispered of something stronger, just like a stone. He walked until the trees thinned and a rocky outcrop rose up. There, peeking from the earth, were gray blocks, stone, solid and promising.
He knelt and struck with a wooden pick. The block broke, and a chunk of cobblestone popped into his inventory-like grasp. He crafted quickly at the table he'd learned to trust, a stone pickaxe, then a stone axe, then a stone sword. Each tool felt right in his hands as if they had always belonged there.
With these tools the world changed. Trees fell faster. Rocks shattered into raw ore. He found a small slab of coal inside a cliff face, black and glittering. He struck it, collecting pieces that burned bright when added to the fire. Torches multiplied, and the shadows retreated with them.
The Small Cave
Curiosity tugged him toward a shadowed mouth in the hillside, not the cave from the first night, but a small hollow that yawned beneath a ledge. When he peered inside, he saw a glitter: veins of coal and stone. He could have ignored it, but something deeper pushed him forward. The torch in his hand sputtered orange, throwing trembling light against the rough walls.
The cave was shallow at first. He mined coal, then stone, and each ring of sound seemed to teach him something new, how much force to use, where a vein might run, the rhythm of mining. Deeper in, the hollow opened into a wider pocket. There, against a far wall, he found a small iron-gray box: a chest, half-buried and ancient by the look of it.
His breath caught. He had never seen a chest before, but the instinct that had guided him so far hummed in his bones. He pried it open.
Inside were simple things: a stray piece of leather, a flint, a single bread loaf wrapped in a cloth that gave off the faint scent of spices. Nothing remarkable. Yet when he touched the bread, a strange warmth spread through him, not memory, but the smallest echo of comfort, like a promise that this place could be tamed.
A New Horizon
Steve left the cave carrying coal, cobblestone, and a tiny bag of supplies for the road. He built a small furnace outside the cave, fed it with coal, and watched as the first iron-like ore he had mined glowed and transformed. Metal meant possibility, better tools, armor, shelter.
When he climbed a low rise to look back over the valley, he noticed something on the far horizon: a thin column of smoke rising against the sky, not the soft natural steam of a spring but steadier, deliberate. It could have been a fire, a cooking smoke, a chimney, or something else entirely.
A new instinct flared: People, Beings, Other minds.
He stared at the column of smoke until the sun climbed higher. For the first time since he had opened his eyes in that strange square sky, Steve felt a small, bright thing inside him that wasn't fear or confusion.
It was hope.
He set his jaw, slung a stone pick over his shoulder, and started walking toward the smoke.