Aiden did not move right away.
He stayed where he was, hidden by trees and uneven ground, watching the camp from a distance. The people moved slowly. Their steps lacked strength, and even simple actions looked heavy. He kept his breathing steady as he studied them, forcing himself not to rush.
"I cannot approach them like this..." he said quietly. "People in another world might not react the same way as on Earth."
Instead, he reached for control and brought one of the land drones online.
The drone was small and low to the ground, its movement smooth and careful. He guided it through brush and shallow dips, keeping it far enough that it would not draw attention. Once it reached a good position, he adjusted its sensors and activated its hearing.
Not just surface sound, but layered input. It picked up voices drifting through the air along with movement, carried by softer noises such as footsteps on dirt, cloth brushing against skin, and the quiet scrape of tools against wood.
Aiden stayed there for hours while the drone recorded, watching the natives with quiet patience. He did not rush the process or push the feed constantly. Time mattered here, and so did distance.
The drone captured everything it could. Voices overlapped as people spoke over one another. Short arguments broke out and ended just as quickly. Long stretches of silence followed, heavy and uncomfortable.
Children cried in soft, tired sounds, while adults spoke in low tones, careful and restrained, as if every word cost them energy. Aiden listened only in short bursts before cutting the feed again, refusing to let emotion take control before he understood the situation clearly.
When the sun dipped low and the light began to fade, he finally called the drone back.
He returned to the base before nightfall, sealed the gate, and reviewed the data inside the ship. The language was unfamiliar, not even close to anything he recognized. In the year 4059 on Earth, even with thousands of living languages, most of them could be learned within two or three days using modern tools. Patterns always showed up. Sounds shared roots, sentence flow followed rules, and structure revealed itself quickly.
This did not.
He replayed the voice records again and again, but understanding never came. The speech sounded harsh and heavy at the same time, as if parts of it were pressed together instead of flowing naturally. It reminded him faintly of German mixed with Russian, but only in sound, not in structure. The comparison fell apart the longer he listened.
Even when the same words repeated, their meaning refused to settle. Tone, timing, and situation changed everything. A word spoken calmly seemed different when spoken in anger or fear. For the first time in a long while, he faced a language that could not be broken down quickly.
He switched to video.
That was when he noticed the injuries.
Several of them were injured, and the wounds were far from clean. Cuts had been wrapped with rough cloth, tied too tight in some places and too loose in others. Limbs moved stiffly when they walked, as if every step pulled at pain that never faded.
One man dragged himself forward with a deep limp, his leg bound in dark stained cloth that had clearly not been changed in a long time. The children looked worse. They were far thinner than they should be, with sharp faces and eyes that seemed too large for their small frames. Some of the women sat still for long stretches, barely moving, saving what little strength they had left.
"They are starving..." Aiden said quietly.
He watched more.
Meals passed quickly and without comfort. People gathered close, spoke little, and ate in tense silence. Some scraped strips of bark with crude tools, peeling away the thin inner layer before chewing slowly, their jaws struggled to even do so.
Others sucked on leaves and spat them out after a few bites, faces tightening as the bitter taste spread. No one lingered over food, and no one looked full when it was gone.
"They should be able to hunt small animals at least, right?" he muttered. "Then what seems to be the problem?"
He shifted the view and focused on their weapons.
The bows told the story right away. The wood was bent unevenly, warped from poor shaping and long use. The strings looked dry and frayed, stretched thin from being pulled too many times.
Even when the bows were drawn back as far as their frames allowed, the force behind them was weak. An arrow might injure a small animal if it struck the right spot, but against thick hide it would barely pierce the surface.
Bringing down a deer with such a weapon would demand a perfect shot to the eye or throat, and even then it would be a dangerous gamble. No hungry hunter could afford to fail a shot like that.
The swords offered no real solution either. Their blades were short and uneven, with poor balance that drained strength instead of delivering power. Some of them were stained with rust, the metal pitted and dull from long use without proper care.
A cut from one of those blades looked more likely to bring infections or the like than a quick kill. They were useful for close defense, for scaring something away or holding a line, but they were not made for clean kills though. Facing large prey with those weapons would be slow and risky, and more often than not, the one swinging the blade would be the one to fall.
Water was another serious problem.
He paid close attention to how they handled it. Every sip was small and measured. Containers were passed from hand to hand, never tilted too far, as if every drop counted.
No one drank freely. Since his arrival on this world, there had been no rain for a long time, which meant they had to be using a water source somewhere nearby. That made their careful drinking stand out even more, because people with easy access to water did not act like this.
Something was stopping them from using it whenever they wanted. It could be animals that gathered at the water, or a place that was dangerous to reach, but whatever the reason was, the risk was high enough that they treated every sip as something precious.
"I need to make contact with them.." he said quietly.
The decision was clear, but there was a big problem he needed to fix first.
The language barrier was the biggest issue.
After thinking for a bit, Aiden thought of a solution.
He adjusted one of the drones again, but this time it was not meant for scouting. It was meant to learn. He opened its internal processing and linked it to the ship systems with strict limits in place. He built a narrow framework, focused only on sound, movement, and behavior, nothing more.
Aiden began setting the AI step by step.
He configured it to start with passive intake only. No responses. No guesses. It would listen and record for hours at a time, taking in conversations during the day, arguments when food ran low, and quiet talks at night spoken close and low. He set it to ignore meaning at first and focus only on patterns. How long sounds lasted. Which words repeated. Who spoke after a pause.
Next, he adjusted the system to track context.
The AI was set to tag speakers by position and behavior. It would note when adults spoke to children, when one voice caused others to stop and listen, and when someone spoke often but was ignored. Meaning would be shaped by who spoke and who listened, and the system would learn that slowly.
After that, he linked speech to action.
He configured the AI to match words with visible behavior. Sounds spoken while pointing at water. Phrases repeated near the fire. Sharp noises during pain. Slower, heavier sounds during anger. The system would build weak links first and strengthen them only after repetition.
He then enabled emotional tracking.
The AI would watch posture, body tension, and movement speed. It would measure distance between people during conversation. Raised voices were flagged, but not labeled as anger by default. Fear and warning were treated as separate possibilities.
Intonation mapping followed.
He set it to record rhythm and pitch, marking where voices rose, fell, stretched during pleading, or cut short during commands.
Gesture recognition came next.
The system would track repeated hand movements, head shakes, nods, and closed or open palms, linking them to outcomes rather than assumptions.
He made sure mistakes were kept.
The AI stored every uncertain match with weight instead of certainty. Wrong links would weaken over time, while correct ones stayed.
Silence was included as data.
Who spoke first. Who waited. Who was ignored.
"This will take days to gather enough stuff to learn.." Aiden said quietly. "Maybe weeks, even. Sigh"
He saved the configuration and moved on to the drone.
He adjusted its hearing range and narrowed its focus so overlapping voices could be separated. Directional input was refined. Visual sensors were tuned for better zoom and slow movement tracking. He repainted its shell with dull forest colors. Greens. Browns. Grays.
"This should be fine. Doesn't need to be invisible..." he said. "Just enough for it to not be too obvious."
When the setup was complete, he prepared to place the drone near the settlement, hidden by brush and rocks, close enough to hear and see, and then let the system begin its work.
For one full week, he checked the feed daily.
What he saw made his chest feel tight. He had enough data to make contact. Now was the time or Aiden would not forgive himself if they would die and he could have prevented them dying.
******
Voices clashed inside the tent.
The air was thick with heat and anger, and the smell of sweat and smoke hung low under the cloth roof. People spoke over one another, words sharp and desperate. Hands moved as they argued, some shaking, some clenched tight. No one sat comfortably. Hunger made it hard to stay still.
"We really can't stay here anymore..." one man shouted. "Another hunt failed. We are wasting our strength!"
"And go where?!!!" another snapped back. "If we move, they will find us!"
A woman near the edge held a thin child close to her chest. The child did not cry anymore as it did not have the strength to even do so.
An older man leaned on his staff, breathing slow and heavy. His eyes were tired. Everyone could see it.
"The weapons we have are not enough..." a hunter said. "The big animals shrug off our attacks, and we cannot trap them without nets. The small ones escape before we can react."
A man with his arm wrapped in cloth slammed his fist against the ground.
"If this goes on. Then we will die here. Slowly."
The name came up again, as it always did.
"The Ravanis Kingdom will hunt us if we move out of this forest." the leader said, his voice firm but strained. "Their troops are everywhere."
"We are already dying!" someone yelled back. "What is the difference?"
Silence followed, heavy and sharp.
The elder spoke then, his voice low. "We will send scouts again. Bring in, Pietro. He will lead. We need to know if there is anywhere else. Sigh... May the gods watch over them."
No one argued after that.
Then the shouting came.
"Leader! Leader!"
The tent flap was thrown aside as a scout stumbled in, breathing hard, eyes wide.
"Talren!" he shouted. "Talren, come out now!"
Every hand reached for a weapon. Fear spread faster than words.
"What is it?!" Talren, seemingly the leader demanded as he stood.
"There is someone at the entrance of the camp!" the scout shouted, his voice shaking.
"The Ravanis Soldiers?!"
"We have been found!?"
"Enemy?!!"
The tent broke into noise as people spoke at once. The elder raised his staff and struck the ground hard to silence them. A baby began to cry in the corner, the sound sharp in the tense air. The elder snapped his head toward the scout.
"How many are there?" he demanded.
"J just one person, elder!" the scout said quickly. "He is wearing strange armor. Covered in metal. There is no mark of the Ravanis Kingdom on him."
The tent fell silent for a heartbeat.
Then voices burst out again, louder than before.
"One person?"
Talren and the elder exchanged a quick look, confusion clear on both their faces, and then moved at once. Talren stepped forward without hesitation, while the elder followed close behind, leaning heavily on his staff. Others moved with them, hands closing around weapons as they left the tent.
They stepped out into the open clearing.
The camp had already shifted. People gathered in tight groups, forming a loose circle around the entrance. Able men stood at the front, blades and spears raised, their grips tight but unsteady. Children were pulled back into the shadows of the tents, small hands clutching cloth. Women watched in silence, eyes wide and fixed on the same point.
At the edge of the camp stood the stranger.
He was tall. Taller than any man among them. His body was wrapped in metal, dark and pale plates layered over one another from head to toe. The armor caught the light but did not shine, breaking his shape instead of reflecting it.
A large shield rested in one hand, thick and heavy enough to stop a charging beast. Four long spears hung at his side, their points clean and sharp, untouched by rust or wear. In his other hand, he held a strange metal object, bent at an angle, smooth and unfamiliar, shaped like no weapon they recognized.
There was no banner. No mark. No symbol of the Ravanis Kingdom.
At his feet lay food.
Two deer rested on the ground, whole and uncut, their bodies heavy and fresh. Ten bunnies were laid beside them, small but clean. A cloth bag sat nearby, its opening loose, bright fruits spilling out across the dirt in colors few of them had seen in days.
No one spoke.
The stranger moved slowly, carefully, as if every motion was chosen. He lowered his hands slightly, turning his palms outward to show he held no blade ready to strike.
Talren felt his heart pound in his chest as he stepped forward, forcing his legs to move.
The elder stayed at his side, grip tight on his staff.
The metal man tilted his head, pausing as if searching for the right sounds. When he spoke, his voice was rough and uneven, the words broken and hard to place.
"You two, leaders?" he said.
Talren hesitated, then glanced at the elder. They nodded together.
The stranger fell silent for a moment, then spoke again, slower this time, each word pushed out with effort.
"I not enemy.." he said. "I help you. I give food."
The world seemed to stop.
Eyes widened across the camp. Mouths opened, but no sound followed. No one moved toward the meat. No one dared step closer. The smell of fresh flesh drifted through the clearing, rich and real, cutting through hunger like a blade.
For the first time in many days, something stirred among them.
It was hope.