The once-prehistoric human child was no more. His body remained the same—small, frail, and familiar—but something beyond human comprehension now resided within him. A presence that did not belong to this world had taken hold, shaping his every movement, every thought. The deep blue glow in his eyes flickered with intelligence far greater than the tribe he now stood among. His jet-black hair, darker than the night sky, made him stand out among his people, yet he remained silent, observing, calculating.
At first, he did not understand what he had become. He had memories of the child's life, fragmented thoughts of hunger, thirst, and fear. But he was not that child anymore. He was something else—something new. He did not know how to act, but he learned. He imitated.
The tribe moved in a rhythmic dance of survival, their lives dictated by the land and the creatures they hunted. He watched their mannerisms, their crude speech, their rituals. Slowly, he copied them—mimicking their gestures, mirroring their expressions, replicating their instincts. He moved when they moved, slept when they slept, hunted when they hunted. Though he had no concept of emotion, he learned to fake it. He learned to blend.
One day, he ventured into the wild, his body moving with unnatural grace. He tracked a creature much larger than himself—a prehistoric beast that would have been impossible for a normal child to take down. Yet, when the moment came, he struck with precision beyond human ability. The animal fell without a sound. Dragging its heavy carcass back to the tribe, he stood among them, his face void of satisfaction, yet his actions spoke of strength. The people did not question how he, a mere child, had achieved such a feat. They only saw the meat he provided, and that was enough.
And so, time passed.
Forty thousand years.
The world changed, but he remained the same. His body did not wither, his hair did not gray, and his face never bore the marks of aging. He was eternal, locked in the form of a child while generations of his people lived and died around him. And yet, no one questioned it. Perhaps they believed him to be blessed by the spirits, or perhaps their simple minds could not comprehend such an anomaly.
One fateful day, the ground trembled beneath pounding hooves. A horde of mammoths charged across the plains, their massive forms shaking the earth. The tribe, now armed with sharpened stones and primitive weapons, ran alongside the beasts, their eyes burning with the fire of the hunt. This was survival. This was their way.
But the child—the creature in human form—was different. He ran not with desperation, not with the need to kill, but with something else. Understanding. Control. He did not hunt for survival, nor for sport. He hunted to learn.
And as the years continued to pass, his knowledge only grew.
The Imitator had become something more.
And the world would never be the same again.
For millennia, he learned, he adapted, and he survived. He had become a master of observation, his mind an ever-expanding library of knowledge. Every movement, every habit, every tool his people crafted—he studied and perfected. Time had no meaning to him, yet he moved through it like a silent shadow, unaging and unchanging.
But the world around him did not remain still. The land shifted, creatures evolved, and something new arrived—Homo sapiens.
They were different. Unlike the tribes he had once known, these humans carried something powerful—something terrifying. They were ruthless, their minds sharper, their weapons deadlier. They were not just hunters; they were conquerors. And with their arrival, the world descended into conflict.
For the first time, he saw war.
Tribes clashed, blood soaked the earth, and the cries of the dying filled the air. The primitive weapons he had once known—sharpened stones, wooden spears—were now replaced with more advanced tools of death. Fire, strategy, deception. The strong crushed the weak, and the weak either perished or served.
And he was afraid.
Not of death—he had never known it, nor did he believe it could reach him. But of what he saw. Killing another for survival was natural. He had learned that from the beasts. But killing one's own kind? Slaughtering for power, for territory, for dominance? This was something different. Something... wrong.
He withdrew, observing from a distance, watching as the balance of the world crumbled.
And yet, he could not stop learning.
The weapons intrigued him. The strategies fascinated him. Homo sapiens were not like the others; they did not simply hunt—they schemed, they planned, they evolved with purpose. They built tools to take down creatures far greater than themselves, crafting weapons that gave them the power to stand against the wild.
At first, he mimicked their ways, adapting to their methods of hunting. He forged spears, sharpened blades, and learned to strike with precision. But as he continued, he saw something he wished he hadn't—humans turning those weapons against their own.
And something inside him shifted.
For the first time in his endless existence, he felt conflicted.
The peace of his world had been shattered. The harmony of nature, the rhythm of survival—all of it was gone. In its place was chaos. Men fought men. Brother killed brother. And though he had learned to imitate everything about humanity, this was something he did not wish to become.
And so, he watched. He wandered. And he questioned.
Had he been born into the wrong world? Or had the world changed into something he could no longer understand?
For the first time, he felt like a stranger.
A being caught between what he was... and what he feared to become.
And so, he waited.
Waited for what? He did not know. But he had spent millennia learning, adapting. And he was not done yet.