The storm had left the Woolak tribe in tatters. The shelters, reinforced as they were, bore deep gashes, and the air carried a tension that hadn't lifted. Night had already fallen. The tribe sat gathered around the hero of the hour — until Karg stepped forward into the firelight.
"Oonak," he said. "You saved our shelters tonight. I'll give you that. But you let Goran die on the hunt. I watched you freeze in front of danger. A chief who freezes costs lives. The Woolak tribe deserves better."
He drove his gaze into Peter's.
"Prove you're still worthy."
Peter felt the silence close around him like water rising. He glanced at Oudra to his left — still, unreadable — but his eyes said one thing clearly: there is no other path.
He took the spear Oudra held out. It was carved with solar symbols along its entire length. He stood up.
"Come then, Karg."
The circle widened around them.
Karg charged without warning.
No preamble. No circling. A direct, explosive charge — his axe sweeping in a wide arc. Peter stepped back and deflected to the side, but not enough. The blade caught his shoulder. A sharp, immediate pain shot down his arm to his fingertips. His spear slipped from his grip.
He dropped to one knee.
Around him the circle was silent. He felt the ground beneath his palms — cold, grainy earth — and for one second he had a single thought: this body isn't mine and I shouldn't be here.
Karg approached slowly. There was no rush. He could afford to take his time.
"Get up," he said. "Let everyone see."
Peter got up.
Not because he had a plan. Because staying on the ground was worse. He picked up his spear, set his jaw against the pain in his shoulder, and repositioned himself to face Karg.
This time he didn't try to attack. He watched.
Karg was strong and fast for his size — but he attacked with total confidence in his own power. Which meant he went straight. He wanted the frontal impact. He was counting on his mass to end the fight. Peter didn't have that mass. But he had something else. He had spent years learning how to survive in rooms where he wasn't the strongest one.
When Karg charged again, Peter didn't step back. He pivoted at the last second, let the other's momentum carry past him, and drove the shaft of his spear into Karg's ribs as he went by.
Karg grunted. Not in pain.
In surprise.
He turned and looked at Peter differently.
The two men traded exchanges for several minutes — Karg attacking, Peter deflecting, finding angles, conserving energy. The shoulder burned. His legs were starting to weigh on him. Peter knew he couldn't hold this rhythm indefinitely. Karg had the endurance of someone who had spent his entire life fighting.
Something had to change.
And then it did.
Peter couldn't have explained it afterward — even to himself. It wasn't a decision. It was a disappearance — his own. As if the boundary between him and the memories sleeping inside Oonak's body dissolved all at once, and something older and more instinctive took over.
He was living Oonak's old fights as they came back to him. His hands knew where to go before his mind gave the order. His body read Karg — the weight transfers, the micro-shifts in the shoulders before each strike, the angle of the hip that telegraphed the direction of each blow.
When Karg launched his next attack, Peter caught his wrist in the motion, used his own momentum as a lever, and brought him to the ground in one clean, decisive movement. He held him there — one knee in his back — until Karg stopped resisting.
"Enough," said Oudra.
Peter stood up. He looked at his hands without quite recognizing them. The trance was lifting slowly, like morning mist, and his own thoughts returned to him one by one.
Karg got to his feet alone, without help. He brushed the dirt from his arms, straightened up, and looked at Peter with an expression Peter had never seen on his face before.
"You fight like a man who has something to lose," said Karg.
"Or something to prove," Peter answered.
Karg spat to the side. Out of habit.
"Same thing."
He walked back and took his place among the warriors. Something in his posture had shifted. Not defeat. Just a redirection.
Oudra came and stood beside Peter. Nothing more. Just his presence — steady and silent — which was worth more than any speech.
The fire crackled. The tribe stayed. No one moved to leave.
Peter looked down at his hands — Oonak's hands — and wondered, for the first time since arriving in this era, where one of them ended and the other began.