The first thing Caleb felt was cold. Damp grass beneath his back. A breeze brushing over his skin. His eyes fluttered open to an unfamiliar sky — not gray or overcast like home, but clear, piercing blue. The sun was bright but not harsh, framed by massive tree branches that swayed silently above.

  He sat up slowly, blinking against the light. His heart beat unevenly in his chest, more from confusion than fear.

  He looked down at himself.

  Wool. Coarse and rough. A long tunic, stitched at the sides with dark thread. His pants were simple, brown, and tucked into worn leather boots. Everything was dry but smelled of earth and age, like they’d been hanging in some old closet for a hundred years.

  “What the hell…?” he muttered.

  He patted himself down — no pockets. No keys. No wallet.He checked his sides. Nothing. His belt was leather, but it didn’t have any loops or clips.No jeans.No hoodie.No phone.

  He froze.

  His phone.

  He always had it. Even in bed. Even when he showered, it was never more than a meter away.He checked again, more frantically this time — under the tunic, behind his back, at his feet.

  Gone.

  Completely gone.

  A spike of unease shot through him.

  He stood up, slowly. His knees wobbled. The ground was uneven, soft with moss and roots. The forest around him was vast — too vast. The trees towered overhead like columns in some forgotten cathedral. There were no buildings, no cars, no sounds of distant traffic. Just birdsong — unfamiliar, musical, alien.

  None of this made sense.

  Had he been drugged? Kidnapped? Dropped into some experimental theme park?

  He looked around again, this time scanning the tree line for anything — a fence, a trail, a sign, a path.

  Nothing.

  The air was crisp, impossibly clean. The breeze carried no pollution, no gasoline, no cooking smoke. Just the scent of leaves and cold stone.

  Caleb took a step, then another. His boots felt solid underfoot. Real. He crouched down, grabbed a handful of dirt, rubbed it between his fingers.

  Real.

  He didn’t recognize the trees. Or the undergrowth. Or the birds.

  This wasn’t home.

  But it wasn’t anywhere else either. Not Canada. Not Europe. Not even some deep corner of the Rockies.

  He straightened up. The panic hadn’t fully hit yet, but the edges of it scratched at his chest.

  He wasn’t just lost.

  Caleb walked.

  It was the only thing he could do. No signs, no trails, no landmarks he recognised — just endless trees and damp soil. The forest wasn’t oppressive, not exactly. It was... indifferent. As though it had never been meant to be walked through, only observed from the edge.

  He stayed alert, listening for distant sounds — traffic, voices, engines. Anything. But all he heard was the soft crunch of his steps and the call of birds he couldn’t name.

  He passed a fallen log and paused. A patch of red caught his eye — berries, small and clustered in tight bunches. They looked like wild raspberries, but darker, almost black.

  He crouched, hesitated.

  He didn’t know this place. These might kill him. But he couldn’t keep walking without something in his stomach. He picked one and held it to his nose. Slightly sweet. No sharp scent. No visible mold or insects.

  “Screw it,” he muttered, and popped one into his mouth.

  Tart, but edible. At least, he hoped so.

  He ate a few more, just enough to dull the edge of his hunger, then moved on. His pace was steady now. Survival demanded rhythm, even if his legs still ached and his throat stayed dry.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  The forest slowly began to shift. The trees thinned. The ground leveled. Light filtered through more easily, and the silence felt... different. Not warmer. Not safer. Just closer to something else.

  He stopped at the top of a small ridge.

  There, in the distance — maybe half a kilometer ahead — he saw it. A thin column of smoke, rising into the sky like a signal.

  He stared for a moment, unsure if his mind was playing tricks.

  But it was real.Smoke meant fire.Fire meant people.People meant answers.

  Or danger.

  But standing still wouldn’t help. Neither would starving or freezing alone.

  He made his way toward it, keeping to the trees, trying to stay quiet without really knowing why. He wasn’t being hunted — at least, he didn’t think so. But instincts honed from years of late-night walks in rough neighborhoods told him not to draw attention to himself until he understood who or what he was dealing with.

  The closer he got, the more signs of human presence he found. A crushed trail through the brush. Footprints in the mud — large, booted. A broken branch hanging low, as if snapped by someone pushing through.

  Then he saw the clearing.

  A camp. Simple. A small fire pit with a cooking pot suspended over coals. A tattered canvas shelter propped up by wooden poles. Two crates. A bundle of clothes drying on a line.

  No people.

  Not yet.

  Caleb crouched behind a thicket, breathing slow and quiet. His eyes scanned the camp. No movement. No sound but the crackle of embers and the rustle of leaves.

  He waited.

  Caleb waited longer than he needed to.

  A full five minutes passed, crouched in the underbrush, knees aching, eyes fixed on the small camp. Still no movement. No voices. No return.

  Whoever had made the fire wasn’t here — or they weren’t coming back.

  Eventually, necessity outweighed caution.

  He stepped into the clearing, slow and quiet. Every footfall sounded too loud in the silence. The fire had burned low, reduced to red embers, but still warm. Recently used. Maybe less than an hour ago.

  He checked the crates first. One was sealed with rope — rough hemp cord tied in a clumsy knot. Caleb undid it carefully, his fingers shaking slightly from hunger and nerves.

  Inside: dried roots, a cloth-wrapped loaf of hard bread, two small clay jars, and a knife.

  He hesitated, then picked up the bread and sniffed it. Stale. Roughly baked. But not spoiled.

  "I'm sorry," he murmured quietly — to the owner, or maybe to himself — and tore off a chunk.

  It tasted like sawdust, but it sat in his stomach like gold.

  He didn’t take more than he needed. A few bites of bread. One jar — it smelled like weak tea or maybe a kind of broth. He left the rest untouched. He didn’t want to be a thief. Just someone trying to stay alive.

  The knife was tempting. Iron, not steel, and crudely forged, but solid. He ran a thumb along the edge — not sharp, but usable.

  He tucked it into his belt.

  The clothes on the line were simple — brown shirt, linen trousers, a pair of worn boots. No markings. No crest or insignia.

  Whoever lived here wasn’t military. Probably a traveler. Maybe a trapper.

  Caleb stepped back from the camp and looked around one last time. Still no sign of anyone.

  He whispered again, “Thank you,” and retreated the way he came, moving quickly but silently, disappearing back into the trees before anyone could catch him standing there.

  He didn’t know if he’d just made a mistake. But he felt better with food in his gut and a blade at his side.

  Still, the question pressed harder than ever now — not where he was, but what this place was.

  The tools.The clothes.The camp.

  Everything was real. Tangible. But nothing matched what he remembered.No brands. No zippers. No metal tools. No plastic.No sign of modern civilization.

  Only questions. And a growing, gnawing sense that the world he’d woken up in had no place on any map he’d ever seen.

  The forest deepened again as Caleb moved away from the camp. The trees closed in, their trunks thick with moss and bark that peeled like old paper. The undergrowth grew denser, and his progress slowed.

  He walked for what felt like hours, weaving through roots and branches, his stomach tight and his legs heavy. Occasionally he’d stop to rest, crouching on fallen logs or leaning against trees, listening — always listening.

  But there was still no sound of cars.No buzzing power lines.No engine noise.No distant drone of civilization.

  The silence was absolute, and it was starting to get to him.

  He found a stream, shallow and clear, winding through the roots of the forest like a silver thread. He drank with his hands, the water shockingly cold, enough to make his teeth ache. But it was clean — or at least, cleaner than anything he’d ever drunk before. It tasted of stone and snowmelt.

  He followed the stream for a while. Water meant life. Life meant people — or something close to it.

  As he walked, he tried to piece things together. He wasn’t injured. He wasn’t hallucinating. Everything around him felt real. Solid. Physical.But that just made it worse.

  He wasn’t dreaming.This wasn’t some abstract vision.This wasn’t a drug trip.

  So where the hell was he?

  The idea that he’d been kidnapped had faded. No one went through this much trouble just to throw someone into a forest without surveillance, a ransom note, or a threat.

  And the more he thought about it, the more wrong his body felt — not hurt, but... different. He felt rested. As if he hadn’t just passed out in an alleyway or fallen asleep on a bus. His muscles weren’t stiff the way they should’ve been. His head wasn’t foggy. His skin, though cold, didn’t show signs of dehydration.

  It was as if he’d woken up from nothing. As if time itself had skipped.

  He frowned and pressed a hand to his chest. His heartbeat was calm. Too calm.

  This doesn't make sense.

  He spotted movement up ahead — a flicker of motion between the trees. He froze, crouched low.

  It was an animal.

  Four-legged, with pale fur and long ears. Something like a deer, but leaner. Its antlers looked almost translucent in the sunlight. Not a species he recognized. It looked at him once — directly — then turned and bounded away with a soundless grace that chilled him more than the wind.

  That’s not right, he thought.

  That wasn’t normal wildlife.

  He moved on, slower now. More cautious.

  Whatever world he was in, it wasn’t Earth. Not the Earth he knew. Not even a remote part of it. Everything here looked like it had been pulled from a storybook and stripped of all modern fingerprints.

  No wrappers. No fences. No ruins.Just untouched wilderness.

  And Caleb Voss, barefoot in someone else’s dream.