45000 BC
When I accidentally trigger an ancient anomaly in a Spanish cave, I am thrusted 45,000 years into the past into an Ice Age world where Neanderthals still walk the Earth. Injured and alone, I rescued by Ika, a young Neanderthal woman cast out from her own clan. As we struggle to survive in a landscape of mammoths, cave lions, and bitter glacial winters, an unlikely bond forms between the modern human and the woman from a doomed species. I must navigate the dangerous politics between scattered Neanderthal clans and newly arrived Homo sapiens while hiding a terrible truth I know Ika's people have only a few thousand years left. Caught between two worlds, I face an impossible choice: attempt to return to my own time, or remain in the past with a woman who has shown him what humanity truly means. But my very presence might be the catalyst that changes history forever or worse, ensures it unfolds exactly as he remembers. A story of survival, forbidden connection, and the love across time itself
OPENING_SCENE
The pain hit first a searing spike through my skull that drove me to my knees. The limestone beneath my palms felt wrong, too rough, too cold. The LED headlamp that should have been strapped to my forehead was gone, along with my equipment pack. I forced my eyes open. The cave mouth yawned before me, but instead of the afternoon sunshine I entered by, a gray dawn leaked across unfamiliar terrain. Where the parking area should have been, a river curved through a valley of scattered pines and l