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I woke alone

Artifact Intent​

  • Story role: Day Opening for Day 1. Establishes the MC's body, kit, and sensorium. Anchors the diegetic register the rest of Day 1 inherits.
  • Playable-lore position: ruin -> clue step; the MC themselves is the first clue. Triggers the survive thread and seeds the Journal as a recurring surface.
  • What this artifact must not claim: any cosmological explanation for arrival; any named anchor or named cosmological state; any visible divine mark; any narrator voice that knows more than the MC.

Narrative Surface Notes​

  • Artifact shape: handwritten diary entry. Short paragraphs, breath cuts, sentences that trail.
  • Player-facing uncertainty: the MC does not know where they are, how they got there, or why their body feels wrong. The MC does not interpret; the MC observes.
  • Journal or objective linkage: surfaces in the Journal as the opening Day 1 entry; the act0.survive.get-up objective is the immediate next step.

Body Draft​

I woke alone.

The light is wrong for noon. Too low. Or I am wrong about the time. My hand hurts when I close it. Knuckles. Cold ground.

What the fuck. Where is this.

I sat up slow because the ribs did not want it. No blood on my shirt. Nothing torn. The pack is still on the strap across my chest like I lay down with it. I did not lie down with it. I do not remember lying down.

Inventory while it is in front of me. One tin pot, dented. A coil of twine, short. The knife with the chipped edge — still in the sheath. A bandage, the one with the smell, half-used. Flint. Two strips of jerky. A water skin, near empty. Wool I keep meaning to mend.

No phone. Of course no phone.

I checked my skin for marks. The way you do when you wake and the world has slipped. Nothing. A bruise on the forearm that could be from anything. No cuts that explain the headache. No signature on me. I do not know why I wrote that — "no signature on me" — but I wrote it and I am leaving it.

The trees here look like trees. The moss looked like English moss, but greener, and it grew up the stones in a pattern I did not recognise. The stones are old. I do not know what kind of old yet.

The air is quieter than it should be. Like a room after someone has stopped talking.

I am going to stand up. I am going to find water before I do anything else.

Playable Consequences​

  • Immediate consequence: act0.survive.get-up resolves; act0.survive.find-water opens as the next directive.
  • Follow-up clue, mission, site, or world-state change: Journal accepts diary entries on this thread; later entries chain off this opening.
  • Related branch or linear continuation: linear; the next entry is act0-day1-water-first.

Review Notes​

  • Open questions: the placeholder name for the failing anchor is left absent on purpose; later entries continue to use "the old stones" descriptive form.
  • Canon-delta follow-up: none. The MC's no-mark and Earth-origin facts are already hard canon in gl-mc-corebound.md and gl-mc-earthborn-backgrounds.md.
  • Audit carry-forward: keep Day-1 entries single-authored and avoid parallel prose channels.