You are in the tundra plains of Eurasia, 30,000 years ago.

The mist was thick, smelling of wet earth and impending snow. You have been tracking a small, hardy herd of reindeer through the sub-arctic spruce forest for some time, as they graze and move, their hairy hooves clicking against the frozen, boggy tundra.

Then, the wind shifted, bringing with it an odor of wet iron and musk. The reindeer pause and look up.

Above the thick mist and the heads of the reindeer, something moved—something far too large to be a deer. Your eyes widen at the sight of a pair of large antlers appearing behind the reindeer herd. But these weren’t ordinary antlers; you can’t even describe the sheer scale. They were a sprawling, palmate canopy of bone, easily twelve feet across, arching high above the pines like a living canopy.

A few reindeer step aside, finally revealing the antlers’ true owner as it strides past them: a Megaloceros. It stood nearly seven feet tall at the shoulder, towering over the reindeer herd. The reindeer, normally wary, seemed to scatter around it not in panic, but in deference, instantly reduced to mere shadows against its sheer bulk.

The giant deer paused, turning its head with those massive antlers. The animal snorted, a deep, resonant sound, and began to rake the snowy ground with a shovel-shaped branch of its antlers to graze alongside the reindeer herd, seemingly ignoring you...