"When the world rots, it does not mourn the fruit that falls.
It celebrates the tree that withers."
⸻
Cain drifted.
Or maybe he was sinking.
There was no air. No direction. No weight to his body — only the pulsing red that burned beneath his skin like infection, or grief. A suffocating nothingness swallowed everything, even the idea of pain. This wasn't sleep. This wasn't death.
This was something worse.
He was whole again — arms, legs, chest — the body they tore from him rebuilt like a cruel joke. He moved his fingers. His pulse beat steady. But he knew.
This wasn't his body anymore.
It was a container.
A vessel built from spite and sorrow.
⸻
Around him, the void bled red.
It pulsed.
It whispered.
Not with voices.
But with memory.
Stones thrown at him by the people he once protected.
The priest averting his eyes like he was filth.
His own mother's silence as he screamed her name.
⸻
Cain gritted his teeth.
The silence felt alive now. Breathing. Mocking. Pulling at the edges of his thoughts like claws.
His footsteps echoed on nothing. Beneath him, something began to take shape — a landscape torn from nightmares: a molten path of jagged stone winding through an abyss, rivers of lava gurgling with the faint screams of souls buried beneath its fire. Skulls littered the edges, eyes still wide with agony, as if trapped in their final moments.
⸻
Cain kept walking.
He didn't know why. There was nowhere to go.
But the rage...
The rage kept him moving.
"They killed me like a dog in the street."
"They cheered."
"They smiled."
He clenched his fists. The red aura coiled tighter around his limbs, like it fed on the hatred growing in him.
And then—
A voice.
Clear. Cold. Familiar.
"Kaen."
⸻
Cain froze.
His blood iced over.
No one had called him that name in months.
Not since the day he was exiled. Not since the world spat on his name like it was poison. That name had died in the mud, buried beneath the boots of knights and the silence of friends.
His head turned slowly.
And what he saw...
Was himself.
But not.
⸻
The man stood barefoot, tall and still, inhumanly pale with white hair falling to his shoulders like silk soaked in ash. His body was lean, coiled like a beast waiting to strike. Across his skin, glowing runes moved — alive, shifting, whispering in languages the dead forgot.
But it was his eyes that struck hardest.
Red. Endless. Hollow.
A hatred so old it had fossilized.
The pressure around Cain — Kaen — changed instantly. The void bowed to this man.
⸻
"Kaen," the figure said again.
It shattered something in him.
Like glass cracking under pressure.
His body dropped to its knees involuntarily. The weight in the air became intolerable, like the entire world wanted him flattened into the dirt.
His breath hitched.
"Don't call me that."
⸻
The man grinned.
It wasn't kind.
It was like watching a wolf grin at a rabbit with a broken spine.
"Why not?"
"Because it hurts?"
"Because it reminds you that you begged for love like a mutt and got piss instead?"
He took a step forward. The ground cracked under his feet, leaking smoke and bone.
"You can bury a name, Kaen."
"But you can't bury the truth."
"You were always worthless."
"A dog dressed in light — nothing more."
"The moment you lost your magic, they saw you for what you really were."
⸻
"Weak."
"Disposable."
"Unclean."
⸻
Kaen tried to breathe, but the weight in the air was crushing his lungs.
He whispered:
"Who... are you?"
⸻
The man knelt — and the lava dimmed around him like it was afraid.
"I am the first."
"The one who killed his brother."
"The one cursed by God and claimed by Hell."
"I am Cain."
⸻
Kaen blinked. Eyes wide. Mouth trembling.
"But... I'm..."
Cain laughed.
"You're nothing."
"You took my name thinking it would save you from your past. But your past is sewn into your skin, Kaen."
"You were born to be forgotten. Erased. Buried alive by people too blind to see the fire they pissed on."
He stood tall again.
"They threw you out like trash. And you still cried for them."
"You were still hoping she'd scream for you."
"Still waiting for someone to come running through the crowd and beg for your life."
"No one came."
⸻
Kaen trembled. He tried to speak — to protest — but all he could do was listen.
And Cain's voice was a dagger in the ear.
⸻
"You were naive."
"You believed in light. You believed in kindness."
"And the world raped that belief and hung you by the throat for trusting it."
⸻
The tattoos on Cain's body began to glow.
"You are what happens when mercy dies screaming."
"And I am what comes after."
He raised his palm — and red fire bled from his skin into the void.
The mist swarmed Kaen, slamming into his chest like a charging beast.
He screamed — not in pain, but in memory.
⸻
"Ten percent of my hatred," Cain whispered.
"Ten percent of the Morning Star's will."
"Enough to kill gods."
"Enough to rip this world inside-out."
"And yet..."
He knelt one final time — face-to-face with Kaen.
"You'll forget all of this."
"You'll wake up with scars that ache like hell, but no clue where they came from."
"The only thing you'll remember..."
He grinned again.
"...is that everything you once loved deserves to burn."
⸻
Kaen arched back, body glowing with cursed light, and the void imploded, flooding into him, carving symbols across his skin like fire branding flesh.
His last breath before losing consciousness was a whisper.
"I hate them".