CHAPTER 1213: PRESSURE CREATES DIAMONDS (1)..

He’d found a stranger dying in the street after the first collapse. The sky had cracked open overhead, the air screaming, and Cain had dragged the man under cover. Put pressure on the wounds. Begged him to hold on.

The man died minutes later.

Cain dropped his hand. "Why are you showing me this?"

The monolith didn’t respond.

The image shifted again—fast, seamless. A new scene. Cain fighting off a creature in a burning street. Cain tearing through debris to pull out a trapped child. Cain smashing a window to rescue someone screaming from inside.

Cain running into danger again and again while everyone else fled.

He didn’t want to watch this.

He didn’t want to see the truth the monolith was carving in front of him.

"You think this means something?" Cain whispered. "You think this makes me some hero? I didn’t have a choice."

The monolith flickered—once—then settled on another image.

Cain, alone, standing in a room full of bodies.

Bodies he hadn’t been able to save.

He staggered back.

His knees buckled, hitting the stone hard. He pressed a hand to his mouth, fighting the rising wave of nausea.

"I didn’t ask for this," he whispered.

"I didn’t ask for any of this."

He expected silence.

Instead, a voice rippled through the cavern.

Not the Watcher’s.

Not human.

Not even a voice, exactly—just meaning, pouring directly into him.

The tear chose you because you step forward while your world steps back.

Cain’s pulse jumped. "Get out of my head."

You run toward the screaming. Not away from it.

"Stop."

Purpose is not granted. It is revealed.

"Stop talking!"

The monolith brightened until he had to shield his face. The images vanished. The black surface split open down the middle, peeling apart like liquid glass tugged by invisible hands.

Light spilled out. Violent. Blinding.

Cain stumbled to his feet. The cavern shook, dust falling like snowfall around him.

From within the monolith’s open core, a presence stirred.

Not physical.

Not manifested.

Something conceptual made almost-real.

A shape began forming—tall, humanoid, burning like a silhouette carved from sunfire.

Cain instinctively stepped back.

"What are you?"

The presence didn’t speak.

Instead, it extended an arm—slow, deliberate.

Light dripped from its fingertips like molten metal.

Cain raised both hands defensively.

"Don’t. I’m warning you."

But the presence didn’t attack.

It pointed.

Past him.

Cain turned.

A tear—much smaller than the one he’d crossed—had formed behind him. A thin vertical rip in the air, shimmering like oil on water. Edges frayed. Colors bending wrong.

A portal.

A way out.

Cain stared, stunned.

"You want me to go through that?"

The presence didn’t nod.

Didn’t speak.

Didn’t move.

But the meaning was clear.

Cain approached the tear slowly.

It pulsed.

Glowed.

Hummed.

Warm.

Almost welcoming.

He stopped inches from its surface.

If he passed through...

Would he end up in the same world he’d left?

A new one?

A worse one?

He glanced back at the presence.

It was fading.

The monolith was sealing itself.

The cavern walls were trembling harder.

He didn’t have time.

Cain took a breath that hurt his cracked ribs and scorched lungs and whispered:

"...if this drops me into another nightmare, I swear I’m punching whatever god is running this circus."

And he stepped through.

The tear snapped shut behind him.

The cavern vanished.

And Cain fell.

Cain approached the lantern with deliberate steps, each one quiet, measured. The forest didn’t welcome him, but it didn’t reject him either; it simply watched. The mist parted just enough for him to see where he was walking, swirling around his boots like something alive. The lantern creaked on its hook, swaying even though the air was still.

Up close, the thing looked older than the branch it hung from. Iron frame, cracked glass, a flame that burned too steadily, too cleanly—no flicker, no smoke, just a constant warm glow that made Cain’s instincts tighten.

Nothing natural glowed like that.

He extended a hand, stopping centimeters short of touching the lantern. Heat radiated from it, but faintly, as if it were holding back its true temperature.

Then the flame bent.

Not sideways, not upward—it bent toward Cain’s hand like it sensed him.

Cain pulled back instantly, muscles tensing, gaze scanning the trees.

"Alright," he murmured to himself, "so this place is not normal. Good to know."

A stick snapped somewhere deeper in the woods.

Cain shifted his stance, lowering himself reflexively. He didn’t have his weapons—the {Golden Tyrant} was gone, the tear had taken it. His metal manipulation was dormant without mana. He was, for the first time in a long time, frighteningly mortal.

He reached down, picked up a sturdy branch, and gripped it like a club.

Another sound. Leaves shifting. A slow exhale that did not belong to him.

Cain stepped back until his shoulder brushed the lantern’s branch.

The flame reacted again—this time swelling just slightly, brightening, like it was responding to the presence lurking between the trees.

Cain frowned.

"Warning me...?" he muttered.

The forest answered with silence.

Then a shape moved between the trunks. A tall silhouette—lean, human-shaped, but its arms were too long, its neck too stiff, its movements too smooth. It walked into the faint radius of lantern light, and Cain saw enough to know it wasn’t human.

Its skin was ashen, almost bark-colored, with long ridges crawling up its limbs like carved seams. Its eyes reflected the lantern’s glow but did not blink.

It stared at Cain.

Cain tightened his grip on the makeshift weapon. "You lost?"

The creature tilted its head sharply, too sharply. Something cracked in its neck as it adjusted, observing him with slow, unnatural precision.

It took a step forward.

The lantern’s flame flared.

The creature stopped instantly, as if the light physically held it back.

Cain’s brow furrowed.

"So the light matters. Got it."

He lifted the lantern from the branch—hesitating only long enough to confirm touching it wouldn’t melt his skin—and found it surprisingly manageable. Warmer than he liked. He held it up toward the creature.

It hissed.

Not audibly—Cain didn’t hear anything. But the creature recoiled as if struck, its form shuddering out of the lantern’s glow and dissolving into the shadows. No footsteps, no rustling, just gone.