The faint horizon bent inward, urging movement. Not physically pushing—but making standing still feel wrong. Unnatural. As if the entire place expected Cain to walk.

His brother's voice cracked. "This isn't a request. It's a directive."

Cain's eyes hardened.

"Then let's get it over with," he muttered.

He took a step toward the shadows.

The monolith circle opened like a gate.

Cain stepped through.

His brother followed, terrified but unwilling to leave him alone.

Every step across the black glass felt heavier—even though the ground made no sound. The silhouettes grew clearer with distance.

Some were human-sized.

Some were giant.

Some were twisted.

Some had too many limbs.

Cain's breath caught.

The nearest silhouette leaned forward—not as movement, but as if time shifted around it—and revealed a distorted mask-like face with hollow, elongated eyes stretching from one cheek to the other.

It wasn't alive.

But it wasn't dead.

It was a possibility.

A version.

A fragment of something that once could have been.

His brother whispered, "Cain… these are alternative selves."

Cain froze.

"What?"

"Not yours. Not mine. But someone's. Variants. Scrapped iterations. Attempts."

The nearest silhouette's edges rippled, distorting.

Cain lifted the lantern instinctively.

The flame rejected the silhouette—pushing it back with a pressure that cracked the glass beneath its feet.

Cain clenched his jaw.

"What is this place?" he whispered.

His brother looked hollow.

"This isn't a graveyard," he murmured. "It's a workshop."

Cain stiffened.

The silhouettes watched without eyes.

The monoliths hummed.

The ground rippled with expectation.

The voice spoke again—

"Bearer.

Return what was taken.

Or become what was intended."

Cain tightened his grip on the lantern.

"Over my dead body."

The silhouettes shifted.

The ground cracked.

The sky bent inward.

And the workshop of abandoned realities finally woke up.

Cain hit the ground hard enough to drive the air from his lungs. Stone dust exploded around him, stinging his eyes, but the pain snapped him awake. His body remembered things before his mind did—how to roll with the impact, how to brace, how to get back on his feet even when everything ached.

He stood.

He was still here.

Not a vision. Not a dream. Not dead. Not absent.

The world around him writhed like a wounded animal. The cavern he'd fallen into pulsed with a slow, red heartbeat, its walls rising and falling as if the stone itself breathed. Slabs of rock floated in midair, shifting like drifting islands. Gravity twisted in places; sand poured upward in spirals. Light crawled across surfaces like living veins.

Cain stared at it all with one thought cutting through the noise: This place wasn't meant to exist.

A voice answered from behind him.

"Neither were you, by the rules of the Divine Will."

Cain turned sharply.

A figure stood on one of the floating slabs—a tall silhouette with white hair falling to the shoulders, robes stitched with symbols that rearranged themselves whenever Cain tried to focus on them. His eyes burned a blue-white that reminded Cain of lightning frozen mid-strike.

A Watcher.

A real one.

Not Fallen. Not corrupted. Not broken.

Still pure.

Still connected to the Will.

And staring at Cain like he was a glitch in the universe.

Cain didn't bother asking the obvious questions. He cut straight to the point.

"What is this place?"

The Watcher's gaze slid across the cavern. "A faultline. A tear in the original design. Formed the moment you refused to die where you were supposed to."

Cain felt a cold pulse run under his skin.

"There was no 'supposed to.'"

"There always is," the Watcher said. "The Divine Will writes beginnings and endings. It does not enjoy improvisation."

A shard of floating stone drifted too close; Cain smacked it aside. "Get to the part that matters. Why drag me here?"

"I didn't," the Watcher said. "You did."

Cain froze.

The Watcher lifted a hand, tapping a fingertip against the air. Light rippled outward, revealing a thin silver thread extending from Cain's chest into the shifting dark beyond the cavern.

Cain's heartbeat stuttered.

His thread.

His life.

His fate.

Whatever you wanted to call it—there it was.

But it wasn't clean. It wasn't smooth. It frayed, split, tangled, and knotted on itself, branching into dozens of impossible directions before weaving back together again. It looked like someone had fought the universe and refused to play by its rules.

The Watcher circled him slowly.

"You've been breaking the pattern since the moment you were born. Mortals tug their threads sometimes—rarely enough to matter. But you…" He exhaled. "You rip."

Cain swallowed a dry knot in his throat. "If all of this is because of me, tell me why now everything is collapsing."

"Because you're reaching a point where the story can no longer bend around your choices." The Watcher drew a glowing line in the air, and the cavern reacted, rumbling like thunder. "It must snap… or rewrite."

Cain's jaw tightened. "So you're here to kill me."

"If that were the goal, you'd already be gone."

The Watcher stepped closer. "I'm here to give you a choice."

Cain waited.

"You can surrender the thread," the Watcher said. "Return it to the pattern. Accept the fate written for you—without resistance, without deviation. The world stabilizes. The fractures close. Your existence becomes… clean."

Cain didn't blink.

"And the other option?"

"You keep the thread unchanged. Keep ripping. Keep bending the world until the entire design reshapes around you." The Watcher looked almost amused. "It will be chaos. Dangerous. Uncertain. But yours."

Cain didn't need time to think.

"Choice two."

The Watcher sighed. "I assumed as much."

His hand snapped forward.

Light slammed into Cain's chest, pinning him against the cavern wall. His muscles locked, his breath cut off, and the thread in front of him brightened until it seared the air.

Cain growled through clenched teeth. "Thought you said you weren't here to kill me."

"I'm not," the Watcher said, stepping closer. "I'm here to test whether you're capable of carrying the weight of the choice you just made."

The pressure increased. The light burned. The thread vibrated like a live wire, and Cain felt it—raw, electric, ripping through him, pulling memories and futures and possibilities into a violent storm behind his eyes.