Soros looked at his son. He didn't say a word—he simply gazed quietly at Kaine.
At this point, there was no need to say anything more. Kaine had already understood: from the beginning, his father had never intended to bring him back into the family.
All he ever wanted was for Kaine to die out there.
It was only Kaine's failure to fulfill that wish that disrupted the plan.
He survived—and thrived. Thrived even more than those beloved children of his father.
Kaine clenched the steel trident in his hand. He didn't want to admit this fact. He still held onto a sliver of hope.
Maybe... maybe his father only wanted him dead because of his mother's death.
Earth-001.
Now the stronghold of the Inheritor family, this universe—this castle—didn't originally belong to them. It once belonged to the Master Weaver, who now weaves portals for them.
Soros had led the entire clan into this universe to hunt down the Master Weaver, simply because they knew that Spider-Men would eventually destroy them. They wanted to use the Master Weaver to find a way to the other Spider-Men.
The Master Weaver—a godlike being who commanded the Spider Totems. He guided the birth and growth of every Spider-Man.
Peter Parker becoming Spider-Man had never been a coincidence. It was destiny.
But unlike his bloodthirsty siblings, Kaine had never wanted to kill. Not even those who might one day harm them.
He preferred to create, to protect life. But all of that made him an outcast among the Inheritors.
He despised the Inheritors' methods—slaughtering Spider-Men to prolong their own lineage. And in return, the other Inheritors looked down on him.
But how could one child's opinion possibly change the will of an entire family? In the end, they set their sights on the Master Weaver—the one who controlled the fate of all Spider-Men.
During that battle, Kaine's mother—who was also the mother of his siblings—hoped Kaine would personally defeat the Master Weaver.
To "toughen up" her disappointing son.
Because Kaine was so unlike her other sons.
Her other children seemed born to kill.
Especially Daemons. Daemons had constantly begged his mother to let him be the first to attack. He was the largest—he deserved that right.
But their mother refused. She wanted Kaine to lead the assault.
That infuriated Daemons, who believed his mother was coddling Kaine far too much.
Regardless, in the end, Kaine did reach the Master Weaver. But as he stood before the Inheritors' most favored child, the Master Weaver spoke in a calm, understated tone:
"You are different from your brothers and sisters. Death brings you no joy—not even the slightest bit."
Kaine froze at the words. The steel trident in his hand gleamed, but he just couldn't bring himself to strike.
Behind him, his mother's voice urged him on: "Do it, Kaine! Now!"
But what the Master Weaver said had shaken him. He had touched upon a truth buried deep in Kaine's heart—and that hesitation cost him everything.
"You long to create, not destroy."
In that brief moment of hesitation, Kaine's mother leaped forward, raising her axe to cleave the Master Weaver's head.
As she sprang through the air, she shouted, "You've disappointed me too much! Since it's come to this, I'll—"
She didn't even finish her sentence.
The Master Weaver snapped a single strand of silk—and Kaine's mother vanished like dust in the wind, disappearing completely before the eyes of all the Inheritors.
In that one instant, Kaine earned himself a lifelong curse—a ghost of regret that would haunt him forever.
Soros arrived shortly afterward. He and the rest of Kaine's siblings finally subdued the Master Weaver.
But none of his family could bear to look at Kaine anymore.
They made him wear a mask—and from then on, he was exiled.
To earn their forgiveness, Kaine began hunting countless Spider-Men.
Only when the portals opened did he allow himself hope.
Maybe this time... maybe this portal would lead him home.
But each one only sent him into another world where more Spider-Men awaited slaughter.
And now, someone had told him the truth: his father never wanted to see him. He never intended to bring Kaine back. He just wanted him to die out there.
"Was it because of my mother?" Kaine looked at Soros, hoping—just this once—for a clear answer. Something that would at least prove that his mother had meant something to Soros.
But Soros didn't answer. He simply returned to the battlefield against the Spider-Men.
"I suppose your father once told you," Bruce said, standing before the Master Weaver, looking up at the face hidden behind the metal mask, "that if you killed enough Spiders and claimed enough Spider Totems, you could return home and live happily with your family. How long ago was that?"
Bruce could feel something from the Master Weaver—something strikingly similar to Kaine. But right now, he couldn't be sure.
The Master Weaver looked down at the man before him, a man whose body radiated darkness.
By all logic, the man before him should've become a terrifying monster long ago. And yet he was still... human. Still seemed to strive to be a hero.
The Master Weaver conjured two scrolls and handed them to Bruce.
Bruce opened them. The runes on them were unfamiliar—he didn't recognize a single one.
But judging by the Master Weaver's solemn demeanor, he was certain these scrolls were of great importance. Perhaps they even held the key to why the Inheritors needed the Bride, the Other, and the Scion.
Bruce turned his gaze toward Kaine, who stood nearby. He figured Kaine might be able to give him a satisfying answer.
Kaine remained lost in confusion. He stared at Soros, who was still fighting the Spider-Men.
He hoped—just hoped—that Soros would call out to him now.
Even though he knew that, in this situation, asking for an explanation for his exile was a hopeless dream... he still believed, at the very least, he could fight alongside them.
"Sometimes," Bruce said as he walked up to Kaine and placed the scrolls in front of him, "you'll find like-minded friends in the most unexpected places."
"I think you'll find something in here you've always wanted to know."
Bruce hadn't understood a single word on the scrolls. But he believed one of them was about the Spiders... and the other, about the Inheritor who never fit in.
And Bruce was right—Kaine could read the runes.
Kaine glanced at the bat beside him. Part of him wanted to reject the scroll.
This man had crushed his final hope.
But now, more than anything, Kaine needed to know: Had his mother ever truly meant anything to Soros?
Yet when Kaine actually saw what was written in the scroll—what had been recorded—
His will shattered.
He sank to his knees, head bowed, unable to believe the truth inscribed before his eyes.
They had begun their counterattack.
"Who are you?" Karn noticed the bat in front of him.
Even though he hadn't been home for a long time, Karn still knew—this wasn't a place just anyone could enter.
Even lovers of his siblings wouldn't be allowed in.
Let alone those guys—how could they possibly have lovers?
"Darkness. Pure darkness." The Weaver took the liberty of introducing Bruce.
Those words made Karn pause for a moment.
But the next second, a figure crashed through the castle wall and landed directly in the main hall.
It was Brix.
"Karn?" Brix looked at the man holding the steel trident and said in disbelief, "Looks like your exile is over. We need you now."
Brix wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. These spiders were indeed just pests, but even pests could cause harm when there were too many of them.
Even to a natural predator.
Bruce quickly picked up on the information in Brix's words—this successor standing in front of him had been exiled.
That explained what the Ultimate Spider-Man and the others had said earlier—why members of the inheritor family would fight among themselves.
Because they didn't see Karn as one of their own.
They even wished Karn would die out there.
Or rather, it wasn't just them—it was their patriarch who wanted Karn dead.
"I want to know—is my clone, Jessica, on comms right now?" Bruce began trying to contact Jessica from the clone squad.
"Boss, miss me?"
"Is there a clone named Karn in the cloning facility? I believe you should have a backup of the data," Bruce asked, looking at the two people in front of him.
Brix saw Bruce's wrist device and immediately rushed at him. "A friend of the spiders?"
Unfortunately, before he could get there, the Spider-Men who had been holding him back surged in and dragged Brix back into the battle.
"No, Boss."
Jessica from Earth-1610 conducted a search as fast as possible. Not only was there no clone named Karn in the cloning facility, there wasn't even anyone with that name on Genix's employee list.
That confirmed it for Bruce—the person standing before him was someone the inheritor family had abandoned.
They called it exile, but in reality, they just wanted him to die out there.
Karn looked at Brix, who was locked in a difficult fight, and instinctively wanted to rush forward to help.
But Bruce was already blocking his way.
Karn didn't care about the bat in front of him. Anyone who stood in the way of him saving his family deserved to die.
He raised his steel trident and thrust it straight at Bruce's face.
"Are they really your family?" Bruce calmly looked at the trident aimed at him, not caring in the slightest whether he'd die beneath it.
The next moment, just before the trident could pierce Bruce's head, it stopped.
"What do you mean?" Karn didn't understand what Bruce was trying to say. Did he think it would save his life?
"Your brothers, your sisters—they can all die and come back. But why is there no backup of you in the clone factory?" Bruce extended a finger and gently pushed the trident away.
"Clone factory? What are you talking about?" Karn had been wandering outside for so long, he knew very little about what had happened within the family.
But instinctively, he felt that what Bruce said was important.
"Hunting Spider-Men—you must know how hard it is to kill these chatterbox pests with spider totems," Bruce said. Just then, Peter Parker and the others burst in, and couldn't help but roll their eyes at Bruce's description.
"He kind of sounds… mean," Peter Parker commented to the Ultimate Spider-Man beside him.
Ultimate Spider-Man didn't say anything.
In fact, he quite agreed with Bruce. Even he thought having so many Spider-Men gathered together was a headache.
"You were probably seriously injured—almost died. But guess what? Have your brothers and sisters ever truly died?" Bruce stepped closer to Karn.
He was now standing very close.
Karn didn't know how to respond.
Because it was true—he had nearly died a few times at the hands of Spider-Men. And afterward, he had met his siblings again. Given how powerful some of those Spider-Men were, it was hard to believe they could've survived encounters with them.
But at the time, he hadn't thought too much about it.
"They never saw you as family. What they really wanted was for you to die out there," Bruce said, gently patting Karn on the shoulder.
"Boom!!!"
At that moment, Solus burst in with a giant spider.
The enormous spider was actually overpowering the patriarch of the inheritor clan.
Karn looked at Solus.
After barely managing to overturn the spider in front of him, Solus suddenly saw Karn standing there, looking at him.
But his first instinct upon seeing Karn wasn't to tell him to kill the nearby spiders.
It was to frown—almost reflexively.
He hated Karn.
It was a clear expression.
"Now do you understand?" Bruce also saw the look in Solus's eyes. He was sure Karn had seen it too.
Someone who had lived for hundreds of years and killed countless spiders—how could he not notice the hatred in his father's eyes?
"So the whole exile thing… it was all a lie, wasn't it?" Karn looked at Solus.
The Ultimate Spider-Man beside him was about to act, but was stopped.
Jessica from Earth-1610 shook her head.
She more or less understood what her boss was trying to do.
(End of Chapter)
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