In the darkness of unconsciousness, Cain drifted.
There was no pain now. No light. No weight of a body to anchor him. Only silence, vast and endless. But it was not emptiness... it was something much heavier than pain.
Memory.
It came not like a flood, but a storm of broken shards as if fragments of another life, one that was not his but somehow was.
Flashes of a quiet village. The scent of stew cooking over a fire. The creak of an old door. A boy laughing as he ran through fields of wind-blown grass.
This was not the world he had come from. There was no Divine Towers here. No spell matrices carved into cities. No Sigils tattooed on every warrior's skin.
This world was… simpler.
Harsher, perhaps. But not cruel in the same way.
Not until they came.
The memories twisted, warping into something more chaotic. Screaming. Heat. Wind.
A blur of color and destruction. Red and silver. One wielded fire. The other, slicing gales. And caught in the middle of it all—Cain Vox.
A boy of sixteen.
Small. Frightened. Holding a bloody rabbit by its hind legs and wondering if he would get scolded for getting home late.
He had no time to scream.
A boulder, thrown by the chaos of the storm, struck him like the fist of a titan. There was a snap, a rush of pain, and then…
Nothing.
Cain—the other Cain, the one whose soul burned with the curse of gods—watched these memories unravel with eerie detachment.
At first, they grated. His mind couldn't comprehend them. They didn't belong to him. They clashed with his thoughts like two languages spoken in the same mouth. The boy's innocence, his simplicity, his helplessness... it felt foreign.
And the pain. Not just the physical. The soul-deep ache of conflict. The pain he'd felt since awakening wasn't his new body rejecting him.
It was something far more primal.
Two souls trying to occupy the same space. Like trying to jam a square puzzle piece into a triangle-shaped hole. Over and over, colliding, splintering, tearing.
It was madness.
And Cain, in his former life, had faced madness and mastered it.
'This is no different than molding raw mana,' he thought, calm now. 'Crude effort will never work. Force cannot bring harmony. But will… will reshapes all.'
Cain pulled inward, toward the center of himself.
His consciousness condensed, forming something not unlike a soul core—a trick he had learned as a mage in his past life.
A way to isolate the heart of his being and shape it. Focus it.
He reached toward the collision point, the space where his essence clashed endlessly against the broken soul of Cain Vox.
He did not reject it.
He welcomed it.
Pain exploded through his being again, worse than any divine curse or soul hex he had endured. It was as if molten iron was being poured into the mold of his soul.
But he didn't pull away...
He breathed into it... his will sharpening like a chisel against stone.
Slowly, surely, he began to widen.
His soul, hardened by betrayal and rebirth, stretched. Molded. Formed itself around the fractured remains of the boy who had once lived here.
Cain Vox's soul didn't resist. It had no will left. It simply… fit.
The moment it happened, a pulse reverberated through Cain's mind like a gong. And then—
Understanding.
The memories didn't flood in this time. They aligned. Page after page of thought, image, sound—all neatly arranged, like a book opening for the first time.
He was no longer an invader in Cain Vox's body.
He was Cain Vox now.
And Cain Vox… was him.
The first memory to solidify was recent.
A bright morning.
The sun rising behind snow-capped hills. Cain Vox had risen early, stomach growling, grabbing his worn sling and heading out into the sparse woods beyond the fields. His village—Glintmere—was small, tucked between farmland and old trees.
That day he had managed to catch a rabbit, no small feat. He had beamed with pride, thinking he could finally earn praise from his father, Angus, who often worked late into the night tanning hides or treating sick villagers with his knowledge of old medicine.
Cain Vox had taken the long way home, walking near the edge of the fields that bordered the wild grasslands. That was when he saw it—light.
No. Not light.
Devastation.
Two figures—tiny at first—racing across the sky like falling stars. The pressure in the air had shifted, turning cold, then hot, then slicing cold again.
A swirling maelstrom of magic trailed in their wake. They were Gem Masters.
Even now, Cain-the-mage couldn't help but recoil at the sheer carelessness embedded in the memory. These two—whomever they were—had no regard for anything beyond their duel. They fought as if the world around them was not real.
Back in his old world, there were laws, rules, regulations about fights between those with power, whether they be mages, warriors or priests. Even when his companions had betrayed him or when Zeus had scorned him, they had ensured to unleash the wrath away from other people.
But here, it was simply insane.
The first hurled fire.
A roaring wave of crimson incinerated the northern side of Glintmere in an instant. Houses turned to ash. Screams rose—dozens of voices suddenly gone.
The second retaliated with a typhoon of wind, razors embedded in every gust. It churned through livestock pens, sliced through hay bales, and shredded animals mid-step.
Collateral.
Cain Vox had dropped the rabbit.
He took a step forward—and then the wind surged toward him. A rock, no larger than a stool, hurtled toward his head.
He barely had time to raise his hand.
Darkness.
Then… rebirth.
Cain's soul pulsed.
He floated in that strange in-between space still, but now it felt different.
It was no longer chaos.
He was whole.
His name was Cain.
The mage who defied gods.
And the boy who died forgotten.
Together, they formed something new.
Not stronger.
Not wiser.
But anchored.
For the first time in two lives, Cain had a foundation that did not rely on vengeance. He had a life he could build upon, not just burn down.
And yet—
He would not forget.
The gods had stolen one life from him.
Their madness had stolen another.
Never again.
Somewhere distant, Cain felt warmth. A blanket. The scent of herbs. He was still unconscious, but he could sense the world preparing to return.
His eyes would open soon.
And when they did, a reckoning would begin.
Because now he had more than rage.
He had clarity.
And gods help the fools who thought they could continue destroying the world without consequence.