Cain didn’t dream.
There were nightmares, or there was nothing.
So when the world gradually began to form as he slept, he knew that it was the beginning of something horrific.
The ground beneath him shifted from nothingness into muted grass. The air thickened with silence. Flowers bloomed in impossible colors—silver, blue, violet—along the curved path that led through the garden, their petals glowing faintly as though lit from within. The sky hovered in eternal twilight, an ocean of indigo with no stars.
He sighed and began to walk.
The garden hadn’t changed much, but it felt… different this time. Some of the marble statues were cracked, others were scorched at the base. The air held a tension it hadn’t before, like the garden itself started holding its breath.
He reached the fountain.
And she was already there.
Evelyn Raymond stood with her back to him, trailing her fingers in slow, deliberate circles through the trickling water. Her hair shimmered black under the twilight sky, as unchanging as the eternal dusk above. She didn’t speak at first.
“Wearing a new face,” she said. “How quaint.”
Cain arched an eyebrow. “What is it this time?”
“My, aren’t you a patient one?”
He took a slow breath, feeling the nightmare press against his skin like a second layer of clothes. “I’m noticing a pattern with your summons. Is this supposed to be some kind of performance review?”
She turned to face him then, crimson eyes scanning him with casual precision.
“Let’s see,” she mused. “You looted and burned down an estate, broke a soul rift, freed a broken child from slavery, built up a name for yourself, and established a second life with its own name…”
She smiled faintly.
“You’ve been busy, Nick.”
He shrugged. “Cain’s the mask,” he said. “Nick’s the unlucky guy who has to be a hero.”
“Oh, so we’re talking in third-person now?”
He grimaced. “Okay, yeah. That was kind of cringy.”
She laughed. “And how long do you plan to keep that split neat and tidy?” she asked, tilting her head. “I see the idea: doing awful things in a mask and noble things with your face. But in reality, are you seriously going to pretend that there’s still a line?”
He folded his arms. “There is no line. I used to think there was, but there isn’t. I am Nick, and I am Cain. If it feels like my two personas are different people, then it’s probably because you don’t understand me.”
Evelyn rose and approached him slowly, her bare feet silent on the cobblestone path. She stopped just short of him, studying his face as if it were a puzzle she had solved long ago.
“Then let me ask,” she said, voice soft. “Which part of you decided to spare the girl?”
He didn’t answer right away.
Her head tilted slightly. “Was that Nick—the bleeding heart who can’t stomach cruelty? Or was it Cain, the cold-blooded murderer who saw value in breaking her chains?”
He met her gaze. “Does it matter?”
“To me?” Her crimson eyes glittered like wine under moonlight. “No. Honestly, it doesn’t matter at all.”
He sighed. “It wasn’t charity. Lexi is broken. The bare minimum I could do was give her back the ability to control her own life.”
Evelyn rolled her eyes. “But you didn’t take her for utility. You protect her. You shield her from some of your actions. You gave her power over her own chains. If that’s the bare minimum, then that’s not pragmatism. That’s guilt.”
His jaw tightened. “What do you want from me, Evelyn?”
She stepped past him then, circling slowly. “I want nothing,” she said. “But I think you want absolution. Why else would you have accepted my contract? You tell yourself Cain does the dirty work so Nick doesn’t have to. But there’s no mask thick enough to smother conscience. You still dream, don’t you?”
Cain turned his head slightly, voice low. “What’s the difference between a dream and a nightmare?”
Evelyn came to a stop beside the fountain. “You answer first.”
He closed his eyes. “A dream is something you want to return to.” He opened his eyes again. “A nightmare is something that follows you.”
She hummed. “So, which am I?”
“A reminder,” Cain said. “Of what I agreed to. Of what I have to become.”
“You say that like you resent it.”
He shrugged. “Do you think I wanted this fight?”
She scoffed. “Yes. You suck at lying.”
Cain didn’t respond. He just watched her in silence, the windless air heavy with suppressed memory.
Evelyn’s voice dropped lower, the words curling like smoke. “You looked into the void and asked me how to kill a god. And I showed you. I gave you the power. The title. The flame.”
“You did.”
“And was it enough?”
Cain’s jaw shifted, but he didn’t speak.
“Because it worked, Nick,” she said softly. “You burned away an ascendent. You made it leave.” Her smile turned wistful. “You banished something that you couldn’t banish before. That’s growth. A beginning.”
Her words forced him to address his unwanted memories.
“That… thing,” he said. “Why is it here? Is this the world where they came from?”
“So you’ve finally realized,” she said, “that your death on your home planet wasn’t the end of anything. It was only a change of scenery.”
He clenched his fists.
“Is this power you gave me strong enough to beat them?”
She smiled. “Yes and no. You’ve barely begun to scratch Lesser Echelomancy, let alone its true form. If you took Echelomancy alone to its pinnacle, you would be strong enough to fight gods, but your strength would still be bound level to a single world.”
He sighed. “And I assume you won’t elaborate on the difference between Lesser Echelomancy and its true form?”
She giggled. “Maybe another time.”
He rolled his eyes. “Figures. I didn’t realize fighting gods came with so many side quests.”
“It doesn’t,” she said. “You’re the one writing detours. Freeing slaves, protecting beastkin, striking names from little lists… and still, you claim you’re not a hero. Curious, isn’t it? You wear a mask and call it ‘Cain’, but the truth is simpler: you can’t stop being yourself, and you’re inching closer to what you were always meant to become.”
“A god-killer?”
“A judge.”
Cain’s eyes fluttered shut. He sighed.
Her gaze sharpened. “You think that mad dictator ruined your home world because he was strong? No. He won because your world waited too long to judge him. They begged someone else to do the hard thing. Someone like you.”
Cain’s voice was low, hollow. “And now I have to be the one to do it again?”
“You get to decide,” she replied.
“That’d be a first.”
“You always had a choice, Nick. And you’ll always have one.”
He opened his eyes. “Choices are an illusion. The only people who get to make choices are those who have control.”
“Is that why you put on a mask?”
Cain stared at her with the eyes of a man trying very, very hard not to look down at the abyss he already leapt into.
“I put on a mask because I don’t believe in heroes anymore,” he said. “But I do believe in consequences.”
Evelyn watched him in silence, her gaze unreadable.
“Then reap what you sow, Nick. Just remember—judges are not immune to judgment.”
The garden faded. The twilight held its breath.
Cain woke from his sleep.
The memories clung to him like trauma—weightless, but impossible to wash off. Evelyn’s words still rang in his head, sharp as judgment and twice as heavy.
As always—a nightmare.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t stretch, breathe deeply, or shake the memory from his limbs.
Instead, he dressed in silence, holstered his gun, and knocked once on the door to Lexi’s room.
“We’re going,” he said.
She didn’t ask where.
***
The door to Cassian’s backroom swung shut behind them, sealing the scent of spice and varnished wood into the air. The rune-lit chamber was quiet.
Lila didn’t greet them when they entered. She was already there, leaning against a shelf, arms folded, eyes unreadable. The smirk she usually wore had vanished. In its place was a silence sharp enough to draw blood.
Cain shut the door behind him. Lexi stepped in after, her movements small and silent, like someone trying not to disturb a sleeping beast. She hadn’t said much since the dungeon. Her chains whispered against her wrists with every subtle shift.
He broke the silence. “If you’ve got something to say, say it. I don’t like being summoned.”
Lila pushed off the shelf. “I gave you tasks because I wasn’t sure you were worth the trouble. Turns out that you brought a lot more trouble than I could have expected.”
Cain raised an eyebrow. “You’re already in hot water?”
“You said Nick is your cousin, right? Care to tell me why he sold you out to the city council? Actually, why does he even know that you raided the estate?”
He gave a lazy shrug. “That guy always seems to know what I’m up to. Hard to shake someone who knows you as well as you know yourself.”
She stared at him, flat and unreadable.
“You’re treating this like a joke,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’ve got guild enforcers asking me if I’m harboring a rogue. I’ve got clients canceling trades. And I’ve got a dozen eyes crawling through every tunnel between here and the central vault looking for a shadow named Cain.”
He tilted his head. “Sounds annoying.”
She stepped closer. “Don’t test me. If you’re going to burn everything down, I need to know if you’re planning to take me with it.”
His expression didn’t change. “You’re the one who let me in.”
“I let in a smuggler with good instincts and a grudge.” She pointed toward the floor, her voice low. “What I got was a storm front with blood on its heels.”
Cain smirked. “Alright, let’s stop pretending.”
He looked her in the eyes.
His gaze was calm and steady.
Inevitable.
“You know the kind of things that thrive down here. Show me one.”
She blinked. “One what?”
“A farm.”
Her expression didn’t crack, but she stiffened ever so slightly.
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” she said carefully.
“Skill point farms. Monster breeding pits. Whatever form they take, I know that the Underworld has something like that.”
Behind him, Lexi tensed. The whisper of her bindings scraped faintly as she shifted her weight.
“If I’m going to keep working with you, I need to know what you’re standing on—and what you’re willing to step over.”
Lila’s expression cracked, leaking pure disbelief. Her hand twitched like she was weighing the idea of drawing a blade.
“If you’re going to keep working with me?” she repeated. “Excuse me? You’re the one lighting estates on fire, and you think I’m the liability? I was operating just fine until you came along and implicated me with your crazy stunts.”
He shrugged. “Then cut me loose.”
She paused.
He stepped forward—not enough to threaten, just enough to leave no space for pretending they were equals.
“Cut me loose,” he repeated. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you don’t know where the rot is. Tell me you don’t look away.”
Her silence wasn’t hesitation, it was restraint hidden in the line of her jaw and the subtle twitch of her fingers. She was weighing responses like blades.
“You want to prove something?” she said finally. “Burning an estate isn’t how you do it. That’s how you get watched. That’s how you get people like me killed.”
“Maybe some things are worth that.”
Her voice sharpened. “Easy to say when it’s not your neck on the guillotine.”
Cain stepped forward. “You think I’m bluffing?”
“I think you’re dangerous,” she said. “I think you’re angry. And I think people like you leave a trail behind them.”
He didn’t deny it.
He couldn’t deny it.
The silence stretched—long enough for Lexi’s chains to rattle when she shifted uncomfortably.
Then Lila tilted her head. Her gaze dropped briefly to Lexi. The question in her eyes wasn’t spoken, but it didn’t have to be.
“She’s the reason, isn’t she?”
Cain didn’t answer.
She let out a long breath through her nose. “You want a farm?” she said. “Fine. One of the quiet ones. Unregulated. No guards worth naming.”
“But?”
“But if you crack it open, there’s no putting the lid back on. The moment you break it, you’ll stain the color of our little alliance. You understand me?”
Cain met her stare. “I was never interested in being safe.”
She studied him for another second. Then gave the barest nod.
“Ten minutes,” she said. “Be ready.”
***
The underground air was damp with the scent of moss and oil.
Lila led them through a side tunnel Cain hadn’t seen before—narrow, half-lit, its ceiling crawling with old conduits and hanging roots. The torches along the walls burned low as if even the flames were reluctant to mark this route.
Lexi hadn’t spoken since they left the office. She walked a few steps behind, her movements stiff, her eyes forward but unfocused.
Cain didn’t turn around. He could feel the weight of her silence pressing into the back of his skull.
“You said it’s a small site?” he muttered to Lila.
“It is,” she replied without looking back. “Unofficial. No guild sanction or permits, just a few handlers running something they’re not supposed to.”
“And no one’s stopped them?”
“Plenty of people don’t know. The ones who do find it convenient to look away from operations like these.”
The tunnel forked ahead. Lila veered left without hesitation.
Cain glanced at the right-hand path. It was brighter, cleaner, lined with signs and arrow markers. The left smelled like rust and rotting wood.
They walked for another minute in silence. Then Lila spoke, soft, like she was only half-committed to saying it.
“You don’t come back from this clean, you know.”
He said nothing.
“You kick the anthill, the ants don’t just scatter. They swarm.”
Still nothing.
She clicked her tongue. “Whatever you’re expecting to find out there, it’s worse. And if she—” her voice caught ever so slightly as she nodded toward Lexi, “—if she loses it, you’d better be ready.”
Cain didn’t stop walking.
“I am,” he said.
The tunnel spilled them out into a shallow hollow lined with mildew-slick stone. Rusted scaffolding clung to the walls above, forming a partial dome overhead—collapsed in places, like the bones of a ribcage long since picked clean.
In the center of the space stood a squat metal structure. A repurposed warehouse, maybe. The roof sagged. The door hung crooked on a single hinge. It didn’t look like a prison.
That almost made it worse.
No guards. No wards.
Cain stepped forward.
The smell hit him first. Not rot or filth—though both were present—but the sterile tang of magic suppressants and enchanted iron. The kind used in collars and chains.
Lila stopped at the base of the ramp leading to the door, arms folded.
“That’s it,” she said. “They rotate batches every two weeks. Low-level monsters, mostly. Some hybrids. Anything humanoid gets caged.”
Cain looked at her sideways. “Hybrids?”
“Beastkin,” she said, flat. “Young ones. Sometimes they’re easier to ‘train’.”
Behind him, Lexi made a noise.
It was quiet. Just a sharp breath through her nose. But Cain turned, and what he saw stopped him cold.
Her hands were clenched. Her jaw was locked tight. And her eyes—her eyes weren’t unfocused anymore.
They were locked on the building like they could burn it down by sheer force of will.
“She doesn’t have to go in,” Lila said quietly. “You can look. You can make your judgment. But don’t drag her through—”
Lexi moved.
Cain followed.
Lila cursed under her breath, then fell in behind.
The door didn’t creak—it groaned.
Cain pushed it open with one hand, and the warped metal scraped across the frame like a protest.
The interior was darker than it should’ve been. A few mage-lights, dull and flickering, clung to the corners of the ceiling like dying stars. The floor was concrete, cracked and stained. The walls were stone, reinforced with a lattice of old iron bars.
And the cages.
Dozens of them. Jammed wall-to-wall. Crude metal boxes, each barely big enough for a body to curl up in. Some were empty. Most were not.
Goblins with bruises around their throats, trolls with dull eyes and splinted limbs, and in the far corner—
Beastkin.
Children.
No older than ten, by Cain’s guess. Cat ears. Fox tails. Scales, on one. Some huddled together. Others just stared.
No one cried. Not here.
There was movement in the back room—soft footsteps, a muttered voice. A man stepped into view, rubbing his hands with a cloth. He wore a stitched leather apron and the blank expression of someone who’d long since stopped asking if what he did was right.
He froze when he saw them.
Cain’s eyes didn’t leave the cages. “How many?”
The man blinked. “What—?”
Lila stepped in behind them. “Don’t.”
Too late.
Cain turned to the man. “I asked how many.”
The man took a step back. “This is legal under Guild sanction—”
“It’s not sanctioned,” Lila snapped. “You’re off-ledger. You’re not even supposed to be here.”
He looked between them, calculating. Then his gaze landed on Lexi, and something in his posture changed.
“You,” he said slowly. “You’re one of the—”
He didn’t get another word out.
Lexi lunged, a blur of motion, more animal than girl.
Her chain caught him around the neck mid-sentence. He choked on the rest of his words as she twisted, dragging him down. His head slammed into the wall with a sickening crack. Blood painted the stone in an arc.
He collapsed, twitching.
She didn’t stop.
She wrapped the chain twice more, bracing her foot against his shoulder and pulling, not just trying to strangle him, but trying to erase him.
Neither Cain nor Lila tried to stop her.
Lila stood by the wall, arms folded tight across her chest. Her face was blank, but her knuckles were white.
The only sound was Lexi’s breath, ragged and high in her throat, and the wet crunch of bone under iron.
When the body finally stilled, she stood there, chain hanging loose, chest heaving.
Her hands were trembling.
Cain stepped past her without a word.
This was what had to happen.
He moved to the cages.
The first one held a young goblin. Its face was swollen on one side, an eye sealed shut. When Cain reached for the door, it flinched.
He opened it anyway.
The goblin stared at him, hollow-eyed.
Cain looked to the next cage. Then the next. And then—
A sound behind him—a door creaked in the rear chamber.
More footsteps.
A man with a clipboard stepped into the main room, blinking at the light.
Then froze.
His gaze moved from Cain to Lila, then to the handler’s body, and finally to Lexi, still red-knuckled.
“Who the hell—”
Lexi’s chain snapped through the air like a whip, coiling around his ankle before he could retreat. She yanked. He fell hard, face-first into the stone, cracking his teeth.
She was on him before he could scream.
She wrapped the chain around his neck, then twisted it around her forearm, planting her foot against his ribs for leverage. The man thrashed and clawed, gurgling, blood bubbling at the edges of his lips.
Lexi’s mouth was open, but she wasn’t making a sound.
Her eyes burned.
She leaned in, pulling harder.
Something gave in his throat.
He went still.
Her chest rose and fell. Then again. Faster. Shallower.
She looked at her hands. At the blood on the chain.
Her breath hitched.
But then another voice echoed from the far side of the warehouse. A shout. Footsteps pounding toward them.
She moved.
Cain followed at a distance.
A man with a cudgel turned the corner ahead, already mid-curse—
Cain was on him before the word finished leaving his mouth.
His hand snapped out and crushed the man’s wrist, bones splintering with a sound like dry twigs. Before the scream even began, Cain drove a knee into his gut, lifting him off the ground, then slammed his head sideways into the wall.
The body slid down.
=You have defeated (1) Human=
Another handler broke into a sprint.
He didn’t make it three steps.
Cain appeared behind him in a blink, caught him by the neck, and hurled him into the nearest wall hard enough to crater the stone.
=You have defeated (1) Human=
A third tried to fight.
He lunged, screaming, desperate.
Cain caught the man’s forearm mid-swing, twisting it until the elbow shattered—then flicked his fingers toward the man’s throat, collapsing the airway instantly. The man fell, gasping, clutching his neck like it might keep him alive.
It wouldn’t.
He kicked the gasping man aside like refuse.
=You have defeated (1) Human=
Another handler screamed somewhere to his left.
Lexi stood over what used to be a man—his chest caved in from where she’d slammed him into the floor. Her chain still trembled in her grip, slick with blood. Her knuckles were raw. Her breathing came fast, shallow, through clenched teeth.
He’d begged her not to.
Not with words, but with his eyes.
She remembered those eyes.
The same shade of brown as—
Her arms moved again before she realized she was swinging. Another figure lunged from behind a pillar, shouting something she didn’t hear. She caught his wrist with a chain and yanked, sending him sprawling.
Then she was on him.
Claws. Elbows. Chains.
Every hit landed too hard. Every crack of bone came with a shudder that worked its way down her spine. She heard someone screaming—high and panicked—and it took her a full second to realize it was her.
Her voice broke. But her fists didn’t stop.
Something warm splashed across her cheek. She blinked it away, vision swimming. The man wasn’t moving anymore. He hadn’t been for a while.
Still, she hit him again.
She didn’t stop until someone touched her shoulder.
Cain.
He didn’t speak.
He didn’t need to.
Her arms dropped. The chain slid from her fingers with a soft clink.
Lila hadn’t moved from her spot. Her eyes hadn’t left Lexi since the screaming started. There was something in her stare now—something uncertain. Like she was seeing a reflection she didn’t want to recognize.
Cain stood beside her, gaze sweeping across the room like he was counting corpses.
He wasn’t breathing hard.
Somehow, there wasn’t even a drop of blood on him.
Lexi was shaking.
Cain didn’t speak to her. He walked past the crushed bodies and the blood-streaked floor to the center of the room.
Then he raised his hand
The air around him rippled like the room itself was holding its breath.
Lila furrowed her brow, but she said nothing.
And the Infinite Wardrobe appeared.
It was simply there as if it had always been there, and the world only just remembered.
Ten feet tall. Wood polished to a glass sheen, carved with swirling patterns. Ornate dragon-head handles jutted from the doors, their eyes glinting with cold judgment. Tiny gemstones pulsed along the trim.
The doors were already half open.
Cain stepped aside.
Then he gestured.
“Inside,” he ordered.
A goblin limped forward first. Then a troll. Then the little foxkin girl stepped out from her cage, eyes wide and glassy.
She looked up at Cain, like she was waiting for him to change his mind.
He didn’t.
She climbed inside.
More followed, quiet and hesitant. A few stayed curled in the corners of their cages, unmoving.
Cain didn’t force them.
You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.
When no one else moved, he shut the wardrobe with both hands. The doors sealed with a click, and the whole thing vanished like it had never been there.
Lila turned away, her expression turning cold like the start of a realization she hadn’t decided what to do with yet.
Lexi stared at the empty space where the wardrobe had been.
“…Why save them?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
Cain looked at her.
“I killed the monsters,” he said.
Project Knightfall 