Location: Meighen Island, southern ice shelf
Time: Summer, 1900 – several months after Cain's arrival
---
The ice had begun to rot.
Thin fissures split the shoreline. Pools of meltwater gathered in depressions that had once been thick-packed with snow. The air, while still sharp with Arctic salt, no longer bit with the same cruelty. The wind carried warmth—faint, but real. The kind that made the elders of distant villages turn their heads and whisper to one another that something had changed.
Something had awakened.
---
They came in three umiaks—long skin-on-frame canoes stretched over bone and sinew, propelled by eight paddlers in each. Twenty-three men and women in total. All of them seasoned hunters, guides, and blood-kin to the shamans who had vanished months earlier. They brought spears. Harpoons. Black powder rifles wrapped in oilcloth. They wore ceremonial masks carved from driftwood—mourning symbols, painted with black tears and red moons.
They did not come to conquer.
They came to reclaim the dead.
And bury whatever darkness had taken them.
---
From the sea, Meighen looked unchanged.
Bleak. Jagged. Silent.
But as they came closer, the paddlers began to feel it: a wrongness in the water. The current shifted against them. The wind turned colder, then warmer, then still. The ice here melted in odd shapes—not naturally, but in circles, in lines, in spirals.
The dogs aboard the lead canoe began to whine.
Several men made the sign of protection with their fingers.
> "The spirits are watching," said one, voice tight.
> "No," said another. "They already watched. Now they wait."
---
They made landfall near the southern cliffs, dragging their boats ashore under a sun that flickered oddly behind passing clouds. The beach was empty. No birds. No seal cries. No driftwood. Just silence and the echo of every breath they dared to take.
Then they found the first marker.
---
A skeleton.
Bent backward into an impossible arch, spine cracked and arranged like a shrine, ribs pulled wide and bound with sinew into the shape of angelic wings. Its skull wore a crown of antlers. Its hands were nailed to the ice with harpoon heads, fingers pointed toward the heart of the island.
Carved into the ice beneath it were the same spirals the villagers remembered from childhood tales—the symbol of the Sun-Wound.
And beyond that—more statues.
Human.
Twisted.
Beautiful.
And terrible.
---
The leader of the group, Tasiq, an older hunter with a face like cracked rock, drew his rifle and gave the signal to move.
They left four behind to guard the boats.
The rest marched inland.
---
As they approached the stone circle, the change in the air became undeniable.
The temperature rose. Not sharply—but subtly, unnaturally. The ground underfoot was no longer packed snow, but damp moss. Small flowers bloomed in narrow cracks between stones. Moss. On Meighen. In high summer.
The cave stood on the ridge above.
Smoke rose faintly from its mouth.
The carvings around it were clearer now—more defined, as though someone had cleaned them, traced them, honored them.
They stopped at the edge of the circle.
And there, standing atop the ridge, illuminated by the light of a sun that seemed suddenly too close—
Was Cain.
---
He stood tall—not in stature, but in presence. His body was lean and defined, wrapped in layered furs and sealhide armor. His face was painted with blood and ash. A glaive of tusk and bone rested across his back.
His eyes—ice-bright, emotionless—watched the hunters without blinking.
He did not speak.
He simply stepped forward and descended the slope.
---
One of the villagers cried out.
"A spirit!"
Another fell to one knee, sobbing.
A third raised his harpoon and shouted:
> "You desecrate the dead! You stole the breath from the circle!"
Cain tilted his head.
He could not understand their words.
But he understood their tone.
Hostility.
Fear.
And beneath that—
Accusation.
---
He said nothing.
He walked to the edge of the circle, stopped, and placed one hand on the stone beside him.
It pulsed.
And then, in a single, fluid motion, he drew his glaive and raised it—not as a threat, but as declaration.
> This is mine.
The moment broke.
A rifle was raised.
A shout rang out.
But the first thing to break the silence for Cain was not the rifle, not the scream.
It was the sound of the stone pulsing louder, the Light Stone deep within Cain's cave, echoing in perfect time with his rising breath. It shivered through the earth like a heartbeat. Like a warning.
Only then for him did the shout come, a desperate, choking cry from one of the villagers as he hurled his harpoon straight towards Cain's chest.
But Cain didn't move.
Not until the harpoon was already airborne.
Only then, he did.
He pivoted—inhumanly fast, stepping sideways with the effortless precision of a dancer. The harpoon sailed past him, struck the earth, and quivered. He turned his eyes toward the thrower.
The man's mouth opened to speak.
Cain was already on him.
---
He crossed the distance in a single burst of movement—a blur of bone, hide, and light. His glaive sang as it left his back, carving a half-circle through the air. The haft struck the man's ribs, shattering them with a hollow crunch and sending him spinning to the ground in a tangle of limbs and blood.
Two more villagers charged—one with a spear, another with a stone axe.
They expected a child.
They found a god of violence.
Cain flowed between them. The glaive spun in his hands—one strike, two. The spear snapped. The axe fell. Bone split open. Blood sprayed across moss that should not exist.
---
A rifle cracked.
The bullet struck Cain in the shoulder—and bounced off, deflected by the golden-reinforced bone beneath his skin. He turned, slowly, toward the shooter.
His gaze said everything.
The man turned to run.
Cain threw the glaive.
It caught him mid-back, splitting spine from shoulder to hip.
---
The rest began to retreat, backing toward the coast, slipping on thawed snow, shouting in languages Cain didn't understand—but recognized as fear.
One hunter fell to his knees, raising his hands, weeping. Another dropped his weapon and tried to speak—babbling in desperation, begging.
Cain stood over him.
His eyes flickered with White Core light, seeing the man's fear, his guilt, his rage.
Impure. Heretic. A witness.
Cain reached down and snapped his neck cleanly.
> "You came with death," he said, flatly. "And I gave it back."
---
When it was over, seven were dead.
The rest had fled—four into the hills, wounded and scrambling. The others, toward the boats.
Cain walked to the water's edge and saw the umiaks still beached, half-loaded with supplies—meat, tools, and most importantly, maps.
He looked down at his hands—bloody, twitching with residual energy.
He was breathing harder than usual. Not from exhaustion.
From memory.
This had felt like war.
And it had been too easy.
---
He dragged the bodies into a line, stripped their furs, and cleaned their weapons. Then he set fire to the bloodied moss with a ring of seal oil, watching the flame catch and spread.
By the time he had packed the supplies into the umiak, the sky had shifted to gray-blue. Morning.
He stepped into the boat, secured the rudder, and pushed off.
For the first time since his arrival, Cain left the island.
---
That Night, at Sea
The ice was calm. The boat cut through still waters, guided by Cain's unnaturally steady hands. He sat at the front, arms crossed, eyes watching the shoreline slip away behind him.
He had killed without hesitation.
He had taken their vessel.
He had seen maps—simple, hand-drawn, but marked with villages.
Settlements.
Targets.
He didn't know what world this was. What era.
But it didn't matter.
They had found him.
And so he would find them.
---
Location: Inuit village near Grise Fiord, southern Ellesmere Island
Time: Evening, days after Cain leaves Meighen Island
---
The umiak scraped against the rocky shore with a grinding hiss.
Cain stepped off into shallow surf, his boots soaked, his glaive strapped across his back. He wore seal-hide armor, crudely lashed but tight and silent. Blood—some dry, some fresh—darkened the furs. A necklace of carved bone teeth hung from his collar. His hair, long and tangled, gleamed like gold in the low sun.
He stood for a moment, silent, studying the horizon.
The village rose gently across the slope ahead—no walls, no watchtowers. Just skin tents, low stone-and-bone shelters, and a ring of smoke drifting upward from cooking fires. Children ran between homes. Dogs barked lazily. Spears leaned against drying racks.
It was small. Soft. Unprotected.
> No outer defenses, Cain thought, narrowing his eyes. No patrol lines. No elevated firing points. Not even a lookout.
Primitive.
And yet… peaceful.
Too peaceful.
He began walking.
---
At first, no one noticed.
He passed between scattered driftwood fences and mossy stones, his presence almost ghostlike. The air was cool, but not cold—not to him. His Light Core adjusted for climate automatically. Each step was measured. Silent. Intentional.
A dog barked once—then whined and backed away, tail tucked.
A child looked up and froze, mouth open.
Then another.
Then the shouting began.
---
A woman screamed and grabbed her child.
Men emerged from homes, brandishing spears and crude muskets. One old man stumbled out, holding a talisman of bone and string, chanting words that sounded like a prayer—or a warning.
Cain stopped just beyond the village threshold.
His posture was neutral. His eyes were not.
> "No uniforms. No ranks. No Gothic. Just superstition."
He looked into their eyes—and saw raw fear.
> They don't recognize me as one of them. They don't know what I am.
Then one man—bolder than the others—stepped forward and spat at Cain's feet.
He pointed at the bloodstained armor.
Then at the sky.
Then screamed something in Inuktitut, voice shaking with rage.
Cain didn't understand the words.
But he understood the meaning.
You are not welcome.
You are not human.
You are a monster.
---
Cain reached for the haft of his glaive and drew it with one smooth, practiced motion.
The villagers shouted, stepping back. Several raised spears. One cocked a rifle.
Cain's jaw tensed.
> I could kill them all in under a minute. Less, if I don't bother avoiding the children.
He didn't want to. Not truly.
But he also knew how these things went.
> "If they fear me now, they will hate me later."
Then came the sound that ended any chance of peace:
The rifle fired.
The shot missed—barely. It struck the dirt near Cain's foot and kicked up a cloud of soil and ice.
Cain moved.
He charged, faster than the eye could follow.
The rifleman barely had time to blink before Cain slammed the haft of his glaive into his chest—a sickening crunch of ribs and blood. The man flew backward into a bone rack, scattering tools and drying hides.
Two others lunged at him with spears. Cain twisted, ducked, swept one to the ground and drove his glaive through the other's thigh. Blood sprayed. Screams followed.
The rest broke formation, chaos erupting.
Women dragged children back into tents. Dogs barked and ran.
Some villagers fled. Others attacked blindly.
Cain moved through them like a storm—precise, brutal, unstoppable.
A club shattered on his shoulder.
He turned, caught the attacker by the neck, and snapped it cleanly.
Another tried to run with a child on his back.
Cain let him go.
Not because of mercy.
Because he was tactically irrelevant.
Within five minutes, the fight was over.
Seven dead. Two dying. A dozen wounded.
Cain stood in the center of the village square, blood dripping from his glaive.
His chest rose and fell slowly. His eyes flicked over the carnage, analyzing. Calculating.
> "Minimal resistance. Low threat profile. Primitive organization. Non-military."
He looked toward the largest tent—its entrance flapping in the wind.
Inside, he found supplies. Dried meat. Hide. Tools.
And a scroll map, crude but functional.
It marked other villages. Coastal trade paths. Summer fishing routes.
He took it.
Outside, the few survivors stared at him from the edges of their homes—some weeping, some whispering prayers, some staring in silent terror.
Cain said nothing.
He strapped the map to his belt. Took a bone needle. A pouch of sun-dried roots. A spare waterskin.
Then he turned.
And walked back to the umiak.
And as he pushed off from shore, wind at his back, he glanced once more at the smoldering village.
He felt no pride. No thrill.
Just certainty.
> This is not the Imperium. This is not humanity. This is a lost world. A broken world.
And now, it would be rebuilt.
Even if he had to burn it down first.
---
Location: Meighen Island – The Stone Circle and Cave
Time: A day after the village slaughter
---
The umiak cut cleanly through the ice-calm water, its paddles creaking softly under Cain's steady hand.
The cold didn't touch him anymore. The wind passed over him without bite. The sea mist clung to his hair, now tied in a rough warrior's knot behind his head. His clothing—sewn from hides and reinforced with ivory plates—clinked faintly as he shifted.
At his feet: a bundle of supplies taken from the village.
Carved bone tools
Coiled sinew rope
A satchel of seeds and dried roots
And most important of all—the map
Primitive, yes. But it marked other locations. Human ones. Cain had scanned it carefully before departing. He knew now: the world wasn't dead. It was just… early.
Unshaped.
Still crawling toward destiny.
And he had arrived to forge it faster.
He reached Meighen just as the sun dipped low—though here, it never fully set. Just circled.
The island looked the same from a distance: jagged, white, quiet.
But as he landed, he felt it again.
That pressure.
That pull.
Like stepping across the threshold of a temple. Or a war room.
His cave waited for him, steaming softly at the ridge.
And beyond it—
The Stone Circle.
Cain did not go to the cave first.
He went to the stones.
They stood as they had since the day he fell—black and eternal, yet… changed. The spirals on their surfaces seemed clearer now. Sharper. As if drawn to him, responsive to his gaze.
He stepped inside the circle.
The moment he did, the air grew still. The sound of the ocean faded. The wind died. Even the crunch of his boots in the moss fell silent.
It was like standing inside a heartbeat.
The stones hummed, just beneath hearing. The same rhythm as his Light Stone. The same rhythm as his fused Core.
He walked to the central slab—the one carved with wings and serpents locked in combat. And there, at its base, the image he hadn't fully seen before:
A child, wreathed in light and shadow. Kneeling. Hands open. Surrounded by a sunburst cracked down the middle.
> Me.
> Or what I'm becoming.
Cain placed his palm on the center of the slab.
It was warm.
He pressed harder.
The stone pulsed.
And in that moment, he felt it—not a voice, not a vision—but a knowing.
This place was a conduit. A wound. A gate. Not just for power—but for transition.
> They didn't summon me by accident. They found something here… and asked it to open. And it answered.
> Why me?
> Why now?
No answer came.
Just silence.
Just pulse.
He returned to the cave in silence, his thoughts locked in place like tectonic plates. Inside, the warmth greeted him like breath from an old god.
He unpacked the seeds.
Tiny things. Hand-wrapped in bone tubes. Labeled with symbols he could not read.
He selected a patch of moss near the Light Stone and planted them carefully.
Not for food.
Not yet.
But for proof.
Proof that life could grow here. That something permanent could begin.
The next day, he planted more. Dug irrigation trenches using bone scrapers. Built a drying rack from driftwood. Hung fish to cure. Reinforced the cave entrance with walrus ribs and antler beams.
He mounted two skulls on either side of the cave's mouth—not as trophies, but as warnings.
He carved a sigil into the stone just above them: a perfect circle, split by a vertical line, flanked by a rising sun.
The symbol of his sanctuary.
The symbol of his rule.
And when night came, and the cave grew dim, and the island fell still—
Cain sat beside his Light Stone, breathing in time with its slow, steady pulses.
He was not lost.
He was not waiting.
He was preparing.
The world would come.
And when it did…
He would be ready.