The morning was too quiet.
After the crash, the men had barely slept. The fires were kept low, the rations hoarded. The remaining perimeter was reduced to a ring of crates, sharpened poles, and exhausted eyes. No birds flew. No wind blew. The moss beneath their boots was damp—too damp—and smelled of rust and ash.
The pulse in the ground had grown stronger.
And Corporal Silas Wick had begun to tremble.
He hadn't spoken since Blackmoor vanished. Not a word. He just sat near the half-collapsed tent where they stored the flares, sharpening the same knife over and over, mumbling to himself.
Mallory had noticed. Everyone had.
But no one had time to care.
Until the smoke rose.
It started with a scream.
Then a crackle.
Then the unmistakable snap-hiss of burning canvas.
Penfold was the first to see it—red flarelight spilling from the supply tent, licking at the medical packs and wrapped bandages.
> "FIRE!"
Men scrambled. Mallory sprinted toward the tent, kicking through the mist. The fire wasn't huge—but deliberate. Four flare canisters lay scattered, their waxy innards glowing orange. Wick stood in the center, arms spread, knife in one hand, flint in the other.
His eyes were wide.
Not mad.
Holy.
> "I saw it," he rasped, voice cracking. "In the moss. In the firelight. I heard it breathing."
> "Put the damn knife down!" Mallory shouted.
> "He's here!" Wick screamed. "He's already here, watching us! You saw the mark! The sun-wound! He's a god of death! You think bullets will save you?! He's already inside the blood!"
Someone tried to grab him.
He swung the knife.
Cut a man across the cheek—not deep, but enough to spill blood. Enough to scream.
Wick bolted from the burning tent and into the woods, flares crackling in his hands.
Minutes Later – Into the Trees.
Mallory and two men chased him.
The fog thickened around them. Branches reached. Shadows lengthened.
They never found Wick.
Just a boot, stuck upright in the moss, laces neatly tied.
Nearby, a string of entrails hung from a tree branch—not his, but a fox's. Fresh. Still twitching.
> "He's gone," one marine muttered.
> "He's bait now," Mallory said. "The kid's watching. Testing us."
They left the boot where it was.
Back at Camp.
The fire was out.
But the damage was done.
Half the medical supplies were scorched. One marine was being stitched in silence. Penfold worked with tight, trembling hands.
Tremayne sat on a crate, shaking, repeating:
> "He's real. He's real. He's not a child."
Dr. Greaves stood near the firepit, eyes locked on the treeline, muttering calculations aloud.
Captain Harrow didn't speak at all.
Just sat.
Writing.
One name at a time.
From high above, Cain watched.
Wrapped in fur. Mask gleaming in the filtered sun.
He had not touched a single man that night.
And yet, the camp had wounded itself.
Burned itself.
Exiled its own.
> They break without blade.
> Good.
> Now I know how little I must do when the time comes.
---
Location: British inland camp → shoreline.
Time: Evening, Day 2 after the shipwreck.
The mist came early that evening.
It bled down from the cliffs in soft waves, curling through the moss and trees, swallowing tents and boots alike. The light that filtered through it was pale green, like sun through seawater, and everything felt further away than it was.
Even sound.
Even heartbeats.
Even safety.
The campfire crackled softly in the center of the perimeter. Tremayne sat with his knees hugged to his chest, staring into the flames like they could answer him. Mallory stood watch near the treeline, flanked by two marines whose rifles twitched with every gust of wind. Penfold quietly repacked the scorched medical kit, salvaging what gauze and tinctures she could.
No one spoke.
Until the wind shifted.
It didn't blow.
It pushed.
A sudden, solid gust that knocked the fire sideways and filled the air with the smell of salt, blood, and bone.
And then—something thudded into the center of the campfire.
The flames hissed and parted.
And a corpse fell forward into the circle, half-charred, soaked in blood, a spine sticking out of the back like a handle.
Wick.
His body was broken, flayed open from sternum to groin. His tongue had been ripped out and sewn into his palm.
Across his chest, carved into the meat with surgical precision:
> "NO GODS."
> "NO HELP."
> "ONLY ME."
The marines screamed. One dropped his rifle. Another backed away, clutching at his stomach.
Penfold vomited.
Mallory didn't move.
His eyes flicked toward the treeline.
And there—for the briefest moment—a silhouette.
Small. Still. Glinting eyes behind a skull mask.
Then gone.
> "We're leaving," Mallory snapped. "Now. Back to the beach."
> "We can't carry the wounded—" Penfold began.
> "Then we drag them."
> "He's pushing us—"
> "No," Mallory growled. "He's letting us run."
> "There's no ship," Tremayne whispered, staring at Wick's body.
> "Then we dig in and wait for death like soldiers."
Within twenty minutes, the entire camp was packed into rough sleds and crates, lashed with rope and dragged by human hands. The survivors moved in a broken column, sloshing through thawed moss and mist, eyes flicking to the shadows around them.
The Light Stone's warmth faded behind them.
But the pulse did not.
It followed them.
Beating beneath the ground like footsteps just out of sync.
They reached the wreckage by nightfall.
Smoke still drifted from the gutted hull. A few crates had been pulled up to form a defensive crescent near the rocks. Rifles stacked. Shovels in hand.
A last stand being built by shaking hands.
Penfold treated wounds under oil lamps. Greaves muttered scripture and theory. Harrow drank quietly from a bottle of gin, the ink of his journal bleeding where his hands wouldn't stop sweating.
And Mallory?
Mallory didn't sleep.
He stood at the edge of the rocks, glaive in hand, eyes on the cliffs.
Waiting.
---
From high above, Cain watched them move like ants. Watched them retreat. Scramble. Dig. Pray.
He watched them abandon warmth and knowledge to hide beneath wreckage and flags.
He watched them try to build walls in a graveyard.
And he smiled.
> They are doing exactly what I need them to.
---
Location: Wreck-Camp on the Shoreline.
Time: Day 3, post-shipwreck.
---
The day began cold.
Not cold like the Arctic once was.
Cold like something watching you through a crack in the wall.
The survivors had rigged canvas tarps over salvaged crates, forming crude lean-tos along the rocks. What tents they had left were half-burned, their poles bent from smoke warping. There were no fires now—Cain had extinguished those by stealing the flint and leaving it on top of a soldier's chest while he slept.
The message was clear.
You have no light here but mine.
---
Greaves hadn't slept in two days.
His hands shook.
He muttered to himself, not in fear, but in wonder.
He scribbled endless notes in a leather journal, tearing out pages to rearrange sentences. He sketched the Light Stone sigil, over and over again.
Circle. Split line. Radiating rays.
He had begun calling it the Womb of Flame.
He asked Penfold how long the sun had been in the same spot.
Penfold didn't answer.
She was too busy trying to sew shut a wound no one remembered seeing made.
Midday.
Greaves stood suddenly.
Eyes wide. Mouth trembling.
> "I understand now," he whispered. "The Light isn't just alive—it thinks."
> "Doctor," Mallory said, standing. "Where are you going?"
> "To see Him."
> "Greaves—"
> "He wants to know if we're worth saving. So far… I think we're failing."
He walked past the supply crates, barefoot, the soles of his socks dark with moss-blood.
No one stopped him.
Some part of them wanted him to go.
From the ridge above, Cain lay prone, breath steady, skull-mask damp with mist.
He had followed Greaves for twenty minutes.
Observed the gait, the trembling fingers, the whispering voice.
Watched as the man walked to the shoreline and began to kneel in the surf, facing the open sea.
Cain moved closer.
The man didn't see him. Didn't hear him. Only shivered and wrote something into the sand with a stick.
It was English, broken and crude, half-erased by waves.
> "He is not a child"
> "The world watches"
Greaves took a field scalpel from his coat.
He pulled open his shirt.
And began to carve.
Cain didn't stop him.
He only watched.
Still.
Unmoving.
Recording.
He read the movements of the blade. The letters. The mistakes.
He saw what they feared.
Words. Names. Symbols. Meaning.
This was a new weapon.
Two hours later, Mallory and Penfold found the body.
Greaves was laid on his back, the sea lapping at his legs.
His chest bore a bloody scrawl:
> "ONLY ME"
His eyes were open.
And he was smiling.
Near his body, scratched into a driftwood plank beside his journal...
> "We were never supposed to come."
That night, Penfold found a message carved into the sand beside the medical tent.
It hadn't been there an hour before.
The same phrase, letter for letter:
> "HE IS NOT A CHILD."
It was signed with the Sun-Wound symbol.
And beneath it, a single bullet.
Clean.
Untouched.
Not one of theirs.
---
Location: Wreck-Camp, Meighen Shore
Time: Nightfall, Day 3.
---
The fog returned like a breath held too long.
It drifted in from the sea, thick and glistening, moving in coiling waves, blurring the lines between tents, crates, and the shoreline. It muffled sound. It distorted shape. It invited whispers where none had been.
Penfold crouched over the fire pit, now reduced to a stack of smoldering stones. Her hands were numb despite the unnatural warmth that still clung to the ground. Mallory stood nearby, rifle slung across his back, eyes half-closed from lack of sleep.
Tremayne was gone again.
He wasn't missing.
Just silent, staring into the wreck of the Enduring Grace with a look like prayer.
No one asked him to speak anymore.
Then the thud came.
Wet. Heavy.
From the center of the camp.
Everyone froze.
Mallory turned slowly.
> "Who's on watch?" he asked.
No answer.
There was no watch.
Not anymore.
In the center of camp, just beside the old signal crate, a corpse had been placed.
It hadn't been there minutes ago.
It was Private Haddon—one of the younger marines. He had been sent to gather seawater for filtering. No one had noticed he was late.
Now he lay kneeling, arms bound behind his back with twisted gut-rope, spine bent, head tilted up as if in reverence.
His eyes were gone, carved neatly from the sockets.
His mouth was sewn shut with fine, delicate thread.
In his chest, etched with blackened iron or perhaps obsidian:
> "LEARN"
And stabbed into the sand before him—half-buried, bone-hilt gleaming:
Cain's glaive.
Mallory approached slowly, weapon raised.
Penfold whispered a prayer.
Greaves' body had barely cooled. Now another.
No sound in the camp—except the pulse beneath their boots, growing stronger by the hour.
> "It's a ritual," Mallory muttered. "A message."
> "It's a challenge," Penfold said. "Or an invitation."
> "No," Harrow said suddenly, voice dry and cracked.
They turned.
The captain had emerged from his tent, eyes sunken, hands shaking slightly.
> "It's handwriting."
They looked at the word carved into the boy's chest again.
It wasn't a symbol.
It was a test.
No one touched it for hours.
It stood like a flag.
A line.
A question.
Who would pick it up?
Who would break the silence?
Cain, watching from the cliff's edge, smiled faintly.
They hadn't fled.
They hadn't fought.
They were waiting—to see who moved first.
Good.
> Let them assign meaning. Let them argue about symbols. Let them pray.
> Let them look at one blade and think it holds their fate.
He crouched back into the mist.
His work was not done.
---
Location: British Shore Camp
Time: Day 4, morning
---
The fog didn't leave.
It just hung heavier—like wet wool across the tents, soaking into boots and bones. The survivors no longer spoke unless they had to. Even Tremayne, who had once muttered softly to himself, now sat in silence.
Mallory hadn't slept.
He'd spent the night crouched beside Private Haddon's corpse, watching the glaive shimmer in the mist like it might move again.
Captain Harrow had stopped issuing orders.
He just wrote.
Over and over. Names. Ranks. Circumstances of death. At some point during the night, he began listing the same name twice.
They gathered around the glaive at sunrise.
Penfold stood behind them, arms crossed, face gaunt.
> "It's not a trophy," she said. "It's an instrument."
> "It's bait," Mallory replied. "He wants us to pull it and feel brave. Like we've done something."
> "It's a message," said Harrow, quietly. "LEARN. He wants us to take it."
They stood in silence a long time.
Then Mallory reached down, grasped the bone hilt, and slowly pulled it free.
The blade came free without resistance.
Clean. Honed. Still warm from the chest it had rested in.
Mallory held it in both hands.
It was too light.
> "We'll bury the boy," he said. "But this…"
He slid it into his belt beside his sidearm.
> "This stays with me."
By midday, Penfold found something outside the camp's southern edge.
Not a corpse this time.
A rifle.
Their rifle.
It had gone missing days ago—Blackmoor's, they realized. The one they never recovered when he vanished.
It was cleaned, wrapped in oiled canvas.
Next to it, written into the moss with coal-black soot:
> "I LEARN."
Mallory examined the rifle.
It had been fired recently. The barrel was warm. The bolt oiled.
He disassembled it on instinct.
Inside the stock, tucked where the cleaning kit would usually sit, was a strip of folded seal hide with two words burned into it:
> "LONG RANGE."
That evening, two men at the far side of camp fell at once.
Both were standing watch—two hundred yards apart.
Neither heard the other drop.
One had a clean shot through the upper thigh—a test of pain and pressure.
The other was hit through the shoulder—just above the heart, but not fatal.
The bullets were theirs.
Fired from their own rifle.
From somewhere beyond the mist.
Penfold did her best.
One man would lose the leg.
The other wouldn't wake.
Cain sat in the branches of a frost-bent tree, wrapped in his cloak, bone mask streaked with salt from the morning air.
The rifle rested across his lap.
He'd learned its pull weight.
Its bite.
Its speed.
Its sound.
He'd learned what it could do.
And what it couldn't.
More importantly?
He learned how they responded.
Who ran first.
Who hesitated.
Who screamed.
And who prayed.
> I will know everything about them before I end them.
> This world is not for building. It is for proving.
> And they are my test.
---
Location: Shore Camp, Meighen Island
Time: Dawn, Day 5
---
The fog returned, thick and clinging like wet parchment. It rolled through the shipwreck bones and broken crates, coiling around boots, tents, and shallow graves. No birds sang. No wind stirred. The pulse in the moss was heavier now, like drums beneath the earth.
Penfold sat with her knees drawn up, wrapped in a burned blanket, staring at the edge of the camp. Her fingers wouldn't stop twitching.
Mallory hadn't slept. He hadn't even sat down. The glaive rested beside him now, lashed to his back like a second spine.
Harrow sat alone, whispering to himself, rocking slowly with a pistol on his lap.
And then the stone hit the center of camp with a heavy, deliberate thud.
It was fist-sized, smooth and gray, wrapped in cloth soaked with blood.
Mallory approached it slowly, rifle raised.
He kicked away the cloth with his boot.
On the surface of the stone, carved in crooked, deep slashes:
> "COME TO THE CENTER"
"AND LIVE."
Tremayne collapsed to his knees.
> "He's inviting us…"
> "No," Penfold said. "He's testing us."
> "What center?" someone asked.
Mallory didn't answer.
He already knew.
---
They arrived before noon.
A cautious group—Mallory, Penfold, Tremayne, and two surviving marines.
They stepped into the clearing like trespassers in a cathedral. The twelve monoliths stood as they always had—towering, ancient, veined with carvings that seemed to shift when you weren't looking directly at them.
The moss at their feet pulsed—warm. Faintly glowing. Like it had been fed.
At the center lay a flat stone slab, almost like an altar. Upon it, a second stone, larger and heavier than the first, soaked in dried blood.
Mallory lifted it.
The message carved into it was simple. Elegant. Written in nearly perfect English:
> "KILL EACH OTHER"
"ONE LIVES"
"ONLY BLOOD WILL OPEN THE WAY"
Beneath the stone were marks in the dirt:
A circle.
A sun.
And twelve lines.
From above the cliffs, Cain watched their heads bend over the stone. He saw their fear. Their silence.
He could not yet speak their language.
But he was beginning to understand it.
Tone. Gesture. Repetition.
He understood the sound of the word "god."
He knew the shape of "death."
And he was learning the weight of obedience.
This was not just a message.
This was doctrine.
And they would write the next verse for him—with blood.
Tremayne was the first to fall to his knees.
His fingers curled into the moss. His mouth trembled.
> "He wants it... He wants us to choose. That's the only way we get out. He's... he's watching who breaks first—"
> "Get up," Mallory snapped. "Get up and shut your mouth."
Captain Harrow stood near the altar, eyes locked on the stone. His face was expressionless, but his hands twitched.
> "It's madness," Penfold said softly, her voice cracking.
> "Is it?" Harrow replied. "Because if this was some native trap, it wouldn't be in perfect English. If this was savagery, it wouldn't have form. It wouldn't have... intention."
Penfold turned on him.
> "You can't seriously be thinking about this."
Harrow didn't answer.
He just looked at her. Long. Quiet.
Then a marine, a broad man named Coster—spat onto the altar and stepped back.
> "He wants blood? We give him fire."
He raised his rifle, aiming at the stone, finger curling around the trigger.
> "Let's see how his symbols bleed—"
> "Do it," Mallory said, coldly. "But you better be sure he's not watching."
> "He's always watching," Tremayne muttered.
Another Marine collapsed.
He sat in the moss, shaking, arms around his knees.
> "We're not getting out. We're not getting out. He's not human. He's not human…"
Penfold crouched beside him, trying to calm him. Her hands were steady—but her eyes were flicking to the treeline now. To the cliffs. To the shadows.
Mallory stepped forward.
He looked at the stone again.
Then at Harrow.
Then at the others.
> "We don't do this. We don't play his game."
> "Then what's the move?" Harrow asked. "Wait until he takes us one by one? You've seen the traps. You've seen the writing. He's learning. Faster than we are."
> "Then we starve him," Mallory said. "We give him nothing. Not blood. Not ritual. Not meaning."
And then the spear came down.
It struck the moss with a wet thud, just inches from Harrow's boots.
The blade was bone. The haft wrapped in hide. It quivered in the earth—angled intentionally, not meant to kill.
Tied to the shaft with gut-string was a cloth-wrapped object.
Mallory stepped forward and unwrapped it.
It was a bandage roll.
Clean. Medical-grade. The last kind Penfold had in inventory. It had gone missing two days ago.
It had been returned.
Untouched.
Penfold stared at it like it was poison.
> "He gave it back."
> "No," Mallory said. "He gave us a choice."
And from the cliffside, Cain watched.
Still. Silent. Unmoving.
He saw the ripple pass through them—from panic to rage to uncertainty.
He saw who flinched.
Who stood tall.
And who looked at the spear, just a little too long.
> Not yet.
> But close.
> Soon, one will fall, but for a while nothing happened as he had expected. Until when suddenly he noticed one man move, silently away from the rest of them.
---
Corporal Owen Carrow sat apart from the others now, legs folded, back to a stone.
He wasn't shaking. He wasn't speaking.
He was thinking.
He reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a worn scrap of paper—creased at the edges, soft with oil and time.
A drawing.
Crude, but careful. A child's hand.
A house. A tree. A tall figure with big arms.
And beside him—a girl with blonde hair and a red ribbon.
Her name was Elsie.
She was six.
He stared at it a long time.
His wife's last letter had come three months ago.
> "The factory's not taking more girls. I'm knitting for coin now. Elsie keeps asking when you're coming home."
She had begged him not to take this contract.
> "You're a baker, not a soldier."
But the pay had been good.
And the British Empire always paid its debts.
Even if the cost was blood.
Now there was a bone mask in the fog, a god-child with knives for fingers, and a stone that asked him to choose life over morality.
Was he to die here?
For science?
For a captain he barely knew?
For the Crown?
> "They'll be hungry," he whispered.
> "And I'll be rotting on a green hill no one will name."
He folded the picture.
Tucked it back into his coat.
And stood up quietly.
Back in the Circle, Mallory was still holding watch. Harrow sat hunched near the altar, tracing the edge of the stone with a finger.
Tremayne was asleep. Or pretending to be.
Penfold bandaged one of the wounded near the edge of the ring.
No one noticed Carrow leave.
No one noticed him circle wide.
Back toward camp.
He passed the last totem.
Took a slow breath.
And began preparing.
Not a trap.
Not a prayer.
A solution.
> Let them fight over ideas. Symbols. Righteousness.
> I'll bring my daughter home.
Owen Carrow walked through the mist with quiet steps, hands tucked deep into his coat, breath fogging faintly in the air.
He wasn't running. Not yet.
But his heart was hammering.
He clutched the folded drawing in his pocket—his daughter's picture. His reason. His future.
The others could pray, cry, write names in logs.
He was going to survive.
And if that meant blood, so be it.
But something moved ahead.
Not a sound.
Not a shape.
Just an absence.
Like the forest itself pulled back to make room for something more ancient.
Then it hit him.
Hard and fast.
A blur of motion, bone and weight.
He was thrown off his feet and slammed into the moss, the wind knocked from his lungs.
A knee pinned his chest.
A hand covered his mouth.
And above him—
The skull.
Cracked. Horned. Staring.
Cain.
The boy was small. Bare-chested. His skin glistened like marble beneath the moonlight. But his mask—his presence—made him feel taller than mountains.
Owen's limbs flailed. The world spun.
Then the voice came.
Not loud.
Not screaming.
But like ice pressed against bone.
> "You brought me here."
Owen froze.
Cain leaned lower.
> "Your kind. Your priests. Your filth. You tore me from battle and vomited me onto this world like a cursed relic."
He pressed a finger to Owen's chest—hard enough to make ribs creak.
> "I did not ask to come. I did not want this war. I had a war already. One that mattered."
Owen couldn't breathe.
Cain let go of his mouth.
> "Say it," he whispered. "Say this was your doing."
> "I—I didn't—"
> "You wear their colors. You carry their weapons. You eat their bread. You are them."
Cain rose to his feet slowly.
> "Then fix it."
He turned and walked a few paces away, then stopped—shoulders rising, falling.
> "I want to go back," he said, voice suddenly quieter.
> "Back to the Imperium. Back to the Light. Back to where I belong."
He looked up at the stars, dim through the mist.
> "But I don't have a way. Not unless I open one. Not unless you open it for me."
He turned back.
> "The stone circle. That's how I arrived. Through death. Through blood. Through ritual."
> "Now it's your turn. You will lead them. You will bring them to it. And they will die in it."
> "All of them. Somehow. Any way you like."
Cain stepped closer again.
> "Because if they don't die…"
He knelt.
> "Then you do."
Owen didn't answer.
He just stared.
Afraid.
Trembling.
But something behind his eyes had shifted—survival instinct turned to grim purpose.
Cain watched the change. Felt it.
Then reached out—two fingers brushing Owen's temple.
White light surged.
Owen gasped, body stiffening. His heart pounded, then slowed. The frost in his lungs vanished. The fog in his head lifted. Old scars flaked off like dust. His spine straightened. His pulse steadied.
Cain's hand moved to Owen's chest—flat palm, full contact.
Cain focused.
His eyes changed—the pupils narrowing like an owl's in moonlight, the irises flickering with gold and white.
And suddenly—he saw Owen in color.
Owen glowed gray—normal, flawed, human.
But inside, Cain saw patches of deeper tone.
A pale silver pulse in the lungs: strong breathing capacity.
A white thread along the spine: tenacity.
A faint flicker in the skull: loyalty—not yet to Cain, but to family.
Cain pressed harder, pouring light in, guiding it.
Owen's gray shifted.
Lighter.
Cleaner.
His bones thickened. His joints aligned. Muscles knit tighter. Vision sharpened.
He wouldn't be a Spartan.
Not yet.
But he would survive.
> "There," Cain whispered. "Now you won't fail."
He stood, voice low and cold.
> "Tell them it's a ritual. A test. Say a cut on the finger is all it takes."
> "Lead them to the circle."
> "Make sure they all die."
Cain leaned close one last time.
> "If even one walks out alive…"
The mask tilted slightly.
> "Then you will beg me to finish what I started."
Cain vanished into the mist.
Owen stood alone—body whole, heart broken, eyes wide.
He turned back toward the camp.
And for the first time since landing, he felt watched not from behind—but from within.
---