Location: London – Admiralty House, Halifax Naval Command, and Ottawa Colonial Office
Time: 6 weeks after the light beam and the disappearance of HMS Enduring Grace
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London – Admiralty House, Whitehall
The gaslamps flickered under the dark oak-paneled ceiling as Lord Julian Worthington, First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, closed the latest dispatch. His fingers tapped against the brass fittings of the desk, slow and precise.
> "It's been six weeks," he said aloud.
The aide beside him didn't respond.
> "No signal. No reports. Not even driftwood."
The man across the table was Lord Reginald Ashby, MP for Dover and uncle to Captain Elias Harrow, presumed lost. He stared down at the crumpled letter in his hands, its wax seal cracked.
> "My sister is asking why her son hasn't written. What shall I tell her, Julian?"
> "That we've lost good men," Worthington replied, rising from his chair. "And that we're going to find them."
---
Halifax – Naval Command Center
The chart room was silent but for the scratch of quills and the slow rhythm of ticking clocks. Officers gathered around a large map of the Canadian Arctic, marked with red threads and pins. The position of the Enduring Grace had been plotted. The last known signal: a distorted Morse burst—recorded, copied, and still unsolved.
> "Rhythmic static, sir," said the comms officer. "It pulsed like a heartbeat. That's what the man said."
> "And we think the Germans are behind this?" asked Commodore Alistair Redgrave, arms folded.
> "We don't know," said the intelligence man. "But something is killing patrols. Native hunters have vanished. Villages... emptied."
> "And you want to send another expedition?"
> "No, sir," said Redgrave.
> "We want to send you."
---
Ottawa – Colonial Office
A missionary from Baffin Bay stood in the marble-floored chamber. His beard was frozen. His hands shook.
> "They spoke of a child," he rasped. "Small. Pale. In a mask of bone. He walked through fire and left no tracks. He pulled their hearts from their chests with bare hands."
The officials exchanged glances.
> "A native myth," one muttered.
> "No," the missionary said. "He wasn't one of them. They feared him more than death."
---
London – Later that Night
The Queen's private secretary delivered a sealed note to a locked archive beneath Windsor Castle.
It read:
> CLASSIFIED: ORDO INITIATION
Light anomaly consistent with pre-Black Year sightings (Reference: 1864–Alaska)
High risk of spiritual contamination.
Heretical energy patterns matching pre-Reformation studies.
Non-Imperial entity active in British territory.
Primary concern: containment before foreign powers act.
Proposed Action:
Mobilize Arctic Command.
Deploy Redgrave.
Prepare theological consultants.
At the bottom, the file was stamped:
> "CONDITION: SUN-WOUND."
---
Halifax – Days Later
Three ships were readied at dock.
Men were outfitted in cold-weather gear. Cannons were loaded. Dynamite crates were stamped and packed.
And beneath all the noise, men whispered of demons.
Of ghosts.
Of something in the north that had killed 24 men and left no graves.
---
Location: Meighen Island
Time: 6–7 weeks after Cain's arrival
---
The sun never fully set anymore. It just circled the horizon like a hunting bird, casting gold and silver light across the cliffs. The fog rose each morning, thick and wet, then pulled back by afternoon, revealing the moss-covered ridges and glistening black rock beneath.
But now there was more than moss.
There were bodies.
Dozens.
Hung on pikes.
Crucified on iron plating.
Stretched across ropes made from sinew and naval cordage.
Some upright. Some bent backwards in agonized devotion.
Each one facing the sea.
Watching, and waiting to strike fear into the other group of invading heretics that was surely to come.
Cain moved among them silently.
He carried a bone-handled hammer in one hand and a coil of wire in the other.
He tightened a neck strap on a corpse that had begun to sag, repositioning the head to face east.
Then he stepped back and looked across his work.
> "Let them see," he muttered.
> "Let them understand what it cost."
By now the Shipwreck had been Harvested for part's, for his ever growing island fortress.
Now the once mighty ship called the Enduring Grace, was nothing more than a carcass that was even still being stripped further.
Deck beams now reinforced the main cave's ceiling.
Hull plates lined choke tunnels and foxholes.
Rifle parts had been disassembled and rebuilt into pressure triggers.
A broken Gatling had been mounted on a turntable, hidden under a mound of flowering moss—triggered by a lever made from bone and boiler pipe.
The engines had been pulled apart for gears. The boiler cracked open and buried, forming the core of a furnace chamber where Cain smithed in silence by firelight.
Above the bunker, a grave-sigil of scorched moss spread outward in rings, like a sun bleeding into the soil.
Deep beneath the cave, the Light Stone pulsed like a buried star. And now he had named it, simply as Light stone Level 4, as by now he after pouring more and more power within it had seen it grow that many times at least.
And with growth it's range had expanded—2 kilometers in every direction, at least.
Within that space:
The air was warm year-round.
Trees had begun to sprout, small but fast-growing.
Moss grew on vertical cliffs.
Vines curled up the crucifix poles, blooming tiny white flowers from the mouths of the dead.
The animals had changed too—larger, calmer, watching Cain like servants.
He was no longer alone.
He was a priest-king, and the island was his cathedral.
And inside the Cave the walls were carved with spirals and light-touched markings, forming a record of the trials:
The first fleet
The ritual bloodbath
The failed gate
Each name of the dead was burned into the wall, ending in Owen Carrow, last survivor, first liar, first tool.
Next to the altar Cain had rebuilt from the second ship's copper plating, he had written his creed:
> "They summoned me in blood.
They denied me my return.
So now I build my gate in their bones."
And now Cain stood at the cliff's edge.
He no longer wore only furs.
His armor now gleamed with plate taken from the ship—chest plating, greaves, and a shoulder pauldron marked with a Navy officer's insignia, blackened and defiled.
His glaive had been reforged with a sharpened steel core.
His mask was now fused with brass and horn.
He had become more than a child.
He had become a ruin given voice.
And as he stared across the sea, the wind carried a faint sound.
A low rumble.
Propellers. Steam. Hulls groaning under weight.
Cain smiled.
> "Come closer."
> "Come bring me home."
---
Location: Arctic Sea, Approaching Meighen Island
Time: Early morning, Day 43 since the loss of HMS Enduring Grace
---
The sea was calm.
Too calm.
Three ships cut through the waters like teeth—steel-hulled, reinforced, bristling with cannon and ambition.
The HMS Resolute led the way, her polished decks lined with Royal Marines in cold-weather greatcoats. Behind her trailed the HMS Vanguard, loaded with supply wagons, munitions crates, and a field cannon mounted midship. The third, the Glory's Wake, was smaller, faster—a dispatch and support vessel, carrying telegraph equipment, a mobile infirmary, and half a dozen crates marked with crimson wax seals: explosives.
Aboard the HMS Resolute.
Commodore Alistair Redgrave stood on the bow, arms behind his back, coat sharp as ice, jaw clenched.
He had not spoken much during the journey.
He hadn't needed to.
The orders were clear:
> "Find the source. Burn it. Retrieve the dead. Restore the Crown's dominion."
To Redgrave, it wasn't a mystery.
It was a stain.
And stains were burned away.
Lieutenant James Merrick, younger, sharper, watched the mist thin ahead with a telescope.
He stiffened.
> "Sir. Land in sight."
Redgrave stepped beside him.
Through the lens:
A jagged ridge.
Beyond it—green.
Then the mist pulled back like a curtain torn open by a silent hand.
First came light—not bright, but strangely warm. The kind of light found in hothouses, where life grows despite the frost outside. It shimmered along the waves like honey over glass.
Then the island took shape.
And what lay ahead of the fleet was not cliffs or ice or gray Arctic desolation.
It was impossible.
Not gray rock.
Not dead snow.
But rolling hills veiled in green, a thousand shades of moss.
Wildflowers bloomed in clusters, defying reason—blue, red, yellow—too lush, too healthy.
Birds wheeled above in slow, deliberate spirals, not in flocks, but in orbit—as if circling something sacred or dangerous.
On the lower slopes, seals lay basking on black volcanic stone, thick and content, surrounded by curling steam that hissed out of thin cracks in the earth. Not smoke. Not fog. Heat.
A thin river wound down from the cliffs, impossibly clear, glittering with meltwater that should not exist—not at this time of year, not in this place.
It was not just alive.
It was thriving.
It was welcoming.
And that was the most terrifying thing of all.
The men lined the rails of the HMS Resolute, squinting at the land that should not be.
Some crossed themselves.
Some whispered the Lord's Prayer.
Others just stared, jaws slack, rifles forgotten in their hands.
> "Bloody Eden," one marine muttered under his breath.
> "No wind. No waves. Even the birds are off…"
> "What's that smell?" another asked, wrinkling his nose.
> "Like spring," someone replied. "Like… rot. Wet rot."
They didn't realize they were holding their breath.
And as the ships edged closer to shore, the beauty began to fracture.
The green continued up the ridge—but so did shapes.
Poles.
Tall, thick, crooked things, at first mistaken for dead trees.
Then they saw the cloth.
Blackened. Tattered. Hanging like flayed skin.
And then—
The figures.
At first just one.
Then two.
Then dozens.
Crucified men.
Nailed to beams of wood, steel, and bone.
Some upright, arms outstretched like offerings.
Others bent unnaturally backward, ribcages sawn open and spread like wings—mockeries of angels.
They were not old.
Their skin had not blackened with rot.
Their wounds had not peeled in age.
They were fresh.
One still wore the remnants of a Royal Navy coat, shredded and crusted with dried blood.
His eyes had been scooped out. Cleanly.
His chest had been carved, letter by letter, with unshaking precision:
> SEND MORE
On the deck, the men stood frozen.
Some stared.
Some whispered.
No one moved.
Not until Commodore Redgrave turned sharply on his heel, voice low but clear.
> "Lower the boats. Prepare the landing party."
There was a beat of hesitation. A few faces turned toward him—uncertain. Uneasy.
Then Lieutenant Merrick stepped forward, voice tight.
> "Sir?"
Redgrave didn't turn to him.
His eyes were fixed on the green hills rising behind the crucified line.
> "That's not a battlefield, Lieutenant."
He raised one gloved hand and pointed toward the slope—toward the wildflowers and steam and silence.
> "That's a challenge."
He looked over his shoulder, the wind tugging at his collar.
> "And the Crown answers every challenge."
Far Away on the Island, Cain crouched in a tree hollow, cloaked in fur and silence, his mask flecked with morning dew.
He watched the boats lower.
Watched the soldiers load rifles, check maps, adjust straps.
Watched the flags flutter.
His eyes narrowed.
> "You brought me fire again."
He rested his hand on the rifle he had rebuilt, now fitted with a sharpened bayonet and carved grips.
> "Let's see if your blood is worth more than the last."
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