Cain and the Champions of the Root felt the surge before they saw it. A violent burst of energy rippled out from the Matrix—raw, resonant, and impossibly vast. Even from their perch in the fractured void, they sensed how much power it consumed. And then, from that incandescent pulse, eight massive golden gates bloomed into existence across the distant horizon.
Emprik and Kukulkatz exchanged a moment of wordless confusion, their eyes narrowing as the colossal structures unfolded like burning constellations. But Cain… Cain recognized them instantly.
His gaze sharpened with a cold, knowing focus. The aura radiating from those gates was the same force that had seized him when he was once trapped within the Empyrean Wall—dragged him through blinding light and screaming space so he could stand before the Heart of the Root itself.
"So it was the Matrix that brought me here," he thought, the realization flickering through his mind like a razor of certainty.
