Pain was the first thing that greeted Cain.
Again.
This time, not the shattering, soul-rending torment of rebirth. This was the pain of the flesh: sharp, raw, and humming in his bones like he'd been buried under a landslide.
Cain's eyes cracked open.
The ceiling above him was wooden and cracked, its grain bleached gray by age. The smell of herbs and dried blood lingered in the air. His body was stiff, cold sweat gluing the thin blanket to his chest. Light trickled in from the edges of a shuttered window.
He was alone.
Breathing was difficult, as if drawing in air through wet cloth. It was something he could truly relate with. After all... He had been waterboarded dozens of times before.
His throat burned, parched and bruised.
"Urrghh…"
The sound that left him was hardly human. Hoarse, broken, more breath than voice. But it was his.
Alive.
He shifted, but even the effort of lifting his hand left his vision swimming. The muscles in his limbs ached as if they'd atrophied. It took a full minute just to roll onto his side. When he did, he collapsed there, panting through gritted teeth.
'Mana,' he thought. 'I need mana. Just enough to...'
He reached out.
His mind cast the spell instinctively, [Mana Thread], a minor magical spell from his old world used to pull ambient mana and form a rudimentary thread for spellcasting. It was the basis of a lot of complex spells... a foundation.
As long as he could use it, he could use the most rudimentary method of healing. It was not even a spell, but a simple infusion of mana into broken flesh.
And yet...
Nothing happened.
Cain blinked, tried again. This time he reached deeper, his senses probing the air around him.
And what he found left him stunned.
'So abundant.'
The mana in the air was thick—richer and denser than anything he'd ever encountered, even in the High Arcanum Fields of his original world. It swam around him like currents in an invisible ocean. It was everywhere.
Yet he couldn't control any of it.
Not a single strand bent to his will.
It was like holding an ocean in your palm and realizing your fingers were broken.
"What…?" he rasped, barely audible.
This wasn't right. He had cast spells with his breath alone. He had manipulated natural mana springs in battle and weaved spells mid-fall with a flick of his mind. Now, he couldn't even move a thread of mana despite being surrounded by it.
Then the realization hit him, 'This isn't my world.'
The thought sent a jolt down his spine.
No, this wasn't the land where his former allies had knelt before Zeus. This wasn't the sky under which his betrayal had been carved in blood. The very nature of mana here was different—richer, deeper, more ancient.
And as that thought anchored in his mind, something else stirred.
A sensation… like a ping.
Information flowed into his thoughts—not chaotic this time, but structured. Like a Smart Matrix Database he'd once built in his original world. Back then, it was a tool—an intelligent archive of his magical research that connected memory, theory, and spellcraft. It was something that most mages built upon reaching a high enough rank.
As such, this sensation felt eerily similar.
But this knowledge wasn't his.
Not originally.
It belonged to Cain Vox.
He wasn't remembering so much as retrieving.
The boy's voice, soft and uncertain, echoed through him like a ghost:
"Dad said the gods made this world first, then made us. Said they gave us life in exchange for our worship. That's why we say prayers before meals, and why the village offers gifts during skyfall. Otherwise… the gods get angry."
Fragments filled in like puzzle pieces:
This world was created by gods who no longer shaped with hands, but ruled through belief.
Worship wasn't tradition—it was currency. Power.
Those who failed to pay their dues? Heretics. Often executed. Sometimes exiled.
Then came the beasts.
Terrible creatures, wrought from divine whims. Wolves with eyes of flame. Serpents that sang men to madness. Chimera that swam through stone. Creatures born of mana, shaped to test humanity.
The gods claimed it was for sport. Some said it was to "inspire growth."
But too many died.
And so the gods "took pity."
From their divine essence, they created God Gems—fragments of their own power, meant to be wielded by worthy mortals. Each gem held a fraction of a god's strength. Some, lesser. Some… truly divine.
Those who could fuse with a God Gem were known as Gem Masters.
The chosen.
The few.
Cain—both of them—had grown up hearing tales. Cain Vox had always dreamed of becoming one, though no commoner from Glintmere ever had. Not really. The only gems their people saw were far-off flashes during the rare passing of traveling warriors.
Cain-the-mage closed his eyes, parsing through the information.
This wasn't a world of spellcraft and theory. Not the structured discipline he had mastered. No sigils, no mana circuits, no academies.
Here, it was all about affinity.
You either connected with a God Gem—or you didn't.
If your soul aligned with one, you could access its power. The stronger the affinity, the more gems you could wield.
And if not?
You were dust in the wind.
Cain exhaled slowly.
'No wonder I can't control the mana here… I'm not aligned with this world's system.'
His soul wasn't bound to this world's magical laws.
It was an intruder.
Except… not entirely.
He remembered the abyss.
The barrier.
The pulse of impossible power that had wrapped around him.
The God Gem of Annihilus.
The primordial void. The dead god before gods. A power so ancient it had never belonged to this realm—or any realm.
'That must be the key', Cain thought. T'hat's why I'm still alive... Why I'm even here... That Gem brought me in.'
But where was it now?
He didn't feel it. Not yet. But deep inside, beneath the pain and fractured soul-link, something pulsed in response to his thoughts.
Waiting.
A breeze moved the shutter slightly, allowing a stream of sunlight to stretch across the wooden floor. Dust motes drifted lazily in the air, uncaring of the divine truths now unraveling in the mind of a broken boy with a god's hatred burning in his veins.
Cain closed his eyes again.
His body was weak.
His magic useless.
His position uncertain.
But now he had clarity.
This world worshipped gods out of fear and desperation. It bowed to power it did not understand. And worst of all, it obeyed—without question.
Cain had done that once.
He would never do it again.