Cain once more sat beneath the vast night sky, wrapped in the silence of Glintmere's ruins like he had for a few more nights earlier.
The stars above glittered with distant, indifferent light, one that was cold and eternal. He sat with his back to the remnants of the garden wall, staring into the charred remains of what had once been his childhood home.
His body had healed. His mind was sharper with each passing day.
But his soul… his soul was still changing.
Deep within, something pulsed... a cold, alien rhythm echoing through the marrow of his being. It was not pain, not anymore.
It was… presence. A subtle, patient pressure. Not intrusive, but constant.
Like something ancient watching him through a veil.
He knew its origin.
That thing buried deep in him: the fragment.
An existence only known as a God Gem!
And it was no ordinary God Gem.
No relic from the self-proclaimed deities that strutted across this world.
No holy shard to be displayed in a temple.
This… thing… was older.
And yet, despite all his magical knowledge, despite a mind once celebrated as one of the finest arcane scholars in his realm, Cain could not name it.
The name "Annihilus" never appeared in any of his former world's tomes.
But the Abyss? That he remembered.
The mages in his former life had called it many things:
The Primordial Darkness.
The Endless Void.
The Eternal Emptiness.
The Bottomless Abyss.
Ginnungagap.
Cain's breath misted slightly in the cool night air as he muttered the final name aloud, "Ginnungagap…"
Even speaking it gave him pause.
It was a name that had inspired terror, even among the boldest scholars. Not because it was forbidden—but because it responded.
Mages who researched it too deeply reported waking from endless nightmares, whispering phrases in dead tongues.
Some found strange glyphs burned into their skin. Others simply vanished.
And those were just the ones who lived long enough to share their tales.
The legends were often dismissed as arcane hysteria—symptoms of mages delving too deep into dangerous theories. But Cain had seen enough to know the truth:
The Abyss was real.
It was the darkness before light, the silence before sound.
That which existed before the very first creation.
And now, a shard of that very void—an Abyssal fragment—was inside him.
Not aligned. Not borrowed. Fused.
He had never felt anything like it.
Not from divine relics he had studied to get insight into gods after borrowing precious time betting against the very fates.
Not even from the precious demigod souls they had reaped at the cost of a million fallen comrades to have a chance going against real gods.
Cain's fingers clenched slowly.
Whatever this being was, it had transcended everything he had ever known about power.
It wasn't a god.
The term didn't apply.
It didn't fit.
No matter how he tried to twist it.
Calling that thing "god" would be like calling the ocean a puddle.
No… this was something different.
Something before.
Cain closed his eyes and let the wind tinged with the ashy scent of the decimated houses and lost dead roll over him. It was almost like returning to his 'real' hometown for him, for it too had perished under similar circumstances several decades ago.
He could almost see it flash before his eyes, but he resisted.
He had far too important things to deal with right now.
Something more pressing, something more ancient, and something that quite literally demanded his attention.
In his mind's eye, he saw the barrier again. The one he'd crashed into during his soul's journey through the Abyss.
That final veil he should not have been able to pass.
He hadn't pierced it on his own.
The fragment had answered.
It had wrapped around his soul like a protective cocoon—no, more than that.
Like a key, unlocking a door that had never existed for anyone else.
Why?
Why him?
Was it his hatred of the gods?
His broken soul?
Or… was it because even now, he was not truly alive?
Cain let out a long breath.
He needed to name it.
Not the shard.
The being.
If only to understand it.
But every time he tried to shape it into something recognizable, the concepts fell apart. This wasn't a creature or a force. Not a spirit or a god. Not an energy or a law.
It was… origin.
Older than the first flame. Older than the concept of life.
Older than even death.
Cain recalled something from a half-forgotten philosopher in his former life—a fringe thinker who had once theorized that reality had been seeded by consciousness. One who had lived in a heap of garbage and dung, scorned by the erudite.
And not because of the state of his being, but the state of his thought.
For he said something that defied everything.
That before gods, before order, before even chaos, there had to be a spark. Not a creator in the traditional sense, but a first thing.
A Progenitor.
That word stuck.
And not just any progenitor.
No, this thing was not a being that gave birth to light or life.
This was something else.
The Primordial Progenitor.
The First Silence.
The First Void.
And somehow… it had noticed him.
Cain didn't believe in fate. Not anymore. Not after everything.
But he did believe in cause and effect.
And the fact that this power had reached across the abyss, shattered the rules of reincarnation, and dragged him into a world still bound by divine chains?
That meant something.
This wasn't mercy.
This was selection.
And now… he was the vessel.
The last heir to a forgotten terror that even gods once feared.
Cain stood slowly, legs steady beneath him.
"I don't know what you are," he said to the darkness around him, voice quiet. "But I'll carry your name. Even if it burns me from the inside out."
He turned his eyes toward the distant mountains, where fierce beasts were said to sleep and high temples gleamed like stars.
"I'll use your power," he whispered. "Not to serve… but to destroy."
His voice was ice.
"To burn their temples. To shatter their gems. To make them kneel."
He felt it then—a faint pulse in his chest.
The fragment stirred.
Not with joy. Not with warmth.
But with approval.
As if saying:
So mote it be.