Cain couldn't argue that. The fire. The unnatural resilience. The dreams he never understood. The sense that something watched him not to harm him but to direct him.

Yet anger cut through him anyway.

"So what now?" Cain demanded. "You show up, drop a revelation, and expect me to kneel? To thank you?"

"I expect nothing," the figure said quietly. "I reveal what the spiral chose to show you. The rest depends on whether you accept your lineage."

Cain frowned. "Lineage?"

The figure lifted a hand. A simple gesture. Not commanding—inviting.

The threads overhead parted once more, revealing a hidden path Cain hadn't noticed before. It wasn't a thread of memory like the others. It didn't show visions, scenes, or fragments.

It showed a fire burning in the distance, steady and patient.

"Walk it," the figure said. "And you will understand why your bloodline was sought. And why your brother—"

Cain stiffened. "Brother?"

"—why he fell."

The chamber trembled. The flame in the lantern surged, casting sharp light across the spiral.

Cain stepped forward instinctively. "Explain that. Now."

The figure didn't move. "If I explain it here, you will not believe me. If you see it for yourself, you will not forget."

Cain stared at the burning path.

It stretched into a distance that wasn't distance.

A place that wasn't a place.

"Where does it lead?" Cain asked.

"To truth," the figure answered.

Then, after a beat—

"To him."

The lantern's flame leaned toward the path like a magnet finding its opposite.

Cain took a breath. "And if I walk it?"

"Then you take ownership of what was traded on your behalf."

"And if I don't?"

The figure's voice shifted—no threat, just inevitability.

"Then the contract remains unbroken. And you will continue running from a fire that has already chosen you."

Cain looked at the path again. The fire at the end flickered, waiting.

His fingers tightened around the lantern handle.

He stepped onto the first glowing symbol.

The chamber responded instantly.

The spiral ignited.

The threads pulled back.

The air cracked with heat.

The figure's final words followed him as the world lurched forward:

"Walk carefully. Purpose burns."

Cain didn't look back.

The path swallowed him in light.

Cain staggered forward as the brilliance collapsed around him. The moment his feet touched solid ground again, the light vanished—cut clean, as if someone tore a curtain away.

He stood in a barren landscape of scorched stone and drifting ash.

The sky above him wasn't a sky at all. It flickered, unstable, like a sheet of dying embers stretched thin across a void. Every now and then, a vein of darker flame pulsed through it, echoing with a faint, distant reverberation.

The place smelled of smoke and iron. And something older.

Cain gripped the lantern tighter. Its flame didn't just illuminate the area—it fed on it, pulling in stray sparks from the drifting ash, growing brighter with each breath it took.

He steadied himself.

This wasn't the chamber.

This wasn't the threads.

This wasn't anything he'd seen before.

This was the path.

He turned in a slow circle. There were no landmarks, no walls, no horizon—just open wasteland stretching forever. Yet something tugged at him. A direction. A pull anchored deep in his ribs, like an instinct waking up after years of silence.

The fire at the "end" of the path—the one he saw from the chamber—wasn't in sight. But he could feel where it should be.

Cain moved.

The ground cracked beneath each step, brittle and hot. Not dangerous, not burning through his boots—just reacting to him. A faint reddish glow appeared in his footprints, trailing behind him like cooling magma.

Minutes or hours passed—time didn't behave normally here. But eventually, Cain stopped.

Not because he grew tired.

Because the land stopped being empty.

A structure rose ahead of him—not built, but grown, as if solidified from flame. Towering pillars of blackened obsidian twisted around each other, forming a crude archway. And beyond it, a pair of massive doors forged from metal too dark to reflect the lantern's light.

Symbols were carved into their surface—some Cain recognized from the spiral beneath his boots in the chamber, others unfamiliar but eerily intuitive. His pulse hammered as he approached.

The pull in his chest intensified.

The lantern's flame strained forward, brighter, almost eager.

Cain reached the doors, hesitated, then pushed.

They swung inward without resistance.

A wave of blistering heat hit him. Not painful—just overwhelming in its purity. Like stepping directly into the heart of a forge.

He stepped inside.

The hall was enormous, dark at the far edges, lit only by veins of molten light that ran along the walls like rivers trapped behind glass. The heat here wasn't physical—it pressed against his thoughts. A memory of fire, not fire itself.

At the end of the hall stood a figure.

Not the Fallen from before.

This one was hunched over, sitting on a slab of stone. Shackles bound its wrists and ankles, though the chains trailing from them had been melted down long ago. He couldn't see its face, only the silhouette—solid, unmistakable, and painfully human.

Cain froze.

His heartbeat quickened for reasons he didn't fully understand yet.

He took a few steps.

The figure didn't react.

"Hey!" Cain shouted.

His voice echoed unnaturally, bouncing off the walls in sharp, delayed fragments.

Still no reaction.

Cain approached until he was only a few feet away. The closer he got, the stronger the pull in his chest became. Panic? Recognition? Something between.

He circled around the bound figure.

And the moment he saw the face—

His stomach dropped.

A man, barely older than Cain himself. Scar across the left brow. A jawline so similar it felt like a reflection warped by suffering. Hair dark and matted with soot. Hands blistered, knuckles split, like he'd clawed at restraints for years.

The resemblance hit harder than any blade.

Cain's voice cracked. "Who are you?"

The man's eyes opened.

They burned—not metaphorically, but literally. Flickers of gold flared in the irises, matching the lantern's flame.

When he spoke, his voice sounded hollow from disuse.

"You finally made it."

Cain's breath caught.

"Do I know you?" he asked.

The man studied him with an expression that mixed bitterness and pride.

"You should," he said. "You're the reason I'm here."

Cain felt the ground tilt beneath him. "Explain."