CHAPTER 1224: MONEY.

He recognized this voice. Not the Watcher. Not an anchor. Something older. Something deeper. The Will itself—raw, unfiltered, speaking directly because the world was unstable enough to let it bleed through.

RETURN THE THREAD. RESTORE ORDER.

Cain stared at the dying anchor. "If I do that, I disappear."

YOU FULFILL YOUR DESIGN.

He shook his head. "Same thing."

The force behind the voice intensified. The grass flattened. The clouds convulsed. The anchor creature cracked at the torso, splitting nearly in half.

The Will pressed harder.

THE WORLD FRACTURES AROUND YOU. YOU CANNOT HOLD IT TOGETHER.

Cain snapped back, "Then I’ll hold the parts that matter."

YOU CANNOT—

"Watch me."

He grabbed the anchor’s arm. The moment he did, the creature froze, as if stunned by the contact. Cain felt energy surge up his arm, icy and hot at the same time, like trying to grip lightning.

He held on anyway.

The Will roared through him, furious, vast, impossible to fully grasp.

RELEASE THE THREAD. NOW.

Cain steadied himself.

"No."

The anchor’s fractured body glowed with a faint, pale light. The cracks began to seal—slowly, unevenly, but enough to halt the collapse. The world around them steadied just a fraction, like a tremor ending.

Cain’s knees almost buckled.

The Will pulsed once more—an immense, wordless pressure—and then it withdrew, retreating as if recoiling from something it didn’t understand.

Cain gasped and released the anchor. The thing sagged but remained stable, its form no longer dissolving.

He wiped sweat from his forehead.

"Guess that works."

The whisper inside his chest returned, softer now.

You interfere with more than your own fate. Be cautious.

Cain shrugged. "If the world’s going to fall apart every time I breathe, I might as well breathe loud."

He turned.

And froze.

Someone stood at the edge of the field.

A woman. Cloaked. Hood drawn low. Hands folded.

Not an anchor.

Not a Watcher.

Not a human.

Her presence warped the air.

Cain reached for a weapon he didn’t have. "Alright. Let’s hear it. You watching me, or coming for me?"

She stepped forward, voice like steady steel.

"I’ve been sent to make sure you don’t break the world faster than I can repair it."

Cain blinked. "And you are?"

She pulled back her hood.

Her eyes burned the same white-blue as the early Watchers, but threaded through with cracks of shadow.

"An exile," she said. "Like you—but older, angrier, and with a list of mistakes far longer."

She extended a hand.

"You want to keep ripping the story apart? Fine. Someone needs to make sure you don’t tear it beyond stitching."

Cain stared at her hand.

Then he took it.

"Let’s get to work."

The Exile’s grip was cold—cold in the way metal gets after being buried in snow for years. Cain released her hand the moment the handshake was done.

She didn’t seem bothered.

"Walk," she said, already turning away.

Cain didn’t move. "You show up out of nowhere, throw a cryptic introduction at me, and expect me to follow like a stray?"

She stopped but didn’t turn around. "If you stay here, anchors will spawn until their bodies pile into mountains. The world will bend around you until it snaps. Move, Cain."

He clicked his tongue.

"That’s not an answer."

"Then keep up," she said, striding across the shifting slate-grass.

He followed.

The landscape adjusted around her steps, stabilizing in a neat radius—grass holding its form, sky smoothing, the distant cracks closing like wounds under pressure. She wasn’t powerful in an explosive or dramatic sense. She was stabilizing, the way a load-bearing wall held a building upright. She walked with the weight of something that had carried too much for too long.

After a minute, Cain asked, "You said exile. From what?"

"From the structure you damaged."

"Did I break your house?"

"You broke everything," she replied.

Cain frowned. "And why help me now?"

"Because unlike the Will, I don’t want you erased. I want you contained."

"That supposed to comfort me?"

"It’s supposed to keep you alive."

The ground ahead finally shifted into something recognizable: a canyon. Not natural—too symmetrical, too sharp. Two parallel cliffs ran for miles, forming a long corridor with walls carved in clean geometric patterns, like someone had sliced the earth with a blade made of pure intention.

The Exile said, "Inside."

Cain stared into the canyon. "...And what’s in there?"

"The reason the world hasn’t collapsed already."

Her tone didn’t suggest dramatics. It was simply fact.

Cain stepped in.

The moment he crossed the threshold, the temperature dropped. The walls hummed with energy—steady, rhythmic, purposeful. Not like the glitchy instability outside. This was organized. Constrained. Held.

"Explain," Cain said.

The Exile walked beside him, cloak brushing the stone. "This corridor is a buffer. A haven where the narrative stabilizes. The world doesn’t mutate here. Threads don’t snap."

Cain ran a hand along the wall. Smooth. Cold. "So someone built this."

"Many tried. I finished it." She glanced at him. "Partially finished."

"Partially?"

"We ran out of time."

Cain eyed her. "We?"

She didn’t answer.

The canyon widened into a chamber—vast, circular, domed by a stone ceiling threaded with faint blue light. In the center stood a platform, hexagonal, covered in symbols Cain didn’t recognize. They weren’t decorative. They felt like locks.

Cain stepped onto the platform.

It lit beneath him instantly.

The Exile tensed. "Careful."

Cain glanced back. "What? Afraid I’ll break your floor too?"

"You joke," she said, "but yes."

The platform pulsed again, brighter this time. Cain’s chest burned as the thread reacted, flaring against the symbols like a live wire shoved into old circuitry.

"What is this thing?" he asked through clenched teeth.

"A registry."

"For what?"

"Deviations."

Cain’s eyes narrowed. "Meaning me."

"Not only you," she corrected. "All anomalies. All broken paths. All choices that split from design. The platform maps instability. Shows where the fractures spread."

"Show me."

She didn’t move. "It will hurt."

"Everything hurts. Show me."

The Exile exhaled slowly, stepped forward, and placed her palms on the outer edge of the platform.

The chamber darkened.

Lines of light erupted around them, forming a sprawling, three-dimensional lattice of threads suspended in the air. Thousands. Millions. Each one pulsed with a different color—some steady, some flickering, some frayed at the ends like unraveling rope.

Cain stiffened.

"Is that the world?"

"No," she said. "That’s just the part affected by you."