CHAPTER 1236: LANGUID DAYS (3).

Cain gripped the golden thread. It hummed, warm against his skin.

Leth stepped beside him. "When you cross, remember one thing. Don’t call his name. Names are invitations."

"I won’t."

"And don’t run." Leth’s voice flattened. "His realm responds to momentum. Fear makes you move fast. Fast turns to lost."

Cain met Leth’s gaze. "What about courage?"

"That," Leth said, wings sparking briefly, "makes the path stronger."

Cain nodded.

Then he pulled.

The golden thread tore the gray world open in a single clean seam. Light poured through—not bright, not gentle, but sharp and steady like the edge of a promise.

Cain stepped into it without hesitation.

Leth followed.

And the tear sealed behind them.

Cain hit ground—real ground this time. Solid. Cold. Rough like ancient stone left too long in shadow. He steadied himself, inhaling air that tasted metallic, sharp, and almost electrical. The realm he entered didn’t look like a world so much as a memory of one—frozen mid-thought, half-formed, half-forgotten.

Behind him, Leth emerged through the seam. The tear folded shut with a soft hiss.

"Welcome to the Court of the Forgotten," Leth said, voice lowered. "The Watcher’s cradle. The place he built before he fell."

Cain scanned the terrain. Vast columns rose around them, ribbed like spines, glowing faintly along etched runes that curved in spirals. The sky—if it could be called a sky—looked like swirling ink. No stars. No sun. Only slow currents of dark light dragging across it like bruises.

"Feels dead," Cain muttered.

"It’s dormant," Leth corrected. "Waiting."

"For what?"

"For him."

Cain picked a direction at random—forward. The air vibrated with an uneven hum, faint as whispering breath. The gold thread had dissolved, leaving no guidance, but Cain didn’t need a string anymore. Asha’s presence—her echo, her pull—throbbed under his ribs like a second heartbeat.

Leth drifted beside him. "The realm will test you first. Not him. This place wants to know who’s entered it."

"Then let it watch," Cain said. "I’m here for her."

"That’s exactly why it’ll test you."

Cain didn’t slow. The path between columns widened into a vast open space, shaped like an amphitheater. Stairs descended in perfect symmetry, yet every step held a slight distortion, as if the angles refused to settle. At the center stood a platform, circular, smooth as glass.

Cain stepped toward it. His foot crossed the boundary.

The entire arena shifted.

He froze. The ground rippled outward like water disturbed by a stone. The columns darkened. Something unseen swept over his skin, cold and probing. Leth’s wings flared in warning.

"It’s starting," Leth murmured.

The platform beneath Cain lit with symbols—circles within circles, crossing lines, geometric shapes that realigned themselves faster than the eye could track.

"What is this?" Cain asked.

"A measure," Leth said. "It weighs what you are."

Cain felt the air thicken. Pressure tightened around his skull, trying to bore inward. His instincts flared—fight, push back, resist—but Leth’s earlier warning echoed: Don’t run. Don’t let fear set the pace.

Cain planted his feet and breathed. Steady. Controlled.

The symbols slowed.

A voice—low, resonant, neither echo nor whisper but both—rolled across the arena.

"Cain Ashfall."

Cain stiffened. That wasn’t a voice spoken aloud. It was closer, like someone was standing directly inside his thoughts.

Leth’s wings jerked in surprise. "He shouldn’t be speaking yet."

Cain didn’t let the moment rattle him. "Show yourself," he said.

Silence stretched, long and deliberate.

Then the voice returned.

"You walk into my realm with certainty. Dangerous trait."

Cain clenched his jaw. "I’m here for Asha."

"Yes." The voice threaded dark amusement through the word. "You think you can take her."

Cain ground out each syllable. "I’m not asking permission."

The air rippled again. The arena’s columns trembled.

Leth stepped forward. "He’s not here. You’re hearing a projection—an imprint. He left pieces of himself everywhere in this realm."

Cain kept his gaze fixed ahead. "Then I’ll talk to whatever piece listens."

The voice circled him, no direction, no source.

"She called to me long before she ever knew your name."

Cain’s fists tightened. "Doesn’t matter. She’s mine to protect."

That earned a low, pulsing hum—displeasure or curiosity, hard to tell.

"Claiming her makes you arrogant."

"Protecting her makes me human."

The arena’s symbols brightened—too bright, blinding white. Cain staggered back. The light swallowed the platform, drowned the stairs, erased the columns.

And then the world around him snapped into something else entirely.

He stood in a narrow hallway—one he recognized instantly.

The orphanage.

His breath hitched despite himself. The peeling green paint. The warped wooden floorboards. The dim window at the end of the hall where he used to sit to read when he couldn’t sleep. Every detail was perfect.

This wasn’t memory. This was precision.

Leth’s voice echoed distantly, like shouted through water. "Cain—don’t lose focus. It’s using your past."

Cain forced himself forward. "I know."

The hallway stretched with each step. Doorframes elongated, shadows deepened. The air smelled of dust and cold—exactly as he remembered. The realm wasn’t showing him fear or pain. It was showing him weight. The place where his story began.

The Watcher’s voice seeped through the walls.

"You claw your way toward others, but you never learned how to be still."

Cain ignored it.

"You bury yourself in purpose to avoid looking at yourself."

Cain kept walking.

The end of the hall refused to get closer.

He stopped.

"Enough games," he said under his breath.

He closed his eyes—not retreat, not fear. Intention. He visualized where he needed to be, not where the realm wanted him.

A desert of pale sand. A horizon cracked with falling stars. A jagged monolith where Asha’s energy pulsed like a spark.

When he opened his eyes—

The hallway shattered like glass.

He stood in an endless stretch of pale dunes. The sky burned with drifting embers, star-ash falling in slow arcs. And there, far ahead, the monolith pulsed faintly. A rhythmic glow. A heartbeat.

Asha.

Cain started toward it.

Leth appeared beside him in a snap of fractured light, wings dimmed. "You broke the trial faster than I expected."

Cain didn’t waste time. "How far?"

"Farther than it looks," Leth said. "Distances bend here."