Cain scanned it. "Any sign of Susan or Steve?"

"They made it out before the collapse," Mara said. "Susan's ward shielded them. She burned a lot of energy, but she's upright. Steve's… well, Steve. Panicking with purpose."

A knot in Cain's chest loosened. He hadn't realized how tightly he'd been clenching around their fate.

Mara jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. "We regrouped in the reliquary chamber. The Fallen's envoy hasn't shown himself again, but the aura he left behind hasn't dissipated. And you're going to explain why he said your name."

Cain stiffened.

He'd hoped she wouldn't bring that up yet. Hope never stopped Mara.

She turned, boots crunching on debris as she led him down the fractured corridor. "He called you 'First-Born.' And unless you've been lying to us for years, that's not a title mortals just pick up."

Cain followed, stepping around shattered tiles without meeting her eyes. "He was taunting me."

"He was greeting you." Mara glanced back. "And he bowed."

Cain kept walking.

The reliquary chamber appeared at the corridor's end, half-lit by failing crystal lanterns. The air shimmered with leftover angelic residue—warm, golden, and wrong, like something holy bending out of shape.

Susan leaned against a broken pillar, breathing hard but awake. Steve paced behind her, muttering about structural integrity and blast radii and how many ways the roof could still collapse on all of them. When they saw Cain, both froze.

Susan's shoulders slumped with relief. "Finally."

Steve rushed forward and stopped inches from Cain's face. "You're alive. Great. Fantastic. Could you please not set off a death trap again? I'm running out of near-death quota."

Cain lifted a brow. "I didn't set—"

"Don't even finish that sentence," Steve shot back. "You walked into a hallway and the hallway tried to kill you. That counts."

Susan gestured him closer. "Let him breathe. Cain, sit. You look like you lost round one with a building."

He lowered himself onto a chunk of fallen stone. Mara stayed standing, arms crossed, ready to interrogate the universe until it confessed.

Cain inhaled. Slow. Steady. If he didn't choose his next words carefully, the truth would detonate harder than the ward.

Susan tilted her head. "What exactly happened before the explosion? We felt the pressure shift. Something else was in there with you."

Cain rubbed the dried dust from his palms. "The envoy appeared."

Steve squeaked. "The Fallen envoy? The same one who— who turned the whole marketplace into statues of screaming stone? That guy?"

"Yeah."

Susan swallowed. "And he spoke to you directly."

Cain nodded once.

Mara stepped forward. "Speak plainly. What did he want?"

Cain looked at their faces—three people who had followed him through storms, sanctums, and near-impossible fights. Three people who trusted him even when he didn't trust himself.

He exhaled. "He didn't want anything. He came to remind me of what I am."

Silence hit the chamber like another blast.

Steve blinked. "Okay. Uh. That sounds like the start of an identity crisis, so maybe elaborate."

"I wasn't born the way you think." Cain kept his voice level. "I was raised human. But I wasn't… made human."

Mara's jaw tightened. Susan's fingers dug into the pillar.

Cain continued. "The Fallen—Watchers, before the corruption—once needed intermediaries between themselves and mortals. They shaped beings to bridge the gap. Not angels. Not human. Something in between."

Susan whispered, "Hybrids."

"Prototypes," Cain corrected. "Early attempts. Most were destroyed when the Watchers Fell. I shouldn't exist. But one survived. Me."

Steve stared. "You're saying you're— what? A leftover cosmic draft version of an angel?"

Cain let him have the phrasing. It wasn't totally wrong.

Mara spoke next, voice sharp. "And you never thought to mention this?"

"What would I have said?" Cain shot back. "'By the way, I might be tied to the same beings threatening humanity'? You'd have walked away."

Mara didn't argue. Her silence said she hated that he had a point.

Susan pushed off the pillar, wincing but determined. "Cain… does this mean the envoy serves you? Or expects you to serve him?"

Cain shook his head. "Neither. He sees me as property that slipped through the cracks."

Steve winced. "They want you back."

"Or dead," Mara added.

"And that's why he triggered the ward," Cain said. "The sanctuary recognized what I am. It reacted."

Susan's eyes widened. "So we're standing inside a divine vault designed to repel anything Fallen… including you."

Cain gave a humorless smile. "Exactly."

The crystals overhead flickered harder. A low hum rolled through the chamber—an activation pulse.

Steve looked around wildly. "Uh, is that noise meant to happen? Because it does not sound like it wants us here."

Mara cursed under her breath. "The sanctuary's waking up. It thinks Cain is an intruder."

"And if Cain is an intruder," Susan said grimly, "it'll purge the chamber."

Cain stood. "Then we move. Now."

But as he reached for the exit, the air rippled. Light congealed in the center of the chamber, forming a spiraling sigil of gold fire. Not Fallen energy. Angelic. Pure. Purposeful.

Susan paled. "That's a summons."

Mara grabbed her blade. "Who's calling?"

Cain stared into the blazing sigil—and felt recognition strike him like a blow.

"The Divine Will," he said quietly. "The true one. It wants me."

Steve groaned. "Fantastic. The Fallen want to claim you, the Divine wants to summon you, and we're caught between both sides' custody battle over your soul."

The sigil pulsed again, brighter. The chamber trembled.

Cain stepped forward.

Susan grabbed his wrist. "Cain, don't."

"Standing here gets us all killed," he said. "This is the only way out."

Mara held his gaze. "Come back."

"Always."

He walked into the light.

Cain expected the light to burn. Instead it wrapped around him like cold wind—sharp, clean, absolute. The world dissolved into a column of radiance, and the sanctuary, his team, the broken chamber—all of it vanished in a blink.

Then his boots touched solid ground.

A vast expanse stretched in every direction, endless white-gray stone carved with flowing script that rearranged itself whenever he blinked. The air vibrated with an unspoken presence, like a thought so massive it bent reality just by existing.