Chapter 40 – The Presence That Watches

Cain plummeted.

The golden battlefield shattered around him, its fragments dissolving into the void as he fell through something deeper than space, older than time. His Titan Core screamed, golden fire flickering wildly around him, but it wasn't enough to stop the fall.

This wasn't just a physical descent.

Something was pulling him down—not gravity, not force, but will.

A will far greater than his own.

The voice echoed again, a sound that came from everywhere and nowhere.

"You were not meant to wake up."

Cain gritted his teeth, twisting midair, trying to fight against the pull. His Titan Core surged, golden flames igniting around his limbs as he tried to slow himself down—

But the void did not care.

The deeper he fell, the heavier everything became. His body felt unnaturally dense, like the air itself was turning into an ocean of lead, pressing against his skin, sinking into his bones.

It wasn't just slowing him.

It was suffocating him.

"You were buried for a reason."

The voice wasn't angry. It wasn't threatening.

It was calm.

Like something speaking from a place beyond consequence.

Cain clenched his fists, his breath ragged. "I don't care what was supposed to happen!" His golden flames surged outward, fighting against the force dragging him down. "I don't care if I was buried! I don't care if you think I should have stayed dead!"

The pressure intensified.

"But you do care, don't you?"

Cain froze.

His Titan Core stuttered inside him, golden fire flickering uncertainly.

"You rage because you do not understand. You fight because you do not know who you are. You claw your way forward because you are lost."

Cain snarled, pushing back against the weight pressing down on him. "Then tell me! If you know so much, then tell me who I am!"

Silence.

Then—the void parted.

Cain's body stopped falling.

One moment, he had been plummeting into nothingness. The next, he was standing on solid ground.

Or at least—something like it.

The space around him wasn't a battlefield, wasn't the abyss, wasn't the golden city. It was… wrong.

The air was too still.

The sky was a color that shouldn't exist.

And the world beneath his feet was silent, yet pulsing—as if it were breathing.

Cain exhaled slowly, steadying himself. His Titan Core still burned inside him, but the overwhelming weight was gone.

Then—he saw it.

A figure stood in the distance.

Not a warrior.

Not a Titan.

Not Forsaken.

Something else.

Something watching.

The figure was massive, wrapped in shadows that pulsed with something far worse than darkness. It wasn't absence.

It was containment.

As if the thing inside those writhing, shifting shadows was something not meant to be seen.

Cain's muscles tensed.

The figure stepped forward.

The shadows peeled away slightly, just enough for Cain to see—

Golden eyes.

Not like the First Forsaken.

Not like the Titans.

Eyes exactly like his own.

Cain's stomach dropped.

"You are incomplete," the figure said. Its voice was not loud, not demanding—but it was final.

Cain stepped back. His instincts screamed warnings—not fear, not danger, but something worse.

Recognition.

This thing… knew him.

And deep down, buried beneath all the memories that had been locked away, beneath all the fights and survival and struggle—

He knew it too.

The figure took another step forward, and Cain's Titan Core flared wildly, reacting before his mind could catch up. Golden flames erupted from his skin, the energy roaring like a storm—

And the figure lifted its hand.

Cain barely had time to react before a force unlike anything he had ever felt slammed into him, knocking him to his knees.

His Titan Core staggered.

For the first time since it had awakened inside him, it hesitated.

Because the power pressing down on him now was identical to his own.

"You were not meant to wake up," the figure said again. "Because the part of you that was buried—"

Cain gasped, struggling against the weight, every cell in his body burning under the pressure.

"—was me."

Cain's mind snapped.

The shadows collapsed inward.

And the world went white.