Another Garden

"Where is your brother?"

The voice was neither thunder nor whisper, yet it stirred the marrow in Kein’s bones. Once known as Cain, the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, he froze. The question echoed across the wasteland where no flowers bloomed, where even the sun seemed reluctant to shine.

The Creator—the I AM—already knew the answer. Yet He asked anyway.

“I… I don’t know,” Kein muttered, eyes avoiding the heavens. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

It was a deflection, not a denial. Blood still clung to his hands, dried at the edges of his fingernails. The blood of Abel, his brother. His guilt made the soil beneath him groan. The earth, once his friend, turned its back on him. His sacrifice had been rejected, and his rage had found no outlet but fratricide.

And for that, the punishment was not death.

It was immortality.

To roam the earth endlessly, never to return to the presence of the Creator. To wander until the end of days, carrying the mark of divine disapproval and the weight of eternal memory.

Somewhere in the centuries that followed, Kein met another exile—a creature also cursed by the Creator. One whose punishment echoed his own, though far more ancient.

Velial was the name whispered by terrified prophets and dreamers. The serpent of old. Once radiant, now loathsome. Condemned to slither upon the earth and be reviled by the sons and daughters of Eve—Kein’s mother.

They were two pariahs who shared a strange kinship—resentful, broken, and tethered to divine judgment. Together, they wandered lands scorched by time and untouched by hope. It was during one of these journeys that Kein stumbled upon something… extraordinary.

A garden.

Not just any garden—but one that shimmered in his memory like a story half-remembered from childhood. It reminded him of the place his parents used to speak of—Eden. A land of harmony and wholeness. But this garden was not the one from his father’s stories. This was something new.

From behind a veil of trees, he saw two figures tending the land. A man and a woman—Malacaz and Mahganda. They moved with a grace that suggested innocence, their children playing nearby with laughter that stirred something long dormant in Kein’s heart.

“Are you surprised?” Velial hissed, coiled on a gnarled branch above. “Did you think the Creator could make only one garden? Only two humans in His image?”

Kein said nothing. His eyes were wide with wonder, watching the way sunlight danced on the couple’s faces, how the wind seemed to sing for them.

“So there are others?” he finally asked, his voice low. “Other Edens? Other beginnings?”

“Of course,” Velial replied. “The Creator is infinite. Creation didn’t end with Adam and Eve.”

Kein adjusted the basket strapped to his back. It held fruits—scarce and withering. Only those tainted by Abel’s blood had not spoiled in his possession. Everything else, every seed and sapling he tried to plant since that day, died under his touch. The soil had rejected him, just as heaven had.

“You can’t even grow your own food anymore,” Velial said, slithering down from the tree to his shoulder. “You should eat meat. Like I do.”

“Meat?” Kein winced. “Blood disgusts me.”

The serpent let out a mocking hiss. “Yet you spilled it freely.”

Kein clenched his jaw.

The truth stung. It always did.

They sat in silence for a while, watching the garden. Kein couldn’t help but notice that Malacaz and Mahganda in their nakedness appeared innocent and pure.

“You tried seducing them, didn’t you?” Kein asked, glancing at the serpent with a faint smirk.

Velial didn’t answer. He coiled tightly, his tongue flicking rapidly. “They are not like your parents,” he said at last. “They are… different.”

“Oh,” Kein grinned. “You failed.” Otherwise these lovely couple would be clothed like his parents after the fall.

The serpent’s tail tightened around his arm, and Kein gasped. His laughter cut short by the pressure, but not entirely gone. “Careful,” he wheezed, “You’ll break your favorite toy.”

“You are the one whose lineage was severed from the Creator’s presence,” Velial snapped. “Don’t mock what you cannot understand.”

Kein didn’t reply.

The insult landed somewhere deeper than he’d like to admit.

He turned back to the garden, eyes narrowing. “I wonder what it’s like inside…”

Velial said nothing.

“Maybe I’ll ask them to let me in.”

“If they welcome you,” Velial murmured, sliding away into the shadows.

Kein walked forward, one foot after another, each step feeling heavier. As he reached the garden’s edge, his hand stretched forward.

And then—

Pain.

It wasn’t a strike or a blow, but something invisible and overwhelming slammed against his body. His limbs gave out, and he fell to the ground, writhing.

There was no wall, no gate, yet he could not cross. An unseen boundary held him out like a judgment spoken in silence.

From the trees, Velial’s hiss echoed with cruel amusement.

Kein groaned, pressing his palms against the ground. “What… is this?”

“You are not welcome,” the serpent said. “Not yet.”

Kein’s eyes flicked upward. Malacaz had turned briefly toward the sound but resumed playing with his children. Mahganda smiled, unaware of the stranger just beyond the veil.

“I just want to talk,” Kein whispered. “To see what it’s like to be clean again.”

The garden didn’t answer.

As night fell, Kein sat by the boundary, the forbidden line of paradise just inches from his feet. He placed the last of his unspoiled fruits beside him. Abel’s blood had preserved them, a final gift from a brother whose voice still cried out from the ground.

He knew hunger would gnaw at him soon. The ache had already begun.

But it wasn’t just physical.

It was longing.

For redemption.

For soil that welcomed seeds.

For peace.

Velial returned before dawn, perching on a low branch. “You can’t stay here forever.”

“I know.”

“You’ll never get in.”

“Maybe not.”

“Then why do you wait?”

Kein looked up. “Because this is the closest I’ve felt to home in a long time.”

Velial didn’t reply. For once, the serpent had no answer.

The sun rose slowly. Golden light spilled over the trees, touching the garden, brushing Kein’s cheek. It didn’t burn.

For now, that was enough.

He closed his eyes and whispered a name he hadn’t dared to say in centuries.

“I AM…”

Maybe, just maybe, the curse of wandering was not the end of his story.

Maybe the soil would soften one day.

Maybe even the marked could be welcomed again.