"It wasn't the darkness that changed me.
It was being forgotten in the light"
The world didn't end when Kaen died.
It just stopped remembering him.
No banners lowered. No tears fell.
There was no grave. No last words.
He wasn't mourned — just erased.
The people who once kissed his hands, who sang his name in festival hymns, didn't bury him.
They simply left the door open and turned their backs.
And so he crossed an ocean with no map, a mark on his chest no one could explain, and a name he no longer spoke aloud.
Now, they called him Cain.
Not that anyone here cared enough to ask.
Elvoreth was a city that had forgotten the concept of warmth.
The sky hung grey, even when the sun broke through. The rain didn't fall — it lingered, seeping through stone and skin until everything felt damp with tiredness. Cain moved through its streets like smoke, weightless, without scent or sound.
He worked in a tavern that rotted from the inside.
A broken sign swung half-dead above the door, smearing its name into nothing. The owner had a voice like shattered glass and hands that hit tables harder than necessary. But he paid Cain in coin and space — enough floor behind the kitchen to sleep on.
That was all he needed.
That was more than he deserved.
He scrubbed dishes. Lifted crates. Chopped wood when his arms didn't shake too much.
Some days he bled. Most days, he ached.
All days, he stayed silent.
No one asked him where he came from.
That was Elvoreth's one kindness — it didn't care who you were, so long as you kept your head down and your hands moving.
The owner's daughter didn't speak much either.
She wasn't like her father.
She didn't bark or glare. She just existed — quiet, pale, eyes tired in ways most girls her age shouldn't be.
Sometimes, without a word, she'd leave him something extra at the end of the shift.
A cloth for his wounds. A small bowl of stew. Bread that hadn't gone stale yet.
He never said thank you.
She never waited for it.
At night, when the tavern emptied and the lanterns burned low, Cain would slip out the back into the alleyways. He didn't wander far — not like he used to, back when his legs didn't feel like glass and his chest didn't hum with unspoken warnings.
The streets were quiet then, quiet enough for him to hear his own thoughts.
He hated that.
Every corner in Elvoreth had a board. A wall. A post.
And every one of them had a wanted poster tacked to it — faces of rebels, war criminals, and dark-element users drawn in black ink like curses etched into public memory.
"Kill on sight."
"No trial for traitors."
"Purge the shadows before they take root."
He read them like scripture.
Not because he wanted to — but because he knew one day his face might be there too, and he wanted to see how they'd lie about him.
The mark on his chest hadn't glowed in months.
Not since the sickness.
Not since the collapse.
Not since the voices.
It sat there now — a crooked spiral carved over his heart — dead, but not gone.
Like a god waiting for its next sacrifice.
He hadn't used magic since then.
He didn't dare.
Every time he so much as felt the energy stir, his vision would go black and his body would crumple under its own weight.
The light was gone.
The pain stayed.
Sometimes, in sleep, he dreamed of it — the light.
It used to feel like warmth, like purpose. Like being held by something greater than himself.
But the dreams always twisted.
The light would turn to flame.
The flame would turn to ash.
And the ash would whisper in voices that sounded too much like his mother.
"You were never chosen."
"Only used."
"And when the light left, so did we."
Cain woke one morning with blood on his tongue.
Didn't know if it was from a cough or from the dream.
Didn't matter.
He got up.
Washed his face.
Put on the same clothes as the day before.
Walked back into the tavern like he hadn't died last night — again.
Elvoreth didn't ask where he came from.
Didn't ask what he believed in.
Didn't ask what was under his skin.
And for now, that was enough.
But even in cities built on forgetfulness...
the past always finds a way back.