The Girl Beneath the Stone, Cain's awakening "
"You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You." — Isaiah 26:3
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The first thing she felt was cold.
Not the chill of winter. Not the passing touch of breeze.
This was bone-deep. A silence that bled into her marrow. It crept through her veins, weighed down her lungs, and turned every breath into something she could only dream of taking.
And beneath the cold…
There was a voice.
Wake up.
It didn't belong to anyone else. It wasn't spoken aloud.
It came from inside her. Echoing like a drip in a forgotten cavern. A ripple brushing against the edges of her soul.
Her body didn't respond.
Her lips were stone.
Her fingers might as well have been carved from marble.
But her mind—
Her mind was on fire.
Fighting.
Something was wrong. Something was happening. She could feel it, even if she couldn't move. Even if she couldn't scream.
There were whispers now. Chanting. Low and guttural, sliding across the edge of her thoughts like oil down glass.
Words not meant for human ears.
They brushed against the fraying fabric of her awareness—curling around her name like vines.
A tongue older than dust.
Older than angels.
She didn't understand the language, but her body remembered it. Her blood remembered it.
Each syllable pulled on something deeper than language.
On her being.
Then came the pain.
Not sharp. Not screaming.
Worse.
It was slow. A steady grinding, like her soul was being rewritten—line by sacred line.
Like the blueprint of her existence was being copied over, erased by something older than laws.
She tried to pull away.
Tried to scream.
Tried to move even a single finger.
Nothing.
It was like her mind was trapped beneath a frozen lake.
She could see the surface, feel the distortion above… but she was sinking deeper, deeper.
Get up.
The voice inside was louder now.
Her heartbeat—if it still existed—thudded in her ears.
The altar beneath her felt wrong.
Not just cold. Hungry.
Stone, etched in deep, spiraling grooves. Worn smooth by time and something slicker than water.
The chanting reached a crescendo. The pressure inside her head grew.
Then—
"Bring her soul to the surface."
A voice. Male. Measured. Almost kind.
Too kind.
She would have flinched if her body could. But she was still locked inside herself.
Still watching.
The presence that spoke—the professor—was there. Or what wore his skin. She could feel it, pressing down like thorns.
Like teeth, smiling beneath a mask.
The candles above her pulsed.
Their flames didn't flicker—they drew in. Inverted. Siphoning light instead of giving it.
Shadows coiled upward from her body like steam. Not from her skin—from her soul.
Somewhere distant—gunshots.
Muffled through layers of veil and stone.
A door slammed. Boots on marble. The unmistakable metallic bark of a silver gun.
The world trembled, even as she lay still.
Then—
A memory.
Not hers.
Not truly.
A child. Standing amid ruins. Smoke rising in lazy spirals behind her.
A dagger—black and jagged—held tightly in small hands. The blade dripped red, slow and patient.
She turned.
Her eyes were Thalia's. But older. Hollowed.
Carved out by lifetimes of silence.
The girl whispered a name Thalia couldn't hear.
And vanished.
This isn't real.
But it was.
She tried to scream again. Not in fear.
In defiance.
I am here.
I see you.
But the only thing that moved was her will.
The air grew heavier. Thicker.
Above her—something sinister stirred.
Something that was not meant to exist in this world.
Not now . Not ever.
Yet that presence watched from behind a veil of rotted light. It pressed against the membrane of existence like a spider against glass.
She could feel its smile.
A voice—a sinister echo, resounding in the present—spoke above her.
"You're too late. Your threads can't save her now."
The professor. The cult leader. The vessel of something foul and ancient.
And it was right.
Luciel couldn't stop what had begun.
But she could.
Or at least… something inside her could.
Because somewhere, deep within the cold stone, the fire had never gone out.
Not completely.
She'd thought it was fear.
She'd thought the thing she felt behind her in dreams was a monster. A curse.
It was.
But it was much more than that.
It was a tomb for things, names, people buried in silence and forgotten by history.
A beat.
A pulse.
Like something woke.
Not around her.
Inside her.
Her spine arched invisibly as a tremor shook the altar—though no one else saw it.
From the depths of her mind, a single name bloomed.
Cain.
A name known by all not known at all.
It hissed across her soul like wind over broken glass.
I AM THE WITNESS TO THE FORGOTTEN.
The shadows trembled.
Even the professor stilled.
Not because he heard it.
Because something else did.
The thing above.
The god descending.
It saw them watching.
Every one of them.
And it feared
Thalia was not alone.
She was with every voice ever silenced.
The ones history forgot out of fear
She was with every curse bearer the ones history calmed Reapers
the ones refused to break quietly to be forgotten so lightly.
She was awake—and unwilling to be forgotten.
Not yet.
Not ever.