God Ash: Remnants of the fallen.-Chapter 1247: Black Water (2).

Cain didn’t flinch.

The new stability humming under his skin felt like a taut wire pulled straight. Not comfortable. Not familiar. But strong. Coherent. His pulse synced with something deeper—like another rhythm beating beneath his own.

The envoy glided forward. "You return changed," he said. His voice was smoother now, almost reverent. "Show me what touched you."

Cain cracked his knuckles. "Come find out."

The envoy thrust the spear.

Cain moved faster than he expected—faster than physics would’ve allowed him a day ago. He tilted aside, the spear skimming past his ribs in a burst of heat, then drove an elbow into the envoy’s jaw. Bone—or whatever passed for bone in the Fallen—cracked. The envoy staggered.

The other two reacted instantly.

The first stretched out its hand and sent a wide arc of force toward Cain. The second dove from above, claws extended, aiming to rake across his spine.

"Mara!" Cain shouted.

Mara didn’t hesitate. She lunged forward, caught the falling beam with a grunt, and heaved it sideways. It slammed into the diving Fallen mid-flight, knocking it off trajectory and crashing it into the rubble.

Steve popped up from behind the slab. "Cain, left!"

Cain pivoted. The wide arc of force slammed into his torso, but instead of throwing him across the room, the energy broke against him like surf hitting rock. His boots scraped back a few inches. That was it.

Cain blinked. "Okay," he muttered. "That’s new."

Susan hurled a burst of ward-light that struck the attacker, splitting its attack flow and giving Cain an opening. He dashed forward, grabbed the Fallen by the throat, and slammed it into the ground. The stone spiderwebbed under the impact.

The envoy regained his stance. "A partial Awakening," he said. "He polished the raw material they forged." His wings unfurled fully, blotting out the collapsing ceiling. "How predictable."

"Predict this," Steve snapped, throwing a chain of glyphs that detonated near the envoy’s chest.

The blast staggered him only slightly, but it was enough for Cain to charge. He swung upward, striking the envoy under the ribs. The impact sent a shockwave through the chamber, dislodging even more ceiling.

Susan yelled, "We can’t stay here! The structure won’t hold for another two minutes!"

The envoy bared a jagged smile. "Then perish with your sanctuary."

He formed another spear—longer, denser, dripping with black sparks.

Cain didn’t wait.

He lunged—and collided mid-air with the third Fallen, now recovered from Mara’s earlier hit. Its claws locked with his forearms, pinning him. Black smoke hissed from its mouth as it tried to wrench his arms apart.

Cain snarled and twisted his grip. Something inside his chest pulsed again—light, sharp, cutting.

A flare erupted between him and the Fallen.

The creature screamed and dropped him, its claws smoking. Cain didn’t know what he had just done. It felt like he had exhaled a blade.

No time to think.

He chased it down, slammed his knee into its gut, and struck its head so hard the creature cratered into the floor.

The envoy was already moving.

He hurled the massive spear straight at Cain. It cut through the air with a low, sickening hum—an execution blow.

Susan reacted first. She shoved her staff forward and shouted, "WARD—FORTIFY!"

The barrier erupted.

Thin. Weak. It wasn’t going to stop a Fallen strike of that level.

Cain saw it. He saw Susan bracing herself, teeth clenched, trying to hold back a weapon meant to kill gods.

He moved without thinking.

Cain stepped in front of her.

The spear hit him square in the chest.

The sound was a thunderclap.

The impact did not send him flying. It didn’t even push him

Cain didn’t hesitate. He twisted the envoy’s body, slamming him into another crumbling pillar. Dust and shards of stone rained down around them. The Fallen gasped, struggling, but Cain’s grip was iron. "This ends now," he said, voice cold and unyielding, "or you die here, and no one remembers your name."

Cain dragged the battered envoy across the fractured stone until the screech of armor on marble became unbearable even to him. He released the man only when the wall ahead began to crack from the strain of the impact. Dust drifted down like a pale curtain while the envoy wheezed for breath, arms shaking, eyes wide with the realization that this was no longer a simple capture mission. Cain wasn’t negotiating. He wasn’t posturing. He was done playing with anyone who stood between him and answers.

The hall surrounding them—once a sanctuary—had become a hollowed-out ruin. The pillars that still stood were webbed with fractures. The murals depicting watchers and gods were half-shredded, half-burned. Cain had done some of it. The envoy’s entrance had done the rest.

Cain stepped back, flexing his fingers once, forcing calm back into his hands. The power he carried now simmered beneath his skin without the clean symmetry it once had. Losing his abilities had destabilized the foundation he’d built himself on, and regaining fragments of them in the wrong order had left everything... jagged. But that didn’t change what mattered.

He locked eyes with the envoy.

"Talk."

The envoy spat dust and a tooth, then lifted his head shakily. "You think you’re in a position to command anything? You’re a missing piece wearing human skin. Nothing more."

Cain didn’t respond immediately. He had learned long ago that the best weapon in conversations like this was silence—cold, cutting silence. The envoy’s smirk faltered. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"Why are you after me?" Cain asked finally.

The envoy’s breath hitched. "Because they want the shard you carry. The fragment in your chest—"

Cain slammed him against the wall again, not out of anger, but to stop the sentence.

He didn’t want to react. He REALLY didn’t want to, but his pulse betrayed him. He shoved it down.

"You’re guessing. You know nothing."

The envoy gave a strangled laugh. "I know enough. I know the moment you touched that meteorite, something lodged inside you—something you still haven’t figured out how to control. I know the Fallen are moving again because they can feel it waking."