Cain had been walking for a long time.
Not years. Not centuries. Longer than that. The kind of long that turns legs into habits and memories into scars. He had walked across continents when they were still joined, when the ice was thick and the mammoths still screamed at night. He had walked through cities that rose and fell like tides, through plagues that emptied streets, through wars that painted the earth redder than his hands ever could. He never stopped. The mark wouldn't let him.
It burned now.
Not the old burn, the one God had pressed into his forehead like a brand that refused to blister. That one had dulled to a constant throb, like a toothache you learn to live with. This was new. Hotter. Deeper. It felt like someone had taken a poker fresh from the forge and shoved it straight through his skull, then twisted.
He was somewhere in Iowa now. Or what used to be Iowa. Cornfields stretched in every direction, dead and brown under a sky the color of old blood. The wind smelled like diesel and rot. A few abandoned tractors sat like skeletons in the rows, tires flat, cabs rusted. Somewhere far off a silo had collapsed, spilling grain that the crows had already picked clean.
Cain kept walking.
His boots were old military surplus, cracked across the toes, soles worn so thin he could feel every pebble through them. His coat was black leather, patched in a dozen places, the kind of coat that had seen too many winters and too many knives. Underneath, his shirt was flannel once red, now faded to the color of dried blood. His hair hung long and black, streaked with gray he refused to acknowledge. His beard was thick, hiding the worst of the scars on his jaw.
The mark pulsed again.
He stopped.
For the first time in... how long? Decades? Centuries? He actually stopped.
The pain wasn't just in his forehead anymore. It was spreading. Down his neck. Into his chest. Into his hands. His fingers flexed involuntarily, curling into fists so hard the knuckles popped like gunfire.
Something was waking up.
He looked at the sky. The tear was there, same as everywhere else. A jagged rip running north to south, edges glowing faintly purple, like infected skin. Things moved on the other side. Shapes too big to be birds, too fast to be planes. He didn't care what they were. He had seen worse.
But the mark cared.
It flared white-hot, and Cain dropped to his knees in the dirt.
He hadn't prayed since the day he buried his brother. He wouldn't start now. Instead he snarled, teeth bared, and slammed both fists into the earth.
The ground cracked.
Not like normal ground. Like glass. Spiderweb fractures raced outward from his knuckles, spreading faster than he could track. The dirt heaved. Cornstalks snapped like matchsticks. A low rumble rolled through the soil, the kind of sound you feel in your teeth more than hear.
Then the ground opened.
A fissure maybe ten feet long, three feet wide. Steam poured out, smelling of sulfur and wet iron. Something red glowed at the bottom.
Cain stood.
His hands were bleeding. Not from the impact. From the mark. Thin lines of blood ran from the center of his forehead down his face, tracing the old scar like rivers finding their bed. He wiped them away with the back of one hand and looked at the smear.
The blood was black.
Not human black. Demon black. Thick and shiny, like spilled motor oil.
He laughed once, a short, ugly sound.
"Finally," he said to the empty field.
Then he jumped into the fissure.
He fell maybe twenty feet before landing in a crouch on packed earth that felt warm, almost feverish. The walls were smooth, like they'd been melted and cooled too fast. Red light came from cracks in the rock, pulsing in time with the mark on his forehead.
At the end of the tunnel, a chamber.
It wasn't natural. Too regular. Too deliberate. The ceiling was domed, carved with symbols he recognized from nightmares he had never admitted to having. The floor was black stone, polished until it reflected his face back at him, distorted and monstrous.
In the center of the chamber stood a stone slab, waist-high, stained dark brown in places that had once been red. On the slab lay a body.
No. Not a body.
A corpse. Perfectly preserved. Naked. Male. Young. Maybe twenty. Dark hair. Strong jaw. Eyes open, staring at nothing. The throat was cut from ear to ear, the wound clean and old.
Cain knew the face.
It was his own.
Not the face he wore now. The face he had worn the day he swung the rock. The day the blood had sprayed hot across his hands and the ground drank it down like it was thirsty.
The mark on the corpse's forehead was fresh. Still smoking.
Cain stepped closer.
The corpse blinked.
Not a twitch. A full, deliberate blink.
Then it sat up.
Slow. Joints popping like dry branches. It swung its legs over the edge of the slab. Stood. Naked and perfect and wrong.
Cain stared at himself.
The corpse smiled. Teeth white. Too many.
"Brother," it said.
The voice was Abel's.
Cain's fists clenched. Blood dripped from his knuckles onto the black stone.
"You've been gone a long time," the thing wearing Abel's face said. "I waited."
Cain took a step forward.
The thing took a step back.
"You always were impatient," it said. "But look at you now. Look at what the mark has become."
Cain felt it then. The heat spreading from his forehead into his arms, his legs, his spine. Strength poured into him like whiskey into an empty glass. Old muscles tightened. Old bones straightened. Scars faded. Not gone. Just... quieter.
He looked down at his hands.
The skin was changing. Darker. Harder. Veins stood out like black cords. Nails lengthened, darkened, curved.
The thing wearing Abel's face laughed. A soft, knowing sound.
"You killed me once," it said. "Now kill again. Kill everything. The mark demands it. The world is open. The others are waking. You feel them, don't you?"
Cain did.
Distant pulses. Like heartbeats under the earth. Eleven of them. Each one different. Each one hungry.
He looked at the thing that wore his brother's face.
It smiled wider. "Take it back," it whispered. "Take what was stolen. The first murder was only the beginning."
Cain reached out.
His hand closed around the thing's throat.
It didn't fight.
It leaned into the grip.
"Yes," it breathed. "Yes."
Cain squeezed.
Bones cracked. Cartilage popped. The smile never left the face.
The body slumped.
Cain let go.
The corpse hit the stone floor and began to dissolve. Not rot. Dissolve. Skin sloughed off in wet sheets, muscle melted, bones turned to ash. In seconds, nothing remained but a pile of gray dust and a single drop of black blood.
The drop rolled across the floor. Touched the toe of Cain's boot.
The mark on his forehead flared one final time.
Then it cooled.
Cain stood in the empty chamber.
He felt... bigger.
Not taller. Not heavier. Just... more.
He turned.
The fissure above had sealed itself. No way out.
He didn't need one.
He raised both hands.
The stone ceiling cracked.
Then shattered.
Dirt and rock rained down. Light poured in. Iowa sky. Redder now. Torn wider.
Cain climbed.
Hand over hand. Rock crumbling under his fingers. Strength he had never known before. When he reached the surface he pulled himself out like a man climbing from a grave.
The field was different.
The corn was gone.
In its place, dead earth. Barren. Cracked. Nothing grew. Nothing would ever grow again.
He looked at his hands.
The skin was darker. Almost black. Nails like talons.
He touched his forehead.
The mark was still there. But it no longer burned.
It glowed.
Soft. Steady. Like a beacon.
In the distance, a farmhouse.
Lights in the windows. Smoke from the chimney.
People.
Cain smiled.
Not the smile he used to have. This one had teeth.
He started walking.
The ground died beneath his feet.
Grass withered. Dirt turned to ash.
He didn't hurry.
He had all the time in the world.
And the world had no more time at all.
Behind him, the fissure closed completely.
In front of him, the farmhouse waited.
A dog barked once.
Then stopped, with a whine... it's body sprawled on the floor, w8th a huge hole punctured through it's chest...he had been killed
Cain kept walking.
The mark had spoken.
The first murderer was awake.
And he was very, very hungry.