Cain sat on the edge of the narrow bed in Room Eleven, the familiar creak of the floorboards a sharp contrast to the stone silence of the Slytherin dungeons. Outside, the London rain pattered against the cracked windowpane, a sound that usually brought him peace but now only fueled the restless cycle of his thoughts.
The conversation with Dumbledore weighed on him like a physical burden. The Headmaster's words about the "Quill of Acceptance" crossing out his name because he had already died—and then returning because he was "interrupted"—lingered in the air like a curse.
He recognizes a boy who died and returned with his will intact, Cain thought, staring at his small, unscarred hands. But he also recognizes that whatever brought me back may not be a blank slate. Which may or may not be an Outer God, or have a connection to it.
In the Lands Between, Cain had been a tool for the Greater Will, a Tarnished warrior pushed toward an impossible throne, this truth was undeniable. He had defeated the Elden Beast, thinking it was the end, only to be spat out into this world, which raised many questions. Now, Dumbledore suspected that the same cosmic forces might still have expectations for him.
"I just wanted to live," Cain whispered to the empty room.
He looked at his wand resting on the desk—a stick of hornbeam and dragon heartstring that felt increasingly like just another weapon, despite its fragile appearance. If the world of wizards was just another "board" for the Outer Gods to play on, then Hogwarts couldn't be considered a retirement; it was in fact a new front line. A different one but front line non the less.
A sudden, sharp chill swept through the room, though the window remained shut. For a fleeting second, the peeling wallpaper seemed to ripple, and the shadows in the corner stretched upward, forming the jagged silhouette of a Site of Grace—not the golden one he remembered, but something fractured and dark.
Cain didn't reach for his wand. Instead, his fingers instinctively curled as if gripping the hilt of a sword he no longer carried. He closed his eyes, forcing his breathing to steady. When he opened them again, the room was normal. Only the rain remained.
He wouldn't tell Dumbledore the truth. He wouldn't tell Draco, or Harry, or anyone else about the madness he had seen or the gods that treated reality like a playground. They were children playing with matches while he was a man who had stood in the center of the sun and felt it burn.
Today, he had return to the "normal" world for the summer. He would walk among Muggles who knew nothing of magic, and wizards who knew nothing of the Void. He would play the role of Cain Riven, the quiet Slytherin orphan.
But as he lay back on the bed, staring at the cracked ceiling, Cain knew the silence was a lie. The Greater Will was patient, and if it had brought him here, it would eventually come to collect its debt. Afterall it had waited for so long, what's a few more years for 'It'.
The summer in London was a stifling affair, but for Cain, the sweltering heat of the city was a mercy compared to the scarlet rot of Caelid or the frozen wastes of the Mountaintops. He spent his days drifting through the Muggle streets, a ghost in a schoolboy's oversized coat, blending into the grey throngs of people who moved with a frantic energy he no longer understood.
He kept his wand tucked into a hidden holster he'd fashioned from an old leather belt. It was a tool, nothing more. The magic of this world—flickers of light, levitation, transfiguring buttons into beetles—was whimsical, almost fragile. It lacked the primal, visceral weight of the Sorceries and Incantations he had once wielded.
One afternoon, while sitting in a small, crowded park near Camberwell, Cain felt a prickle at the base of his neck. It wasn't the presence of a wizard, but something… thinner. A lingering coldness that didn't belong in the July sun.
"Are you lost, lad?"
Cain didn't flinch. He slowly turned his head to see an elderly man sitting on the adjacent bench. The man was dressed in a suit that had been fashionable forty years ago, his eyes milky with cataracts. But he wasn't looking at Cain's face; he was looking at the space just behind Cain's shoulder.
"Just resting," Cain replied, his voice neutral.
"You have a heavy shadow," the old man wheezed, tilting his head. "I've seen many boys come through St. Jude's. Most of them carry sadness. You carry... something else. Like you're holding a door shut against a gale."
Cain's expression remained a mask of polite indifference. "I don't know what you mean. I'm just a student on holiday."
"A student," the man chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. "Yes. We're all students of something. But some secrets are too big for a boy's pockets. They'll tear the seams eventually."
Cain stood up, the movement fluid and predatory, a relic of a life spent dodging colossal blades. "My secrets are my own, sir. And the seams are stronger than they look."
He walked away without looking back, his heart thudding a steady, rhythmic beat against his ribs. He felt the old man's gaze until he turned the corner. Was it a coincidence? Or was his madness getting to his mind already, making him believe in things which didn't exist?
Back at the Leaky Cauldron that evening, Cain laid out his schoolbooks on the small desk. Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2. A History of Magic. Beginners guide to Transfiguration. He flipped through them, but his mind kept drifting back to the Elden Ring—not the object, but the concept. Order. Discord. The cycle of life and death.
The Headmaster suspicion was right, but he was looking for a magical explanation within the confines of his own understanding. He was looking for Horcruxes or even ancient curses, necromancy wasn't an uncommon word afterall. He couldn't conceive of a world where death was a literal Rune plucked from the fabric of reality.
Cain picked up his quill and began his essay on the properties of Mandrakes, but after a few lines, his hand drifted. On the bottom of the parchment, he drew a small, intricate symbol: a circle intersected by a vertical line, with arcs crossing through the center.
He stared at it for a long moment, the ink shimmering in the candlelight. Then, with a sharp, decisive motion, he dipped his quill in black ink and scribbled over it until the symbol was nothing but a messy, unrecognizable blotch.