For a moment, Auden considered turning back - he could still feel the wind outside, faint on the back of his neck - but then Cain glanced over his shoulder. The old man's eyes caught the dim light, steady and expectant, and Auden found himself moving again. He stepped through the doorway before he was fully aware that he had done so.
The room smelled faintly of cedar smoke and something herbal. He squinted against the harsh light pouring from a low, wide fire pit sunk into the center of the room. The flames snapped and rolled violently, casting skeletal shadows along the walls. Smoke stung his eyes. Auden blinked until the shapes softened.
And soften they did - as his eyes adjusted to the glow, Auden realised he was standing in what appeared to be a living room. He saw a squat wooden table beside a pair of chairs that looked like they belonged in a cottage. A pot simmered over the fire, its steam carrying an herby, earthy scent that tugged at his stomach and made him realise how long it had been since he last ate. Cups and bowls rested neatly on shelves.
Cain shuffled into view.
"Welcome," he said softly. "You must be cold."
Auden said nothing.
Cain moved toward the fire and brushed a few embers into the pit, coaxing the flames higher. A rope of sparks twisted upward, briefly illuminating the upper half of the chamber. The ceiling vanished in darkness. Auden had no sense of how tall the room really was.
"You can set your things down," Cain said. "You're safe."
Safe.
The word landed strangely in his mind.
Cain eased himself into one of the chairs, sighing contentedly as his joints popped.
Auden closed the door behind him without realising he'd done it.
Cain looked back, smiled, and beckoned.
Auden nodded - slowly, dreamlike - and stepped further into the room. The heat wrapped around him like a heavy blanket. A pleasant heaviness settled behind his eyes. He lowered his sack. The sound of it hitting the floor was strangely muted, as though padded by something unseen.
"I haven't…" Auden's voice sounded distant to his own ears. "I haven't seen a home like this. Not in years."
"Most people haven't," Cain murmured. He knelt at the fire pit, stirring something in a clay pot suspended over the flames.
Auden's stomach fluttered - was it hunger? Or…
"Sit. Please." Cain gestured to the padded bench.
Auden sat without meaning to. The bench cushioned him. The heat soaked into his spine. His vision blurred for a heartbeat, then sharpened - but only on the things that comforted him: the fire, the rug, the steaming pot. The corners and walls of the room faded into shadow.
"When's the last time you slept?" Cain asked, filling two clay cups.
Auden opened his mouth to answer, but the memory slipped away as he did so. "I don't know."
"That's all right." Cain offered him a cup. "This will help."
Auden stared at the drink.
The steam curled upward in perfect spirals. Too perfect. Hypnotic.
"Drink."
Somewhere deep in Auden's mind - far, far back - a tiny part of him whispered that this was wrong. Wake up.Look around you. Pay attention. Then, very briefly, he felt panic. Where was he? What was this place? What happened to his children? He had to leave.
Auden stood up.
The panic dissolved in the warmth like sugar in hot water.
Cain's hand appeared in front of him, offering the cup again.
"Here," he murmured. "Take it."
Auden took it. As he sat down again, the cup seemed to mould itself to his grip.
He blinked. Once. Twice. He sipped.
The warmth touched his mouth first, then slid down his throat. A soothing heat unfurled in his chest, spreading through his ribs, loosening every tight muscle. He exhaled, shuddering with relief he could no longer question. The world softened.
"I am very sorry," began the old man, "For what must come next. Please know that I do not wish to cause you any pain, nor to deceive you. Quite the opposite, in fact. If this could be done any other way, please know that I would do it."
Auden realised that he couldn't see Cain anymore. Vaguely, he shook his head, searching…
"The world must have been very unkind to you."
Auden turned toward the voice, or at least, he tried to - but Cain's voice now seemed to be coming from everywhere at once; sliding along the walls, threading through the rising steam, curling behind his ears. The room itself seemed to speak now.
"I am sorry for what you will endure. But you will endure, and in time you will come to understand the suffering. You will not be grateful. But you will understand."
The meaning of the words fell on deaf ears. Although Auden did hear them, at this moment it was like reading prose to a dog.
"Auden."
Cain was in his chair again - was it Cain? Though his face was partially obscured by his robe, the man appeared thirty years younger. The lines in his face were softer, but his expression was stern and painfully, terrifyingly lucid.
"You've survived much. I only ask that you continue to do so."
Something spoke in the back of Auden's mind.
Your children.
Auden shot up and the world snapped open.
The air turned cold and wet. The room - if it had ever been a room - lurched into focus.
He staggered back.
The "rug" beneath his feet was no rug at all, but something dark that clung to his boots. The sweet air twisted into a fetid stench of decay, mould, and copper. The fire pit sputtered, revealing not logs but blackened, twisted shapes piled on top of one another; shapes that were writhing in silent agony.
He looked to the walls, and wished that he hadn't.
The stone swelled like something was breathing behind it. Faces - not carved, not drawn, but pressed from the inside - bulged into view, stretched taut beneath the filmy surface. Their features smeared and distorted as if submerged in thick liquid. One face tore free of the wall entirely, jaw distending in a soundless scream before melting back into the surface like wax.
Auden stumbled against the table - not a table anymore, but a stone slab splattered with dark stains.
He looked up to the ceiling.
There was no ceiling.
Above him yawned a vast and impossible sky - it was no sky of this world, but an endless gulf of shifting stars that pulsed like the slow opening and closing of eyes. The constellations twisted, rearranging themselves in patterns that scraped at the edges of comprehension. Colours he had no names for. And in the middle of it all, something looked back.
"My… my children… where…"
He stuttered and sputtered in blind, ridiculous fear.
"Auden. No."
Cain's hand was on his shoulder.
"My children…?" Auden croaked, the question torn from his throat.
"They are safe," said Cain. "You would not have come with me if they weren't."
His voice obliterated any doubt. Again, Auden felt the inevitable pull towards total calm. That made sense. Of course. Why would he have followed Cain otherwise? He was a father - a good father. He would never leave them if they were in danger.
Cain's voice slipped in like a whisper through a narrow door. "You are exhausted, Auden. Let yourself be held up. Just this once."
The tension slid out of his shoulders.
The room was a room again. The ceiling was stone.
The fire crackled.
"I don't… need help…"
Cain made a sound - amused, but not unkind. "Everyone needs help. The ones who say otherwise usually need it most."
Auden tried to laugh at that, but the sound didn't quite form.
Cain dabbed gently at Auden's forehead with a damp cloth in calm, practiced strokes. "You walked so far today," he murmured.
Auden hummed faintly. The sound rumbled from deep in his chest, involuntary.
Cain continued. "And before that - how long have you been carrying your worries? Without rest. Without quiet."
Auden swallowed. His chin dipped.
Cain pressed the cloth lightly to the side of his neck. "I am giving you quiet now."
Quiet.
Yes. That sounded right. Good.
"I am sorry."
Auden felt something - some last thread inside him - loosen, unwind itself and slip gently from his grasp.
He didn't reach for it.
Didn't even watch it go.
He only sank deeper into the warmth, further from the cold world outside, further from memory and worry and fear.
The firelight danced, and Auden fell into the waiting quiet.