The world around Cain dissolved into polygons.
He didn't fall.
He was dropped—like a corrupted file—into a spiraling chamber of glass, chrome, and burning reflections. Every surface shimmered with copies of himself. Some were bloody. Some wore armor he never created. Some… were smiling in ways he never had.
> [ZONE ENTERED: Tower of Reflections]
[RESTRICTION: Cain.exe Admin Rights Disabled]
[SYSTEM NOTE: No Glitching Allowed Here]
He tried to summon his interface.
Nothing.
He snapped his fingers to jump timelines.
Silence.
Cain stood in a mirrored hell with no System, no cheats—just one message burned into the wall of the infinite tower.
"This is where you see what you became by skipping your own story."
---
He walked.
Each floor was a memory he never lived.
On Floor 1, he watched a version of himself fail the entrance exam into the Sovereign Academy and still become a powerful lord—but through pain, patience, and politics.
On Floor 3, he saw Cain.exe as a low-ranking explorer fighting through collapsed realms with a team—not solo, not glitched. They died for him. One smiled as she faded.
On Floor 7, Cain.exe sat with his mother. She was alive. In that version, he had given up the System to preserve his family.
Each floor shattered him a little more.
---
> [SYSTEM NOTICE: Fragment Detected — CAIN.PRIME]
It was on Floor 12 where it happened.
The mirror didn't reflect a memory.
It reflected him.
The true Cain. Before the Glitch. Before the System warped him into a god. A teenager with trauma in his eyes, potential in his blood, and no cheats to lean on.
And then, it attacked.
CAIN.PRIME launched forward—not with powers, but with desperation. With fists. With pain. Every punch screamed one thing:
"You skipped the story!"
Cain.exe countered, not with power—but with confusion. He was the story, wasn't he? He was the glitch. The reason the world couldn't follow rules.
But as CAIN.PRIME struck his jaw and the mirror behind them cracked, something inside Cain.exe shattered.
The glitch...
had covered up a broken origin.
---
They fought.
And when it ended—Cain.exe held the reflection's head in his hands.
Tears streamed down both faces.
"I'm sorry," Cain whispered. "But I don't know how to be the story. I only know how to survive it."
> [Reflection Integrated: Narrative Alignment 42% Restored]
[System Rights partially restored. CAIN.EXE recalibrated.]
[UNLOCKED: Storyline Karma Mechanic]
---
Elsewhere: Nemira.exe
In the void outside the Tower, Nemira.exe watched.
The vines of the Antagonist Kernel wrapped around the zone's outer logic. But she didn't enter. Not yet.
She watched Cain confront his past.
And for the first time since her creation…
She hesitated.
> [Nemesis Thread: Complication Injected]
[Narrative Chance: Redemption Path 2% available]
She screamed.
Then began walking.
---
System Mall Update
When Cain exited the Tower, the System Mall unfolded.
> [NEW SECTION UNLOCKED: Emotional Reconstruction Wing]
[Items Available: Memory Reweavers, Regret Capsules, Perspective Compilers]
But Cain didn't touch any of it.
He looked toward the east, where a fragment of a collapsed realm flickered—a place he had glitched past long ago.
> "Let's go see the version of me I left behind."