The lights in Kael's workshop dimmed as the door sealed behind Enzo. Rain pattered softly aboveground, though down here, it sounded like war drums. The forge pulsed with heat, yet the air was thick with tension.
Enzo removed his coat, damp from the storm, and looked toward the center of the room where a single object sat atop a black pedestal—enshrouded in a pale blue containment field.
Kael stood beside it with his arms crossed. "You're early. I figured you'd take a day to recover."
"I need something more," Enzo said, voice quiet. "Something stronger."
Kael walked forward, inputting a code into the pedestal. The containment field fizzled out. The weapon it protected was unlike any Enzo had seen. A saber-shaped lightsaber, sleeker than standard military issue, and etched with faded lines of circuitry that pulsed faintly like veins.
"CA-001," Kael said. "We called it CAIN. Core-Augmented Integrated Nexus. It adapts to its wielder. My family's oldest heirloom, hidden since the Old Conflict."
Enzo stepped forward slowly, drawn to the weapon like gravity. "Why hide it?"
"Because its strength lies in what it takes from you." Kael paused. "Teleportation. Spatial disruption. CAIN lets you bend reality for a moment—but every use threads your mind tighter into it. I've seen what it does. That's why it hasn't been used in decades."
Enzo considered that. Then, without another word, he reached for the hilt.
The second his hand made contact, a pulse rippled through his arm. Not pain, but pressure—like gravity shifting direction. For half a second, the forge went silent. Then he blinked, and sound returned.
Kael raised an eyebrow. "It's responding to you already."
---
In the training chamber, Enzo stood before a mirrored wall. He ignited the weapon. Light spilled out—not pure blue or red like typical sabers, but a brilliant, electric silver. It bent slightly at the edges, as if reality itself struggled to hold it.
He moved through basic forms. The weight, the balance, the responsiveness—it felt alive. Every swing precise. Every flick of his wrist carried intention. Then, as he turned into a spinning arc, the world tilted.
He blinked—
—and suddenly stood three meters behind where he started.
He hadn't jumped.
He hadn't run.
He had simply moved. Instantaneously.
Kael's voice crackled through the chamber comm. "That's Cain's core reacting. It doesn't need input. It reads intention. But be careful. It doesn't always care who you are."
Enzo looked at the blade. He could feel it—not just in his hand, but in his spine. In his thoughts. Every flicker of aggression, every urge to act—Cain fed off it.
---
News arrived fast. A city under Descovinio control—Novar—was burning. Loyalist soldiers had turned it into a staging ground, rounding up civilians and executing dissenters.
Zero had a choice.
Enzo didn't wait for orders. With Cain at his side, he boarded a smuggler's hovercraft and slipped into Novar under the dark of night.
The city was a graveyard. Fires choked the alleys. Bodies littered the square. Soldiers in black-and-gold armor patrolled like gods among insects.
Enzo crouched on a rooftop, overlooking the central plaza where a transport carried shackled citizens. He exhaled slowly, his fingers brushing Cain's hilt.
Then he leapt.
He hit the ground running, blade igniting mid-air. Cain howled as it met the first rifle, cleaving it in half. Enzo spun, dodged, slashed—and then blinked.
He appeared ten meters away, behind two more soldiers. They turned just in time to see the blade arc through them.
The teleportation was seamless. Each burst of movement came not from thought, but instinct. He became a blur, untouchable. Each time he moved, Cain burned brighter—and louder.
But something else came with it.
Whispers.
Not voices. Fragments. Images. Faces of people he didn't know. Memories that weren't his. A battlefield. A woman's scream. A voice begging.
Cain's power wasn't clean. Every time it moved him, it reached into someone—somewhere—and brought a sliver of them back.
Still, he pressed on. Soldiers fell, their command structure collapsing in minutes. The citizens looked on in silence as the final guards fled.
Zero stood in the plaza's center, chest heaving. Cain hummed in his hand, no longer vibrating with raw energy, but something deeper. Something hungry.
---
Back in the forge, Kael didn't ask questions. He watched Enzo silently, noting the way his hand trembled slightly when he set Cain down.
"You didn't let it consume you," Kael said.
"Not yet."
"Did you see it?" Kael asked. "The echoes?"
Enzo nodded. "What are they?"
"Pieces of everyone who's ever used it. Cain doesn't forget. It connects its wielders through the core. If you draw too much power, it starts bleeding their memories into yours. And eventually, yours into someone else's."
Enzo stared at the weapon. The silver hilt looked cold now. Unassuming.
"I don't think I can give it back," he said quietly.
Kael smiled faintly. "It doesn't let go once it's chosen."
Enzo looked at his reflection in the forge glass. Not Zero. Not Clarenzo. Just someone in between. Someone trying to outrun his blood.
Cain pulsed once in the background. Silent. Waiting.