Cain did not wake up to pain.
He did not wake up to the weight of his body or the rough cold of the floor where he had fallen.
Instead, he opened his eyes into something that did not feel like waking at all.
It felt like he had stepped into a place that existed outside of waking and sleeping, a place that had no clear beginning and no clear end.
A world made of mist.
Dark.
Endless.
Silent.
"…What is this…"
The words left his mouth, but even his own voice sounded distant to him, as if it had been swallowed before it could truly exist. The air around him did not echo. It did not carry sound. It simply let it disappear.
Cain stood still for a moment, trying to understand where he was.
The ground beneath his feet was strange. It was not solid in the way stone or soil would be, but it did not feel unstable either. It felt like standing on something that only pretended to be ground, something that allowed him to exist there without revealing what it truly was.
He looked down.
