Kain stood in the church, the cross above the altar casting long shadows across the stone floor, and the truth settled into his bones like frost creeping through cracked walls—slow, cold, and impossible to stop.
His father had been forced into the loan. That much was true. Pushed and manipulated and trapped by men who saw his dreams as nothing more than an opportunity. And when the business succeeded, when the money started flowing, the loan sharks had tightened their grip, forcing him to gamble away everything he earned at tables rigged against him, bleeding him dry month after month, year after year, until there was nothing left but debt and despair.
Then the twins came. New children. New lives. New reasons to make choices that could never be undone.
And Kain—the firstborn, the son who had played in the garden while his parents watched from the porch, the boy who had laughed and run and believed his family would always be there—Kain had been the price of their survival.
Left behind in that apartment like a debt that could never be repaid.
He stood now at the front of the church, the wooden cross looming above him, its surface worn smooth by the hands of countless worshippers who had come here seeking comfort, seeking answers, seeking something Kain had never found. His hands hung at his sides, limp and useless, and he wept—not silently, not politely, but openly, raggedly, the kind of weeping that tore through the chest and left nothing behind but hollow echoes.
I died because of them, he thought, and the words burned in his throat like swallowed fire. I swallowed those pills because of them. I lay down on that mattress because of them. Every day of hunger, every night of cold, every moment of wondering why I wasn't worth keeping—all of it goes back to them. Every single piece of it.
He didn't know how the trial would end. He didn't know if the demon king would let him go or drag him deeper into this church, into this pain, into this moment of understanding that felt less like revelation and more like drowning. The mist had receded, leaving only stone and shadow and the flickering light of candles that seemed to burn without growing smaller.
"I don't know what to do," he whispered to no one, to the cross, to the empty pews. "I don't know how to finish this."
"Kain."
The voice rang through the church, soft and trembling, and Kain's head snapped up, his breath catching in his chest, his tears freezing on his cheeks. His father was standing at the edge of the aisle—not the broken, hollowed-out man from the memory, but someone caught somewhere in between, older than Kain remembered but younger than the specter who had haunted his nightmares.
His father's hands were shaking. His face was pale, his eyes wide, and when he looked at Kain, something in his expression shifted—recognition, yes, but also terror, also hope, also the kind of desperate longing that came from years of wondering and regretting and imagining what might have been.
"Kain," his father said again, and his voice cracked on the name, splintered like old wood under too much weight. "Is it you? Is it really you?"
Beside him, Kain's mother stepped forward, her hand pressed against her mouth, her eyes already wet, her whole body trembling like a leaf in a storm. She was older than Kain remembered—so much older, her face lined with worry, her hair streaked with gray, her shoulders curved inward as if she had spent years trying to make herself smaller, easier to overlook.
"Kain," she whispered, and the word was barely a sound, barely a breath, but it carried through the church like a bell tolling in the distance. "My son. My baby."
Kain shook his head, stumbling backward, his hands rising as if to ward off a blow. "No," he said, and his voice was raw, broken, scraped clean of everything except refusal. "No, don't do this to me. Don't—"
But his father was already moving, crossing the distance between them in three long strides, and before Kain could retreat, before he could run, before he could do anything except stand there with his arms half-raised and his mouth half-open, his father's arms were around him.
The hug was desperate, crushing, the kind of embrace that came from years of absence and regret and the desperate need to hold onto something that had already been lost. His father's body was thin beneath his jacket, his shoulders sharp, his ribs pressing through his shirt, and he was crying—sobbing, really, his face buried in Kain's shoulder, his whole body shaking with the force of his grief.
His mother was there too, her arms wrapping around both of them, her tears soaking into Kain's shirt, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps that sounded like prayers or apologies or maybe just the sound of a woman who had spent years running from something she could never outrun. They held him, and Kain stood frozen in the center of their embrace, his arms at his sides, his body rigid, his heart pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat.
They left me, he thought, but the thought was distant now, muffled by the warmth of their bodies pressed against his. They abandoned me. They chose themselves and their new children and they left me to die alone in that apartment.
His heart broke.
Not the dramatic breaking of stories, not the clean snap of something shattering all at once, but something slower, messier—the way old wood breaks along the grain, splintering and cracking and coming apart in pieces that could never be put back together. Kain's tears spilled down his cheeks, hot and silent, and for a long moment he let himself be held. He let himself feel the warmth he had been craving since childhood, since before he could remember, since the last time his mother had tucked him into bed and kissed his forehead and promised that everything would be all right.
He let himself pretend that this was real and that it meant something and that the years of isolation and hunger and pain could be erased by a single embrace.
But they couldn't. And Kain knew it.
He pushed himself free, his hands pressing against his father's chest, his mother's shoulders, creating distance where there had been warmth. His breath came in ragged gasps, his face wet, his eyes red, and when he looked at them—at the parents who had left him behind—he felt the rage rising again, hot and sharp and necessary.
"Why?" he asked, and his voice cracked on the word. "Why are you looking at me like that? Like you regret something? Like you're sorry?"
His throat tightened, and he had to stop, had to swallow, had to force the next words out through the grief that was threatening to choke him.
"Why are you crying now?" he continued, his voice rising, the words pouring out of him like water through a broken dam. "Where was this—any of this—when I was seven years old? When I woke up alone in that apartment and you were gone? When I searched for you for days, for weeks, for months, and no one came? When I was so scared that I started seeing things that weren't there?"
His father opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again—no words coming, just the hollow click of teeth and the desperate flutter of breath. His mother pressed her hand tighter against her mouth, stifling a sob, her shoulders shaking.
"What's the point?" Kain demanded, and his voice was louder now, echoing off the stone walls, filling the empty church. "What's the point of showing me emotion now? You abandoned me. You left me in that apartment with money and food and a bottle of sleeping pills and you walked away. You didn't look back. You didn't come back. You just... left."
He was crying openly now, not the silent tears of before but great, heaving sobs that tore through his chest and left him gasping for air. His hands were shaking, his whole body was shaking, and he didn't care anymore about being strong or being brave or passing whatever trial the demon king had set before him. He just wanted them to understand. He just wanted them to know.
"I ate expired food from café garbage," he said, and each word was a struggle, each syllable dragged out of him like a tooth pulled without anesthesia. "I couldn't go to school because I had to work, because I had to survive, because there was no one there to take care of me. Do you understand that? There was no one. Just me. Just a child, alone in an apartment, trying not to die."
His mother made a sound—a small, wounded noise, like an animal caught in a trap. His father's face had gone gray, his eyes wide, his lips parted, and Kain kept going because if he stopped now he would never start again.
"The loan sharks found me," he said, and his voice dropped, the rage fading into something worse, something that sounded like exhaustion, like the voice of a person who had been tired for so long that tired had become their natural state. "They found me because I was your son, because I was the collateral you left behind. They hit me. They beat me. They threatened to sell my organs if I didn't pay debts I didn't even owe."
His father's hands were shaking. His mother had stopped crying—she was just staring now, staring at Kain like she was seeing a ghost, like she was seeing the consequences of her choices made flesh, standing in front of her in a church that shouldn't exist.
"I was so broken," Kain said, and the words came out soft, almost gentle, which made them worse. "I was so broken, and I didn't even understand why. I couldn't remember any of it—the contract, the twins, the plan to leave. My mind blocked it all out because it was too much. Because I was just a child and I couldn't carry that weight and survive."
He looked at his mother, and something in his expression made her flinch.
"You drugged me," he said. "You gave me sleeping pills so I wouldn't wake up while you packed. So I wouldn't see you leave. So you wouldn't have to watch me watch you go."
His mother's face crumpled. She didn't deny it. She couldn't.
"I woke up alone," Kain continued. "I searched for you. For days. For months. For years. I looked everywhere. I thought maybe you had been in an accident, maybe someone had taken you, maybe you were trying to come back and something had stopped you."
His voice cracked again, and he had to stop, had to press his hands against his face, had to breathe.
"I started hallucinating," he said finally, his voice muffled by his palms. "I started imagining things that never happened. I imagined my dad running away. My mom leaving me to die. Everyone blaming me for things I didn't do. I lived in those hallucinations for so long that I couldn't tell what was real anymore. I couldn't tell what was memory and what was fear and what was just my mind trying to protect me from the truth."
He lowered his hands and looked at them—at his parents, the people who had given him life and then thrown him away.
"Until now," he said. "Until this trial. Until this church. Until I saw everything I had blocked out." His voice broke. "And now I know the truth, and the truth is worse than anything I imagined."
His father sank to his knees.
Not slowly, not gracefully, but all at once, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The stone floor met his knees with a sound that echoed through the church—a hollow, final sound—and he bowed his head, his shoulders shaking, his hands pressed flat against the cold stone.
His mother followed, sinking down beside him, her face buried in her hands, her whole body trembling.
"We're sorry," his father said, and his voice was barely a whisper, barely a sound. "We're so sorry, Kain. We didn't have a choice. We didn't—"
"Choice?" Kain's voice cut through the apology like a blade, sharp and cold and final. "You didn't have a choice? Leaving me alone in that apartment was a choice. Abandoning me was a choice. Letting me starve and freeze and hallucinate and die—" his voice broke on the word, "—all of that was a choice. Don't tell me you didn't have a choice. You just didn't choose me."
His father raised his head, and his face was wet, his eyes red, his expression wrecked in a way that might have moved Kain once, in another life, before he had learned that apologies meant nothing without action to back them up.
"For your younger brother and sister," his father said, and the words came out in a rush, desperate and pleading, like a man throwing himself off a cliff and hoping something would catch him. "We had to take that step for them. We couldn't let them grow up in that life. We couldn't let them be taken, be used, be—"
"So you sacrificed me," Kain said, and his voice was quiet now, flat, emptied of everything except the facts. "You sacrificed me to the loan sharks so you could save yourselves and your new children. That's what you're saying."
His father didn't deny it. He just knelt there, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking, and said nothing.
"What a shitty father I had," Kain said, and the words were not angry anymore. They were just tired. Just true.
His father nodded slowly, his chin brushing his chest, his hands pressed flat against the stone. "I was human," he said, and his voice was hollow, broken, the voice of a man who had been running from himself for so long that he had forgotten what it felt like to stop. "I didn't know the best option at the time. I thought if I disappeared, if I went somewhere else and started a new business and earned back enough money, I could... I could buy you back. I could come for you. I could make it right."
Kain stared at him.
"Buy me back?" He said the words slowly, tasting them, letting them settle in his chest like poison. "Buy me back? How can you buy me back? I'm dead. I'm fucking dead, Dad. I died in that apartment, alone, surrounded by empty pill bottles and a lifetime of waiting for someone who never came. You can't buy that back. You can't fix that. You can't—"
His voice broke, and he couldn't finish.
His father wept openly now, his whole body shaking, his hands pressed against his face. "I know," he said, and the words were muffled, barely audible. "I know you're dead. I know, my son. I know."
"What?" Kain froze. "What did you say?"
His father looked up, and his face was gray, hollow, the face of a man who had been living with a terrible knowledge for years. "I know you're dead," he repeated, and the words were clear now, steady, the kind of steady that came from accepting something too heavy to carry. "I know."
Kain's mother was crying beside him, her hand on his arm, her face buried against his shoulder. She knew too. They both knew.
Kain froze.
The word hung in the air between them—dead—and for a moment, no one moved, no one breathed, no one did anything except stand there in the heavy silence of the church, the candles flickering on the altar, the cross casting a long shadow across the floor.
His father had said it, not Kain. The man on his knees, his face gray, his eyes red, his whole body trembling like a leaf about to fall from a tree. He knew Kain was dead. He had always known.
And then—
"How?" Kain's voice came out strange, not loud but not quiet either, the kind of voice that cracked in the middle and kept going anyway. "How do you know? How could you possibly—"
His father didn't answer. He just knelt there, his hands hanging loose at his sides, his head bowed, and Kain felt something cold creep up his spine, something that smelled like a truth he had been running from his whole life.
"System." The word left his mouth before he could think, before he could stop it, before he could do anything except try to understand what was happening.
The blue screen flickered into existence, cold and steady, and Kain's voice was shaking when he spoke again.
"Scan them. My parents. Tell me if they're real. Not memories. Not illusions. Real."
The screen flickered. Spun. Paused. And when the words appeared, they came slowly, one by one, as if the system itself was hesitant to speak.
SCANNING. SYSTEM PROCESSING. DATA FOUND.
USER'S PARENTS ARE REAL. THEIR FORMS ARE SOUL-BASED. THEY ARE NOT ILLUSIONS OR MEMORIES. THEY ARE ACTUAL SOULS, PRESENT IN THIS SPACE.
Kain lowered his hands. His parents were real. His parents were here. His parents were dead.
"Souls," he said, and the word was barely a whisper, barely a sound, but it echoed through the church like thunder. "What do you mean, souls?"
But even as he asked, he knew. He knew because the trial wasn't about memories anymore. It wasn't about the past. It was about the present—about the people who had abandoned him, who had chosen to leave him behind, who were standing in front of him now, in flesh that wasn't flesh, asking for forgiveness he wasn't sure he could give.
His parents were dead too.
They had died, somewhere, somehow, and their souls had been pulled into this place, this trial, this moment where Kain had to decide whether to forgive them or let the anger consume him forever.
The candles flickered. The shadows deepened. And Kain stood at the center of the church, caught between the parents who had left him and the system that had shown him the truth, and he didn't know what to do next.
To be Contiued....