Chapter 1: The House of Monsters
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They called him a loose screw.
Cain Babel.
A name that lingered like a whisper in tavern corners and drifted behind locked doors. The villagers spat it with caution, like bad blood on cold earth. They thought he couldn't hear, but Cain always heard. He didn't care—not anymore.
Let them talk.
Their words meant as much to him as ash to the wind.
Cain lived with his uncle on the edge of the village, where the trees grew too thick and the wind whistled secrets no one wanted to hear. His parents had cast him off long ago. Disowned him. Forgotten him.
All because he saw something he wasn't supposed to see.
He told them, once. When he was a child. Voice shaking, eyes wild. And they laughed. Said he was broken. Said he was mad. Said he was lying.
So it started with pranks. Little things. A broken fence. Missing tools. Strange symbols carved into barn doors.
Then it became theft.
Then blood.
Someone pushed him too far—spat poison about his past, about the thing he saw—and Cain showed them what madness really looked like. They bled, and he smiled.
And the village hated him even more.
Perfect.
Cain liked that.
He liked seeing the disgust in their eyes, the fear in their voices when they thought he wasn't listening. He liked the way their perfect little world trembled when he walked by. Because they ruined him first. And now they wanted peace?
Hypocrites. Every last one of them.
They had no right to speak of right and wrong. No right to judge. No right to breathe in peace while pretending they weren't monsters themselves.
So Cain would show them a real monster.
---
He packed lightly.
A flint knife, some dried meat, a lantern, a worn cloak. Enough to survive a few nights alone. Not that he expected to be gone long. Just long enough to prove what he already knew: the villagers were cowards, and the legends were lies.
They called it the Breakout.
A mountain scarred by black trees and deeper myths. They said it was cursed. They said men who entered came back twisted—or didn't come back at all. A prison where the damned once made pacts with devils, selling their souls for power, only to be tricked into becoming the very monsters they sought to command.
Superstition. Childish tales for housewives and trembling brats.
Cain didn't believe in monsters.
He believed in men. Men who lied. Men who feared. Men who turned on their own.
What killed the hunter last month wasn't a devil. It was a beast—a bear, perhaps, or wolves. Nature, not nightmares. And Cain would prove it.
He'd sleep where they said no man should sleep.
Walk where no one dared.
Laugh in the face of the myths that shackled their minds.
He would bring back bones if he had to.
And when he returned, they would know.
They would all know.
---
The wind howled louder as Cain neared the base of the mountain, and the trees leaned in like eavesdroppers. The sky was bleeding dusk, and the air felt…thicker. Heavy.
Good.
He welcomed it.
Let the world try to scare him.
He would dig through its fears with his bare hands.
And if monsters did exist—
Then maybe he'd finally meet someone who saw the world the same way he did.
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The mountains loomed like ancient gods, their jagged silhouettes carving cruel shapes into the darkening sky. Cain climbed higher, his breath short and sharp in the cold air. The stone path crumbled beneath his boots with each cautious step, and still he pressed on.
Something moved.
He heard it.
A branch cracking—quick and deliberate.
Cain froze, but he did not turn. He told himself it was an animal. A bird, perhaps. A fox. Maybe the wind. He did not want to know otherwise. Not up here, where the forest grew too still.
Off the main path, the pines grew thick and oppressive. Shadows pooled between their roots like oil. Cain wandered into them, half out of curiosity, half to prove to himself there was nothing to fear.
"Where are the animals?" he muttered, barely louder than a breath. The silence answered him.
He frowned. Even at dusk, the woods should've echoed with life—chirps, rustling, distant howls. But there was only quiet. A hollow, unnatural quiet.
Probably just because it's almost night, Cain told himself.
He scoffed. "It's not like there's monsters eating them or anything... That'd be crazy, right?"
But his voice felt wrong here. Like it didn't belong. Like it was being swallowed by something listening.
Cain felt fear. Not the loud kind that made men scream. No, this fear was quiet and crawling. He didn't fear monsters, not exactly. He feared the cold fact that he might not survive the night. He had brought enough supplies for a day—no more. No maps. No lanterns. Only a knife he didn't know how to use.
What if he got lost? What if something found him?
Cain shook his head. Shrugged. Tried to bury the thoughts. But they festered.
Then—another sound. Rustling. This time closer. And louder.
He spun around.
Nothing.
But that was the worst part. Just seconds ago, the forest had been deathly still. Now something was moving. Not skittering like a fox. Not clumsy like a deer. No. This sound was deliberate. It stalked.
Cain remembered the stories. The ones whispered by drunk hunters and mad pilgrims. Flesh-eating things. Starved things. Things that only moved when the light died.
But they have to be false, Cain told himself.
He kept walking.
He did not run.
He would not look behind him.
Even though something was there.
Watching.
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Cain was close.
The mountain loomed before him—torn from the bones of the world, jagged and black against the dying sky. The wind no longer danced through trees here; it scraped like claws through bark, cold and dry, full of the scent of ash and old things buried too deep.
His chest was tight with anticipation.
He could already see it. The villagers' pale faces, twisted in disbelief. Their lips speechless, their pride shattered. He would descend from the so-called cursed mountain alive and unbroken, dragging behind him the rotted skull of whatever beast they had mistaken for a devil. He would force them to look at it. To choke on the truth.
They called him cursed. Mad.
But they would remember his name when their myths crumbled into dust.
He smiled.
And then—
A scream.
Sharp. Echoing.
A cry for help—female, but not quite. There was something off about it. It rang too hollow. Too smooth. Just a little too perfect. Like a voice carved to resemble a woman's but missing some vital flaw that made it real.
Still, it chilled the air like glass breaking.
Cain's body moved before thought could catch up. He dashed through the thinning trees, boots smashing twigs beneath. The cloak whipped behind him, and his breath came sharp and short. The scream had come from somewhere ahead—just beyond the bend, deeper into the wild.
"Hold on!" he growled. "I'm coming!"
His mind spun.
What is it?
Bandits? Some scum dragging a girl off to the shadows?
Cain's blood burned at the thought.
He hated them. Filth. The kind of people who preyed on the helpless. He had no mercy for monsters like that—not the kind with teeth and claws, but the kind with grins and filthy hands.
There were two things Cain Babel could never forgive:
The cowards of the village—
And rapists.
If it was one of them, Cain would bury them where they stood.
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He tore through a thicket of underbrush and stumbled into a clearing—but there was no one.
No woman.
No cries.
Only silence.
And the wind.
It was wrong here.
The forest no longer felt empty—it felt aware. As though it had paused to watch him. The trees bent slightly toward him, listening. Judging.
Cain's eyes darted around the shadows, hand gripping the flint knife at his belt.
Then—
The scream came again.
Behind him.
He spun—but again, there was nothing.
This time, he noticed something else. A detail that twisted in his gut like a worm:
The scream was identical to the first. Not just similar—identical. The same pitch, the same inflection, the same breathless crack at the end.
A recording trapped in the throat of something not human.
Cain's hand tightened on the knife.
"What… the hell?"
He crouched, listening now—not just with ears, but with his bones. Something was here, and it wasn't pretending well enough.
Whatever it was, it thought he would follow the voice.
It wanted him to follow.
Cain didn't move.
He had no fear of wolves. No fear of shadows. But this was different. Something about this was wrong in a clever way.
He stood very still.
Then he whispered to himself, teeth gritted:
"They were right about this place, weren't they?"
The Breakout was no longer just a name.
It was watching.
[To Be Continued]