There was no dawn.
Not here. Not now.
The sun had long since fled this latitude, replaced by a night that refused to end—a half-light smeared across the horizon like an old wound, bruised violet and blue. But even without true sunrise, Cain felt it—the moment the fire left him. The moment silence returned like a final breath held too long.
He stirred.
His first breath was ragged. Sharp.
Not because the air was thin—but because it was clean.
Uncomfortably clean.
No trace of promethium. No trace of plasma residue. No scent of ash, blood, machine oil, or the sweat of dying men packed in an APC.
Just air.
Cold. Dry. Alien.
He opened his eyes.
Above him, the sky stretched out in all directions—black, endless, crowded with stars.
But wrong.
The constellations were all wrong.
There was no Palatine Arch. No Navigators' Cross. No Astropathic Lattice. No watch-beacons from orbital stations blinking like the Emperor's patient eyes.
Just a sky he didn't know. A quiet sky. Ancient and unblinking.
Cain exhaled, mist pluming from his lips.
He sat up slowly.
The ground beneath him hissed and crackled—not snow, but fused glass, still faintly warm. The crater stretched out around him like a wound in the skin of the world—circular, symmetrical, and utterly smooth. Its inner surface had melted into black, glossy stone, warped by impossible heat. The walls rose around him in a steep, shallow bowl—no steps, no handholds, just polished, featureless glass, two meters high all around.
A prison of his own making.
He was naked. Bare as birth. His skin steamed faintly in the frigid air, his muscles compact and dense beneath golden flesh. His limbs were stubby, childlike—but moved with coiled precision. Power waited behind every twitch.
He stood on the third try.
Stumbled on the fourth.
By the fifth, he managed to balance on both feet, wide-legged and panting, the soles of his feet burning slightly on the still-warm crater floor.
He glanced around.
There was no exit.
The crater walls curved gently upward, just steep enough to taunt him. No cracks. No seams. No way up.
"Right. Brilliant entrance. Now let's see if I can survive the landing."
Cain took a few cautious steps, feeling the friction beneath his feet. The surface was glass, yes, but rough in places—bubbled and crazed by heat stress. Climbable. Maybe. If he could manage his weight and find enough momentum.
He eyed the lowest point of the rim and braced his legs.
Then sprinted.
He hit the slope at an angle, legs pumping, arms flailing awkwardly. Halfway up, he slipped—caught himself—scrabbled forward on hands and knees, then lunged.
His hand smacked the lip of the crater.
With a grunt that was more a wheeze than a cry of victory, Cain hauled himself over the edge and collapsed on the other side, panting into the dark stone.
He lay there for a moment, letting the wind bite into his skin.
Then he stood, unsteadily, and took in the island.
The air was clear—unnaturally so. The Warp-taint of his fall had scoured the land clean. No mist. No snow. No frost. Just miles of ancient, glacier-smoothed rock, black and blue and gray beneath a twilight sky. The ground shimmered faintly with evaporated ice crystals, a dead reflection of what once had been a snow-covered world.
Directly ahead, the landscape sloped downward in wide, wind-polished ridges. Between them, dry gullies carved by ancient glacial melt twisted toward the coast like scars. Vegetation? None. Just rock. Scraped. Wounded. Primeval.
Beyond that—
Water.
Not sea ice. Open water.
A ragged halo of melted sea encircled the island where Cain's fall had flash-boiled the surrounding permafrost and coastal ice. The ocean steamed faintly in the cold, the ice sheets beyond it cracking and groaning like something waking from a long sleep.
Even further—at the distant edge of sight—more islands. Dark shapes in the endless sea. Silent. Watching.
He turned slowly.
Behind him: the crater. Black glass. Divine violence made permanent.
Above: stars he didn't know.
Before him: a world untouched.
And then—
Movement.
He blinked. Leaned forward.
Far away—perhaps five hundred meters, near the edge of the melted coastal shelf—he saw them.
Lined up on the bare rock like sacks of sloshing flesh.
Gray. Fat. Alive.
Dozens of them.
Seals.
They didn't look up. They didn't run. They just lay there in the thermal bloom of the crater's residual heat, basking like happy idiots.
Cain narrowed his eyes.
"Xenos? No… too dopey. No visible armor. Not smart enough to enslave a moon. Not ugly enough to be Tyranid."
But...
"They're breathing. They're warm. They're fat. They're food."
He looked down at his own small form—bare, cold, trembling slightly despite the heat he still radiated.
"And they probably won't mind giving up a few skins."
He turned back toward the distant coast.
His baby legs wobbled.
His fists clenched.
The wind picked up.
"All right," Cain muttered, setting his jaw. "Let's see if I can beat the wildlife without pants."
He began to walk.
Slow at first, each step across the vitrified ground a test. The wind nipped at him in cold little bites, but the stone was dry and firm beneath his feet—smooth, yes, but grippy enough in the right places. The melted basin sloped gently downward toward the coast, and soon he was trotting, gaining confidence, adjusting to his absurd body: stubby limbs, high center of gravity, ridiculous baby proportions hiding corded muscle and coiled strength.
"I used to command battle regiments," he muttered between breaths, "and now I'm speed-waddling at sea sausages with murder in my eyes. The Emperor works in mysterious, often humiliating, ways."
The seals were still there.
Still lounging like royalty on the sun-warmed shelf of rock that flanked the impact zone's melted coast. The water beyond lapped gently—freezing black waves brushing the now-exposed coastline. To the west and east, distant floes cracked and groaned, reminders of how unnatural this pocket of thaw was. But the seals?
Unconcerned.
They hadn't moved.
As Cain drew closer, still naked, still steaming slightly, they turned their heads one by one to look at him.
Not alarmed.
Not defensive.
Just... mildly intrigued.
Like he was a strange, hairless pup that had wandered off the wrong glacier.
He slowed as he reached them.
They did not flee.
One seal—massive, gray, with mottled scars along one side—lifted its head, sniffed, and made a soft grunting sound.
Cain eyed it warily.
He scanned the others.
They were all watching him, black eyes shiny and unreadable.
He bent down and picked up a chunky black stone about the size of his fist—hefted it. Felt the weight.
"Look, I don't like this any more than you do," he muttered, stepping slowly toward the big one. "But I need food. I need warmth. You've got both. And if it's any consolation—"
He raised the stone.
"—I'll try to make it quick."
He stepped within arm's reach of the seal.
It blinked.
Then—
GURRRAAKH.
The sound was indescribable.
Like someone shaking a sack of oysters over an open sewer.
The seal opened its mouth wide, gave a short, wheezing cough—and violently puked all over the stone.
Cain froze.
Fish guts, partially digested seaweed, a few twitching minnows, and what looked like half a crab claw splattered across the ground between them.
He blinked.
The seal blinked.
Cain's nostrils flared at the stench. His stomach nearly turned.
"You… generous little bastard."
The seal stared.
And then, as if in benediction, snorted once more and nudged the pile of regurgitated seafood toward him.
Cain looked down.
Back up.
Then at the other seals.
They were gathering now—curious, flopping closer on the warm stone. Big black eyes, twitching whiskers, wet noses sniffing at the air around him.
He dropped the rock.
It clacked harmlessly against the stone.
"All right then," he said, softly. "Truce."
He crouched down—awkward, clumsy, trying not to fall over—and reached for the least horrific bit of fish mush.
It was cold. Slimy. Slightly twitching.
He didn't hesitate.
He bit in.
Salt. Grit. Slime. Bones.
It was disgusting.
But his body welcomed it.
The Red Core flared quietly in approval—fuel. Heat. Muscle repair. His stomach grumbled, then quieted. A strange, raw vitality bloomed in his limbs.
As he chewed, the seals pressed closer.
One flopped against his side.
Another nudged under his arm.
A third lay its entire bulk across his legs, squashing him into the warm rock with the full, judgmental weight of an aquatic heating pad.
Cain blinked.
"You're fat. You're fishy. You smell like fermented tragedy. But you're warm."
He let out a slow breath.
And slumped against them.
By the time night deepened—though here, it never really changed—Cain was curled at the center of a dozen snoring, snorting sea-beasts. One still had seaweed on its flipper. Another chewed in its sleep. Their breath steamed around him, and their bodies radiated heat like giant, oily furnaces.
Cain, half-asleep, buried in seal blubber, whispered into the closest ear:
"Your name... is Fatsquatch."
The seal grunted softly.
Cain smiled.
Warm. Fed. Alive.
It was enough.
For now.