What the Camp Kept

The ute rolls toward camp loaded with supplies and weighted with silence. Paul drives whilst explaining impossible things to a man who can't accept them. Nial recounts his arrival — Luke's offer, the push through the portal, the hundred thousand dollars that was never real — and each word lands like a confession of stupidity he can't forgive himself for.

When Paul suggests Nial's fencing skills might be valuable here, the irony cuts deep. Back home, his business is failing — debts mounting, clients disappearing, every spreadsheet telling the same story of slow collapse. And here, in hell or another dimension or wherever this is, suddenly what he knows how to build matters. Suddenly he has purpose.

But purpose doesn't ease the ache of Jenny waiting for him to come home. Of Sammy waving goodbye, secure in the certainty that Daddy always returns.

The shadow panther's head announces their arrival before anything else. Mounted on a pole at camp's entrance, jaws frozen in a snarl, teeth still carrying the rust-brown stains of violence. Kain recognises those teeth — they tore his leg apart, dragged him through darkness, nearly ended him. Seeing them displayed should feel like victory.

It doesn't.

Nial's confession about his wife and toddler is the thing that breaks Kain. Not the panther, not the pain, not the entity whispering in his skull — but watching another man's grief and recognising it as his own. Brianne. His unborn daughter. The life he hasn't finished living.

He can't carry anyone else's weight on top of his own.

So he leaves. Limps away from camp, away from Nial's despair, away from Paul's steady leadership, heading for the lagoon with one thought burning clear: it's time to have a conversation with the voice in his head.