The moon had now covered eighty percent of the sun.
The light had faded to a deep, eerie violet, and the temperature in the plaza plummeted. The moisture from the sea spray froze mid-air, falling like a fine, glittering dust of ice.
Vikram lay on the cold stone, his body shivering. He could hear the shouts of the Dharavi youths, the crackle of Aetheric rifles, but they seemed distant, drowned out by the heavy, rhythmic thumping of the Core beneath the plaza.
*Do not fight the shadow,* Mr. Desai's words echoed in his mind. *Let it flow through you.*
Vikram looked at the massive beam of dark photons shooting from the Gateway arch. The air was thick with dark matter. He didn't need to generate Chaya; it was already there, swirling around him, waiting to be shaped.
He stopped trying to block the cold. He embraced it.
He performed a deep, silent Pranayama, his nervous system expanding his bio-electric field to its absolute limits. The Prana in his veins reacted with the dark photons in the air, creating a violent, swirling vortex.
Javed stepped forward to strike, but suddenly, the air around Vikram went completely black.
The light was bent away. To Javed, Vikram had vanished into a pocket of absolute, spatial darkness.
"What?" Javed gasped, swinging his blade wildly into the black void.