The Sunken Temple of Tongues was not built.
It was whispered into being.
Carved beneath the flesh of the world, it pulsed with chants that no longer had speakers—songs of a forgotten god whose name had been erased not once, but twice. Its walls were alive with unintelligible murmurs, and its corridors twisted in defiance of logic, as if language itself had rebelled against structure.
Even the air tasted like broken promises.
Astha stood before the temple's gate, Smritidhaara wrapped loosely around his forearm like a serpent at rest. Behind him, Luv's lightning flickered softly against the stone. Naira held a whisper-shield up to her ears—anything to keep the ambient noise from crawling into her mind.
"This entire temple is a language trap," Naira muttered, scanning glyphs that flickered in and out of meaning. "It's trying to infect our understanding."
"Good," Astha said coldly. "That means it still fears comprehension."
He stepped forward.
And the door spoke.
"What is your name?"
A thousand voices. All wrong. All in the wrong mouths.
"Astha," he answered flatly.
"Incorrect."
The gate melted into ash.
---
Inside the Temple
They descended through a spiral path carved from fossilized tongues. No light guided them—only the occasional shimmer from divine glyphs embedded in the walls, each one pulsing with unintelligible emotion: grief, terror, longing, betrayal.
"The god buried here…" Naira whispered, "they didn't just kill it."
"They silenced it," Luv said.
Astha stopped in front of a large cracked mural—depicting a war between the gods and a single figure cloaked in silence, mouth sewn shut, standing on the bodies of celestials.
He traced the faded markings and exhaled.
"This was the God of Voice."
"Why erase it?" Naira asked.
"Because it knew too much," Astha replied. "And because it could speak truths even gods couldn't unmake."
Behind them, a low click echoed.
Too late.
---
A blur of motion.
No warning. No battle cry.
Luv barely raised his spear before the blow came.
A figure dropped from the ceiling—cloaked in invisibility, blades made of crystallized scripture, face covered in veils of divine wax.
The Silent Assassin.
The gods had sent it to eliminate Astha before his memories birthed chaos.
Astha blocked its strike with Smritidhaara, but the blade bent from the pressure. The assassin was fast—absurdly fast—phasing in and out of perception, moving between syllables instead of shadows.
"You can't fight what you can't define," it whispered into Luv's ear mid-combat, before slicing his thigh open and vanishing again.
Blood hit the temple floor.
And the glyphs responded.
"It's using the temple itself as a language weapon!" Naira shouted.
"Then we change the dialect," Astha growled.
He dropped into a combat stance.
And summoned his weapon.
---
Vaayutal – Second Form: Ash-Devourer Edge
From the ether, Vaayutal twisted, transforming into a longer, crescent-shaped blade marked by volcanic glass and swirling red mantra script. Its edge pulsed like a living ember, heating the air around it until even sound struggled to move.
Smritidhaara ignited simultaneously, coiling around his back and arm like a flaming skeletal spine.
"You were sent to silence me," Astha muttered, his voice layered with pain and rage.
"But I've walked through worse than erasure."
"Let me show you what memory—really—looks like."
---
The next clash was not beautiful.
It was brutal.
Astha moved like fire trapped in a storm, his blade carving arcs of searing heat while his chain lashed in unpredictable spirals. The assassin countered with silence bombs—glyphs that disrupted time in small pulses—but Luv rejoined the fray, thunder erupting from his palms, disrupting the void-space between glyphs.
Naira cast memory distortion fields—forcing the assassin to relive past injuries for brief windows.
CLASH! SLASH!
The veiled killer cut Astha's cheek.
Astha responded by punching straight through the creature's shoulder with his free hand—brute force, no mantra.
"You rely too much on silence," he spat.
"But I was born in the screaming ruins of erased cities."
He snapped the assassin's blade mid-air and hurled Smritidhaara straight through its chest.
The glyphs on the walls shuddered—
And the assassin shattered.
Not died.
Shattered.
Like an idea denied a voice.
---
The walls of the temple dimmed.
A final passage revealed itself—a narrow staircase leading into the Vocal Crypt, where the God of Voice's last breath still lingered, stored inside an obsidian urn sealed by nine forgotten languages.
"What now?" Luv asked, limping.
"Now," Astha said, "we breathe what the gods buried."
And as he placed his hand on the urn—
The entire temple screamed.