Victory often carries a strange flavour. It seems sweet at first, but leaves a bitter note that clings long after the moment fades. For SP Sharma and Rajendra, who stood over the disfigured corpse of the Asura, that flavour became irresistible. They believed they had achieved the unthinkable. They had ended a being with powers beyond comprehension. They had silenced something that could have torn their carefully spun web apart.
But all valuable things come at a cost.
And often, that cost is not paid by the hands that claim victory, but by the ones crushed under them.
SP and Rajendra were too drunk on the feeling of conquest, too blinded by the thrill of vanquishing something far outside human logic, to remember why they had come in the first place. Their primary target, the boy they were meant to eliminate, had become an afterthought.
Consumed by bloodlust and the madness of success, they had forgotten their mission entirely.
"Look at him," SP muttered, pressing his boot against the Asura's severed head. "All that power, all that spiritual rubbish, and still he bleeds like anyone else."
Rajendra was still shaking, his hidden blade smeared with blood as he wiped it clean. "I thought we were done for. I really believed we were finished back there."
Their attention stayed fixed on the Asura's corpse. They watched. They waited. They wanted to make sure the death was complete. None of them noticed the boy's body slipping away into the currents. Perhaps they assumed he too had drowned, dragged beneath the surface of the River, swallowed by the dark water forever.
They did not understand the kind of man they had destroyed.
They had no clue what they had interrupted.
The Asura was not someone who abandoned his purpose. Even while alive, he operated with a precision that left no task incomplete. Death, it seemed, was just another problem for him to solve.
His work never stopped until the matter was completely closed.
The flame that burned within him in life, the same fire that drove him to protect the boy, had not been put out. Instead, death transformed it into something sharper, colder, more relentless.
As his physical body collapsed, that flame of intention turned his presence into a spiritual force.
His abilities, crafted through centuries of discipline and knowledge, travelled with him into the next phase. The shift from body to spirit happened so smoothly, it was as though his soul had anticipated it all along.
"Dead or breathing. I always close my accounts."" his voice echoed beyond the veil, saturated with unwavering clarity.
This was not defeat. This was transition.
In the space beyond life and before final release, the Asura's spirit formed again, shining with condensed will and ancient wisdom. He sensed the ritual crumbling. The energy he had summoned scattered and uncontrolled, like pages torn from a book in a storm.
The spell was slipping away.
Danny's soul had already moved on. It floated gently, drifting into that distant, unknowable space. The connection that was meant to anchor him had not finished forming. The threads meant to hold him in life were unravelling, each one snapping from strain.
Even without a body, the Asura remained. The task was not over. It could still be completed.
His ghost glowed faintly but stood firm. In this suspended state, his purpose sharpened. Nothing else mattered except finishing what he had started.
Failure was not acceptable. Danny had fallen, but the killers had not. That imbalance could not remain. Not while even a fraction of his essence endured.
Time slipped away. Normal paths were closed now. He needed something else.
He reached out across that thin, spiritual space, searching for a soul that could act as a replacement. One had already been close by, one he had tried to pull before death reached him. It was a presence that burned fiercely, one that carried its own wounds, its own unfinished stories.
Rudra.
The name rang out like a warning bell.
Rudra's soul was not at rest. It could not settle. It would not forgive what had happened to it. The Asura recognised its heat, its strength, its pain. This was no ordinary spirit. This was a storm barely contained.
Rudra's energy was unmatched. It did not flicker. It roared. It pressed against the world, trying to come back.
This was never the plan, the Asura admitted silently. But maybe the plan had never mattered. Maybe something greater had written this path.
He thought he was trying to rescue a blameless soul. Perhaps that had only been the surface. Perhaps Danny's death and Rudra's fury were meant to collide all along.
With the last drop of strength that his fading presence could summon, he acted.
He completed the ritual.
It was not the clean solution he once imagined. It was not the simple act of returning a boy to life. It had become something different. More dangerous. More unstable.
He bound Rudra's soul to Danny's empty vessel. He joined vengeance to innocence, creating a bond that twisted two beings into one.
From a distance, the symbols of the circle ignited. The carved stones began to glow with a brilliance that lit the riverbank. The air thickened. The ritual responded.
The Asura's spirit, having done what was necessary, began to weaken. He was finished. His purpose had ended.
But before he let go completely, he used what remained to pull the boy's body to the shore.
Hands made of light and intent moved the figure away from the deeper water. Away from the killers. Toward safety. The body rolled ashore far from where the others stood, a silent motion through weeds and sand.
It came to rest among mud and broken reeds, hidden from any who might return to look.
The body breathed. Shallow at first, like a broken flute trying to find its sound. The chest moved, slow and mechanical. But it was not Danny that opened his eyes.
It was Rudra.
The face was still young, but what lived behind it was far older. Far darker.
Meanwhile, SP Sharma and Rajendra were still near the water, burning and breaking what was left of the Asura. They dropped the corpse into the river, satisfied that the nightmare had ended.
They did not realise they had awakened something far worse.
On the muddy shore, the boy sat upright. The motion was smooth, too precise for a corpse.
And then the Asura's last message arrived.
His voice was now only a trace of sound, carried on the wind. It whispered into Rudra's mind, filled with peace and certainty.
"I never leave things undone."
Then silence.
He was gone. The final journey had begun.
But not before the system within Rudra activated, responding to the completed ritual.
Information flooded in. The mission had changed. New rules. New goals.
[MEMORY SEQUENCE OF Asura COMPLETE]
[QUEST PARAMETERS UPDATED]
[TARGET 1: ELIMINATE THE SP]
QUEST REWARD: [SYSTEM UPGRADE]
[TARGET 2: ELIMINATE RAJENDRA]
QUEST REWARD: [GIFT OF Asura]
[WARNING: FAILURE TO COMPLETE QUEST WILL RESULT IN PERMANENT SOUL DESTRUCTION]
Rudra took this message in. And he understood.
This body, this strange new life, was not just survival. It was justice. It was a second chance to settle the past.
He opened his eyes, aware now of who he truly was and what needed to be done.
He was Danny in form, but Rudra in truth.
Two souls bound by injustice.
He knew the names. He knew the faces.
He knew who had to die.
"So," he said softly, his voice steady and full of quiet wrath, "we have some old scores to settle. And not every debt is paid with money some are paid in blood."
He turned his gaze to the town in the distance. The light of its streets flickered like sparks.
SP Sharma and Rajendra might be celebrating.
But they had no idea what they had created.
The body that had once been Danny stood fully now. The soul within it had already chosen its path.
"It's about time the world learns: it's either my way or the highway."
The hunt was about to begin, and this time, Rudra would not be the prey.
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