Bhaktapur's dusk sky burned a fiery orange as prayer flags drew slow arcs above the brick lanes. Incense braided with the scent of roasting corn, and drumbeats pulsed from a temple square where lanterns had already been lit. Arya cut through the crowd like a thread in a loom—seventeen, lean, and fast enough to be a rumor. No one knew his name; they only felt the draft when he passed and checked their pockets a heartbeat later.
He wasn't looking for trouble tonight, only food. But trouble had a way of flashing its teeth in the old city. A heavyset thug waddled past, leather satchel bouncing at his side. Through the torn seam, a faint blue aura breathed in and out—softer than candlelight, impossible to ignore. Arya's hunger argued with his instincts; hunger won. He slipped behind the man, fingertips whispering across rough leather. One tug. The weight was his.
"Oi! That brat—"
The market erupted. Arya ran. He wove through hanging silks and baskets of citrus, vaulted a cart stacked with brass bowls, then took a bamboo ladder two rungs at a time to the rooftops. Tiles slid under him, clacking down the eaves like startled birds. He crossed a yawning alley in a single desperate leap, caught a prayer-flag line, swung, and landed hard. Below, curses and boots blurred together. Above, the sky darkened as if someone had drawn a sleeve across the sun.
The satchel throbbed now, syncing to his pulse. He risked a glance: inside, a crystal shard lay cradled in worn cloth—icy and bright, like a shard of frozen lightning. He didn't know why, but the sight hollowed him out and filled him at once.
He dropped into a courtyard no one used anymore, the kind old women warned children to forget. A moss-crowned arch slumped over a door that had forgotten hinges, murals flaked from the walls: gods lifting mountains, demons with molten eyes, a trident spearing a storm. The air was colder here, the way air gets before thunder.
At the center stood a cracked pedestal shaped like a trident head. Arya should have run. Instead, he set the shard into the broken groove.
The floor breathed. Runes kindled from dust to fire, whirling into a mandala beneath his feet. Lightning crawled from wall to ceiling, tasting stone, tasting him. The world contracted to a single note—low, endless, and inside his bones.
Bearer of the storm… awaken.
The voice was everywhere and nowhere, inside his ears and behind his ribs. Light roped him upward. His hoodie smoked, hair lifted, and for a moment he saw—no, remembered—things that could not be his: a god striding through rain with a trident that split mountains; a gate of night yawning open between snowbound peaks; a monk whose blind eyes shone like dawn.
The light snapped. He fell, knees cracking against stone. The shard was gone. In its place, a mark burned on his palm: a trident of thin, clean lines, pale blue and alive. Outside, thunder rolled over Bhaktapur, and a bolt of lightning struck Pashupatinath's golden spire with a sound that turned prayer into a gasp.
Someone was in the rafters—he felt it like a change in weather. A weightless shift, a cold attention. He squinted into the dark, but the dark looked back with one red eye and then wasn't there at all.
Arya wrapped his palm in his sleeve and staggered into the alley. The city went on pretending—vendors haggled, bells chimed, dogs barked at the moon. But each breath dragged a faint taste of metal into his mouth; each step rippled a spark along his nerves.
He made it to a rooftop and sat with his knees to his chest. The trident pulsed slowly, answering a rhythm he couldn't hear. He pressed his wrist against the tiles until pain blurred the glow.
"This isn't mine," he told the air, the city, the god whose name he hadn't learned but somehow knew. "Give it back."
The wind nosed at his hair and moved on. Far to the north, the Himalayas caught the last light and held it a while. Somewhere behind those heights, a set of prayer beads stilled in a young monk's hands, and in a place no human should stand, something huge uncoiled and smiled.