: The First Attempt
The plan, hatched in the desperation of the ruined temple, felt flimsy in the harsh light of day. They had decided on a soft approach, a delicate probe meant to gently remind Devansh of who he was, not confront what he had become. They chose the Music Garden at dusk, a place saturated with his most peaceful memories. The weapon of choice would be nostalgia, their only armor, hope.
Aaditya stood near the ancient banyan tree, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. He held not the rejected flute, but a simple, old practice veena—the first one Devansh had ever learned on, its wood scratched and worn with the memory of a child's fumbling fingers. Mrinal was positioned near the jasmine archway, a silent sentinel, her hand resting on the head of a gentle, old hound that had been Devansh's constant companion as a boy. The dog, sensing the tension, whined softly.
Devansh arrived as he always did now, with Vani strapped to his back, his movements a study in controlled, unnatural precision. He did not acknowledge them. He walked to his usual marble bench and sat, his gaze already turning inward.
This was the moment.
Aaditya took a deep, steadying breath and stepped forward. "Dev," he said, his voice softer than he intended, betraying his nervousness.
Devansh's head turned slowly, his blue eyes flat and uninterested. "You are interrupting my practice."
"I... we found this in the old storage," Aaditya pressed on, holding out the practice veena. "Remember? Your Guru ji had you start on this. You said its strings felt like 'thick, stubborn river reeds'." He offered a small, tentative smile, reaching for a shared memory. "You played your first full raga on this. The Raga of the Morning Dew. For your mother's birthday."
For a single, heart-stopping second, nothing happened. Then, a flicker. A subtle shift in the blankness of Devansh's eyes. The memory, vivid and warm, seemed to brush against the frozen surface of his mind. His brow furrowed, just a fraction. His gaze dropped to the old, scarred instrument in Aaditya's hands.
Mrinal saw her opening. She gave a low, gentle whistle. The old hound, Raja, perked up his ears. He had been dozing in the sun, but at the sound, he rose stiffly and ambled towards the bench, his tail giving a slow, tentative wag. He nudged his wet nose against Devansh's limp hand, a familiar, decades-old gesture of affection.
The combined assault of memory and sensory familiarity was a powerful one. The real Devansh, the one buried under layers of corrosive darkness, stirred. Aaditya saw it—a profound, gut-wrenching confusion in his eyes. A war. The man was fighting a war inside his own skull, and for a glorious, fleeting moment, it seemed he might win.
His lips parted. A soft, ragged breath escaped. His fingers, resting on his thigh, twitched.
And then it happened.
Vani, strapped to his back, reacted.
It was not a gentle hum or a soft glow. A violent, bloody crimson aura erupted from the ancient veena, a visible shockwave of pure malice that slammed into the tranquil garden. The air itself seemed to scream, a high-pitched, psychic shriek that made Mrinal clap her hands over her ears and Raja yelp in terror, scrambling back behind her legs.
The flicker of confusion on Devansh's face was instantly incinerated, replaced by a mask of pure, unadulterated rage. The red energy didn't just surround Vani; it seemed to pulse into him, coursing through his veins, lighting his eyes from within with that same hellish glow.
He shot to his feet, the movement so fast it was a blur. He didn't look at Aaditya or Mrinal. He looked at the practice veena as if it were a venomous snake.
"GET THAT FILTH AWAY FROM ME!"
The roar was not human. It was the voice of the corruption itself, guttural and layered with a thousand discordant notes. A wave of invisible force exploded from him, not aimed at them, but at the instrument in Aaditya's hands.
CRACK!
The old practice veena, a repository of a lifetime of innocent memories, shattered in Aaditya's grasp. The sound was not of breaking wood, but of a soul being snapped in two. The strings whipped through the air, and the neck of the instrument splintered into a dozen pieces, falling to the ground like broken bones.
Aaditya stared, stunned, at the wreckage in his hands, then up at Devansh. The man he loved was gone, completely subsumed by the red energy that crackled around him like a malevolent storm.
Devansh's chest heaved. His glowing eyes swept over them, devoid of any recognition, filled only with a seething, possessive hatred. He didn't say another word. He turned, the red aura receding back into Vani as quickly as it had appeared, and strode from the garden, leaving a trail of psychic devastation in his wake.
The silence he left behind was heavier than before, now poisoned with failure and terror.
Raja was trembling, pressed against Mrinal's legs. She knelt, mechanically stroking his head, her own hands shaking. She looked at Aaditya, her face pale. "He... he didn't even see us," she whispered. "At the end. He only saw a threat to... to it."
Aaditya let the fragments of the broken veena fall from his numb fingers. He looked at the empty doorway, his own hope lying in splinters amongst the wood. The gentle approach had been a catastrophic error. They had poked a beast, and it had roared back with the force of a hurricane.
"He will protect it with ferocious, violent desperation," Aaditya murmured, echoing Alok's grim warning from their secret meeting the night before. "Seeing any attempt to remove it as a mortal threat."
Mrinal rose to her feet, her initial shock hardening into a cold, sharp resolve. She looked at the shattered instrument, then at the path Devansh had taken. "We tried to remind him of his heart," she said, her voice like steel. "It seems we must now confront the thing that has stolen it. We cannot reason with the shadow. We have to separate him from it."
The first attempt was over. It had failed. But it had taught them a brutal, invaluable lesson. This was not a battle of persuasion. It was a battle of force. And the time for softness was gone.