Dawn crept across the ruins like liquid gold seeping into the cracks of the world. The night’s rain had left beads of light clinging to the twisted cables that once fed the old metro lines. Arjun stirred, hearing distant temple bells that were not struck by hands but by the wind pushing through hollow copper spires. Each chime seemed to whisper a fragment of an ancient mantra.
Mira was already awake. She had spread her coat beneath a withered banyan whose roots had split a concrete pillar clean in two. She knelt, tracing symbols in the mud with a thin rod of copper — not for prayer, but for measurement. The markings glowed faintly; she was mapping energy lines.
“You read the land like scripture,” Arjun said, stretching the sleep from his limbs.
She smiled faintly. “Every land still remembers the hymns that built it. If you learn their rhythm, they tell you where the next breath of life hides.”
He joined her to watch the first light reach the horizon. Beyond the broken overpass and a field of silent turbines stood the outline of a village — small, mostly intact, smoke rising from clay chimneys. It looked normal, almost peaceful. Yet Mira’s hand tightened on the copper rod.
“Smoke from old clay,” she murmured. “No scent of cooking. That’s wrong.”
They broke camp quickly. The road sloped downward into a shallow valley carpeted with moss and thin streams. As they walked, Arjun noticed the air growing heavier, as if weighed down by silence. No birds. No insects. Only the murmur of machines beneath the soil.
At the edge of the settlement, an archway of carved stone bore faded Sanskrit verses half-overwritten with digital code. Arjun touched one line, and a faint spark jumped from the stone to his mark. The code translated itself in his mind — a blessing once used to keep away famine and war. The data-runes still worked, faintly, like embers of faith refusing to die.
Inside, narrow alleys twisted between low houses. Doorways stood open, but no faces peered out. A cart lay overturned, fruit shriveled to black seeds. The smell of burnt metal lingered. Arjun’s pulse quickened.
Mira gestured toward a central square where a cracked statue of a bull — half stone, half steel — stood amid pools of stagnant water. “This used to be a shrine to Nandi,” she said. “When the gods withdrew, people built circuits into the idols to keep them awake. It worked for a while.”
Arjun ran a hand across the bull’s flank. Under the grime he felt a faint vibration — a heartbeat. “It’s still alive.”
“Or dreaming,” Mira corrected. She stepped back and closed her eyes, murmuring a brief chant. The air shifted; from somewhere beneath the square, a hum answered her voice, like machinery remembering its purpose.
Panels slid open in the statue’s base, revealing a chamber filled with faintly glowing crystals. Within their facets shimmered flickers of images — villagers laughing, children chasing kites, a wedding, a festival. The crystals were memories.
Arjun’s breath caught. “Are they trapped?”
Mira’s tone softened. “Stored. The villagers must have bound their essences when the plague came. They thought to return when the danger passed.”
“And did it?”
She looked at him, eyes shadowed. “If it had, this square would be filled with people.”
For a moment they stood in silence, watching the spectral faces flicker in the crystals. Arjun reached toward one, and the mark on his palm flared. The crystal brightened, projecting a fleeting scene into the air: a little girl placing a garland around the neck of a tall man with dark hair and kind eyes — Raghav.
Mira inhaled sharply. The projection lasted only seconds before dissolving back into mist.
“You knew him,” Arjun said quietly.
Her fingers curled against her thigh. “Everyone in that part of the plains knew the Protector of Willowgate,” she replied, voice almost steady. “He kept the northern border safe for years. Until the sanctum called him.”
Arjun wanted to ask more, but something in her face warned him away. She turned to the statue again. “Help me close this before the energy drains completely. If the memory field collapses, their souls will scatter.”
They worked together, aligning copper rings and pressing runes until the panels sealed. When the hum faded, the square grew silent again — but the silence no longer felt empty. It felt like reverence.
Arjun stood back, breathing slowly. “Why would the gods allow this? If they still listen, why let entire villages vanish?”
Mira straightened, wiping mud from her hands. “Maybe they do listen. Maybe this is their way of keeping what’s left safe until we learn how to rebuild. The gods aren’t caretakers, Arjun. They’re reminders.”
She began walking toward the northern gate, but Arjun lingered. He thought of the flicker of Raghav’s face — gentle, confident, utterly human. It did not match the image the monk’s stories had painted of a merciless judge. The contradiction itched in his thoughts.
Mira’s voice drifted back to him, soft but firm. “Come on. There’s a place ahead where the wind still carries prayer. You’ll need to hear it before you face your next trial.”
They left the village as the sun climbed. At the ridge, Arjun looked back. The statue of Nandi glimmered faintly in the morning light, as if bowing in gratitude. A single bell hanging from a broken arch swayed in the breeze and rang once — clear and solemn — sending ripples through the still air.
Mira glanced over her shoulder and whispered, almost to herself, “They will wake again someday.”
Then, quieter still, “If he can be freed.”
Arjun pretended not to hear the last part. He adjusted the strap of his pack and followed her northward. The road wound through terraced hills where wildflowers had grown over the remains of highways. The world was broken, but not dead.
By noon, they reached a rise overlooking a vast plain dotted with metallic pillars. Each pillar hummed with faint energy and occasional sparks leapt between them, forming invisible nets. Mira stopped.
“Divine field,” she said. “Boundary of an old celestial network. This is where the next shrine used to be.”
Arjun squinted. “Used to be?”
“It sank,” she said simply. “When the guardian fell.”
He felt a chill. “Raghav?”
Mira nodded once, then walked forward into the humming field. As she passed, the air shimmered around her like heat over sand. “Keep your thoughts clear,” she called. “The old energies read what you carry inside.”
Arjun followed. Every step through the field felt like stepping through water. His heartbeat synchronized with the low hum of the pillars. He thought he heard faint voices — prayers, cries, laughter — the residue of countless souls who had sought blessings here. For a brief instant, he glimpsed a shape in the distance: a massive gate etched with symbols of the gods, half-buried, half-glowing.
The mark on his palm pulsed in response.
Mira looked back at him, her hair caught by the wind. “The path of light isn’t made by gods, Arjun. It’s made by those who keep walking when gods go silent.”
He understood, at least partly. And for the first time since the monk had called him “Yodha,” he felt that the title might someday fit.
They descended toward the sunken shrine, unaware that miles away a man with eyes like molten iron had just opened them after a long sleep, a double-edged blade resting across his knees, whispering promises of justice.