The clearing
Madhu's legs turned to stone.
Every step with Satya's unconscious weight across his shoulders cost him a heartbeat of life.
Kūrma's shell blazed golden across his back, chest, arms—but the gift came with tortoise speed.
The floating faces drifted closer, a slow tide of stolen smiles.
Old men who had once given him directions, children who had waved from school buses, the young mother from the tea stall—every mouth stretched too wide, every eye empty of anything human.
Black spears of liquid night shot from their mouths.
They shattered against the shell in bursts of cold fire, driving Madhu to his knees again and again.
Amrita's voice cracked across the clearing like a gunshot.
"Reduce their power—fifty percent—NOW!"
Twenty metres away she stood, legs braced, one palm forward, eyes bleeding violet light.
Half the spears thinned to harmless smoke before they reached him.
The price showed on her face—she looked suddenly older, hollowed.
Tārā darted beneath the storm like a sparrow in a hurricane, snatched Satya from Madhu's shoulder, and slapped the inspector awake with a sound sharp enough to cut bone.
Satya's eyes flew open.
He took one look at the wall of faces and retched into the dirt.
Tārā locked eyes with Madhu.
"Only defence until the big gun arrives," she said, calm as a bedtime prayer.
"And right now, you are the only shield this village has."
Before he could answer, she and Amrita were gone, dragging Satya between them into the trees.
Madhu was alone.
Time lost meaning. Madhu has no idea how long it has been.
He tore a sal tree from the earth, roots dripping black soil, and swung it like a club.
Faces exploded into ink-black mist with every hit, but three more drifted forward to replace each one.
They kept calling his true name—three times each, then silence as the rule burned their voices away.
For a little while it felt like he could win.
Then the calls stopped.
The smiles vanished.
The faces twisted into something furious and hungry.
They weren't hunting him anymore.
They wanted to go past him.
Madhu understood with the clarity of a knife in the ribs:
The Nishi didn't need his face in its collection he is too tough for it.
It needed the village asleep behind him—doors that would open at the sound of a dead wife, a missing child, a mother who had died ten years ago.
He dropped the broken tree.
Planted his feet.
Spread his arms until the shell creaked.
Not one step.
Invisible hands—hundreds, thousands—clawed at the shell now, trying to peel him aside like a gate.
Black storms replaced spears.
Cracks bled molten gold down his arms.
Four nights without sleep.
Vision tunnelling.
Knees trembling like leaves in a cyclone.
The faces sensed it.
The snarls melted back into laughter—slow, wet, certain.
"Madhusūdana… you're tired…"
"Madhusūdana… just sleep…"
"Madhusūdana… let us pass…"
He fell to one knee.
The shell flickered, dimmed.
A single tear carved a clean line through the blood and dirt on his cheek.
He whispered the only thing left inside him.
"…I'm not moving."
3:59 a.m.
Madhu's arms dropped.
The shell went dark.
Darkness rushed in from every side.
Then a man stepped between him and the tide.
Plain white kurta, sleeves rolled to the elbow, barefoot on the blood-soaked earth.
No jewellery. No weapon.
Just a back that somehow made the night feel small.
"You have done well, " the man said without turning.
"Now rest."
He raised one open hand toward the sky.
Every star went out at once.
Space itself folded downward like a sheet someone had decided to crumple.
The floating faces froze mid-snarl.
Then they were dragged downward—trees bending at impossible angles, trunks screaming, leaves shredded into the collapsing point above the man's palm.
The Nishi howled with every stolen voice it had ever taken,
slamming against an invisible sphere that shrank faster than thought.
Smaller.
Smaller.
Until the entire creature—thousands of faces, centuries of hunger—was crushed into a single black marble the size of a child's goli.
The man closed his fist.
Silence fell so complete that Madhu heard his own heart stop for one terrified beat.
The man finally spoke, voice quiet enough to carry across galaxies.
"Akasha asmi.
Bearer of the Dyaus fragment, first of the Vasus"
Remember me as the one who sends things like you
back to the nothing you crawled out of."
The marble dropped into his pocket like loose change.
Tārā arrived first, skipping over roots that were still untwisting themselves.
"Easy for you, huh, Akasha-bhaiya?" She grinned like a child who had won a bet with God.
Amrita followed, wiping violet blood from her eyes.
"Double success," she rasped. "Nishi deleted. Vessel secured."
Satya stumbled in last, uniform torn, face the colour of old ash.
He stared at the ordinary-looking man who had just folded the night sky into his pocket.
"How the hell do I file this report?" His voice cracked on the last word.
Akasha said nothing.
He never wasted words on things beneath the horizon.
Madhu collapsed face-first into the dirt, shell dissolving into faint golden lines under his skin like fading tattoos.
Morning 3 days after the incident
Inspector Satya's quarters, 9:17 a.m.
Madhu woke to sunlight, the smell of aloo paratha, and the sound of a pressure cooker hissing like it had opinions.
Every inch of him screamed.
He tried to sit up and discovered his spine had unionised.
A small face appeared at the door—seven years old, gap-toothed, fierce.
"Papa! Bhaiya is awake!"
Satya filled the doorway a second later, still in yesterday's torn uniform, eyes red from no sleep and tears he would never admit to.
"How are you feeling, beta?"
"Like an elephant used me as a doormat," Madhu croaked.
Satya's voice broke.
"My daughter still has a father because of you."
He swallowed hard. "My wife… Meera… has been gone two years. Last night I heard her voice calling me home. I ran to it. You stood in the way."
The little girl climbed onto the bed and solemnly offered Madhu a slightly squashed paratha swimming in ghee.
"Papa said heroes get extra ghee."
Madhu's eyes stung so badly that he couldn't see the plate.
He took the paratha with shaking fingers.
For the first time in a week,
No one called his name in the dark.
Epilogue –
Rooftop terrace, late evening somewhere far away
Tārā sat on the parapet swinging her legs, starlight dancing in her eyes.
Amrita leaned against the wall, cigarette glowing like a tiny red star.
Akasha stood at the very edge, hands in pockets, staring at the horizon as it owed him an apology.
More figures filled the terrace—some barely teenagers, some older, all carrying impossible power in ordinary school bags and tired smiles.
Arun, practically radiating sunlight, grinned at a photo on his phone: Madhu passed out in Satya's daughter's bed, mouth open, drooling on a pillow that said "World's Best Bhaiya."
"So that's the new Vishnu vessel," he said, voice warm as noon.
"Can't wait to see how bright he burns."
The door burst open.
Daksh strode in, kurta sleeves rolled high, looking like a man who had accepted eternal financial suffering.
"Excellent work, children," he announced, then held up an empty wallet.
"Now—who took five hundred rupees this time?"
Thirty-three heads turned slowly toward Tapesh, who was trying—and failing—to hide behind Medini, tiny flames flickering guiltily at his fingertips.
Daksh pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Tapesh. Confess."
"…Ice cream after training?" Tapesh offered weakly.
A collective groan rose into the warm night sky.
Above them, the stars—finally back in their proper places—
winked once,
as if they already knew exactly how this beautiful, terrifying story would end.