Cold.
That was the first sensation, a raw, biting chill that seeped into marrow he didn't yet know was his own. It was an ancient cold, the cold of forgotten tombs and sunless abysses, and it clung to him like a shroud. Then came pressure, a crushing weight from all sides, a feeling of being interred, not in earth, but in something yielding yet unyielding, something… skeletal.
A gasp, thin and ragged, tore itself from a throat that felt like rusted iron. Air – sharp, acrid, tasting of dust and something else, something indefinably foul – flooded lungs that burned with the sudden, unwelcome intrusion. It was a thief's breath, stolen from the void.
Pain.
It bloomed next, a thousand pinpricks at first, then a dull, pervasive ache that settled deep within the newly re-formed sinews. His limbs felt alien, heavy as stone, yet thrummed with a strange, borrowed energy. He tried to move a finger, a monumental effort of will against an inertia that felt eons old. A faint twitch. Success? He couldn't be sure.
Darkness pressed against his eyelids, a heavy, suffocating blanket. But behind that physical darkness, a different kind of light show exploded – flashes of crimson, streaks of violent purple, the sickly green of decay. Images, too fleeting to grasp, too numerous to count, seared across the inside of his skull. Faces contorted in terror, the gleam of a falling blade, the cold indifference of a starless sky, a child's unheard scream.
And the voices.
Oh, the voices.
They were a storm, a legion, a multitude of whispers and roars, all clamoring at once within the confines of his mind. A cacophony of grief, rage, betrayal, confusion, despair, and a bottomless, fathomless sorrow. It was the sound of a world dying, of countless lives extinguished in terror and injustice. Each voice was a separate agony, yet they merged into a single, overwhelming torrent that threatened to shred his nascent consciousness.
Who… what am I?
The thought was a fragile thing, a newborn bird in a hurricane, almost lost in the psychic tempest. There was no memory before the cold, before the pain, before the voices. There was only this horrifying, vibrant present.
He tried to push, to shift the weight that entombed him. The effort sent jolts of agony through his frame, but also a surge of that strange, borrowed strength. Bones scraped against bones – not his own, he dimly realized, but those around him, above him, beneath him. He was… buried. Buried in a mountain of the dead. The realization, when it finally pierced through the chaos, brought with it a fresh wave of nausea and a primal, desperate urge to escape.
With a guttural cry that was more animal than human, he heaved. The skeletal debris around him shifted, a dry, rattling cascade. A sliver of bruised, twilight sky, choked with ash and the sickly orange glow of some distant, unseen fire, appeared above. Hope, or something akin to it, lanced through him.
He pushed again, harder, fueled by a terror that was not entirely his own, yet resonated through every fiber of his being. More bones clattered away. He could feel the grit of ash on his skin, the bite of the cold wind on exposed flesh.
Then, a voice, distinct amidst the internal maelstrom, cut through the chaos with the sharpness of a freshly honed sword. It was a man's voice, deep, resonant with authority and a core of incandescent fury.
"Up! Get up, damn you! Would you die again so soon, buried like carrion?"
The voice was inside his head, yet it felt more real, more immediate than the other whispers. It was a command, a lash, and it spurred him to a final, desperate effort.
With a wrenching, tearing motion, he broke free. He scrambled, clawed his way out of the charnel pit, limbs flailing, his newly awakened body screaming in protest. He collapsed onto a surface of ash and bone fragments, gasping, the cacophony within him momentarily stunned into a dull roar by the shock of his "birth."
He lay there, trembling, staring up at the oppressive, smoke-stained sky of Kali Yuga. He was alive. He was… something. And he was not alone, not even within the confines of his own skull.
The furious voice echoed again, closer this time, as if its owner now stood beside him in the desolate landscape of his mind.
"So, the Vessel finally breathes. Good. The work begins."
Work? The word was an alien concept, a structured sound in a symphony of madness. He tried to push himself up, his arms shaking violently. The movement sent fresh waves of pain through his body, but also a strange clarity. This body… it was his. Unfamiliar, yes, battered and infused with an energy that felt both foreign and intimately a part of him, but his.
"Who...?" he managed, his voice a dry rasp, the word scraping his throat like sandpaper. "Who are you?"
The internal landscape of his mind, still a tempest of grieving whispers and enraged shouts, seemed to quiet ever so slightly, as if the multitude of souls paused to listen to this singular, dominant voice.
"I am Kaelen," the voice stated, devoid of warmth but charged with an iron will. "Once a general, now… a passenger, like the rest of these wailing shades. But unlike them, I will not simply keen and fade. There is a reckoning due, Vessel. And you are the instrument."
He finally managed to prop himself up on his elbows. The world swam into a slightly sharper focus. He was on a slope, a vast, undulating terrain composed entirely of bones – femurs like gnarled branches, ribcages like broken, ivory cages, skulls staring with hollow sockets in every direction. The Corpse Mountain. The name, unbidden, surfaced from the roiling sea of shared memories within him. It stretched upwards, a grotesque parody of a sacred peak, disappearing into the swirling, ash-laden clouds. Below, the land fell away into what looked like a plain of endless, gray desolation.
The air was thick with the cloying-sweet scent of ancient decay, a smell that should have been unbearable but was, to his newly formed senses, simply… the air. A cold wind whipped across the skeletal landscape, carrying with it fine particles of bone dust that stung his eyes.
"Work?" he croaked again, his mind struggling to grasp the enormity of his situation, the sheer impossibility of his existence. "Reckoning? I... I don't understand." He didn't even understand himself, this resurrected corpse animated by a legion of the dead.
"You will," Kaelen's voice bit back, impatient. "The Asuras. The 'gods' who made this… this monument to their greed. They butchered us. They turned our world into their charnel house. Does that not stir something within you, Vessel? Beyond the mewling grief of these lesser souls?"
As Kaelen spoke, a fresh wave of images, sharper this time, flooded his mind: towering, shadowy figures with eyes like burning coals; a rain of sickly green fire; the screams of the dying. And with the images came a surge of pure, unadulterated rage, so potent it almost buckled him. It wasn't just Kaelen's fury; it was a chorus of innumerable voices, a tidal wave of hatred that threatened to consume him.
He gasped, clutching his head, the internal pressure immense. "Stop..."
"Stop?" Kaelen scoffed, though there was a grudging understanding in his tone. "This is what you are now. A vessel of their rage, their sorrow. You can either drown in it, or you can wield it. The choice, for now, is yours. But know this: they will return. The Asuras will come to harvest what little remains. And we will be ready."
He pushed himself to a sitting position, his borrowed muscles aching, his mind a battlefield. He looked down at his hands – pale, scarred, but undeniably human in form. He flexed his fingers. They obeyed. He was a patchwork of death, yet undeniably alive.
"How?" he asked, the question directed as much to himself as to the voice of Kaelen. "How can I... how can we... do anything?" He was one, against gods, armed with nothing but a broken body and a chorus of tormented souls.
Kaelen's presence in his mind was like a branding iron – hot, searing, demanding attention. Yet, beneath the general's fury, he could feel the chaotic ocean of other emotions, the vast grief that Kaelen dismissed as "mewling." It was a sorrow so profound it threatened to dissolve him, a despair so vast it could swallow stars. And fear. Oh, the fear was a living thing, coiling in the pit of his stomach, a cold counterpoint to Kaelen's fire.
I am a grave, he thought, the realization dawning with a chilling clarity that had nothing to do with Kaelen's pronouncements. A walking cemetery. Each breath I take is stolen from countless dead lungs.
A memory, not his own, yet vividly his to experience, flashed behind his eyes: a woman with kind eyes, humming a lullaby to a child nestled in her arms, just moments before a shadow fell over them, before the green fire rained down. The love in that memory, the terror, the shattering loss – it was his now, a shard of another's existence embedded in his own non-existent past. He choked back a sob that was part his, part hers, part a million others.
"This… this is madness," he whispered, more to the biting wind than to Kaelen. He pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, as if to physically contain the storm within. "I have no name. No past. Only… this." This chorus of the damned. This borrowed life.
"Madness is a luxury we cannot afford, Vessel," Kaelen's voice was sharp, cutting through his burgeoning despair. "Your name is what you will make it. Your past is the injustice that fuels us. As for how? You are not merely a broken body. The resentment that animates you, that healed you – it is power. Untamed, yes. Chaotic, certainly. But power nonetheless. The very essence of those they sought to extinguish, now turned against them."
The general's words, though harsh, carried a strange logic that resonated with the thrumming energy in his limbs. Power. He could feel it, a volatile current beneath his skin. It was the source of the pain, the borrowed strength, the unending chorus.
He looked out over the Kurukshetra Ashen Plains. The desolation was absolute. Jagged peaks of bone pierced the sickly sky in the distance – the true extent of the Corpse Mountain. The ground was a carpet of gray ash, punctuated by skeletal fragments and the dark, twisted husks of what might have once been trees or war machines. There was no sign of life, save for the unnatural vitality that coursed through him.
"And what would you have me do, General?" he asked, his voice still weak but laced with a new, desperate curiosity. If he was truly this… instrument, what was the purpose? "Wage war on gods with bones and whispers?"
A dry, humorless chuckle seemed to echo in his mind, Kaelen's amusement a stark contrast to the surrounding despair.
"Not with bones, Vessel. With their own terror. With their own arrogance. They believe us extinguished, forgotten. They will not expect a reckoning to rise from their own graveyard. First, you must learn to stand. Then, to walk. Then, to fight. And I," Kaelen's voice hardened with grim satisfaction, "will teach you."
He shivered, and it wasn't entirely from the cold. The prospect was terrifying. But what was the alternative? To lie down and be consumed by the countless sorrows he carried? To let the voices tear him apart from the inside? Kaelen, for all his fury, offered a direction, a purpose, however grim.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, the acrid air filling his lungs. The voices within did not cease, but for a moment, Kaelen's iron will seemed to impose a fragile order on their chaos, like a dam holding back a raging flood.
He had no past. His present was a nightmare. But a future, however fraught with peril and vengeance, had just been offered.
Slowly, painfully, he began to push himself to his feet. Each movement was an agony, a symphony of protesting muscles and grating joints. His legs, unsteady as a newborn foal's, trembled under his weight. He swayed, nearly toppling back onto the charnel ground, but a surge of that borrowed, resentful energy stiffened his spine.
Standing. He was standing.
The perspective shifted. From this new height, the Corpse Mountain seemed even more immense, a jagged, ivory spine against the bruised canvas of the sky. The wind howled around him, a mournful dirge carrying the scent of ash and something else, something metallic and faintly sweet – old blood, perhaps, or the lingering taint of the Asuric poison.
He took a hesitant step. His foot crunched on a collection of smaller bones – phalanges, vertebrae – sending a shiver of revulsion through him that was quickly drowned by the internal chorus. The ground was uneven, treacherous. Each footfall was a gamble.
"Good," Kaelen's voice rumbled, a note of grim approval. "The first step is always the hardest, especially when rising from your own grave. Now, look. Truly look, Vessel. See what they have wrought."
He forced himself to scan the horizon. The plains stretched endlessly, a monochrome wasteland under the oppressive twilight. Here and there, dark, skeletal structures jutted from the ash – the remains of what might have been watchtowers, or siege engines, or perhaps grotesque monuments erected by the Asuras in their triumph. Far in the distance, the orange glow he'd glimpsed earlier pulsed faintly, a malevolent heartbeat in the dying world.
The sheer scale of the devastation was soul-crushing. Countless lives… He could feel their absence, a hollow ache within the storm of their presence. How could anything endure this? How could he endure, being a living monument to it?
A softer voice, laced with an almost unbearable sorrow, brushed against his consciousness, nearly lost beneath Kaelen's dominant tone. It was feminine, gentle, like the sigh of wind through ancient ruins.
So much pain… so much lost… Can any of it ever be mended?
The question was a balm and a barb, a moment of shared grief that made Kaelen's talk of reckoning feel… incomplete. It was Lyra. The name felt right, a soft echo from a forgotten song.
Before he could process this new voice, Kaelen cut in, his impatience palpable. "Do not let the sorrow paralyze you, Vessel. It is a poison of its own. Focus. We need to move. This mountain is no place to linger. The carrion eaters of this age, whatever foul forms they now take, will be drawn to fresh… well, relatively fresh… meat."
Meat. That's what he was. A reanimated corpse. The thought sent another wave of nausea through him. He swallowed hard, the taste of ash and bile coating his tongue.
"Move where?" he asked, his voice a little stronger now, fueled by a nascent fear of these unseen carrion eaters. "What is there, beyond this… this graveyard?"
"Safety, for now. And then, knowledge. There is one who might offer answers, or at least a respite from this immediate desolation. But the journey will not be easy. You are weak. Untested." Kaelen paused, then added, a new intensity in his voice, "But you are not helpless. That power you feel, the rage, the sorrow – it can be shaped. It must be shaped. Your first lesson begins now, Vessel. Survive the descent."
With that, Kaelen's immediate presence seemed to recede slightly, though his furious energy still thrummed within him. The multitude of other voices, however, surged to fill the momentary quiet, a disorienting wave of grief, fear, and a thousand other fractured emotions.
He took another step, then another, his gaze fixed on the treacherous slope of bones leading down towards the ashen plains. Each movement was a discovery, a rediscovery of how a body worked, how balance was maintained. And with each step, the chorus within him ebbed and flowed, a constant, terrifying companion.
He was a vessel, yes. But a vessel of what, precisely, and to what end? The answer, he suspected, lay somewhere out there, in the ruins of a world he didn't know, under the oppressive sky of an age called Kali Yuga.
And he had just taken his first steps into it.