[Location: somewhere near Temple Ruins – The Outskirts of Nalanda]
"तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय।"
(Lead me from darkness to light.)
The monsoon rain whipped across the broken stone idols, as if the gods themselves were weeping...
Aarav Vaidya knelt in the muddy courtyard of Kalikund — the temple no one visited anymore, except to curse their fates or dump the dead. His worn tunic clung to his skin. His bare feet were bruised from hours of kneeling. The wind howled around him like a living thing.
Behind him, the voice of the village priest echoed mockingly.
"Still trying to open your Muladhara? Face it, boy — some are born rootless. Chakra-less."
The villagers laughed. Children threw pebbles. Aarav did not move.
In the center of the temple, under the ancient Bodhi tree, sat a cracked stone yantra. It had once glowed with energy, they said. It had once answered the prayers of saints.
Now, it was just a relic of a forgotten world.
Except to Aarav.
He placed both palms on the stone. Closed his eyes. Focused on his breath.
One breath in. One breath out.
He visualized the chakra diagram his mad guru once showed him — drawn with charcoal on the back of a clay plate. Seven lotuses. Seven locks. Seven keys.
He had never unlocked even one.
"Let go," the sage's memory whispered. "The root is not in the earth. It is in your fear."
Lightning cracked the sky.
Suddenly, the stone under his hand pulsed.
Aarav's eyes flew open. The world froze.
Time. Stopped.
The rain froze mid-air. The fire in the nearby brazier stilled. Even the wind halted.
A voice — deep, ancient, and neither male nor female — echoed inside his skull.
"You are not meant to begin at the root. You were not born to follow. You were made to remember."
Symbols blazed on the stone. Light poured from it into his palms — and into his Ajna Chakra. The Third Eye.
Pain.
It felt like a thousand burning suns behind his forehead. Visions slammed into him.
A battlefield. Millions dead. A flaming wheel. A black-robed figure laughing. His own face — older, crueler, wiser.
He screamed.
The villagers ran.
Aarav collapsed, eyes glowing silver.
[Time resumes]
When Aarav awoke, the sky was clear. The priest was gone. Only the mad sage stood at the gate, smiling.
"You opened the sixth gate," he whispered. "Ajna. The Eye. You skipped five paths… and invoked five curses."
"You have 777 days left, boy. Master all seven chakras... or die."