The vault opened like a yawning mouth from the past hissing, ancient, alive.
Obavva stepped forward, the blue glow bathing her skin. The orb had gone silent, but the atmosphere throbbed like a pulse. Carvings on the stone walls lit up in sequence as she entered. Each one flickered with heatless fire, forming symbols too complex to decipher spirals, maps, weapons, eyes.
In the center of the vault stood a pedestal.
Upon it: a stone-bound tome and a metal disk inscribed with concentric rings. Hovering just above the disk: a fragment of crystal, clear as ice, spinning slowly in place.
She stepped closer. The orb on the vault door whispered again:
"Only the Defender may access the Archive."
Obavva hesitated. Her heart thundered louder than the cannon blasts above. What was this place? Why had no one in the fort spoken of it before? Why was it buried beneath layers of stone and blood?
She reached out to the spinning crystal.
The moment her fingers brushed it, her vision shattered.
Darkness swallowed her.
She stood in a different Chitradurga—not the war-torn one above, but something... older.
The sky was bruised violet. The fort gleamed with a silver sheen, its towers twice as tall, and people in robes moved through airships above the battlements. But this wasn't the future.
It was the past—a forgotten age.
A woman in armor like liquid steel walked through the halls—not Obavva, but someone who looked like her. Same eyes. Same fury. Her name echoed faintly—
Velarani.
The voice of the orb returned, narrating like a ghost from another lifetime.
"Long before kingdoms drew lines on maps, this land held a power source—hidden, guarded by an ancient lineage known as the Durgashakti. Women chosen not by blood, but by will. By defiance. You, Obavva, are her successor."
The vision shifted.
Velarani stood atop the walls, wielding a weapon shaped like the onake—but not wood. It shimmered with symbols. She swung it, and energy cracked the air, tearing through enemies like lightning. Invaders fled. Others fell into ash.
And below her feet—the vault, the Archive—sealed away the source of the weapon's power.
"They called it the Etheric Memory. It stores not just knowledge, but potential. Strategy. Prophecy. All that was, all that could be. Meant to be unlocked only in the time of greatest peril."
Obavva gasped.
This wasn't just a war anymore. It was a cycle. A legacy.
She blinked. The vision faded.
She was back in the vault. The crystal spun faster now, activated by her touch. The tome opened by itself. Words crawled across its surface in burning ink.
"THE FINAL DEFENSE HAS BEGUN."
Obavva heard footsteps approaching.
She spun around, onake raised—only to find Commander Bhairav entering the vault, bloodied and limping.
"They're everywhere," he growled. "They breached the eastern granary, the armory is lost, and the Queen—" his voice cracked, "—the Queen is missing."
Obavva nodded grimly. "Then this is all that remains."
Bhairav looked around in awe. "What is this place?"
"A memory," she said softly. "A weapon. And a choice."
He frowned. "What kind of choice?"
Obavva turned to the disk on the pedestal.
"It can't be removed. But it can be activated. Once it's done, it unleashes everything stored in this vault—all past war strategies, weapon blueprints, defense grids, ancient technologies. But it will destroy the fort's inner core. Everything we know will burn... except what's stored in memory."
Bhairav hesitated. "You mean... the fort survives only as knowledge?"
"Yes. A new kind of war. Fought not on stone walls—but in minds."
Above them, the sound of the outer gates shattering boomed like thunder.
The invaders were inside.
Obavva placed both hands on the disk. It pulsed beneath her skin. The orb's voice returned.
"Confirm activation, Defender of the Durgashakti Line."
She whispered: "Confirm."
Light exploded outward. The pedestal cracked. A shockwave pulsed through the chamber.
Up above, enemy soldiers storming the inner halls stopped mid-step as invisible pressure slammed into them. Some dropped their weapons. Others screamed and turned back. A few stood still—frozen—as strange whispers invaded their minds. Not curses.
Memories.
The Archive had awakened.
Outside, the night sky fractured with light. The fort walls shimmered and then began to collapse inward—not from damage, but from choice. Stones turned to dust, towers folded like cloth.
But Obavva remained.
The vault did not collapse. It was sinking deeper into the earth, locking itself with energy tendrils as old as time.
Bhairav looked to her. "What now?"
Obavva stared at the tome as it closed itself and turned into black ash.
"We vanished once," she said quietly. "We became a story."
She turned to him.
"This time, we become the code in every story to come."
End of Chapter 21