The skeletal figure struck with a speed that split the air.Obavva dropped low, the onake swinging upward in a perfect arc. Wood met bone with a thunderous crack, but instead of shattering, the figure's forearm caught the pestle mid-swing.
The impact burned.
She jerked back, but the figure's grip on the weapon was like iron.Its hollow eyes pulsed with white fire, and the crack in the great wheel behind it widened, spilling that same searing light into the chamber.
Bhairav scrambled along the wall, searching for something — anything — that could help. "Obavva! If that wheel fully opens, the Archive's gate—"
"I know," she snapped, twisting her weight. The pestle wrenched free with a burst of splintered sparks, the figure staggering back a single step. It hissed like a forge being quenched.
The wheel turned faster now.Names blazed and faded in an instant, the screams rising in a hideous chorus. Time was unraveling; the corridor behind them was already warping, firelight turning into stormlight, then darkness, then a sunlit field, then back again.
The skeletal figure moved forward, its voice low and grinding.
"You think yourself the last defender. You are the first. And the last. And every one in between."
It swung — not with a weapon, but with its burning hand. The air distorted, and Obavva barely ducked in time as the stone behind her melted from the heat.
Bhairav spotted something at the base of the wheel — a set of ancient levers, carved from black stone. "There!" he shouted. "If we can lock it—"
"No!" Obavva's voice cut him off. "If you lock it, the names stay as they are. Forever. Including mine."
Bhairav froze. "Then what—"
"Break it," she said.
He blinked at her. "Break the Wheel of Defenders? That's the only thing keeping this… thing… bound!"
She met his gaze, eyes like flint. "Not bound. Chained. And chains cut both ways."
The skeletal figure lunged again, but this time Obavva didn't dodge. She stepped into the attack, slamming the onake into its ribcage with the force of a battering ram. The figure staggered backward — right into the wheel.
Bhairav understood instantly. He threw his weight against the black levers. They resisted with the stubbornness of centuries… then gave way all at once.
A shattering boom ripped through the chamber.
The wheel cracked clean down the middle.Light exploded outward, swallowing everything — walls, floor, ceiling. The skeletal figure screamed, its body fracturing into streams of fire that spiraled upward like burning snakes before vanishing into the void.
The names on the wheel blazed one final time, then burst into sparks, each spark streaking into the darkness beyond the chamber.
For an instant, there was silence.
Then came the wind.
The wind roared through the open crack where the wheel had stood, pulling everything toward it. Bhairav clung to a broken column, his face twisted against the gale.
"Obavva!" he shouted. "We have to go!"
But she stood at the edge of the crack, the light whipping her hair into a black halo."This is where it ends."
"No! We've— we've won—"
Her eyes softened. "If I leave, the wheel returns. Maybe not now. Maybe not for a hundred years. But it will. And there will be another me… another you… dying in another tunnel."
She looked back at him one last time. "Guard the fort, Bhairav. This time… guard it from within."
Before he could move, she stepped into the crack.
The light swallowed her whole.
The gale ceased instantly. The chamber was gone.Bhairav stood alone in a collapsed hallway deep within Chitradurga's fort. The air was stale, the stones cool. The wheel was nowhere. The Echo Core — gone.
Somewhere above, the first horns of dawn sounded.
And in the silence, Bhairav thought he heard a faint knocking.
End of Chapter 24