---12 April 2021 — 9:30 PM
Broken Shrine — Jungle Outskirts, Ujjain
The jungle was a black wall behind him now — silent, except for the low hum of cicadas whispering from the branches. The ruined shrine crouched in the darkness like an open mouth.
Inside, the air was heavy with old prayers and new ghosts. Vines crawled over cracked stone — ancient runes half-swallowed by moss, roots clawing at the edges like they wanted to pull the whole thing back into the earth.
Aadiv sat cross-legged in the shrine's heart. A ring of broken clay lamps circled him, their wicks long dead. He'd brought nothing but his anger and the spark that danced at his fingertips.
---He looked at his palm — a tiny ember burned there, gold at the edges, flickering with shadows at the core.
It was beautiful. And it was terrifying.
---
> Aadiv (voice low, to himself):
"You want a vessel, don't you?
I'll be your cage. Just don't abandon me when I open the door."
He pressed his thumb into the ember — it hissed, sending a jolt of pain up his arm like a splinter of sunlight driven under his skin.
His mind screamed at him to stop. He didn't.
---He dipped his finger in old ash from a crumbled incense bowl, smearing a rough circle on the stone floor around him.
The Eclipse Chamber's runes flickered in his mind — he couldn't read them yet, but they moved behind his eyes like shadows crawling through fire.
---> Aadiv (breathing deep):
"Ashes to flame. Flame to shadow. Shadow to ash."
He whispered it again. And again. Each time the ember in his palm pulsed brighter — the shadows around the shrine walls seemed to lean in, listening.
The ember spread — golden threads snaking through the cracks in his palm, wrapping around his veins. It was too bright, too hungry.
---A memory slammed into him like a hammer.
His father's voice. His sister's laughter.
Then — gunshots. Screams. Blood on the car window, warm and bright like sunset.
He tried to pull his hand away. The ember refused to let go — it bit into his flesh, drinking his grief like a starving ghost.
---> Aadiv (voice cracking):
"No… not them. Take me. Take everything else."
The runes on the shrine wall pulsed — faint gold veins tracing ancient prayers.
The shadows trembled — a low whisper curling around his ears, the voice that had haunted him since that night.
---
> The Void (inside his mind, like a thousand moth wings):
"Burn it all. Or be devoured."
---
Aadiv's teeth ground together — pain flaring through his wrist, up his arm, into his chest. His eyes flickered gold, then black, then gold again.
He felt his heartbeat echo through the shrine — every pulse feeding the ember, every drop of grief fanning the flame.
---The shrine's air turned heavy — the runes blurred in his vision, reshaping into a single image:
A doorway.
Behind it — his family. Alive. Smiling. Calling his name.
His throat closed. The flame flared, wild and blinding, licking at his arm like liquid sun.
---
> His Mother's Illusion (gentle, impossible):
"Aadiv. Come home. Let go. Let the fire sleep."
---The ember flickered — almost died — the shadows roared louder.
> Aadiv (breathless, voice shaking):
"No. You're not real."
---He slammed his fist into the stone floor — the ember flared white-hot. The illusion shattered like glass — his mother's face dissolved in sparks that drifted up and vanished into the shrine's cracked ceiling.
Aadiv sucked in a ragged breath — his palm charred, flesh cracked like burnt wood.
---The shadows leaned back. The shrine went still.
The ember — small, defiant — settled in the center of his palm, no longer flickering wildly. Its light was warm now, not consuming.
He stared at it, eyes wide, chest heaving.
---
> Aadiv (whispers, a faint smile ghosting his lips):
"Good. Bite as hard as you want. I'll feed you until there's nothing left to take."
Outside the shrine, the jungle exhaled — leaves rustling in the wind that carried the scent of rain.
The ember in his palm hummed — the first spark of the Golden Flame that would one day devour the world or purify it.
---Deep inside the Eclipse Chamber, far below the roots of this broken shrine, a sleeping rift twitched — as if it, too, had felt the ember's birth.
The Devourer smiled. The Flame awoke.
---