The mountains rose like broken thoughts — jagged, scattered, white-veined with age. As the bus curved up the twisting Himalayan road toward Uttarakashi, Arjun sat by the window, silent.
The old man from the Archive had vanished before dawn. Left only a phrase behind, scrawled on a slate of desert glass:
"Follow the thread that never broke — the boy who sang time to sleep."
Arjun knew who it meant.
Markandeya.
The child blessed by Shiva. Granted life beyond death. Forever thirteen, forever watching.
But where would a boy who never died go, when the world aged around him?
He closed his eyes.
In the blackness behind his lids, the spiral turned — slowly, heavily — and at the center, a temple crumbled in reverse, rebuilding itself like time folding inward.
He awoke with a jolt as the bus rattled to a stop.
The driver shouted, "Last point! No road ahead!"
Arjun stepped off.
Ahead, only narrow paths, rocks slick with snowmelt, and forests that didn't like to be entered.
He tightened the straps on his weather-stained backpack, pulled his hood closer, and walked into the mist.
Locals told stories of a forgotten shrine — Tapovan Thirtha, once tended by sages, now abandoned.
Some said it was haunted.
Others claimed no such temple had ever existed.
But a shepherd boy had once returned with a spiral drawn in soot across his back, eyes white and silent.
Arjun followed that trail.
He moved through pine forests layered with fog, where sounds carried too far and time felt unreliable. Once, he thought he saw the sky bleeding — only to realize it was just dusk catching a vein of red cloud.
By the third day, he found the stone path.
Half-buried, grown over with moss and regret.
It led up the cliffside in tight coils. Cracked steps. Broken railings. Carvings too eroded to read — except one.
The spiral.
He pressed his fingers against it.
The rock trembled, almost imperceptibly.
He kept climbing.
The temple emerged from the mist like a hallucination.
Small. Hollow. Quiet.
The roof had caved in. Statues eroded. Vines wrapped around the pillars like they were holding them upright.
But the air was wrong.
It buzzed, just faintly. As if some frequency from another age still pulsed here.
He stepped into the shrine.
Inside, no idol. No incense. Just a flat stone slab in the center — and around it, etched into the floor, the spiral.
At each of the seven arms, a smaller symbol.
Six were dull.
One still glowed.
He knelt and placed his hand in the center.
A whisper.
Too late…
He turned.
But no one stood there.
Only the shadows.
And one of them moved.
The wind outside stopped.
The mist thickened.
And from the edge of the ruined shrine, a boy stepped in.
Wearing saffron. Barefoot. Eyes older than any sky.
"Are you him?" Arjun whispered.
The boy didn't smile.
"No."
"I am what he left behind."
Arjun felt it before he understood it — this was not Markandeya. This was a projection, an echo. A memory-shaped illusion.
But it spoke.
"He was here. Once. A hundred years ago. Or a thousand. It's hard to tell."
"He left when the spiral called him elsewhere."
"He knew someone would follow."
"And he left a choice."
The floor trembled.
Stone split. A narrow pit opened beneath the slab.
Inside: a scroll, sealed in molten wax.
Arjun reached for it.
The boy moved to stop him — but faded before he could. Like smoke that had forgotten how to stay solid.
Arjun took the scroll.
On its seal: the spiral, burned into gold.
He broke it.
The scroll unrolled itself.
Not words.
Visions.
Fire. Floods. A spiral uncoiling into chaos.
Then — seven faces, flickering like candlelight.
Ashwatthama.Vibhishana.Parashurama.Kripacharya.Hanuman.Vyasa.Markandeya.
Each marked with a different symbol — bow, crown, axe, staff, mace, pen, flame.
And under them all, a line written in Sanskrit, shaking with urgency:
If the seventh awakens, the mirror must be broken… or time itself will shatter.
Arjun reeled back.
He didn't understand it all.
But he felt the pressure.
The spiral was not just a mark.
It was a countdown.
He stepped out of the shrine.
The mist cleared slightly.
Across the ridge, he saw footprints in the snow.
Fresh. Barefoot.
He followed.
They led to the cliff edge.
And stopped.
No body. No fall marks.
Just a whisper, carried on the wind:
He is watching you.
Arjun turned.
A shadow disappeared into the trees.
He ran after it.
Branches tore at his clothes. Ice scraped his arms.
He caught up — but only found a robe.
Black. Frayed. Inside the pocket, a steel chip engraved with a glyph.
The spiral — inverted.
Hours later, Arjun descended the mountain.
Not alone.
He carried the scroll.
But something else carried him — a presence, faint but familiar.
And somewhere far below, deep within the Indian Intelligence Subnet, a message pinged to Jayanth's encrypted console.
MARKANDEYA RELIC ACCESSEDARJUN – INTERFACE CONFIRMEDRETRIEVAL PRIORITY: LEVEL RED
Jayanth stared at the screen.
"He's moving too fast."
A voice replied from the other side. Cold. Measured.
"Then break the pattern before it completes."
"The mirror must not be found."
In the mountains, beneath the crumbled shrine, a pair of eyes opened inside a child's skeleton buried under rock.
They had been closed for five thousand years.
They opened now, not with hunger, but with recognition.
"He's close," the boy said.
And then, smiling like only someone who had never died could, he whispered:
"And so it begins."