The last vestiges of the Western Ghats clung to the sky like fossilized waves, cracked and unyielding. Mist blanketed the forest passes, humming with the breath of thousands of unseen things. Arjun walked through the belly of it, soaked to his ribs, the scroll from Markandeya pressed against his back in a leather pouch.
His shoulder still ached from the mountain fall. His dreams hadn't stopped bleeding either. Every night since the cave, he saw the same face — an axe, a scream, and a temple that refused to burn.
He followed that dream now.
The locals in Kollur had pointed him toward the ruins — not with words, but with silence. Old women stopped speaking when he mentioned the stone temple. One man crossed himself in three different traditions. Children ran from him. That was confirmation enough.
The place he sought was marked on no modern map. But the spiral on his hand pulsed harder as he left the village behind. By the time the sun dipped below the treeline, his skin felt too tight for his bones.
At dusk, the forest changed.
The air thinned. Insects vanished. Trees no longer creaked. Instead, a rhythmic pressure filled the space between heartbeats. Not sound. Not exactly. More like a pressure from within the earth itself — something old and deliberate and watching.
Arjun walked deeper into it.
He didn't know he was crossing a boundary until he did.
There were no signs. No symbols. Only the quiet.
And then the fire started.
Not real fire — not yet — but the memory of it.
Suddenly, the trees shimmered.
And the ruined temple appeared.
Not in full.
Just a sliver.
A collapsed column.
An unbroken lintel with an etched spiral wrapped in flame.
A shattered idol with eyes still wet.
Arjun froze.
Something in him whispered: You've been here before.
But he hadn't. Not in this life.
He stepped toward the threshold and the world tilted.
The temple pulled him inside like a whisper hooks a wound.
What had once been stone was now charred bone — blackened and trembling.
And in the center of it all stood the memory of Parashurama.
Not the legend.
Not the avatar.
The man.
Sweat-matted hair. Bare arms stained with blood. A beard knotted with dust. He turned slowly, as if carrying the weight of too many lives in his joints.
He didn't speak at first.
He simply looked.
As if staring across centuries, through fog, into the last mistake that hadn't happened yet.
Then he moved.
One hand gripped the axe — not as a weapon, but as if it were part of his spine.
And the flames around them surged.
"They made me a god," Parashurama said.
"But I was only ever a wound."
His voice cracked like dry bark. Words spoken from inside an ocean of rage.
"I killed every king. Every ruler. Twenty-one generations. Blood washed into rivers."
"And then… they cursed me."
"Not with death. But with memory."
The flames danced closer to Arjun's feet.
He didn't flinch.
Parashurama took a step forward.
"You walk with the Spiral. I see it. I feel it in my bones."
"But you don't understand it."
"Memory is not history."
"It is a punishment for those who remember."
"And now, they are trying to erase us all."
Arjun took a step forward too.
"Who is they?"
Parashurama didn't answer.
Instead, he pointed to the altar.
There lay a blade, blackened by fire but untouched by ash.
A fragment.
Arjun reached for it.
As his fingers touched the stone, the temple screamed.
Reality shattered.
Arjun staggered backward — out of the vision, out of the fire, back into the real ruins.
The temple was broken again. Roof gone. Moss-covered pillars leaning like dying teeth.
But in his hand — the blade fragment remained.
Red-veined, spiral-etched.
And his palm?
Burning again.
He looked down.
A second spiral had appeared.
This one curled outward.
Fragment 2: Parashurama — Acquired.
He didn't have time to celebrate.
Leaves rustled behind him.
The forest moved.
And Arjun wasn't alone anymore.
There were three of them.
Men in seamless black. Faces hidden. Not military — worse. They moved like people who didn't need to check their steps. No hesitation. No wasted breath.
One of them held up a metallic cylinder.
It pulsed once — and Arjun dropped to his knees, frozen.
Nerve disruptor. Sonic class. Illegal in every continent.
The men approached without speaking.
One knelt and reached for the blade.
Another aimed the disruptor at Arjun's head.
Then everything exploded.
A figure dropped from the treeline like a falling god.
He didn't speak.
He moved.
A silver arc sliced the first man's thigh — not to kill, but to disable. The disruptor clattered.
The attacker spun, kicked the second in the throat, dodged a stab from the third, and landed beside Arjun like he'd always belonged there.
His scarf was saffron. His eyes were cold.
He grabbed Arjun by the collar.
"Move."
Arjun's limbs obeyed before his mind did.
They ran.
Branches whipped their faces. Roots twisted to grab them.
The forest closed behind them.
Somewhere far behind, the black-clad agents regrouped.
An hour later, in a hidden stone hollow, they paused.
The stranger lit a fire with a flick of an old spiral coin.
Arjun stared at him.
"You saved me."
The man didn't answer. Instead, he poured water from a goatskin pouch and handed it over.
Then he sat.
Silent. Still.
Finally, he spoke.
"You've found two."
"You'll need five more."
Arjun narrowed his eyes.
"Who are you?"
The man looked up.
His voice was barely a whisper.
"I am one of the last Spiral Guard."
Arjun frowned.
"I thought the Spiral died."
"It did."
The man held up his left wrist.
Etched there — not tattooed, but burned — were two spirals. One clockwise. One reversed.
"We are memory's servants. We exist to protect what time tries to bury."
"But now the Spiral is breaking."
He leaned forward.
"And they are trying to finish the job."
Arjun felt a chill crawl under his ribs.
"Who is they?"
The man's eyes narrowed.
He didn't speak.
Instead, he pulled out a map.
But it wasn't made of paper.
It was woven from strands of copper and glass, etched with energy.
Each glowing node pulsed in time with Arjun's own heartbeat.
Seven nodes. Two lit.
The third — dim, but starting to glow — pulsed near Ujjain.
"Go east," the Guard said.
"Find the man who wrote time."
"If he still exists."
Arjun folded the map. Tucked it away.
He looked up.
"What's your name?"
The Guard hesitated.
Then: "No names. Names are history."
He stood.
"You're Arjun. That will be enough."
He vanished into the trees.
Three days later, Arjun boarded a freight bus headed toward Madhya Pradesh.
The sun followed him like an omen.
He didn't sleep.
He only whispered two words:
"Veda Vyasa."
The writer of everything.
And possibly, the key to breaking the mirror.
Behind him, in the ruins of the burning temple, a silver chip blinked.
One of the black-clad men picked it up, bleeding from the mouth.
He tapped into a secure channel.
"He survived."
A voice responded.
"Let him collect the fragments."
"Then we take them all at once."
The screen went dark.
And somewhere, under a compound layered in ice and wire, a massive chamber lit up with spiral energy.
Seven containment tubes.
Two flickering.
One — open.
Inside it, a faint heartbeat.
Unaging.
Unwilling.
But waiting.