Pune, India
Weeks had passed since the eclipse, but the sun's return brought no comfort. A shadow remained—not in the sky, but in the minds of people. Schools shut down, malls ran on half-power, and temples were crowded with prayers for protection. Electricity surged and died like a nervous system misfiring.
Raghav Varman sat in his bedroom, surrounded by unopened textbooks. His room was neat, but his JEE preparation had turned aimless. The equations, once a daunting mountain, now seemed almost... beneath him. He could look at a problem and know the answer—not through logic or memory, but as if the universe whispered it to him.
At first, he had thought it a trick of stress. A mind under pressure creating illusions of brilliance. But it kept happening. The more he let go of method, the clearer the answers became.
Like now.
A physics problem:
"A beam of light strikes the surface of a glass at an angle of 30°. Find the refracted angle."
Raghav didn't even pick up his pen.
21.2°, his mind whispered.
He blinked. Then checked the solution. Correct.
He had stopped celebrating these strange victories. It no longer felt like pride. It felt like something else—an inheritance returning.
---
In the next room, his mother, Dr. Meera Varman, sat hunched over her laptop. As an astrophysicist at IUCAA, she had spent the last few weeks dissecting the eclipse. But every angle brought her back to the same terrifying truth.
"There's no solar or lunar pattern that explains what happened," she murmured, tapping her pen against her lips. "No coronal mass ejection. No gamma bursts. No neutrino emissions. Nothing."
Raghav leaned on the doorway.
"You've barely slept," he said.
She glanced up, startled. Her features softened. "I'm close to something. It's like... the sun wasn't just hidden. It was removed. And every spectrum—infrared, ultraviolet, visible—just ceased. Not blocked. Gone."
Her voice trembled. Meera Varman didn't believe in fear. But now it showed.
She pulled out an old manuscript—a copy of the Vishnu Purana she had once dismissed as symbolic nonsense. Now, her hands trembled on the yellowed pages.
"Even the satellites didn't pick up any gravitational anomalies," she whispered. "But something changed. Something ancient."
Raghav noticed a thin red thread tied around her wrist now—something she hadn't worn in twenty years.
"Do you think it was a... god?" he asked softly.
She looked at him, startled. Then quickly turned back to her screen.
"There's no such thing," she muttered.
But the tremble in her hands said otherwise.
---
That night, Raghav dreamed again.
A battlefield stretched across a sky of ash. Fire and smoke. A thunderous gallop in the distance. He stood on cracked earth, sword in hand, wearing white armor glinting like moonlight.
In front of him: a great serpent, its eyes red like molten lava, its coils large enough to strangle the sky. Behind him, soldiers in armor waited for a command.
The serpent spoke in a voice that wasn't sound, but hunger.
"You are too late, Rider. The end began long before your time."
He charged—sword raised—
And awoke gasping, heart pounding.
His hand was clutching a pencil, and on the back of his notebook were drawn lines of Sanskrit. Ancient and perfect. Words he had never studied.
But somehow... had always known.
---
Sofia, Bulgaria
Sergeant Thea Stavridis adjusted her flak vest as she stepped out of the armored vehicle into smoke and static. The streets were scattered with rubble, overturned signs, and graffiti painted in blood-red slashes: "The Light Lied."
Protests had been common since the eclipse. What began as confusion evolved into panic, and panic into anger. Today was supposed to be a food distribution effort in the central square. It had turned into a riot.
"The crowd's growing aggressive, Sergeant," her lieutenant said, breath fogging in the cold air. "Some of them are shouting scripture. Others—nonsense. It's like mass hysteria."
Thea nodded curtly. "Hold the line. We respond with non-lethal force unless lives are at risk. No one dies today."
She moved with practiced ease, calm amid chaos. Her unit trusted her without question, not because of her rank, but because she was never wrong. When bullets flew or buildings burned, her instincts were infallible.
But even she had been shaken by the eclipse.
Not that she would admit it.
---
The square pulsed with screams and chants. Suddenly, a bolt of flame erupted into the sky. Not a Molotov. Not fire from fuel.
Magic.
Thea's breath hitched. She ran toward the origin.
Through a cloud of dust, she saw him: a man standing atop a collapsed truck, shirtless, tattoos glowing with orange light.
"I see it all!" he screamed. "The gods sleep inside us! The fire! The fire!"
He raised his hand, and a column of flame tore through a lamppost.
Thea acted.
She charged forward, ducking under a blaze, kicking off the ground and tackling the man hard. They both hit concrete, rolling.
He growled and spat, trying to throw her off. But she was faster. Stronger. She twisted his wrist until the light in his palm dimmed.
He stared up at her, grinning with bloodied teeth.
"You feel it too, don't you?" he hissed. "In your bones. In your voice. That voice that makes men obey. That power. That war inside you."
Thea didn't respond. She was breathing heavily, but not from the fight.
From recognition.
Her eyes flickered—just for a moment—with a light no human should carry. Her grip faltered.
The man cackled. "You'll remember soon."
Thea's eyes widened.
Her squad arrived and dragged him away, still raving. The flames had scarred the pavement, but her hands were unburned.
---
That night, Thea stood alone in her apartment. The city's lights flickered again. A storm built on the horizon. She looked at her reflection in the mirror.
Noticed the faint glimmer of silver in her eyes.
"Who am I ?" she whispered uncertain of her own identity for something inside her was no longer human it was different, it was higher.
She didn't know what was coming.
But something in her blood did.
---
Elsewhere
The world was changing in fragments and whispers.
In rural China, monks discovered qi moving faster than breath. In Egypt, ancient symbols carved into hidden tombs began to glow under moonlight. In the streets of Brazil, a street dancer set fire to the rain with a single gesture.
People shared blurry videos of "miracles," dismissed by officials as CGI or mass delusion.
But something had been set in motion.
The darkness of the eclipse had not ended. It had simply retreated... waiting.
And in the depths of the Earth, where serpents once whispered to gods, a wounded presence coiled in silence.
Apophis, the Devourer, stirred.
Not dead. Not sleeping.
Healing.