The grand library of the Kashyap mansion was a cavernous room, smelling of old parchment, leather, and dust. Towering shelves reached towards the vaulted ceiling, crammed with thousands of books, scrolls, and manuscripts. In the face of this immense collection, finding one specific text seemed impossible.
**Maira** ran a hand over a dusty shelf, her frustration mounting. **"We need to find something about mind control, puppetry, animated corpses... anything that explains *that*."** She gestured vaguely towards the courtyard.
**Mihir** stood in the center of the room, a determined glint in his eye. **"We don't have time to search shelf by shelf."** He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. He raised his hands, palms facing the endless rows of books.
A deep, **crimson** energy began to swirl around his fingertips, then his hands, growing in intensity until it pulsed outwards in a wave. The air hummed with raw, potent power.
**"Dhoondho,"** he commanded, his voice echoing with an unnatural resonance.
The library erupted into controlled chaos. Every single book on every shelf shuddered and then **flew from its place**, hovering in the air. They swirled around the room in a vast, mesmerizing whirlwind of knowledge-ancient leather-bound tomes, modern paperbacks, crumbling scrolls, all orbiting Mihir like planets around a crimson sun. His brow was furrowed in intense concentration, his magic acting as a living, breathing search engine, scanning the contents of every flying text.
Maira stared, utterly captivated. The display was terrifying and beautiful. **"Even though you're separated from your Daavansh side... you still retained your powers,"** she whispered, her voice full of awe.
The whirlwind of books slowed. A few specific volumes, their covers etched with strange, silvery runes, glowed with a soft light in response to his magic. Mihir lowered his hands, and the selected books gently floated into his grasp. The rest of the books returned to their shelves with a series of soft thuds, perfectly in place.
He looked at Maira, a faint, almost sad smile touching his lips. The crimson energy around his hands faded. **"Maybe,"** he said, his voice quieter now, back to its usual timbre but laced with a newfound gravity. **"Maybe I'm not entirely separated from him. Maybe... a part of him will always be a part of me."**
The admission hung in the air between them, more profound than any magical display. He held out the glowing books. **"Now, let's see what we're dealing with."**
The courtyard was a storm of controlled chaos. The squad moved with precision, their combined powers creating a symphony of containment rather than destruction.
A zombie-**Akhil**-lurched toward **Teju**. Before he could reach her, **Sahir**, eyes blazing icy blue, flicked his wrist. A complex, shimmering diagram of energy snapped into existence around Akhil's feet, freezing him in a magical stasis field. He strained against it, but couldn't break free.
Nearby, **Moti Baa** moved with surprising speed. **Rishank**, his eyes burning red, didn't blast her. Instead, he conjured thick, dark vines that erupted from the ground, wrapping around her legs and torso, gently pinning her arms to her sides without causing harm. She hissed, struggling against the living bonds.
**Armaan's** obsidian wand moved in a sharp arc. **"Bandhan!"** he commanded. Bolts of dark energy shot out, not to strike, but to form ethereal chains that wrapped around **Uma** and two other guests, anchoring them to the ground. They thrashed against their spectral restraints.
**Rikki** and **Rainaksh**, their golden auras merged, worked in perfect tandem. They didn't attack; they redirected. With synchronized gestures, they created powerful gusts of wind that blew a group of advancing zombies off their feet, sending them tumbling harmlessly backwards into a soft patch of flower beds, slowing their advance.
**Rahi's** lightning whip cracked through the air, but she didn't strike flesh. Instead, she expertly wrapped the crackling energy around **Tia's** ankles, a non-lethal taser-like jolt that made her muscles seize and dropped her to the ground, temporarily immobilized.
**Chandni** was a whirlwind of precision. Her lunar shards didn't pierce; they orbited her targets at high speed, creating a blinding, disorienting barrier of light and reflected color around a cluster of zombies, confusing them and causing them to stumble into each other.
**Shaurya** was a protector. He didn't lash out. Instead, he stood his ground before **Saiyaara**, his snakelike eyes glowing. A palpable wave of mesmerizing, hypnotic energy pulsed from him, not to control, but to pacify. The zombies that came near him slowed, their movements becoming drowsy and uncoordinated, as if moving through thick mud, before eventually slumping to the ground in a temporary, trance-like sleep.
They were a wall. A barrier. Every time a zombie was subdued, it would, after a moment, shake off the effect and rise again-weaker, slower, but persistent. The squad was engaged in a exhausting game of supernatural whack-a-mole, buying every second they could for Maira and Mihir inside.
**"They just keep getting up!"** Rishank shouted, reinforcing his magical vines around a struggling Sapna.
**"We don't have to beat them!"** Sahir yelled back, his voice calm but strained as he erected another stasis field. **"We just have to hold the line!"**
The air crackled with spent magic and the grim determination to protect their family, no matter the cost.
The silence of the library was broken only by the frantic turning of pages. Mihir held down a crumbling, leather-bound tome titled "*Aakriti: The Art of Spiritual Puppetry*" while Maira scanned a flowing, handwritten script in a journal labeled "*Elixirs of Vitality & Void*."
**"Here!"** Maira exclaimed, her finger stabbing at a passage. **"It says the 'Potion of the Undead Heart' severs the soul's tether to the body, leaving it a hollow vessel for a puppeteer to command."**
Mihir leaned over, his shoulder brushing against hers. **"And the counter-agent?"**
Maira traced the text on the opposite page. Her eyes widened. **"The Elixir of Life. It doesn't just heal-it *reattaches* the soul, reforging the broken tether."** She looked up at him, hope blazing in her eyes. **"This is it, Mihir! We can save them!"**
They worked in a frenzy, following the intricate recipe. Mihir used his crimson magic to gently heat a small, crystal crucible while Maira measured out rare ingredients from Sahir's meticulously labeled jars: powdered moonstone, a drop of phoenix ash (a label Mihir eyed skeptically), petals from a dawn-blooming lotus, and the essential-a single, crystallized tear of a *devdasi*, which glowed with a soft, internal light.
The mixture in the crucible shimmered, shifting from deep purple to a brilliant, luminescent gold. It emitted a soft, pure light and a sound like a faint, harmonious chime. They had done it.
Maira carefully poured the precious, glowing liquid into a single, small glass vial. It barely half-filled it.
Mihir stared at the vial, then at the hundreds of people outside. His face fell. **"Maira... that's not even a mouthful. How is this supposed to cure *everyone*?"**
A determined smile touched Maira's lips. She held the vial up, watching the golden elixir swirl with its own inner light.
**"We don't need them to drink it,"** she said, her voice filled with sudden, inspired certainty. **"I have an idea."**