The titan fell in slow motion, a mountain giving way.
GROOOOAN. SKREEECH. CRA-BOOOOM!
The war-frame crashed into the corridor wall, the entire sector shaking with the impact. Tunnels collapsed. Power conduits ruptured, showering the scene in a torrent of lethal white sparks. The perfectly controlled environment of the machine god became a maelstrom of raw, chaotic destruction.
Kali's voice, no longer a controlled boom but a sound of digitized rage, echoed through the collapsing tunnel. <"INSIGNIFICANT—">
The word was cut short as tons of duracrete and steel rained down upon the fallen war-frame, burying it.
Devadatta didn't pause to celebrate. Kalpit, still connected to the vehicle's will, commanded it with pure instinct.
OUT!
The ship reversed thrust, its engines screaming as it shot backwards, navigating the cascade of falling debris with impossible precision. They flew through a blizzard of concrete dust and snapping cables, emerging from the collapsing tunnel just as the entire section caved in behind them with a deafening, final CRUMP.
They shot out into a vast, cavernous cistern, a forgotten part of the city's ancient water recycling system. The air was cool and damp. For a moment, there was silence, broken only by the hum of Devadatta's anti-grav emitters and the distant rumble of the collapse.
Kalpit slumped back in his seat, his connection to the ship receding. The adrenaline drained away, leaving a chasm of exhaustion in its wake. Every muscle ached. The Anahata hum in his chest subsided to a warm, gentle pulse. He had done it. He had faced a god and made him fall.
Anasuya was staring at him, her expression a wild mix of terror, awe, and disbelief.
"You… you just…" she stammered. "The war-frame... That was the Kali-Prime Avatar! His personal mobile throne! No one has ever scratched it!"
"He's not a god," Kalpit breathed, his voice hoarse. "He's just a man in a very big suit. And his suit is now under a few thousand tons of rock."
Devadatta's calm, synthesized voice spoke into the cockpit. <"Warning. The host's Prana signature is unstable. Sustained output beyond current biological limits. Recommend immediate cessation of combat.">
Before Kalpit could process the warning, a new sound reached them. It started as a low hum, then grew, a sound of immense, focused power. The rubble pile they had just created began to glow with a furious, incandescent red.
The metal and rock began to melt, turning to slag, then to vapor. The intense heat washed over their vehicle, the cockpit's energy shield shimmering under the strain.
From the heart of the molten rock, a figure rose.
It was not the twenty-meter titan. It was just Kali, his physical body now free of the machine. He was levitating, his body wreathed in an aura of pure, crackling energy. His perfect robes of shifting data were gone, replaced by the stark reality of his form—a body crisscrossed with golden cybernetic tracery that pulsed with internal light. His face was no longer serene. It was a mask of cold, intellectual fury.
He hadn't been defeated. He had merely shed a damaged shell.
"Obsolete technology," Kali's voice hissed, now emanating directly from him. It had lost its divine resonance, replaced by a sharp, personal venom. "You rely on the ghosts of the past. The rusted tools of the Devas who failed and fled this reality. I am what came next."
He raised a hand. The air around Devadatta shimmered and compressed.
VMMMMMMMMMM...
<"Warning. Gravimetric field detected. Extreme intensity,"> Devadatta reported, its engines whining as they fought against an invisible force. The vehicle, which had moved with impossible grace moments before, was now trapped, held fast in an unseen fist.
"I have indulged this prophecy," Kali seethed, his eyes boring into Kalpit. "I allowed the game to play out. But you are not a savior. You are a system error. And errors must be purged. Personally."
He closed his hand into a fist.
The pressure on Devadatta intensified a hundredfold.
KREEEEEEEE!
Metal screamed. The cockpit canopy began to crack, spiderwebs of fractured light spreading across its surface. Alarms blared.
HULL INTEGRITY FAILING. IMMINENT BREACH.
Anasuya screamed as a hairline fracture appeared just inches from her face. They were being crushed inside a tin can.
Kalpit gripped the controls, pushing his will into the ship, commanding it to break free. But the ship was already fighting with all its power, and it wasn't enough. They were flies caught in a spider's web of warped space-time.
There was no escape.
This was the true power of Kali. Not the war-frame, not the armies. Just the raw, focused will of a being who had fused himself with the fundamental forces of the universe.
Kalpit's mind raced. He had no more tricks. His body was spent. His new powers were silent. Despair, cold and absolute, began to set in. Was this it? Was this how the great prophecy ended? Crushed in a forgotten sewer by a wrathful god-king?
He looked at the cracks spreading across the canopy. He looked at Anasuya's terrified face. The echo of the city's pain he had felt earlier was a faint memory. Now, there was only his own fear.
Vashistha's face appeared in his mind's eye. Belief requires proof.
What was he missing?
The Chakras. He had awakened three. But there were seven. The Sages had told him. They were processors. Tools.
But what if they weren't just tools to be used? What if they were also vulnerabilities? If he had them, did other humans? Did Kali?
He looked past the crackling energy aura, past the cybernetic tracery. He looked at Kali the man. He had a spine. He had a navel. He had a chest. He was built on the same fundamental human chassis. Enhanced, augmented, perfected... but still human in his origin.
Kali was suppressing his own humanity, calling it a bug. But could a bug, a dormant piece of code, ever be truly deleted?
He ignored the alarms, the groaning metal, the imminent death. He closed his eyes and reached out with the last dregs of his strength, not with his Muladhara-sight, not with the flow of Svadhisthana. He reached out with his Anahata. The shield of hearts.
He didn't connect with the city. He aimed for a single target. He focused all his intent, all his empathy, on the being trying to kill them. He pushed past the aura of power, past the cold logic.
He searched for the faint, vestigial pulse of Kali's own heart.
For a moment, there was nothing. A void of pure, logical will.
Then he felt it.
Faint. Distant. A microscopic flicker. The ghost of a feeling. An echo of loss from a time before he became a god. The memory of a pain he had tried to erase from his own source code. The trauma that had set him on his path to enforced paradise.
Kalpit focused on it. He didn't attack it. He resonated with it. He held it. He acknowledged it. He showed it back to Kali.
I see you.
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.
Kali's concentration shattered. The gravimetric field around Devadatta flickered and died. The pressure vanished. Kali himself cried out, a sound of pure, ragged agony, clutching his chest as if struck by a phantom spear. The flawless god-king stumbled in mid-air, his aura sputtering.
For a single, priceless second, his perfect control was broken. He was vulnerable.
Devadatta didn't need to be told. The moment it was free, its engines flared. It wasn't an escape maneuver. It was an attack. The vehicle shot forward like a silver bullet.
But it wasn't aiming for Kali.
It was aiming for the wall behind him.
The ancient, corroded wall of the cistern. Kalpit's Muladhara-sight, flaring to life one last time, had shown him the truth. The wall wasn't holding back air.
It was holding back the sea.