A voice echoed through the chamber, thin as a draft yet impossible to place. Ishan's hands went cold. He turned in a slow circle — walls of stone, the waterfall's silver breath, and only that still, seated figure propped against a pillar: an old man whose body looked more like a relic than a corpse. Cobwebs clung to him like memories. No breath. No movement.
Fear reached for him, sharp and immediate, but Ishan swallowed it down. He forced his breathing slow, let panic fold into calculation. If this place wanted to test him, he would not give it the satisfaction of breaking so easily.
That's when he saw the fissure.
A thin crack in the rock, half-hidden behind lichen, and within it something warm and blinking — a glow not of torchlight but of its own will. The same voice, now closer yet still nowhere, threaded the air again.
"So it chose you. Of course it chose you. There is something in you, boy. Yes — you are thinking correctly. The voice comes from that shining thing you see."
Relief washed through him — at least the sound was not coming from the dead man. Cautiously, Ishan stepped forward. He eased his fingers into the crack and brought out a small sphere: smooth, warm, and humming like a quiet heart. It fit in his palm like a world.
There was a mark etched on its surface — at first glance the silhouette of a meditating man. Around him, in the carving, other images revolved: an enormous eye, a coiled dragon, a phoenix mid-rebirth, a tiger poised to pounce, and an ancient, patient turtle. Symbols of power, vigilance, death and renewal.
Ishan traced the lines. The moment his gaze settled on the meditating figure, a thread of light slithered from the engraving and leapt — fast as a striking snake — landing between his eyebrows. It punched into his skull like an accusing palm. Pain exploded in a flash, and the world tore.
When the sting faded, he was somewhere else entirely.
He was suspended in darkness crowded with stars — a void where up and down meant nothing. All directions were peppered with distant suns. There was no ground beneath his feet, no sky above, only endless, indifferent space. Yet somehow he stood.
First came bewilderment: he slapped his own face, testing whether he still lived in flesh. Not a dream. Not anymore. Reality felt softer here, like something shaped by will.
Half a kilometer away — five hundred meters in this impossible vastness — floated an island. It drifted like a single green jewel in a sea of night. When he realized he was moving toward it, he understood something stranger still: he wasn't walking. He willed himself forward and the distance folded like a map being creased. Thought moved body.
He reached the island in an instant. Up close it looked ordinary enough — trees, soil, a warmth as if a sun hung just behind the canopy. The light was not cold starlight but golden, generous. On this island his feet touched ground with the old, familiar sensation of gravity. He could walk like any man.
He pushed through trees and found a fork in the path. To the left, wilderness pressing thick and dark; to the right, a cluster of huts forming a small, fenced village. He headed for the huts.
The settlement was arranged in a neat square, huts facing inward, a stockade hemming them in. At the center loomed a grand gateway — no door, only an archway. Above it, in carved letters, hung a single name: SECT OF WORLD.
Ishan read the words aloud, tasting them. Before he could puzzle further, the familiar voice murmured at his ear: "How long will you linger there? You may enter."
So the voice had followed him. He moved through the gate and walked toward the central hut — the one at the exact center of the ring. He hesitated at its threshold, fingers poised to knock, when the voice soothed, "You may come in."
He stepped inside.
The sight stole his breath. The same old man — the body from the pillar — sat cross-legged in the dim. Ishan's instincts screamed to run; every survival muscle told him to flee. Instead, he forced his throat to calm and stared.
The man smiled with an exhaustion that seemed older than time itself. He spoke with the slow certainty of someone who had seen the turn of ages.
"I know what you are thinking," the old man said. "Yes — you are right. I am dead. What you see is only a fragment of my spirit that remains here. You are inside the Sphere's world — the very ball you held in your hands a moment ago."
Ishan staggered back as if struck. "What…? That's impossible. Where are your companions? Who are you to— Don't play games. Do you not know I am training to be a soldier? I will not be fooled!" He barked the words, every consonant sharpened by doubt.
The old man's eyes were kind and unblinking. "People do not accept what they have not seen before. I can feel what churns in you; you are from another world, and you do not yet understand why you were chosen. I cannot explain everything now. I will ask you but one question. Answer only 'yes' or 'no.'"
Ishan's pulse thudded like war drums in his ears. "What kind of a question?"
The old man's voice cooled. "A simple one. Do you want to begin a new life?"
Silence swelled. Ishan's memory returned in jagged shards: the yacht, the wine, the laughter that turned knife-sharp, the fall. Someone had saved him. Yet here sat a man who claimed to have rescued him from death's jaws — a man who was dead himself.
"My life?" Ishan scoffed. "What new life? What bargain is this?"
The old man's mouth twitched with a smile that was almost permission. "In your previous life you were an orphan who forged an empire through sheer will. In this life you will have family, friends, enemies — a long road to walk and many lessons to learn. I am not saying you can never return to your world, but to earn that right you must travel far. This is your new journey."
He waved a hand. From the shadows beside him, a small pallet slid forward. Upon it lay a sleeping boy — slight, face young, still as if frozen mid-breath.
"This is Ishan Singhania," the old man said. "Heir to the Singhania clan. Poisoned by his own uncle. He came here fleeing his kin, and died before I could save him. I will send you into this boy's body. You will begin anew in him. I will bind your life to his. You keep your memories; you keep your will. But you will also carry his history. He is eighteen. Are you willing?"
Ishan's voice sounded distant. "Why him? Why give me someone else's life?"
"There is no free lunch," the old man said frankly. "You will do something for me when the time is right. I will tell you what when you prove worthy. I promise — I will not ask you to do wrong. As for this boy, his spirit has been prepared. I have cleansed his body and asked his essence to join with yours. All that remains is to unite body and soul."
Ishan's suspicion flared. If this man had failed to save the boy before, how could he now promise salvation through possession? He asked the question the only way he could: plainly. "If the boy had not come, what then?"
The old man expected the question; his smile was patient. "Then I would have given you the body as it is, and you would have started as an orphan again. Fate changes the cloth; the needle is in your hands."
The truth was a cold wind. Whether the boy lived or not, Ishan was being offered a path he could not ignore. He had already been pulled from the ocean's jaws for a reason. The alternative to choice was the void.
He looked at the sleeping face, at the pillar of time wrapped in webs behind the corpse, at the old man whose voice carried the weight of centuries. He breathed in, straightened his spine, and said with a steady voice, "I will begin this journey."
Relief softened the old man's features. "Before we begin, accept me as your master. I will teach you many things that you will need. Only then can I guide you properly."
Ishan's chest tightened, but the logic was simple: a new world required new rules. He bowed low, the gesture old as respect. "Master… I accept."
The old man laughed once, a sound like dry leaves. "Good. You chose a wise path."
He explained the last part of the rite in a voice that made the air seem heavier: the merging would bind Ishan's memories to the boy's body; their emotions would fuse. The joining would hurt — a blinding, purging pain — for mind and flesh were not meant to be stitched so quickly. "Are you ready?" the master asked.
Ishan's answer did not waver. "I am ready, Guruji."
The old man's hands moved, and the chamber inhaled like a beast about to sing. The sphere's light brightened. The webbed cocoon around the corpse seemed to pulse. Ishan felt the first cold fingers of the rite touch his soul.
He had wanted a second chance. He had asked the heavens for it in the drowning dark.
Now the bargain began — and pain, like truth, arrived first.