The Path of Amar Van and the Warning of the Gods
The path from Tapobhumi to Amar Van was not a road but a suggestion, a ribbon of trodden earth slowly being reclaimed by roots and creeping moss. The silence here was not peaceful; it was a held breath. Sunlight filtered through the dense canopy in slanted, dusty columns, illuminating nothing but motes of anxiety hanging in the air.
Nirag and Anvay moved through it like two discordant notes forced into the same measure. They walked shoulder-to-shoulder by necessity, but the space between their bodies crackled with an invisible, hostile energy. Nirag's red and blue robes seemed to bleed their contrasting hues into the atmosphere around him, a personal storm cloud. Anvay, in his earthy gold and green, was an attempt at solid ground beside him.
The quiet was a chafing thing against Nirag's pride. He broke it, his voice slicing through the forest hush like a shard of glass.
"Just so we're clear," Nirag said, his gaze fixed ahead, his jaw tight. "This partnership ends at the edge of this cursed forest. I walk with you because Gurudev commanded it and Tauji's word is law. Not because I see a partner beside me."
Anvay's steps didn't falter. His profile was calm, but his brown eyes, fixed on the shifting path, held a weary depth. "Clarity is appreciated. But the mission remains. We succeed together, or we fail together. That was the instruction."
"Your instruction," Nirag shot back, finally glancing at him, his mismatched eyes flashing. "Your perfect, obedient interpretation of it."
A faint, almost imperceptible sigh escaped Anvay's lips. "Why does my existence offend you so deeply, Nirag? What have I done, besides be who I am?"
The question hung, raw and simple. Nirag's shoulders stiffened. He kicked a loose stone, sending it skittering into the undergrowth. "It's not what you've done. It's what you are. A statue. A perfectly balanced, emotionless monument. You make restraint look easy, and it infuriates me."
"Is that it?" Anvay asked, his voice still low. "Or is it because my stability is a mirror, and you dislike what you see reflected in it?"
Nirag whirled on him then, stopping in the middle of the path. The air around his right hand shimmered with sudden heat. "You know nothing of what I see! You live on the solid ground of your single element. You don't have an ocean and a volcano warring in your veins every waking moment!"
"And you think that's a weakness?" Anvay met his gaze, unflinching. "When trouble finds us in that forest—and it will—will you stand alone with your warring veins? Or will you accept the steady earth under your feet?"
Nirag let out a sharp, bitter laugh that startled a flock of unseen birds into flight. "Don't wait for me to save you, Anvay. I have no interest in playing the hero for someone who looks at a battle and sees a philosophical exercise. If you fall, consider it a lesson in gravity."
Anvay simply nodded, a slow, accepting dip of his chin. "As you say. But your life holds value, Nirag. Even if you're determined to treat it as kindling."
They walked on, the tension now a tangible third presence between them.
---
The border of Amar Van announced itself not with a sign, but with a shift in the world's fabric. One moment, they were in a normal, if too-quiet, forest. The next, they stepped under an arch of intertwined branches that glimmered with a faint, internal sapphire light.
The air changed. It grew thicker, sweeter, carrying the scent of ozone and blooming night-flowers at noon. The very color palette of the world mutated. The greens of leaves were too vivid, tinged with azure and veins of liquid gold. Tree bark shone with a metallic, coppery sheen. The light didn't fall; it dripped, pooled, and swirled.
Nirag stopped dead, his bravado momentarily stunned. "What… is this?"
"The imbalance," Anvay murmured, his hand rising instinctively. His fingers twitched, reading the air currents. They were erratic, choppy, like a sputtering heartbeat. "The forest isn't sick. It's… dreaming a fever dream. And its dream is spilling out."
Ahead, the path forked in a way that defied nature. It didn't split into two trails. The very ground seemed to remember two different destinies. To the left, the earth itself was replaced by a rippling bed of pure, silent flame—not wild and roaring, but intensely concentrated, giving off a heat that made the air above it waver like a mirage. To the right, the path was a shallow, crystal-clear stream flowing over smooth pebbles, its water so still and cold it seemed to absorb sound and light.
An elemental choice, rendered literal.
"The fire path," Nirag declared instantly, a familiar hunger in his red eye. "It's an echo of my own power. It won't harm me."
"The water path would be safer for us both," Anvay reasoned, his practical mind assessing. "A neutral ground."
"Of course you'd pick the passive one," Nirag sneered, but a flicker of uncertainty crossed his face. Anvay's calm insistence always felt like a trap.
Anvay studied the two impossible paths, his earth-sense reaching out. He closed his eyes for a moment. "Wait. This forest is deceptive. It shows us what we expect. Perhaps the true path is the one that challenges our nature, not comforts it. We should take the fire path."
Nirag's head snapped towards him, suspicion flaring. "Now you agree with me? After arguing against it? This is a trick. You're trying to make me choose the water out of spite. Well, I won't." His wounded pride made the decision. "We take the water path. Because I say so."
Anvay opened his mouth to protest, then closed it. Arguing would only cement Nirag's defiance. He gave a single, tight nod. "Lead, then."
Nirag strode forward, a conqueror approaching his throne, and stepped onto the surface of the crystal stream.
The water did not yield. It did not splash. Where his boot touched, the liquid flared a brilliant, blinding white and solidified instantly into a sheet of flawless, diamond-hard ice. A shockwave of intense, dry cold shot up his leg. The stream was not water; it was a mirage of stillness over a core of absolute zero.
Nirag yelped, stumbling back, his foot numb. The "water path" shimmered and vanished, revealing only normal, mossy ground.
From behind him, Anvay made a soft sound. Not a laugh—it was too thoughtful for that. "A test of perception. The fire was likely an illusion of danger. The water, an illusion of safety."
Nirag burned with humiliation, his cheeks flushing. He refused to look at Anvay. "The fire path. Now."
This time, when Nirag stepped toward the bed of flames, they didn't burn. They parted before him like a respectful curtain, revealing a solid, earthen path beneath before winking out of existence. The true way had been hidden behind the facade of his own element.
He didn't gloat. The lesson was too sharp.
---
They journeyed deeper. The forest grew more alien. Trees hummed. Flowers turned to follow them. Anvay moved with heightened alertness, his senses tuned to the subtle wrongness. Nirag, chastened but still volatile, walked a few paces ahead, his own power coiled tight, ready to lash out at any provocation.
Anvay's sharp eyes caught it first: a strand of ivy on the path, its leaves a fluorescent, poisonous green that pulsed gently. "Nirag, stop!"
But Nirag's boot was already coming down. The moment it made contact, the innocuous vine transformed. It snapped upwards with whiplash speed, not like a plant, but like a muscular, emerald serpent. It coiled around his ankle, then his thigh, with terrifying strength, yanking him off his feet and hoisting him upside down into the air, dangling him from a thick branch above.
"What is this?!" Nirag roared, thrashing. The more he struggled, the tighter the vine constricted, its leaves now secreting a sap that smoked where it touched his robes.
"Be still!" Anvay commanded, his voice cutting through Nirag's panic. He didn't reach for the vine. Instead, he dropped into a low stance and placed his palms flat on the ground. A tremor ran through the earth. The soil around the base of the tree hosting the vine churned and fractured. Roots were forced to the surface, loosening the tree's grip. At the same moment, Anvay's hand shot out, fingers splayed. A focused blade of compressed air, invisible but sharp as his Maruchi sword, snicked through the vine's thickest point near the branch.
Nirag fell, landing in an ungainly heap. The severed vine writhed on the ground before turning brittle and grey.
Gasping, Nirag clutched his leg, the skin beneath his robes already blistering from the sap. Fury and pain warred in his eyes as he glared up at Anvay, who was calmly brushing dirt from his hands. "You… you could have cut it sooner! You were just standing there!"
"I was ensuring the tree wouldn't crush us both when it fell," Anvay said, his tone devoid of reproach. He offered a hand. "The vine's sap is corrosive. Can you walk?"
Nirag swatted the hand away, pushing himself up with a wince. "I don't need your help."
"I know," Anvay said, and there was a strange, new weight to the words. He wasn't placating anymore. He was stating a fact he wished wasn't true.
---
The forest canopy suddenly opened, revealing a clearing. At its center stood a temple, but it was unlike any structure in Tapobhumi. It was hewn not from carved stone, but from four enormous, fused elemental crystals—a base of rough-hewn green jade, walls of smoothed blue aquamarine, roof supports of swirling, milky white quartz (air), and a central spire of raw, smoky ruby. It was less built and more grown, a geological prayer.
"There," Anvay pointed, a spark of genuine awe in his eyes. "A locus of the imbalance. The elements are… petrified here."
"I have eyes," Nirag grumbled, limping forward, but his own gaze was drawn to the ruby spire, which seemed to pulse in time with his own heartbeat.
They entered the single, circular chamber. It was empty but for four life-sized statues standing at the cardinal points, each carved from the same crystal as the temple's corresponding section, yet infinitely more detailed.
In the North, a goddess of deep green jade: Prithvi Devi. Vines and stone flowers cascaded from her hands, her face serene and nurturing, feet rooted to a plinth that bled into the temple floor.
In the West, a god of flowing blue aquamarine: Varun Dev. He held a vessel from which a single, eternally frozen droplet of crystal water fell, his expression wise and sorrowful.
In the East, a deity of breath-taking clear quartz: Vayu Dev. His form was slightly blurred, as if caught in motion, robes seeming to flutter in an unseen wind, his eyes sharp and far-seeing.
In the South, a figure of fierce, smoky ruby: Agni Dev. Flames of solid red crystal leapt around his form, his expression was one of fierce concentration, and in his outstretched palm, a tiny, real flame—no bigger than a candle's—flickered stubbornly, the only moving thing in the room.
"They're… trapped," Anvay breathed, understanding dawning. "Their essences are anchored here. This is the heart of the imbalance. The forest is sick because its gods are in stasis."
Before they could ponder further, guttural shouts erupted from outside. They rushed out to see a band of misshapen, grey-skinned rakshasas, their forms leaking unstable elemental energy—sparks of errant fire, dribbles of acidic water. They were not true demons, but manifestations of the forest's sickness.
"Who trespasses in the sacred grove?!" the lead creature rasped.
Nirag saw an outlet for his pent-up fury and shame. He didn't wait. He stepped past Anvay, his hands coming together. This time, the fire he summoned was not a wild blast, but a focused, white-hot beam—a scalpel of flame. It lanced through the rakshasas, not exploding them, but unmaking their unstable forms into harmless steam and ash. It was controlled. Efficient. A warrior's strike, not a child's tantrum.
He stood panting slightly, the clean hit leaving him feeling hollow, not triumphant. He looked at his hands, then back at the temple.
Anvay had not moved to fight. He was watching Nirag, a complex, unreadable emotion in his eyes. "You didn't need to burn the whole clearing," he said quietly. "But that was… precise."
Nirag had no retort. They returned to the silent, watching statues.
"The forest is empty," Anvay murmured, his earlier observation crystallizing. "No birds, no insects. Life has fled or been stilled. These statues… they're not just representations. They're seals. And we broke the things guarding the seals."
As if his words were a key, the temple trembled. A deep, grinding groan rose from the earth. Cracks spiderwebbed across the crystal floor, not spreading from the walls, but radiating from the four statues themselves. The tiny flame in Agni Dev's palm guttered wildly.
"The imbalance is climaxing!" Anvay shouted over the rising din. "They're not just trapped—they're destabilizing each other! They need to be synced, reminded of their connection!"
Without thinking, acting on a twin instinct they did not know they shared, they moved.
Nirag lunged for the South and the East—for Agni and Vayu.Fire and Air. His elements.
Anvay moved for the North and West—for Prithvi and Varun.Earth and Water. His heritage.
Their hands touched the cold crystal at the same instant.
The world turned to light and sound.
The rigid statues dissolved into beings of pure, swirling energy. Agni Dev was a pillar of benevolent flame that warmed without burning. Varun Dev a cascade of healing water. Vayu Dev a cleansing breeze. Prithvi Devi the smell of rich, fertile soil after rain. They filled the chamber, their presences immense, ancient, and profoundly weary.
The tremors ceased. The cracks in the temple sealed with veins of gold.
The form of Agni Dev, his voice the crackle of a sacred hearth, spoke first. "Young warriors. You have undone the knot of avarice that bound us. Lesser beings sought to hoard our blessings, anchoring us here until the forest forgot its own name."
Prithvi Devi's voice was the whisper of roots through stone. "You acted in unison, a four-fold key. For that, the Amar Van will heal. Its dream will become peaceful once more."
But then Varun Dev's voice, like a deep, cold current, flowed forth. "Yet heed this, children of conflict and calm. The harmony you forged today is a thread. Threads can weave a shelter… or a noose. The very power that allowed you to touch us all—your inherent duality, your complementary opposition—holds within it the seed of a far greater schism."
Vayu Dev's words were the final, chilling warning, sighed into their very souls. "Remember. In the garden of power, the closest trees often have the most entangled roots. And when the storm comes… it is these roots that tear the earth apart most violently. Your ally today… may be your annihilation tomorrow."
The divine presences didn't fade. They simply were not there anymore. The temple was just a beautiful, empty crystal hall. The forest outside sounded different—the normal chirp of crickets, the rustle of a gentle wind.
Nirag and Anvay stood in the sudden, profound silence. The victory was ash in their mouths.
Nirag looked at his hands, which had channeled such clean fire, then at Anvay, who had read the truth of the temple. For the first time, his voice held no heat, only a hollow awe. "Tauji… and Gurudev… they were right. Alone, we are just fragments."
Anvay was not looking at the temple, but at Nirag. The calm on his face had fractured, replaced by a deep, unsettling fear. The god's warning echoed in the space between them, wider now than any forest path.
"But Nirag," Anvay whispered, the question hanging in the newly-balanced air, thick and unavoidable. "What if 'fragments' is all we were ever meant to be? What if coming together… is what finally breaks us?"
They began the long walk back to Tapobhumi, carrying not the lightness of a completed mission, but the heavy, chilling weight of a prophecy now lodged in their chests. The bond they had just forged was real. And the terror of it was real too.