The world they landed in was… wrong.
Kashyap felt the impact first—a jolt like his bones had been rearranged during the fall. Cold mist stung his face as he pushed himself up.
Mandakini landed beside him, coughing, her fingers gripping a piece of shattered stone.
They stood in the ruins of a city.
But not any city they knew.
Towering skyscrapers leaned like broken teeth. Glass lay scattered in sheets across the streets. The air smelled of electric smoke and old, unburied fear.
A massive hole was carved into the sky—a swirling, rotating scar of red and black.
Mandakini whispered, "This isn't Earth."
Kashyap scanned the horizon.
Everything felt familiar but warped—
like looking at their world through the eyes of a fever.
"Gravity's lighter," Mandakini noted softly. "Time… feels stretched."
Kashyap took a shaky breath.
"Maybe this is where the Pulse wanted us."
"No."
Mandakini touched the ground,her fingers brushing dust.
"This place remembers us."
Before he could ask what she meant, the wind shifted.
A shadow sprinted across the shattered street—fast, too fast.
Kashyap's instincts snapped awake.
"Get behind me."
Mandakini didn't argue.
The shadow circled again.
This time, it spoke.
Soft.
Broken.
Familiar.
"I warned you not to come back."
Kashyap froze.
He knew that voice.
Mandakini's eyes widened as another figure emerged from the smoke.
A girl—no older than 20—with tangled hair, bloodshot eyes, and a coat stitched from scraps of metal and cloth. She held a weapon shaped from crystallized energy, shaking as she pointed it at them.
But her face—
Kashyap's heartbeat stuttered.
It was Mandakini.
Younger.
Gaunt.
Traumatized.
A different version.
A survivor of something unspeakable.
Mandakini whispered, barely breathing:
"…Me?"
The younger Mandakini trembled.
Her weapon flickered.
"No. Not you. Not again."
She stepped back as if seeing a ghost.
"I buried you.I watched you die."
Kashyap's chest tightened.
A cold dread crept in.
This world wasn't ruined by chance.
It had history.
And they were part of it.
"Listen," Kashyap raised his hands carefully, "we're not from this world."
But the girl shook her head violently.
"That's what you said last time. And then the Gates opened."
Tears mixed with anger on her dusty cheeks.
"You brought the Collapse."
A distant rumble shook the ground.
The sky-hole pulsed.
Mandakini stood, slowly approaching her younger self.
Her voice was soft,steady.
Not denying.
Not defending.
"What happened here?"
The girl's lip trembled.
"The universe forgot how to hold itself together.
Time split.
Reality folded.
Cities fell into themselves.
All because the two of you…chose wrong."
Kashyap felt those words like a knife.
Mandakini swallowed, her voice shaking.
"What choice did we make?"
The girl looked at them with a haunted expression.
"The same choice you're about to make again."
The ground vibrated harder.
Metallic groans echoed across the broken skyline.
A crack appeared in the street—then another.
The air shivered as if something massive was approaching.
The younger Mandakini wiped her eyes and steadied her weapon.
"There's no time.
They're coming."
"Who's coming?" Kashyap asked.
The girl pointed toward the rip in the sky.
"The Anomalies.
The timeline-eaters.
They hunt anything that doesn't belong."
Mandakini's breath caught.
Kashyap's fists clenched.
The ground shook harder—
the first silhouette crawled out of a collapsing building.
A twisted, shifting shape made of fractured mirrors and bone-like segments.
Then another.
And another.
The girl whispered:
"You can't fight them."
Her voice cracked with terror.
"They consume reality itself."
Kashyap stepped protectively in front of Mandakini.
"No.We're not running."
The girl laughed bitterly.
"You don't get it."
She pointed right at Kashyap.
"In this world…
you're the reason they exist."
Kashyap's blood turned to ice.
Mandakini gripped his arm, trembling.
The creatures screeched, warping the air.
The girl yelled:
"Move! If they catch you, every world collapses—again!"
Kashyap pulled Mandakini close.
The creatures charged.
The sky tore open.
And the world began to fall apart.