The air in Beng Mealea wasn't air. It was soup.
Hot, wet soup that smelled like dirt and old rot. It stuck to the back of Aryan's throat, thick with the scent of things dying in slow motion. Around him, the jungle was winning the war against the stone; roots as thick as thighs were crushing the temple walls, strangling the history out of them until they were just gravel.
Aryan stood in the courtyard. He didn't move. He just breathed, slow and shallow, waiting for the humidity to tear open.
Then, the shimmer. Three patches of air went wrong. Green gloom twisted into light. Spirits. Small, jagged things that vibrated like a plucked string.
The first one blurred.
Aryan didn't think. He didn't have to. He pivoted, stepping into the charge. The Vardaan biology in his blood felt the threat and surged—a sudden, heavy rushing sensation in his limbs. His skin went tight, then hard, turning his forearm into a slab of living grey granite.
Crack.
The spirit hit him, and the sound was wet and heavy, like a sledgehammer hitting a side of beef. The vibration rattled Aryan's teeth. He grunted, grabbed the thing by its throat—it felt like holding a handful of cold static—and squeezed.
"Weak," he muttered.
He clenched. His grip was hydraulic. The spirit shrieked—a high, tearing noise that made the moss on the stones flake off—and then it popped. Just burst. Ectoplasm splattered the stones, sizzling like bacon grease.
The other two hissed.
"Left one's mine."
Silas.
He dropped from the canopy, landing in a crouch that was too graceful for the linen suit he was wearing. The suit was ruined, by the way. Stained with green mold and sweat. He stood up, grinning like he'd just heard a joke.
He flicked a hand. "Veil."
It was unsettling to watch. Shadows didn't just appear; they bled out of his pores. Ink-black veins whipping through the humid air, hungry and searching.
They speared the left spirit before it could move.
The thing thrashed, but the Veil just tightened. Silas made a fist, his knuckles white. The shadows crunched inward, slicing through the ghost-flesh like wire through cheese. The spirit didn't even fade; it was just erased.
Aryan took the third. He let it come, let its claws rake his chest. He felt the skin part, the sting of air on raw meat, then the immediate, itching heat of the wound zipping shut. He didn't flinch. He drove a knee into the thing's gut, felt it fold, and hammered an elbow down onto its spine.
Gone.
Aryan wiped the residue from his arm. It felt greasy. "You're late."
Silas dusted off his lapel, smearing mud further into the fabric. "Snake on the trail. Wanted a cuddle. I politely declined."
The ground jumped.
Not a tremor. A heartbeat.
Red light bled into the courtyard, harsh and violent. The temperature crashed, turning the sweat on Aryan's neck to ice.
Specters.
They poured out of the ruins—a dozen floating torsos made of jagged crimson light, wailing a sound that sounded like metal tearing.
"Appetizers," Silas sighed.
He walked forward. The Veil surged around him, a cloak of black knives. A Specter dive-bombed him. A shadow lashed out, skewering the ghost. Silas flicked his wrist—lazy, bored—and the shadow slammed the thing into a pillar. Stone shattered. Dust choked the air.
Aryan moved. He shut off his mind and let the violence take the wheel. A Specter clawed his back; he spun, feeling his muscle fibers twitch and harden to catch the blow. He grabbed the thing's arm, twisted—snap—and ripped the limb off. He used the severed energy like a club, bludgeoning another Specter until it detonated in a flash of red light.
"They're swarming!" Aryan shouted over the screaming.
"They're guarding something!" Silas yelled back, laughing as a tendril tore the head off a ghost. "Something heavy!"
The temple wall exploded.
It wasn't a metaphor. The masonry just vanished, replaced by flying blocks the size of hatchbacks. Aryan dove, tackling Silas, covering him as debris pulverized the spot where the shadow-user had been standing a second ago.
Dust swirled. And out of the grey cloud stepped the Alpha.
Eight feet tall. A nightmare made of white fire and bleached bone. It moved with a glitching, strobe-light speed—here, then there, skipping the space in between.
It backhanded Aryan.
Aryan didn't fly; he was launched. He crashed through a bamboo thicket, fifty feet away, hitting the ground hard enough to bounce. Ribs snapped—a sharp, hot crack in his chest. His biology screamed, flooding the break with calcium. He gasped, choking on air as the bones knit together in seconds, grinding against each other.
The Alpha turned to Silas.
Silas stood up, brushing dirt from his knees. He looked small. "Okay. You're big."
The Alpha vanished.
Reappeared. Right in Silas's face. A fist of white fire coming down like a meteor.
Silas didn't run. The Veil exploded from his chest, forming a dense, chaotic shield of solid shadow.
BOOM.
The impact drove Silas into the earth, burying him to his shins. Blood started dripping from his nose, dark and fast.
"Heavy," Silas wheezed, his teeth gritted. "Very… heavy."
The Alpha raised its fist again.
"Now!" Silas screamed.
Aryan burst from the bamboo. He hit the Alpha from behind, locking his arms around the Guardian's thick neck. The heat was immediate—searing his skin, burning down to the muscle. The smell of his own cooking flesh filled his nose. He held on. His cells panicked, then adapted, the skin turning leathery and grey to fight the burn.
The Alpha thrashed, slamming Aryan against a wall. Aryan spat blood and tightened the choke.
"Dinner time," Silas roared.
He dropped the shield. The Veil surged forward, not as blades this time, but as mouths. Hundreds of jagged, shadowy jaws opening on the tips of the tendrils. They latched onto the Alpha.
The Guardian screamed.
Silas walked forward, his eyes rolling back until only the whites showed. The shadows pumped, throbbing as they sucked the white fire out of the beast and funneled it straight into Silas's veins.
"Consume," Silas whispered.
The Alpha withered. The light died. The bone armor turned brittle. Silas grabbed the Guardian's face with a bare hand. The shadows surged through his arm, forcing their way into the Alpha's mouth, drowning it in darkness.
With a wet, tearing sound, the Alpha collapsed into a pile of dry, grey ash.
Silas stood there, panting. His veins were glowing with a faint, stolen white light. He looked at his hands. The skin rippled—younger, tighter.
Aryan limped over. His burnt skin was already flaking off like confetti, revealing pink, raw dermis underneath. "Did it work?"
Silas drew a serrated combat knife.
"Let's find out."
He sliced his own palm open. Deep. Ugly. Blood welled up, bright red.
Then, the white light pulsed under his skin.
Steam rose from the wound. The flesh reached out, knitting together like a time-lapse video. The skin zipped shut. Three seconds. The hand was pristine.
Silas laughed. It was a jagged, manic sound. "Regeneration factor integrated. I'm basically a starfish in a linen suit."
He sheathed the knife and reached into his ruined jacket pocket, pulling out two small glass vials. The liquid inside was neon green and bubbling.
"Phase two," Silas said. "The Cocktail."
Aryan stared at the vial. "The neurotoxin blend. Cobra venom, cyanide, and the blue-ringed octopus stuff."
"Enough to drop a bull elephant," Silas nodded. "Or one very stubborn soldier."
He tossed a vial. Aryan caught it.
"Why?" Aryan asked.
"Because," Silas uncorked his vial. The fumes hit the air—bitter almonds and chemical death. "The jungle didn't kill us. The spirits didn't kill us. We need to know that nothing can kill us."
Aryan looked at the green death in his hand. … He remembered the labs in Varanasi. The cold metal tables. The way his body had learned to eat pain and turn it into fuel.
"Bottoms up," Aryan said.
They drank.
It didn't taste like liquid. It tasted like molten lead.
Aryan dropped to one knee. His throat clamped shut. His heart hammered a frantic, broken rhythm against his ribs. His vision tunneled into a pinprick of black.
Pain spiked. Every organ seized at once.
Then, the biology woke up.
The Vardaan cells swarmed. They didn't just fight the poison; they dissected it. They broke the bonds, tearing the toxins apart and restacking them into proteins.
Aryan retched, spitting a mouthful of black bile onto the stones. Then he inhaled. The air rushed into his lungs, sweet and sharp. His heart steadied. His blood ran hot, flushed with immunity.
He looked up.
Silas was on his back, convulsing. Foam flecked his lips. The stolen regeneration factor was at war with the poison. The white light pulsed violently under his skin, fixing the damage as fast as the toxin could wreck it.
Silas arched his back, a guttural cry tearing from his throat.
Then, he went still.
A second passed. Two.
Silas sat up. He wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. He burped.
"Spicy," Silas croaked. He stood up, swaying like a drunk, then steadied himself. He looked at Aryan. "You didn't die."
"My body learned," Aryan said, standing. He felt lighter. Stronger. The poison had fed him.
"Good." Silas grinned. His teeth were stained green. He slapped the dust from his knees. "Because the next part is dangerous."
Aryan cracked his neck. "What? Another Guardian? A demon lord?"
Silas shook his head. … "Street food."
He pointed toward the distant, hazy lights of Siem Reap.
"There's a curry stall near the old market. The hygiene rating is nonexistent. The cook smokes while he stirs the pot. It makes that poison we just drank look like skim milk."
An hour later.
The plastic chair creaked under Aryan's weight. The roadside stall was dim, lit by a single flickering bulb and the glow of charcoal. Sweat dripped from his nose into the bowl.
He took a spoonful of the red curry. He swallowed. His eyes watered immediatly.
He grimaced, reaching for a napkin that felt like sandpaper.
"You were right," Aryan rasped. "This makes the toxin look like milk."