✦ HUNT FOR THE AVATAR ✦
Across the burning village, the chaos shifted into something colder—methodical.
Groups of demons descended into the streets like predators organizing a hunt.
Winged creatures swooped low while hulking asuras and demonic horse-backed army blocked escape routes, herding the terrified survivors toward open grounds and broken crossroads. Young men and boys were seized first—dragged screaming from hiding places, torn from their mothers' arms, yanked out from beneath carts and shattered doors.
There was no mercy.
Iron-like claws clamped around wrists and throats. Resistance was met with bone-crushing blows. Those who tried to flee were struck down instantly, their bodies discarded without a second glance.
Soon, dozens were forced to their knees.
A huge winged demon glided above them, its shadow stretching long and suffocating across the ground. The villagers and captive boys were absolutely terrified upon glancing at the source of that huge shadow above them. The winged demon finally descends with a heavy thud on the ground.
One by one, the captives were hauled forward. Rough hands twisted their arms outward, exposing their palms and wrists under the blood-red glow of the eclipsed moon.
The demon leaned close, its molten eyes scanning each trembling hand with feverish urgency.
"Nothing!" He uttered angrily.
A snarl of rage escaped its throat.
The first execution was swift—and horrifying.
A boy no older than sixteen was engulfed in black flame, his scream cutting off mid-cry as his body collapsed into ash with a firebolt. Panic erupted instantly. Some captives begged. Some sobbed. Others froze, unable to comprehend what awaited them.
Still, the inspection continued one by one.
Another wrist. Another rejection.
Another life erased.
"No… no…no...none of them," the demon screamed, its voice vibrating with fury.
"None bear the symbol."
With a violent beat of its wings, it rose into the air and turned toward its legion. Its command rang out like a death sentence.
"Find the boy marked with the serpent symbol. Search every road. Every house. Every shadow. Bring him to me alive. Do whatever it takes to find him."
The asura army immediately bowed in fear and scattered, vanishing into smoke and fire.
Behind them, the ground was littered with bodies—young lives extinguished in seconds.
And remainings were set on fire alive.
And in this madness of chaos, somewhere in the fleeing masses, unaware and unmarked by fate's cruelty just yet, the true target continued to run.
✦ THE ROAD TO THE TEMPLE ✦
Both gopi and arjun finally ran— toward the only sanctuary that remained in a world gone mad.
The road to the temple was no longer a familiar path; it was a gauntlet through a dying villagers. A predatory wind hurled hot ash into their eyes, stinging like needles, while behind them, the crackle of burning thatch sounded like the snapping of dry bones. The path was a graveyard of broken things: splintered carts, discarded heirlooms, and the silent, twisted shapes of those who hadn't been fast enough. Above, the moon—now a bruised, hemorrhaging eye—cast shadows so long and distorted that the very ground seemed to reach up to trip them.
Arjun's lungs felt as though they were filled with liquid fire. "Why?" he wheezed between ragged gasps. "Why did she send us to the temple? Why there?"
Gopi didn't slow his pace, his eyes fixed on the horizon where the temple's silhouette was seen. "The Pandit… he also said that the walls were divine," Gopi managed, his voice thin and sharp with desperation. "He said no Asura, no matter how powerful or mysterical, could ever breach the threshold. Yesterday, it could have been a bedtime story for kids. But Tonight, it's the only truth we have left with!"
Arjun's mind, sharpened by the cold reality of the slaughter he had just witnessed. "Can stone and incense truly stop those… things?" he shouted over the roar of the inferno. "They crush men like beetles, Gopi! How can a wall save us?"
Gopi turned his head for a fraction of a second, with sweat and terror on his face. "If the demons are real enough to kill us," he snapped, "then the legends guarding that temple are real enough to save us! We have nothing else to believe in, Arjun! Nothing! Just run and do whatever is in our hands right now because it's better than doing nothing and still dying like everyone else, but with a regret"
"I wish all of this were just a dream," Arjun muttered, forcing a crooked smile despite the chaos closing in around them. "And any second now, we'd suddenly wake up, realizing it was nothing but a terrible nightmare…"
He paused dramatically, casting a sideways glance at his friend even as the world burned around them.
"…and the only real tragedy would be you waking up to discover you'd wet the bed."
For half a heartbeat, there was a stunned, heavy silence. The sheer absurdity of the joke clashed violently with the life-and-death tension of the jungle.
Gopi just stared at him, letting out a long, exasperated groan. "Aah… Arjun, you are never going to change, are you?"
It wasn't a question born of anger, but a silent, disbelieving acknowledgment of his friend's unique ability to find humor in hell. And somehow—impossibly—the dam broke.
They both burst into a fit of hysterical, breathless laughter. It wasn't because the joke was particularly funny, but rather a manic release born from the terrifying realization of just how small and helpless they really were. Yet, that surreal laughter proved something else: despite the terror and bloodshed, their spirits hadn't quite been snuffed out.
But as the road narrowed into the throat of the village, the air grew heavy and cold. The smoke thickened into a suffocating shroud, turning the world gray and featureless.
And then, the flickering orange light vanished.
A vast, suffocating shadow dropped over the path like a funeral shroud. Their boots skidded on the dirt as their steps faltered, the sudden, absolute darkness more terrifying than the fire they had fled.
✦ THE DEMON ✦
The earth trembled and buckled.
With a sound of a collapsing mountain, a monstrosity dropped from the sky, slamming into the road with enough force to send shards of stone and hot embers gevouring the air. Arjun and Gopi were thrown backward, their boots skidding through the soot as they scrambled for balance.
Arjun's gaze climbed the creature with a sickening, involuntary fascination. He traced the cracked, obsidian-like talons that had shredded the road, up the towering, muscular frame, to a head crowned with jagged, obsidian horns and pointy helmet. Its eyes were twin pits of serpentine fire, glowing with a cold, predatory intelligence. Beneath its leathery skin, veins of dull, rhythmic crimson pulsed.
Its wings unfurled, vast enough to blot out the blood-red sky. A barbed tail scraped against the ground behind it with a sound like a knife on a wetstone.
Then it laughed—slow and deliberate. A sound that crept into their bones.
Arjun's heart hammered. Gopi's legs trembled, locked by terror.
The forest seemed to recoil in its presence; the leaves turned brittle, and the shadows stretched into twisted, agonizing shapes.
The road behind them burns.
The demon's smile widened, revealing rows of teeth like serrated daggers. He loomed over them, its massive frame radiating an oppressive, gravitonic force that seemed to bend the very air. Those glowing red eyes drifted over the boys, sharp and searching, scanning them with the clinical detachment of a butcher at a market.
He was looking for something desperately.
"Look at you," the demon mocked, a low, guttural laugh rattling in its chest as it sneered down at Gopi. "Hair like a mangy ape, a bloated, doughy face, with the terrified expression of a cornered sewer rat. And these trembling legs... There is no life in these pathetic, trembling sticks. You aren't the one I'm looking for. Now crawl aside, you miserable little worm."
Then, with the suddenness of a lightning strike, the demon's gaze snapped upon arjun standing beside gopi.
"But you seems interesting". He pointed his finger towards arjun, His eyes began scanning him from head to toe suddenly locked onto his left wrist.
"The Serpent Symbol." He shrieked upon looking at his wrist.
For a heartbeat, Everything fell silent.
Then a hysterical laugh tore through the forest, ripping violently from the demon's throat. as he raised a clawed finger and pointed directly at Arjun's hand, his laughter thick with madness and triumph.
"Ahh… look at this!" He sneered, his voice a guttural rasp dripped with mockery.
"The universe truly does have a sense of irony."
"The boy I have hunted for decades across every dimension mindlessly suddenly appears before me—without any warning, without any preparation."
Than He looked directly into Arjun's eyes looming his shadow over him "Tell me, kid… do you have any idea what kind of destiny is crawling right behind you?"
Arjun trembled, fear threatening to shatter him. Yet something deep within forced him to stand firm. Gathering the last fragments of his courage, he broke the silence.
"Who are you?" he demanded, his voice shaking but steady enough. "What do you want from us? And what are you looking for?"
He met the demon's gaze directly—fear burning in his chest, but defiance blazing in his eyes.
The demon paused.
Amused.
A slow smirk curved its grotesque face as it stepped closer, the ground crunching beneath its weight.
"Hah. Fascinating," he murmured, "You are the first mortal in this world of weaklings I have encountered in an age who does not simply crumble into a heap of terror at my feet. But then, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I know exactly what hides beneath that fragile skin of yous. the very secret that sets you apart from the rest of all."
Arjun clenched his fists, glaring right back into the creature's eyes.
"One thing is clear, the uglier the face, the more mindless the garbage coming out of it," Arjun snapped, refusing to back down. "Instead of speaking in these worthless riddles, why don't you just say whatever you have to say clearly? Cut the trash talk, you oversized freak!"
The demon's eyes flared, two pits of stoked embers. "I can see the gears of your small mind turning, boy—wondering what this 'mad creature' is babbling about. I understand your frustration, But listen well. And don't panic, because what I am about to reveal will shatter the foundations of your world until nothing remains of the life you knew."
The demon raised a singular, jagged claw, pointing once more to the mark on Arjun's wrist. "That symbol is no mere birthmark.
Anyone who bears that mark is no common man." The demon leaned in.
"He is an Avatar."
The words struck like thunder.
Both boys stared at each other, stunned—confusion and disbelief etched across their faces. The meaning refused to settle in their minds.
"I had warned you before boy, that this revelation would leave you in utter disbelief" he passed a grin smile at them.
And before either of them could speak, the demon lunged forward, stretching its clawed hand toward Arjun. The air thickened instantly, heavy and suffocating.
The demon's claw pressed against Arjun's symbol on his hand.
As his claw pressed, the serpent symbol glowed; it ignited. A brilliant, blinding cobalt-blue flame erupted from Arjun's skin, swallowing him in a pillar of celestial fire. His eyes flared wide, transformed into twin beacons of that same terrifying, radiant light.
A violent shockwave of raw, unfiltered energy tore outward with the force of a collapsing star. Trees were snapped like dry twigs, and the very soil was stripped from the earth. The demon—was hurled backward like a broken ragdoll, crashing through the dense branches before slamming into the jungle floor with a sickening thud. It let out a guttural groan of agony, half of its body burnedand smoked from the divine contact.
Gopi could only stare, though he wasn't harmed in the explosion, his jaw hanging slack, his mind reeling. Arjun stood in the center of the scorched clearing, a silent sentinel wrapped in fading embers, his eyes still shimmering with a dying blue light.
"Arjun!" Gopi finally shrieked, his voice a mix of primal terror and religious awe. "What in the gods' names was that?
Arjun didnt answer his question or reacted upon hearing, he stood motionless, like a hollow vessel.
"Hey! Speak to me!" Gopi scrambled toward him, panic surging as he realized Arjun's gaze was vacant. "Are you.. are you alright, are you even in there?"
Arjun's eyelids fluttered finally. The cobalt glow vanished as quickly as it had arrived. He gasped, his knees buckling as he surged back into consciousness.
"Gopi…" he wheezed, clutching his chest. "What… what just happened?"
Gopi gaped at him, his hands waving frantically at the smoking crater where the demon had been. "What happened?! You just blasted a five-meter demon across the jungle with blue fire, you were carrying almost a sun like lighting bolt inside you? and you're asking me for the details?!"
Arjun shook his head, dazed and shivering as the adrenaline began to sour in his veins. "I swear to you… I felt nothing but a strange warm heat over my body."
He looked toward the shadow in the trees where the beast lay groaning. "Well, if Whatever you said is perhaps true, than We have to leave this place. Now. Before that thing remembers how to stand again."
Gopi didn't need a second invitation. Both of them immediately turned backwards and dived into the dense, tangled maw of the jungle in front of them, abandoning the road and vanishing into the safety of the shifting shadows.
✦ THE HUNT BEGINS ✦
High above the burning forest, the crimson clouds still churned violently around the eclipsed moon. From that blood-stained sky, two winged silhouettes circled like carrion birds drawn to slaughter.
They felt the presence of a sudden surge of high energy and the anonymous power.
And saw a coil of smoke rising from below the ground.
With a thunderous beat of leathery wings, the two demons descended rapidly, reaching towards the source, cutting through the smoke and ash until they reached the epicenter of the blast. The forest floor below was scorched black, trees snapped like broken bones, the earth torn open as if struck by divine wrath.
At the center of the devastation lay their leader.
The once-dominant demon now writhed inside a smoldering crater, its body half-burnt, flesh cracked and blackened, crimson energy leaking from its wounds like molten lava. Smoke rose from its charred form as it snarled in pain, claws digging furiously into the soil.
Both the flying demons touched down beside their fallen commander, they knelt instinctively, their heads bowed.
Unadultured Rage, pure and corrosive, burned in the leader's eyes—a volatile mixture of agony and absolute disbelief.
"That power…" the demon hissed, its voice a jagged rasp that shook with a terrifying blend of fury and starved hunger. "There is no more room for doubt. The scent is unmistakable."
It struggled to heave its charred torso upward, the scorched obsidian of its skin flaking away like burnt parchment. His glowing eyes blazed with a renewed, fanatical obsession filled with rage.
"Go," He snarled, spitting a mixture of black blood and hot ash onto the ruined earth.
He pointed a trembling, taloned finger toward the lightless depths of the trees and bushes.
"Search every shadow. Sift through the dirt of this wretched jungle. Those two boys… they cannot be allowed to reach the safety of that sanctuary. The Avatar must not escape. And whatever you do, do not dare return to me empty-handed. Otherwise, I won't hesitate to amputate your limbs and burn you alive, just like those poor villagers."
His voice dropped into a venomous whisper "Bring them to me alive. I want to see the light break in those blue eyes myself."
The frightened demons offered a final, low bow in fear, before launching themselves skyward. The snap of their wings sliced through the stagnant air like the crack of a whip. They vanished into the charcoal clouds, spreading out in a wide, lethal arc to encircle the forest.
The hunt had truly begun.
...