The world above was quiet now.
A silence that felt wrong — the kind that lingered after something colossal had fallen.
Below the gutted husk of Shambhala, three figures breathed the sour air of the underground. The tunnels were alive with the low hum of broken Aether conduits — rivers of dull white light trickling through cracked glass veins, dripping their dying glow into the puddles that pooled beneath their boots. The once radiant underbelly of the floating city was nothing more than a mausoleum of fractured machinery and fading echoes.
Aryan sat with his back against the rusted frame of a fallen archway, his fingers trembling around a shard of glass still pulsing faintly with energy. He stared at it as though it might give him an answer. His reflection in the shard was hollow — blood crusting on his cheek, his eyes carrying the weight of something far heavier than exhaustion.
Abhi was pacing. His coat — once white — was blackened by soot and ash, his gauntlet sputtering sparks whenever it tried to stabilize the Aether around him. Every movement was jagged, like he was trying to shake the loss off his skin.
"Do you even realize what just happened?" he muttered, voice sharp but cracking beneath it. "That—thing—wasn't even real. A damn projection. We fought a mirage and still lost."
Ahan didn't reply. He was slumped against a pillar, breath shallow, eyes barely open. His right arm was wrapped in an emergency field-band of Aether light, the glow flickering weakly as if afraid to stay lit. Blood had seeped past the seal, turning the glow into a marbled hue of red and white. The youngest of them, but tonight, he looked the oldest — drained, ghostlike.
Aryan's hand tightened around the glass shard until it cracked in his palm. "We lost Siddharth to a shadow," he said softly. "A fake."
"Don't—" Abhi snapped, his voice echoing off the steel walls. "Don't say his name like that."
But Aryan continued, his tone distant, unflinching. "He believed that if he went first, he could hold them off. That if we failed, we'd still have time to escape. He believed in something that wasn't even there."
The memory of that moment flickered across their minds — Siddharth standing alone against the obsidian glare of the Overlord's echo, the world collapsing into light around him. His last pulse had ripped the air apart. His scream had been lost in the storm.
Ahan's voice trembled when it finally came. "Then why… why did we feel it? That pressure, that power — it was real. Whatever we fought, it wasn't just light."
Abhi slammed his fist into the wall. "Real or not, it beat us. And now we're hiding in the dirt like rats."
The conduits shivered overhead — a tremor passing through the metallic bones of the structure. Dust rained down in slow, glittering streams. Aryan looked up at the cracks spreading across the ceiling like veins. "Maybe the dirt's all that's left for us."
Abhi turned to him, fury in his eyes. "You're giving up now? After everything?"
Aryan's gaze met his — cold, tired, but not broken. "You call it giving up. I call it understanding where we stand. Siddharth's gone. We're not ready."
Ahan tried to sit up, wincing as the light on his arm sputtered. "Then we get ready," he said through clenched teeth. "We rebuild. That's what he would've wanted."
The silence that followed was thick — filled only by the hum of dying Aether. Somewhere above them, the floating city still flickered faintly in the clouds, its golden towers cracked, its streets littered with the debris of a war no one dared to speak of. The people who once worshiped the Overlord's light were gone — or worse, still kneeling.
Abhi stopped pacing. "Do you think he's dead?"
It was a whisper, but it hit harder than any scream.
Neither of them answered.
Aryan exhaled slowly. The Aether in his veins responded — a faint shimmer beneath his skin, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat. He lifted his hand, watching as the glow seeped through the dried blood. For a moment, it almost looked beautiful — light fighting through the crimson. "If he isn't," Aryan said finally, "then this isn't over."
Ahan's eyes flicked toward him. "You think he's still out there?"
Aryan's fingers clenched, the light fading back into him. "I think death doesn't come easy to people like him. Or to monsters like the ones he fought."
The air shifted.
The low hum of the conduits deepened — not mechanical, but something else. A pulse. A heartbeat that didn't belong to any of them.
Abhi turned sharply, scanning the darkness beyond the collapsed corridor. "Did you feel that?"
Ahan was already on edge, his good hand reaching instinctively for the remnants of his weapon — a fractured Aether-blade that barely held shape. "It's probably another tremor—"
"No," Aryan interrupted, standing now. His senses sharpened, the residue of Aether in the air whispering warnings through his blood. "That's not the city."
Then they heard it.
A laugh.
Soft at first — like a memory — then growing deeper, distorted, spreading through the hollow tunnels like a ripple through water.
The light from the conduits began to flicker. Each pulse of illumination dimmed, swallowed by the shadows gathering near the corridor's end. Dust swirled, thick and heavy, until the shape began to emerge — not fully formed, but enough to freeze them in place.
Two eyes.
Black, endless, reflecting no light — only hunger.
The laugh grew sharper, almost amused.
Abhi stepped forward instinctively, his weapon flaring to life with a sputter of unstable Aether. "No," he whispered. "That's impossible."
Aryan didn't move. His jaw tightened, his pulse steady. "It's him."
Ahan's voice cracked, disbelief spilling through. "But—he died. He—he was gone."
The darkness breathed. The sound of footsteps — slow, deliberate — echoed closer, each step sending ripples through the dust. And then the voice came, deep and rasped, dragging the weight of ashes behind every word.
"Did you really think… something like me could die so easily?"
The sound twisted into laughter again, this time clear — rich with menace and delight.
The three of them stood motionless, every instinct screaming, every muscle coiled. The tunnels seemed to hold their breath.
And in that fragile stillness, the black eyes flared, and the Aether lights died one by one — plunging the ruins into complete, devouring dark.