THE ANCIENT FORBIDDEN POWERSChapter 1 — The Soul-Code
Morning in Ajmer felt normal. Too normal. Krishna sat in the last row of his classroom, tapping a pen against his notebook while sunlight filtered through dusty windows. Ceiling fans spun lazily above students half-listening to a lecture about algebra. His friend Arjun leaned over and whispered, "Bro, you studied?" Krishna shrugged. "I'll survive." Riya turned back from the seat ahead of them. "You always say that and still get higher marks." "Skill issue," Krishna replied with a faint smile, and the three of them laughed quietly. From the outside, Krishna looked like any other fifteen-year-old—uniform slightly wrinkled, messy hair, tired eyes from staying up too late. Normal.
During lunch they sat on the concrete steps behind the school. Someone played music through a cheap speaker. Someone else argued loudly about cricket scores. The smell of samosas mixed with dust and afternoon heat. For a brief moment life felt simple. Then a group of older boys walked past. One of them stopped, glanced at Krishna's open notebook, and casually picked it up.
"Topper notes?" he said, flipping through pages. His friends laughed.
Arjun stiffened. "Bhai, give it back."
The boy ignored him and held the notebook just out of reach. "What happens if I don't?" He tapped a pen against Krishna's forehead—slow, mocking. Something inside Krishna vibrated. A low hum built deep in his bones. The metal railing beside him trembled almost imperceptibly.
His pulse spiked. For one terrifying second, he imagined the boy's arm bending in ways it shouldn't. Power gathered—hungry, instinctive.
He clenched his fists and forced it down.
Then the humming exploded through him like a punch to the chest.
The world tilted. Sound collapsed inward. And suddenly he wasn't in the schoolyard anymore.
Smoke. Ash. Firelight. Seven-year-old Krishna stood in the Mahakaleshwar cremation grounds in Ujjain, pulled away from his parents by a sound that lived inside his bones. A narrow alcove opened ahead. Twelve Aghoris waited in silence, their bodies smeared white with ash, eyes unmoving. A sand mandala pulsed between them like a living heart. Krishna stepped forward. His foot touched the sand and reality shattered. Cold tore through him. Geometry folded. Symbols burned into his mind. Power carved itself into his body like ancient code being rewritten. The Ashta Siddhis were no longer myths. They became instincts, laws etched into nerve and breath. He collapsed into ash, trembling.
One Aghori—the eldest—leaned close. Unlike the others, his eyes were calm, human, dangerously aware. He placed a hand on Krishna's head. "Listen carefully, child," the monk said softly. "These powers are not a gift. They are a burden." Krishna struggled to breathe. "Hide them. Never show this world what you truly are. The world burns what it cannot understand." The monk's hand glowed faintly. Warmth spread through Krishna's broken body, knitting pain into silence. "Remember my face," the Aghori whispered. "I will come only when you are lost… or when you are too broken to stand." Smoke swallowed the scene. Darkness closed in.
Krishna gasped and returned to Ajmer. Arjun shook his shoulder. "Bro? You zoned out hard." "I'm fine," Krishna said quickly, though the humming still lived in his skull. The rest of the day felt wrong. The air buzzed. Electric wires outside his house sounded like whispers when night fell. He couldn't ignore it anymore. Sitting on his bed, he closed his eyes and let the darkness open.
The world unfolded inside his mind—cities glowing like constellations, hidden crimes pulsing beneath ordinary streets, silent wars fought in shadows no one else could see. Then, deep beneath the Himalayas, something black and enormous revealed itself under endless snow. Pain stabbed behind his eyes. The hum returned—stronger, unstable—pulling instead of guiding. The faint smell of samosas still clung to his breath from lunch, absurdly warm against the cold pressure building in his skull. Distance resisted him. Shrinking changed scale—not location. Crossing continents required force, precision, and risk.
He didn't decide to go.
The power slipped.
He shrank—smaller, smaller—control fracturing as pressure crushed his lungs. The mattress vanished before he moved. Gravity twisted sideways. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. The taste of copper filled his mouth. Space fractured like glass under stress. His brain struggled to map distance it was never built to understand—neurons firing too fast, capillaries stretching under impossible signals. Cold ripped through his nerves—and then metal slammed beneath his feet.
Krishna didn't arrive cleanly. He staggered into existence inside a facility buried deep beneath the Himalayas, barely stable, breath burning like frozen knives in his lungs. The sterile chemical air clashed violently with the lingering memory of fried dough and dust still trapped in his senses. Cold metal floors. Sterile white lights. No alarms. No chaos. Everything looked normal. A digital sign flickered quietly on the wall: PROJECT SUNYATA. Disoriented and terrified of being seen, he slipped into air vents and cable shafts, hiding more than infiltrating, drifting deeper as the air grew heavier. Then he reached the main chamber and stopped breathing.
Pods lined the walls—hundreds of glass cylinders filled with pale liquid. Children. Adults. Men and women wired into machines. A constant low hum filled the room, vibrating through bone more than through ears. The air smelled sharp and chemical, antiseptic mixed with burned plastic. Some subjects floated unconscious while others trained under strict supervision. A boy lifted steel blocks without touching them. A woman bent light around herself and vanished for seconds. A girl summoned crawling bio-organisms that moved like living weapons. One child projected images onto massive screens—cities, conversations, memories—telepathy turned into surveillance. And in the corner a silent boy watched everything. Whenever someone used power, he copied it instantly. The Mimicer.
Krishna's stomach dropped. One small girl clutched the inside of her pod, eyes wide—same age as Riya's little cousin. Same terrified expression. Same helpless tapping on glass. Heat surged into his chest—anger, guilt, something deeper. He was free. They weren't. His throat tightened. "This isn't training," he whispered to himself. "It's a prison."
His focus broke. Pain detonated inside his skull. His body began growing again—small, medium, full size—out of control. His fist struck a reinforced wall. The wall didn't move. Skin split open across his knuckles. The smell of hot copper flooded his nose. Vision blurred, edges dissolving into white static as overloaded neurons fired uncontrollably, trying to interpret collapsing dimensions. Pressure built behind his eyes—tiny vessels stretching beyond tolerance—until blood spilled down his cheeks, warm and thick. Something tore at the back of his skull where nerves burned hottest—wet warmth running down his neck. He staggered, half-blind, barely conscious.
High above, Dr. Adrian Vane stood behind dark glass surrounded by glowing monitors. No smile. No speech. Just a long, slow exhale—like a scientist who had waited decades for proof that a theory was real. He leaned closer to the screen, eyes sharpening, fingers hovering above controls before calmly activating the alarm.
A red light blinked. Alarm sirens screamed across the facility. Scientists shouted. Guards rushed in from multiple corridors. Pod systems slammed into emergency lockdown. Some adult subjects broke free in panic. One telekinetic slammed a steel door by accident; glass cracked and liquid spilled across the floor. Children cried. Others stood perfectly still, obedient and brainwashed, waiting for commands. Chaos—real chaos—spread through the chamber.
Krishna barely understood where he was. Instinct—not skill—took over. He shrank violently, bones grinding inward to survive the pressure, crawled blindly into a vent, and forced one desperate spatial jump. Pain tore through him like electric fire. Vision burned white. And he was gone.
Back home.
Krishna collapsed onto his bedroom floor, choking on the metallic taste in his throat, blood running from both eyes, hands shaking uncontrollably. His skull throbbed like it had been cracked open from the inside—brain still trying to process distances that didn't exist anymore. He wiped the blood away like it meant nothing. Too tired to think. Too weak to stand. He fell asleep in his clothes.
Far away, Dr. Vane replayed the final footage—blood, power, fear, potential—and silently initiated a global data transfer. Krishna's face, biometrics, and energy signature spread across encrypted networks. The hunt began before the blood on Krishna's hands had dried. And far older than any machine, the world itself began to move.
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