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Chapter 10 - Chapter 10 – The Journey Home

No one in the team said goodbye to the Mandala.

They left like thieves who had awakened an ancient god—silent, hurried, carrying the fear that if they slowed even a heartbeat, the world behind them would collapse.

It was still dark when they began to move.

The wind across the Himalayas was no longer ordinary wind. It didn't blow in steady currents but twisted in thin layers, sweeping low across the ground like invisible hands. The snow beneath their boots made no crisp sound. It lay unnaturally mute, as though the air itself had been drained from it.

Duong Minh was the last to climb into the vehicle. He turned once to look back at the valley where the Mandala had stood. The carved circle was gone. The ancient patterns were gone. Only a distorted hollow remained, buried beneath stone and ice.

Yet something in his intuition stirred.

That place hadn't been buried. It had been concealed.

"Let's go." Anika's voice was hoarse as she started the engine.

The vehicle shuddered forward, wheels grinding through dense slush and mud. No one looked back again.

Quoc Trung lay in the rear compartment. His body had been wrapped in thermal layers and isolation fabric, secured carefully against any jolt. But what mattered most wasn't the corpse. It was the small metal case resting beside him.

The box wasn't large—no bigger than a tool kit—but inside it was the reason they were still alive: the core soul fragment of Quoc Trung.

Duong Minh sat close, both hands resting on the lid. Not to guard it physically, but to anchor it.

In his mind, Lyra worked without pause.

"The fragment remains stable at low integrity. Soul oscillation is reacting to the ambient spiritual field. If intensity rises another twelve percent, structural cracking will begin."

Duong Minh swallowed. "How long until it's safe?"

"Only once we leave the Mandala's influence entirely. But the range of influence is expanding."

The words tightened his chest.

Less than an hour after leaving the valley, the first anomalies appeared.

A flock of snowbirds flew over the road. Midair, they stopped. As if frozen. Then they dropped all at once, their bodies striking the ground with dull, brittle sounds.

Anika slammed the brakes. "What the hell?"

Venkatesh rushed out to examine them. No wounds. No impact trauma. Only one shared feature: every pupil was fully dilated, as though each had witnessed something it was never meant to see.

Anika shivered and stepped back.

"I don't want to stay here."

Venkatesh lifted one of the birds, turning it over. Its beak remained slightly open, as if it had tried to cry out.

"They died instantly. No time to react. Like the brain just... shut down."

Duong Minh looked into the dark, widened pupil.

For a second, he saw not the sky reflected there, but something else. A blurred shape. Twisted. Not of this world.

He recoiled, stepping back.

"Don't... don't look into their eyes."

"What?" Venkatesh turned sharply.

"There's something inside. The last thing they saw."

Lyra confirmed quietly in his mind.

"The spiritual field imprinted upon the retina. This is a trace of what's observing you."

They exchanged glances, then returned to the vehicle without touching another bird.

They continued on. But as they moved farther from the Mandala, the anomalies didn't diminish. They intensified.

In a small roadside village, a well began to boil silently. Steam rose in a perfect spiral, geometric and precise, as though drawn by compass. A man bent to look, then stood frozen for three full minutes before collapsing, whispering syllables no one understood.

Trees along the roadside tilted slowly in a single direction. Toward the Mandala. As if the entire mountain range were bowing.

Near midday, Venkatesh shouted suddenly. "Something's following us!"

He pointed at the geological sensor display. A low, steady wave moved parallel to their vehicle. Not an earthquake. Not an aftershock.

"It's moving." His voice was strained. "Same speed as us."

Anika pressed harder on the accelerator. The engine roared as they raced along the narrow mountain road, cliffs on one side, abyss on the other. But the wave held its distance.

Lyra remained silent for a long time.

Then she spoke, and the words turned Duong Minh's blood cold.

"It's not pursuing you. It's the expanding boundary of the spiritual field. You're running at the same speed as it."

Which meant the entire region was being consumed.

They were only fast enough not to be crushed yet.

The crisis peaked as they crossed an old suspension bridge. The structure shook violently when they reached its midpoint. Steel cables shrieked under strain. Cold wind swept across, carrying glittering motes of spiritual energy like silver dust.

Giang, still weak from the battle, suddenly clutched his head and screamed.

"I... I hear something calling!"

He turned toward the Mandala, eyes bloodshot.

"Someone's calling me back!"

Duong Minh lunged forward and grabbed his shoulders.

"Giang! Look at me! Don't listen!"

Lyra intervened at once, sending a stabilizing pulse into Giang's brain. He collapsed, gasping.

"The spiritual field is activating deep memory and unresolved intent." Lyra spoke rapidly. "Quoc Trung is a strong anchor point. Something's guiding the field along that anchor. That makes all of you more vulnerable."

The realization struck like a hammer.

They weren't only carrying Quoc Trung.

His remaining existence was drawing the world closer to the Mandala.

As they reached the far end of the bridge, an explosion sounded behind them. A section of space seemed to collapse inward, as if a fragment of reality had been torn away. The road they had crossed simply vanished.

Anika brought the vehicle to a halt, breathing hard.

"We can't go back."

Duong Minh looked down at the metal case.

"Lyra." His voice was rough. "If we keep carrying this fragment, what happens?"

Silence.

Then Lyra answered slowly, weighing every word.

"If you abandon it, Quoc Trung will die a second time. If you carry it, you'll remain targets of the spiritual current."

Duong Minh closed his eyes. Quoc Trung had sacrificed himself so they could live. And now the remnant of him endangered them all.

"We keep it." Duong Minh's voice was firm. "There's no other choice."

No one argued.

When night fell, they finally left the high mountain zone.

But the spiritual field didn't fade.

Faint streaks of light rippled across the sky, like distorted auroras in a region that had never known them. Radio signals fractured into static. Compass needles turned sluggishly.

Duong Minh leaned back against the vehicle, exhausted.

Inside his mind, Lyra continued working, though her voice had grown softer.

"The Mandala has opened. This is only the first aftershock."

He looked down at the metal case.

"We're taking you home." Duong Minh whispered. "No matter the cost."

The vehicle continued rolling through the night.

Behind them, the old world was cracking.

Ahead, no one knew what awaited.

But one thing was certain.

The journey home had only just begun.

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