The world had narrowed down to the face in front of Rudra.
"Really? You don't remember?" The voice was soft. Rudra didn't answer. His mind was travelling a hundred miles an hour. He searched the creature's face, his grip tightening on its collar. "...How?"
He grinned.
Not with his mouth. Not first. The grin started somewhere behind the eyes, and the mouth only caught up a half-second late, stretching too wide, like it was borrowing the shape from a memory rather than doing it itself.
Something in Rudra's spine understood before he did.
"Now, now, Rudra," the voice deepened,dropped an octave too fast — like something had reached into his throat and retuned it. His jaw didn't move quite right on the consonants, like it was still learning the shape of the words. It was a different voice this time. It was the Dragon King's voice. "What have I taught you about asking the right questions?" he asked. "You are not acting as a Dragon should." His tone dropped with the familiar, fond disappointment Rudra was accustomed to hearing from his father.
Ask the right questions, Rudra.
The word questions came out wrong — half in the dead man's rasp, half already sliding into something warmer, older. By the time he finished the sentence, it was entirely his father's voice.
He had heard it so many times over the years, standing by his father's throne, watching him deliver rigid, merciless judgements upon even the most loyal of his followers.
Why?
Ask the right questions.
He had stood with his father at his mother's funeral, wondering how his mother had come to jump to her death.
Why?
Ask. The. Right. Questions.
"How are you doing this?" Rudra shook him. "Those words—how do you know the exact words?"
The man went still. Not frozen — paused, the way a held breath pauses. Then:
"Because," his voice changed again, "we have always been watching you." Another familiar voice. This one belonged to a dead acquaintance.
"After all," it was the voice of Mehta, the one Suba—the deceased Shapeshifter King—had "borrowed" to speak with Rudra last year, "we are sort of family."
"Rudra?" Nayan was calling, voice trembling slightly. But Rudra couldn't look away. His eyes were fixed on the creature in his hands. He gave him—no, it—a shake again. "In the palace?" he asked. "You were in the palace? All this time?"
The creature didn't answer. It bared its teeth in a semi-arched circle; the teeth were sharp, jagged lines—like that of a carnivore. Its lips stretched. It was smiling. Or trying to.
"Long before that," it said. "Before the beginning of everything and nothing."
"What the fu—"
"The thing they made"—the voice changed again, and this time it was something far more horrifying—"raised and cared for, ultimately killed them."
For the first time in a long time, Rudra felt something he didn't understand at first. It made his fingers numb; it made blood rush to his ears and head until he could hear nothing but the buzzing of his own blood inside his skull. He forgot to breathe.
"The thing they loved killed them."
It was Tish's voice, exactly as he remembered it. Not from this timeline but from his past life, when he had kidnapped the Saintess and flown to Alaka and found the home of the long-lost Alakan civilization.
Rudra couldn't talk. But Tish carried on, "Just like you, Rudra."
"The thing that you love will kill you."
Rudra wasn't here anymore. He was back in Alaka. With a pounding headache and gnawing hunger, standing in the temple of the lost god, looking into Tish's glowing eyes as she recited his fate, tears running down her cheeks, sitting amidst hundreds of the deceased, frozen like statues, still dressed in their garments.
He still remembered how he had to grab her elbow and drag her out of that small, cramped room, his teeth chattering while he felt her entire body shaking violently.
It wasn't Rāva. Whatever had possessed Tish that day definitely wasn't Rāva. She had been coughing and retching even though there had been nothing in her stomach for days. And Rudra had to fly away with her temporarily to the Amber Grooves, a place he had found out of sheer luck.
But nobody—nothing—in this life should know what had happened back then. It was a different timeline. Different life. And yet, Rudra was hearing the same damn old words. Same damn prophecy.
"...What?"
The creature moved, so fast, so abrupt, so suicidal, that it took Rudra some time to realise what was happening.
It didn't try to pry itself away; rather, it pulled closer. And with a satisfied growl, it latched its maw around Rudra's neck and bit.
Nayan was screaming.
But Rudra barely felt the pain. He stared in a daze as the creature desperately pulled itself away, with a mouthful of his flesh.
But how did he know?
"How—?" He opened his mouth to ask, but all that came out was blood. Finally, he felt it. He grasped at his throat, uselessly trying to hold the blood back. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think.
He tried to take a sharp inhale and felt a burning sensation in his nose. He looked down at the ground, watching blood crawl out of his nostrils and fall in droplets.
"Rudra!" Nayan was on his crumpled form. He could feel her nails digging into his shoulders. "Rudra! It's okay, you're okay..."
He was not.
"You will heal..."
I know.
"The pain will go away..."
I know. I know, but fuck, it hurts so much...
His vision blackened until all he could do was viciously focus on the sharp sting of Nayan's nails in his shoulders.
Then he felt a warmth.
Blurry-eyed, he looked up. He saw Tish, eyes wide and glassy. She placed her hand over his, where it clutched at the wound in his throat.
"Let me see. Move your hands..."
He couldn't.
But she was... insistent.
She had always been insistent.
He felt her prying his hands away from his throat and placing her own there instead. "You will heal faster with my power," she whispered. And Rudra hated how reasonable she sounded.
Then he felt the warmth, something ancient and divine flowing from her hands into his throat. A low grunt of sheer relief escaped him; the sensation was so strong it almost made him dizzy. He could breathe the cool, crisp air.
He opened his mouth, gulping air fast.
"Slow down," Tish murmured. "In and out, slowly..."
Easy for you to say...
Then he heard it. The undiluted joy of the shapeshifter.
"So much... so much taste," it was saying. "Power... like fire... no, something hotter...!" It let out a howl of laughter.
Rudra looked past Tish's shoulder to stare at something he didn't fully understand.
It looked like him. Or a messed-up version of him. It had amber eyes like his. A face like his. But the body was different. The stomach was bloated. The legs had scales running all the way up to its waist—obsidian with an amber undertone—like Rudra's draconic form.
It looked at Rudra with a feral grin. "This is how it feels to be—!"
The word never finished.
Something underneath its skin lit. Not glowed—lit, veins running gold-orange like cracks in a furnace door, spreading too fast to track, up its throat, behind its eyes, into its teeth. For half a second it looked less like a creature and more like something wearing a very thin skin over the sun.
It didn't scream. It didn't have time to.
The light reached critical all all at once, and the body simply couldn't hold what it had taken. It came apart from the inside out—not torn, not cut, just overwhelmed, the way a vessel gives when there's more poured into it than it was ever built to carry.
Then, all at once, it was over.
Something wet hit Rudra's face.
He didn't understand what, yet.