The cramped Hong Kong apartment became a crucible. Days blurred into nights marked by meditation, exhaustion, and escalating fear. They took turns guarding the door and retreating into themselves, guided by the fragmented texts and the obsidian mirror's unsettling energy.
aryan sat cross-legged, the mirror before him. He focused inward, trying to perceive the "atoms, but not atoms." Instead, he saw patterns. Vast, intricate webs of cause and effect, stretching into possible futures. He saw Vedant finding them, saw Rohan fully petrified, saw Nadia dissolving into stolen memories, saw Mei lost forever in her nightmares. He saw threads of probability – a slight nudge here, a distraction there – that could alter these outcomes. Atman's Sight. But as he focused, the emotional weight of those futures faded. The people became variables, the outcomes mere data points. He felt a chilling clarity, a cold detachment settling over him like a shroud. He pulled back, gasping, the echo of that emptiness terrifying him more than Vedant.
Nadia tried to focus on her "core." But all she found was a hollow space filled with flickering images – faces of people she'd conned, moments of stolen intimacy, skills plucked from others. There was no "Nadia," only a mosaic of echoes. She tried to grasp something herself – a childhood memory, a genuine emotion. All she felt was a profound, aching emptiness. In frustration, she lashed out with her mind, instinctively reaching out to Rohan, who was meditating nearby. For a split second, she felt his burning determination, his deep-seated fear of losing his humanity. It wasn't a memory; it was a raw, present emotion. Echo Touch. She recoiled, overwhelmed by the intensity of his feeling compared to her own void. The cost was immediate – a wave of disorientation, a fleeting moment where she forgot her own name.
Rohan focused on his body, on the spreading stone. He remembered the pain of injuries past, the warmth of human touch, the rage that fueled his fire. He pushed his focus inward, willing the Vajra Body to manifest consciously. He felt his skin tighten, harden, become unyielding. The patch on his chest spread, crawling up his neck and down his arm. He felt stronger, invulnerable. But as the stone spread, the sensations dulled. The ache in his joints vanished. The memory of sunlight on his skin faded. He felt… less. He focused harder, trying to push back the stone, to feel again. It was like trying to bend solid rock. Panic flared. He forced the transformation to recede, gasping, leaving him trembling and profoundly aware of the humanity slipping through his fingers.
Mei closed her eyes, trying to confront her nightmares. Instead of finding peace, she plunged deeper into the chaos. She saw Vedant's cold eyes, felt his invasive presence in her mind. She saw the shadow serpent from her paintings, coiling around her, whispering Vedant's words: Little Sister. Fear threatened to consume her. Then, an image flashed – the team, battered but standing together after Cairo. Aryan's focused gaze, Nadia's sharp command, Rohan's solid presence. She clung to that image, that feeling of not being alone. She focused on it, pouring her will into it. The air in the room shimmered. A faint, translucent image of the team, locked in a defensive stance, flickered into existence near the ceiling for a few seconds before dissolving. Omen Walk – Projection. Mei slumped forward, drained but momentarily free of the serpent's grip. She looked at her hands, then at her friends, a flicker of hope warring with exhaustion in her eyes.
They gathered around the table, raw and shaken. Each had touched the power within, each had felt its devastating cost. They had Soul Rites now, flickering and unstable, but real. And they knew, with chilling certainty, that Vedant had felt their awakenings too. The game had changed irrevocably.