1. Echoes in the Constellations
The night sky had always felt like a backdrop a silent canvas to the world below. But since Arjun returned from the Timekeeper's Temple, the stars looked back.
The fifth ring on the Core, now glowing violet, pulsed in rhythm with certain constellations. Whenever he looked at the night sky, a cluster above the eastern horizon shimmered more brightly than the rest seven stars, forming what looked like an outstretched hand.
Old Man Madhavan's diary had mentioned it once: "When the heavens stretch their palm, Ramapuram must answer."
What were they asking?
2. The Observatory on Forgotten Hill
Valli and Dheeraj joined Arjun on a moonless night to climb Kaalgiri Hill, a weathered mound cloaked in mist. Local children feared it, saying it had once "swallowed" a shooting star and cursed the land.
Halfway up, the fog thickened into a wall.
"Do you see that?" Valli pointed.
The silhouette of a dome-shaped building rose from the hilltop an ancient observatory, stone pillars cracked by age, and its central telescope turned downward like a mourning elder.
A slab above the entrance read:
"To record what has passed, and to warn what may return."
3. Celestial Archives
Inside, the observatory pulsed with strange energy. Dust floated like constellations. The telescope wasn't for viewing stars it was aimed inward, at a star map etched on the floor. Concentric circles, carved with symbols older than Sanskrit, radiated outward from a central sigil the symbol now etched into the Core.
The Core trembled in Arjun's hand.
Then… the floor lit up.
Beams of violet light traced the carvings and formed a projection in mid-air a holographic star map that hovered above them. It rotated slowly, showing past skies from millennia ago, and future constellations that hadn't formed yet.
"This is… memory," whispered Valli. "The sky remembers."
4. Message from the Ancients
A flicker appeared in the projection a coded star-path, leading to a constellation that didn't exist in today's night sky. It was titled in a forgotten script:
"Taaraya Manthan" The Star of the Reckoning.
When Arjun placed the Core into a central socket on the floor, the observatory came to life. Walls shifted. Panels opened, revealing celestial scrolls and strange orbs that rotated on their own.
From one of the scrolls, a voice echoed not spoken, but felt in their bones:
"A rift shall open when seven stars align.
Memory will become prophecy.
And Time… shall become a wound."
Valli turned pale. "The Taaraya Manthan is not just a place in the sky. It's a moment. A celestial event."
5. The Rift of Memory
The Core suddenly pulsed violently. Arjun fell to the ground. He was pulled into a vision.
He stood at the observatory but it was burning. The sky above had split open , like glass cracking. From that rift, tendrils of dark starlight poured down, turning people into shadows of themselves trapped between past and present.
The Core floated above the temple, spinning out of control.
A voice screamed in his ear:
"Seal the Rift before the Seventh Dawn!"
He gasped awake, drenched in sweat.
"How many days until the Seventh Dawn ?" Arjun asked.
Dheeraj looked at the map again. "If the pattern holds… six remain."
6. Decoding the Heavenly Codex
Back at the village, they gathered every astrological chart, folk tale, and astronomical record from Madhavan's collection.
Ammukutty's chants held clues in their rhythm.
Even ancient festival songs Valli remembered had hidden verses:
"When Saptarishi stand still, and Ardra sings,
Light must be painted upon the wings."
They realized the star event the Taaraya Manthan was a reverse eclipse. Instead of darkness overtaking light, light would bleed into void through a crack in space.
The only thing that could prevent it ? Aligning the Core with the forgotten star using a device known only as The Mirror of Ethers.
But it was lost.
7. The Mirror Beneath the Sky Pond
Legends whispered of a Sky Pond, whose waters reflected not one's face—but their fate.
It lay hidden in the Eastern woodlands, where mist never lifted.
Arjun and Valli ventured there, crossing bridges of moonlight and following a trail of blue fireflies that appeared only after chanting a verse Ammukutty taught them.
In the center of the pond stood a stone lotus, floating. Inside it lay a concave mirror, crafted from starmetal.
When Arjun held the Core against it, the pond reflected not him but seven versions of himself from past, possible futures, and one cloaked in shadow.
The mirror whispered, "Only the true self may realign the stars."
He took it.
8. Countdown
Back at the observatory, the mirror was installed into the telescope.
They calculated the path of each of the seven celestial bodies that would align. One, Drakshatra , hadn't been visible for thousands of years but Valli's chant called it forth.
Each night, the Core synchronized a ring with a constellation.
1…
2…
3…
By the fifth night, the Core had become weightless.
Time around it began to ripple.
9. The Betrayer Returns
On the Sixth Dawn, a shadow entered Ramapuram.
The Betrayer, no longer just man or ash he had become *a fracture in time itself. Where he stepped, people froze mid-breath, birds hung in the sky unmoving.
"You have stolen the stars," he growled, "and yet you do not understand their debt."
He reached for the Core but the mirror blinded him.
Valli stood in front of Arjun. "You may fracture time, but you don't own it."
The Betrayer whispered, "Then I'll end it."
He vanished into the observatory.
10. The Seventh Alignment
The Seventh Dawn arrived.
The sky burned violet.
Constellations spun wildly.
Arjun ascended the telescope platform. The mirror began to rotate.
But inside, the Betrayer had sabotaged the gears the telescope wouldn't align.
Dheeraj climbed the gears manually, holding them in place with his bare arms as they tore.
"Now, Arjun!" he screamed.
Arjun placed the Core into the mirror's heart.
The Core sent a beam of light through the telescope into the heavens realigning the constellation of Taaraya Manthan.
The crack in the sky began to seal.
The Rift faded.
11. Aftermath and a New Ring
The stars settled.
The violet ring of Time now fully glowed.
But something strange happened.
A sixth ring began to shimmer transparent, almost invisible.
It wasn't made of any element.
Valli whispered, "It feels like… Memory."
The Core had begun to awaken a sixth force neither physical nor temporal, but collective remembrance.
Something ancient stirred across the land.
And far away, in a chamber buried beneath Ramapuram's soil, a mechanical heartbeat resumed for the first time in ten thousand years.