The moment Dhruv and Meena stepped through the Chronicle, the world inverted.
Not turned upside down, but unraveled, like someone pulling a thread through a tightly woven cloth, and the weave collapsing inwards.
Color drained, sound vanished, and gravity turned sideways.
And then, they were standing in a boundless hall, where time had no meaning.
The Inner Loom.
Thread-like lines of gold and blue curved through space, forming gigantic moving runes, like mantras etched across constellations. Each thread pulsed with lives, millions of them. Lives long past. Lives still to come. Lives that never happened. It was not a place, not really. It was a mechanism. A soul-machine.
You have entered: The Inner Loom.Warning: All thoughts are visible here.Falsity is not permitted.
Dhruv gasped as his memories spilt outward, woven into the air in soft silhouettes. He saw himself at ten, running through Andheri with a sling bag and a cracked smile. At sixteen, trying to stop his father from walking into debt he would never return from. At nineteen, collapsing onto the floor as the loan sharks banged on their door. Then, awakening under a ruined sky.
Meena's memories joined his, her grandmother's hands, warm and brown with turmeric; her own feet running barefoot across wheat fields; the silence of her parents' burning home; the long walk to safety.
A low hum began to build. The threads above them trembled.
A voice, not Ashvatthama's, not the system's, spoke from nowhere and everywhere.
"Child of Echoes. Dreamwalker. You stand within the Loom."
A figure coalesced from light. Not human. Not divine. A Rishi, but not one of the seven. A rogue.
"I am Manduka," the being said, robed in stars. "The Seventy-Eighth Threadkeeper."
"What is this place?" Dhruv asked.
"The truth that underlies all illusions. The code beneath the karma."
Meena stepped forward. "Why have we been brought here?"
"Because your thread touches something ancient. A knot that should not exist."
Manduka raised one hand. A thousand threads shifted, and a glowing node appeared, a black sphere suspended in light. A knot of fate.
"This knot is Ashvatthama. His karma refuses to complete. It spins endlessly, feeding on others. The relic he guards is not his. It never was. It belongs to the lost Rishi: Atri."
A memory flared within Dhruv, the statue of Atri with its eyes scratched out. The unspoken pain. The prophecy.
New Quest Unlocked: Untangle the Lost Thread.Objective: Find Atri's Relic. Cleanse the karma wound.
"But how do we do that?" Meena asked.
Manduka's face grew solemn. "By surviving the Trial of One Thousand Lifetimes."
Without warning, the Loom trembled.
The gold threads surged around them, forming a spiral, then grabbing them.
Phase One: The Warrior's Path
Dhruv stood alone on a battlefield of red dust, a trident in his hand. Before him, a demon taller than a building, burning with rage and injustice. No memory. No Meena. Only war.
He fought until blood covered his skin like paint. Until his arms ached from holding on. Until the demon fell, and he with it.
He died.
And awakened again.
Phase Two: The Saint's Trial
This time, he was a monk. Sitting beneath a waterfall. Centuries passed in moments. He forgot how to speak. Forgot how to move. Until he remembered how to breathe.
And then, the waterfall turned to blood.
He opened his eyes. Meena stood across from him, tears in her eyes. She had just killed someone. Him? Someone else? He didn't know.
"How many lives?" she whispered.
"Enough," he said, though he had no idea what that meant.
Phase Three: The Queen's Dilemma
Now, Meena stood at the center. She was cloaked in peacock-feather silk, a crown of lotus on her brow. Her people stood behind her, broken but hopeful. Before her knelt a captured enemy, one who had razed villages and slaughtered thousands.
Her generals begged for vengeance. Her son, a child of the war, clung to her hand. And yet, her vision showed another thread, one where this enemy became a guardian, not a monster.
"The choice is yours," the Loom whispered. "One thread breaks another."
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them, she held a sword in one hand and mercy in the other.
Phase Four: The Ghost's Pilgrimage
Dhruv walked across endless dunes under a triple sun. No water. No companions. Just the sound of the wind and whispers in the sand.
He was a ghost. He had failed.
Each step hurt, but he continued walking.
At the horizon stood a boy made of light. The same boy who warned him of Ashvatthama.
"You are further than he ever came," the boy said.
"I still feel empty."
"That is the price of carrying echoes."
"Will I ever be whole again?"
"Only if you stop seeking wholeness."
The desert faded.
Back in the Loom, they both awoke, older, not in body, but in soul.
Manduka hovered nearby.
"You have seen but four threads. Nine hundred and ninety-six remain."
Dhruv collapsed to his knees.
"Why are we being punished?"
Manduka tilted his head. "Punished? No. Tempered. To hold the Sovereign Thread, you must bleed truth."
Meena didn't collapse. She looked up.
"Then show me the next one."
Manduka's form flickered.
"You're not ready for more. Not yet. You must first descend into the Ashen Loom. The place where karma knots are born."
The threads parted again.
A stairwell descended downward into pure black.
New Location: Ashen Loom.Hazard Level: Fatal to unbound souls.
Dhruv took a breath. Meena grabbed his hand.
Together, they stepped into the darkness.