Ashhollow Inn held its breath as the sun dipped behind smoke-colored clouds. Aash stirred in the cot, limbs stiff, skin still raw beneath the bandages that veiled the mark on his back. The scent of ash lingered in his nostrils — not from the inn's fire, but from something deeper. His eyes fluttered open to the wooden ceiling, beams cracked and stained with age.
"How… did I get here?" he croaked, the words sticking to his tongue like soot.
From across the room, Veer stirred. He was tending to the fire, coaxing flame from damp wood. He didn't look at Aash right away. "You didn't return by nightfall," Veer muttered. "So I went looking."
"You went to the temple?" Aash asked, slowly sitting up.
"I went to what was left of it," Veer replied, voice flat. "Found you beside a broken basin and a statue that looked like it had been weeping blood. You were glowing. Faintly. Like a coal that refused to die."
Aash blinked, struggling to believe it. "I survived?"
"That's the part that surprised me."
Veer finally turned, expression unreadable, his scar catching the firelight. "Most people go in there to speak to the dead. You brought something back." His eyes lingered on the faint shimmer on Aash's brow — the dormant Third Eye mark, pulsing gently beneath the skin.
Without another word, Veer turned and left the room, leaving Aash alone in silence.
The inn creaked softly, wood shifting as if echoing something ancient. Aash sat still, trying to breathe evenly, but his thoughts clawed at his skull. Fragments of the temple returned like blades: Maahi's tear-streaked face trapped beneath a red chain of burning syllables. His own reflection in the basin — older, hollow, laughing in flame. The Third Eye opening. Power beyond control.
And then something stranger. A flicker. A vision of five figures cloaked in ash-colored robes, standing in mist, each marked with runes he couldn't read. Their eyes glowed behind masks. The memory wasn't full — not clear — but it burned enough to feel real.
They would come. He didn't know when. But they would.
Later that evening, when Veer returned, Aash met him with firm resolve.
"I want to learn to fight," he said.
Veer didn't answer right away. He poured a drink into a wooden cup, placed it on the table, and folded his arms. "What for? Another vision?"
"No," Aash said quickly. "When I first came into the city, three men tried to rob me. I got lucky. Next time… I won't."
It was a half-truth. But it was enough.
Veer studied him for a long moment, then sighed. "Then we begin at dawn."
The next fourteen days passed like ritual.
Ashhollow Inn became a crucible, and Aash, its ember.
Veer trained him at the edge of the city and on the cracked stone of the inn's open courtyard. It started with breath — always breath. Inhale to ground the fire. Exhale to move. He made Aash walk barefoot across cold stones, balance along ruined beams, and strike with a wooden spear carved to echo the shape of a Trishul. Every motion came with meaning. Every pause had purpose.
Veer's instructions were sparse but sharp. "Don't aim to kill. Aim to see. Fire reveals what lies beneath."
Physical training bled into mental discipline. Veer drew ash circles on the ground each night, seating Aash within them. That's where the voices came. Some nights, they whispered like wind. Other times, they screamed like dying bells. Maahi's name echoed most often, soft and pleading. But Aash learned not to flinch. Not to move.
"Don't fight the whisper," Veer murmured. "Just don't follow it."
It wasn't just strength Veer was teaching. One night, seated beside the fire, Veer finally began to explain the world's hidden structure — the nature of power.
"Most think it's a gift," he said. "But real power? It's a Sanskar — a divine impression carved into your soul."
He showed Aash a cracked pendant with faded script. "Some are born with it. Some earn it through ritual or pain. Most die never knowing they had any at all."
He described three known types: Flame-bearers, who channeled internal divine fire; Wordbinders, who could speak curses or blessings into the flesh; and Echo-souls, those haunted by knowledge from past lives, moving through memory like rivers.
"But you," Veer said quietly, pointing to the tattoo on Aash's back, "are none of those. You're not channeling power. You're carrying it."
He stood slowly and tossed the pendant into the fire.
"Something was sealed inside you — fire, truth, guilt. It remembers things you don't. It has will. It's not a tool. It's a hunger."
Aash said nothing, but his grip tightened around the spear Veer had given him — iron-tipped, simple, balanced. Not a weapon of conquest. A weapon of clarity.
Each day, he trained to keep the fire steady. Each night, he meditated in silence, hands pressed to the earth, trying to feel where Maahi's soul had gone. By the second week, Aash could summon a faint flicker of flame in his palm — not chaotic, but calm. It responded to breath, not anger.
Still, the cracks remained.
Sometimes, water hissed when he touched it. Sometimes mirrors fogged over even when the air was still. He avoided his reflection after that.
Veer watched him closely but said little. One evening, while sharpening a blade in silence, he spoke without looking up.
"You're getting stronger," he said. "But strength brings attention."
Far from the inn, past crumbling altars and rivers that ran black beneath the surface, a chamber pulsed with black flame.
The cult leader stood beneath a circle of broken masks, his golden face gleaming in the light of dead candles. His voice echoed through the stone.
"He survived the Temple. He trains. He steadies his flame."
A hush passed through the masked congregation.
"But even fire that steadies still feeds."
From the shadows stepped a figure draped in rust-red robes, silver chains veiling his face. He knelt without a word.
The leader placed a charred coin into his palm.
"Take five with you. The Mirror-Bearer. The Chainspeaker. The Twin-Tongue. The Monk Who Forgot. And the Hollowed Eye."
One by one, five figures emerged, cloaked and marked with sigils of silence and unmaking.
"Find the vessel," the leader whispered. "If he burns with mercy… break him.
If he burns with wrath… bring him home."
As they vanished into smoke, the golden mask turned once more toward the fading flame, and the Eclipse crept closer with every breath.