The ground was cold beneath him.
Aash blinked, but the world didn't return. It shimmered — like smoke over embers, like memory turned to mist. His limbs ached. His ribs cracked with every breath. But something deeper hurt more.
Something was still here.
Footsteps echoed. Heavy. Familiar.
He tried to lift his head — just enough to see the figure walking calmly through the firelit ruins.
Veiled in silver chains.
The Second Flame.
Aash groaned and reached for the spear beside him. His hand found it. The grip felt like stone in his fingers. He rose, barely, and fell into a stance Veer had drilled into his bones.
That's when the sixth figure stepped from behind the crumbling arch.
Slender. Wrapped in decaying cloth and temple gray. His face was covered in ceremonial bandages, but his mouth moved in soft, breathless chant.
Words with no self. A voice without a soul.
The Monk Who Forgot.
Aash didn't wait.
He lunged.
The spear moved before he could think — training and survival guiding every shift of weight, every thrust. The monk tried to speak, but Aash struck first — a wide slash that split through the cloth and snapped the chanting. The monk stumbled, clutching his chest. Symbols flared red — Sanskrit scars bound across his ribs.
Aash gritted his teeth. He spun the spear over his back and drove it forward through the heart.
The Monk staggered.
And said nothing.
The fire inside Aash flickered low. He stepped back as the monk fell without a sound.
But the moment he turned, the Second Flame was already there.
The glaive came down like thunder.
Aash raised the spear to block — but the impact shattered bone. The weight of it crashed through his defense and slammed into his shoulder. He was thrown across the stone like a broken prayer bell.
His body screamed, but he stayed conscious.
He rose again. Stumbled. Bled. Stood.
They clashed.
Steel rang against steel. The Second Flame was relentless — every strike measured, heavy, unbreaking. Aash could barely keep up. The fire tried to surge, but he held it back — still fighting as a man.
Still hoping to win without it.
A cut opened above his eye. His chest caved under another strike. His grip began to slip. The Trishul mark on his back burned with warning.
Then the chains came.
The Second Flame swept his arm wide, and silver bindings of heat and script shot out from the veil. They struck Aash across the chest, coiling, pulling, burning. He dropped to his knees, the spear clattering beside him.
He couldn't feel his hands.
He couldn't move.
The enemy stepped forward. The glaive rose again, slow this time — execution slow.
And then—
The fire took over.
The Third Eye opened with a hiss — not golden this time, but blue-white. The world shattered. The flame rushed outward, not as chaos but as memory — old, divine, wrathful.
Aash stood without rising.
The chains snapped before they could finish wrapping him.
The Second Flame's mask cracked from the heat alone.
Aash moved with unnatural grace, body half-limp but guided by something deeper. His hand reached for the spear — it lifted itself. The air warped as he stepped, no longer walking — flowing.
Their weapons met again.
This time, the impact threw the Second Flame back.
He slid across stone, barely regaining balance.
He hissed something in an old tongue — maybe a curse, maybe a prayer. His chains flared again, striking out in spirals. Aash didn't block them. He let them strike — and the fire burned them apart in the air.
He thrust forward.
The spear pierced just beneath the veil — not deep enough to kill, but deep enough to mark.
The Second Flame screamed.
It was not human.
He vanished in a blink of smoke, fleeing. Not defeated — but wounded.
The moment he left, Aash dropped.
The divine light died with him.
His body fell beside the cracked stones, ribs shattered, blood flooding his throat. The Trishul mark dimmed to ember. The fire receded.
Darkness returned.
This time, it didn't leave.
A voice broke through hours later.
"Aash."
Hands. Rough. Familiar.
"Aash, damn you, breathe."
He gasped — pain filling his lungs like fire. His eyes opened to Veer's scarred face hovering over him.
"You absolute fool," Veer muttered. "You went alone."
Aash groaned. "Didn't… plan to… fight."
Veer laughed bitterly and started bandaging his wounds, breath slow and furious. The temple ruins around them looked burned, warped by heat.
Aash's voice cracked. "The chains… the masks. They weren't just killers."
"No," Veer said. He looked at the broken stones, the shattered remnants of ancient sigils.
"They were pilgrims. Once. Temple-blood. Marked by rites long dead."
He looked down at Aash.
"They weren't chasing you," he said. "They were answering something. Something that's waking inside you."
Aash tried to speak again, but the pain swallowed his voice.
Veer pressed a hand to his chest.
"Rest now," he said quietly. "You burned too bright tonight."
Aash closed his eyes.
And somewhere inside, the fire still remembered.