Unknown Time. Unknown Location.
Wind rushed through hollow trees. The air tasted of ash and iron.
Aarav opened his eyes to a sky that bled red and violet, the clouds spiraling unnaturally like scars on a wounded sky.
He blinked. His body ached—not from injury, but from existence itself. Every breath felt borrowed.
> "Where… am I?"
He sat up. The land around him was dry, cracked, and empty. Ruins of temples littered the landscape—old Indian architecture, but twisted, as if time itself had forgotten how to shape them properly.
The Wheel embedded in his palm flickered like a fading candle.
> "Cycle…error…timeline divergence…003.002.∞…"
The air buzzed.
He wasn't in the past, future, or present.
He was in a false India—an alternate reality.
---
A Shadow Called India
He stumbled across a broken statue of Ashoka, its face melted into a sneer.
Then he saw a sign nailed crudely to a fallen banyan tree:
> "Property of the Dominion of Ashvra. Unauthorized Time Access is Punishable by Erasure."
Aarav's throat went dry.
Ashvra ruled here.
This was not the world he came from. This was a timeline rewritten.
He followed the blackened path forward, surrounded by whispering ruins.
---
The City of Echoes
By nightfall, he reached a massive gate of obsidian steel. Above it: a hovering drone blared—
> "Welcome to Mahapralaya. The Last City. All who enter must kneel to the God-King."
Aarav clenched his fists. The Wheel in his hand surged weakly, trying to adapt to this corrupted timeline.
He was escorted by soldiers—automatons shaped like men but with faces of cracked marble. Their armor bore the mark of the Regalia, but wrong. Twisted. Inverted.
They led him through a city both magnificent and broken: silver towers grew from ancient ruins like weeds, and the streets echoed with chanting:
> "All hail the Bearer of the Blade. Ashvra, the Eternal Flame."
---
The Temple of Ruin
Aarav was dragged to the center—an enormous ziggurat of black stone. At its peak sat a throne of fire.
And upon it… Ashvra.
But not the one Aarav knew.
This Ashvra was older, darker, and cloaked in regalia made of star-stuff and bone. His eyes weren't angry—they were empty. As if all of time had passed through them and died.
He spoke, calm as winter:
> "You shouldn't exist here, Aarav. But here you are."
Aarav stepped forward. "What the hell is this place?"
Ashvra smiled. "A victory. Mine. I made the right choices. Sacrificed the right gods. Killed the right friends."
Diya's name flashed in Aarav's mind.
Ashvra stood. The Blade of the Regalia was fused into his forearm. He raised it lazily. "This is what happens when you choose to preserve the world, instead of remaking it."
Aarav spat. "You broke the world."
"No," Ashvra said quietly. "I finished it."
---
Truth in the Archives
Later that night, a resistance contact snuck into Aarav's holding cell.
Her name was Nyra—a girl with eyes of molten gold and tattoos that moved like living ink. She whispered:
> "You're the fracture. The anomaly. The last true holder of the Wheel."
Aarav asked the only question that mattered. "How do I fix this?"
Nyra led him to the Forbidden Archives, hidden beneath the ziggurat.
There, Aarav saw scrolls written by gods. Tapestries made from the skin of fallen timelines. And, in the deepest vault, a memory echo:
> A vision of Diya, trapped in a stasis cage, her soul frozen in mid-scream.
Nyra spoke urgently.
"She's not dead. She's been locked outside of time. If we can reach the fourth Regalia, we can undo this branch. This false empire."
Aarav's voice trembled. "Where is it?"
Nyra replied with a single word:
> "Kanchipuram."
---
Ashvra's Warning
Before they could leave, Ashvra appeared—alone, unguarded, calm.
"You think traveling to Kanchipuram will save your world?" he asked. "It won't. That Regalia—the Shard of Soul—was sealed for a reason."
Aarav clenched his jaw. "Then unseal it."
"You'll die," Ashvra said. "Or worse. You'll see the world as it really is. Do you truly want that?"
Aarav's eyes met his.
> "If it means saving her, yes."
Ashvra sighed.
"Then run, child of fire. But remember—each Regalia awakens a god. And each god remembers what was done to them."
---
A New Flame
Nyra gave Aarav a weapon—an obsidian dagger called Kalastra, forged from a sliver of time itself.
As the two escaped into the wastes, pursued by Ashvra's hounds, the stars above began to shift.
Reality quivered.
And far away, in a crypt older than the Vedas, the Shard of Soul began to glow.
The fourth Regalia was waking.
---
⚡ To be continued…