Episode 09:
The night was still.
Alok lay awake, staring at the ceiling as the faint orange glow of the streetlight bled through the curtains. Shadows drifted across his walls slow, uncertain, alive.
On his chest, the pendant pulsed faintly, its glow rising and falling in time with his heartbeat.
Then the voice came again soft, distant, echoing through the dark.
"...Alok... you can hear me now."
His breath caught. Fingers closed around the pendant's cold edge.
"Who's there?" His voice came out smaller than he expected, swallowed by the silence.
"The one who waits... the one bound to you before you were even born."
A chill rippled down his spine. He sat up, scanning the dim outlines of his room the cracked wall, the flickering clock, the half-open curtain whispering in the wind. Everything was still. His parents slept down the hall. The city outside was quiet.
"What do you mean, bound?" he whispered. "Is this some kind of prank?"
"No prank… This world hides more than your eyes can see. The day is near when you must remember... everything."
The pendant flared.
For an instant, the room dissolved into light and within that light, shapes moved. Towering figures of armor and flame. Weapons forged from light and bone. A sky split apart by fire and shadow.
Alok gasped, clutching his head. The images flooded him flashes of war, of screams, of a girl with silver eyes watching him from across a field of ash.
"...What are you?" His voice trembled.
"Not what," the voice said softly. "Who. You knew me... once. Before this life."
Pain lanced through his skull. The visions shattered fragments slipping through his fingers like sand.
Then silence.
Only the hum of the city returned, dull and distant.
The voice came one last time, low and almost tender:
"When the time comes, follow the path to the hill beyond the school. I will be waiting."
The glow faded. The pendant turned cold again lifeless metal against his skin.
Alok sat in the half-light, breathing slow. He should have been terrified.
But he wasn't.
Somewhere deep inside, beneath the fear, something else stirred curiosity... and longing.
Tomorrow was a school day.
And yet, the hill beyond the school suddenly felt like the only place in the world that mattered.