The air grew heavy long before the sky broke.
Aadi stood with the Naag sadhus on a ridge overlooking the valley. The villagers huddled behind him, their prayers weak against the thunder rolling above. The clouds churned in violent spirals, dark veins of lightning racing across them. But it was not thunder that shook the world—it was something deeper. A tearing, like the sound of the heavens splitting open.
The sun dimmed, the moon staggered across its path—and then both froze.
From the horizon rose two shadows, vast and serpentine, coiling through the storm. One was a severed head with eyes burning like pits of obsidian: Rahu. The other was a headless body, its form writhing and infinite: Ketu.
Together, they dragged the sky into darkness.
The Naag sadhus fell to their knees, tridents pressed to the earth. "The Twin Eclipse," one whispered, his voice breaking. "The Veil weakens…"
Aadi felt his bones tremble. His heart pounded as the air itself split into two streams—past bleeding into present, present collapsing into futures that flickered like broken glass. He saw visions everywhere: rivers of blood, mountains cracking, men turning on each other with hollow eyes.
Rahu's voice slithered into his mind."The gods chained me. They feared truth. But with my brother, I return. The veil that blinds humanity will fall, and all will see."
Ketu's body writhed, its headless form drawing currents of energy into its hollow neck, a void that pulled stars themselves closer. Time warped, bending the valley into impossible shapes—trees blooming and burning in the same instant, children aging into ash before reverting to infants.
Aadi clutched his chest, gasping. He felt himself unraveling.
"Resist!" cried one of the sadhus. Their voices rose in mantras, coils of serpent-light flaring from their bodies to shield the villagers. But even their tantric power faltered under the eclipse's weight.
The sky became a mirror of twin eyes—one devouring, one void. And between them, Maya's veil, the shimmering fabric that had always separated truth from illusion, began to tear. Threads of light snapped like harp strings, exposing something vast and incomprehensible beyond.
Aadi's vision blurred. He saw his brother Arul, pale and broken, reaching toward him. He saw Kairava in the Cave of Iron Veins, burning with humanity's sorrow. He saw gods sharpening weapons of light, and demons gathering in shadows.
The choice pressed harder: cling to the veil, or let it fall.
As the storms screamed overhead, Rahu's head bellowed with laughter, Ketu's void pulled at the earth, and Aadi understood—this was no longer about gods and demons. This was about the unraveling of time itself.
And he was standing at its center.