The chamber beyond the door was plainer than Herald expected after the rest of Divyabhawan. Two reclining chairs faced a low wooden table, while shelves along one wall held old scrolls and several instruments he could not identify.
A young man stood beside the table, black hair framing a freckled face. His hazel eyes studied Herald with open curiosity rather than the concern everyone else seemed to carry.
He extended a hand. "Facade," he said, and Herald took it before answering, "Herald." The faintest grin touched Facade’s mouth. "I know."
"Of course you do." Herald released his hand while Facade gestured toward one of the chairs and opened a wooden box on the table.
Inside rested a red-and-black ring carved with symbols similar to Croaker’s bronze one. Herald leaned forward for a better look. "Croaker used something like that yesterday."
"Similar. Not the same." Facade placed the ring in Herald’s palm, and the metal felt colder than the room around it. Herald turned it between his fingers. "What does this one do?"
"Prepares your body for the ritual." Facade pulled the second chair closer and sat opposite him. Herald looked up. "And the ritual?"
"If a Pathway responds to you, you awaken as a Siddha." The answer came so directly that Herald almost distrusted it. "So that’s what Ludicrous is?"
"Yes." Herald watched Facade’s face. "And I used to be one."
Something shifted there before Facade answered. "That’s what Croaker told me."
Herald’s fingers stopped moving around the ring. "You don’t believe him?"
"I believe Croaker. I’m more interested in what your body believes." Facade glanced toward Herald’s hand, and Herald followed his gaze. "What happens when I put this on?"
"The ring settles you into a receptive state. Once you’re ready, I begin the ritual and guide the chakra response." Herald stared at him. "You could’ve started with that."
"You hadn’t asked." Facade barely changed expression, and Herald lifted the ring between them. "I asked what the ring did." After a pause, Facade nodded. "Fair."
Herald slid the ring onto his finger. Cold sank beneath his skin at once, travelled through his wrist and arm, then settled beneath his ribs as his breathing slowed without permission.
The chamber seemed to recede around him. Footsteps beyond the door, distant voices and the faint ringing of bells softened until his heartbeat filled the space between them.
Facade leaned forward. "Don’t fight it. This part is only preparation." Herald flexed his fingers. "Easy for you to say. You’ve done this?"
"I have." Herald narrowed his eyes. "Recently?" Facade answered, "No," and Herald let his head rest against the chair. "Comforting."
The ring pulsed against his finger, and his heartbeat answered. A whisper brushed past his ear from somewhere behind him, but when Herald turned, nothing stood near the shelves.
More whispers followed from different directions, too faint and fast to understand. Then came flashes: a battlefield drowning in dust, a temple burning beneath an orange sky, someone crying with their face hidden.
Herald gripped the chair. "Facade," he said, but another voice cut cleanly through the others. "Herald."
Facade’s expression changed at once. "Tell me what you’re seeing." Herald tried to focus on him, but the room blurred farther away. "I... I don’t know."
Another pulse travelled through the ring, followed by the sensation of something moving beneath Herald’s skin. Facade’s eyes snapped toward his hand. "Wait."
Herald’s vision smeared. "What?" he asked, and Facade leaned closer. "I haven’t activated the ritual yet."
The chamber vanished before Herald could answer. Darkness swallowed the chairs, shelves and Facade, leaving him with no sense of whether he was falling or whether the world had simply been removed from around him.
When his eyes opened again, blue light washed across the ceiling. The shelves and table were back, and Facade sat several feet away with a scroll across his knee.
Herald swallowed against a dry throat. "Am I dead?" Facade lowered the scroll. "No."
Herald waited for something more and received nothing. "That’s it?" he asked, pushing himself upright while Facade folded the scroll halfway.
"Yes." Herald glanced around the chamber. "Where am I?" Facade answered, "My office," as though the question had been unnecessary.
A faint blue light lingered around Facade’s eyes and ears before fading. Herald pointed toward him. "What was that?"
Facade blinked. "What?" Herald kept watching his face. "Your eyes."
"Nothing relevant." Facade set the scroll aside, and Herald’s hand dropped slowly. "Relevant to whom?"
"Me." Facade looked perfectly satisfied with that answer.
"That’s the problem." Facade leaned forward. "The ring was only preparing you. Normally, once your body settles, I activate the ritual, your chakra responds, and we see whether a Pathway answers."
"But you never activated it." Facade shook his head. "No."
Herald’s fingers curled against his knee. "Then what was all that?"
Facade paused before answering. "You awakened anyway." Herald’s irritation disappeared. "Before the ritual?"
"Before I initiated it." Facade picked up the ring and inspected its inscriptions while Herald leaned forward. "Can that happen?"
"It just did." Herald frowned. "Has it happened before?" Facade’s thumb stopped against one of the symbols. "Not that I know of."
Herald’s hand moved toward the covered mark on his wrist, and Facade’s eyes followed immediately. Herald pulled his sleeve lower. "You saw it."
"I did." Facade set the ring down. "If I intended to announce it, we’d already have company."
Herald kept his hand over the mark. "What is it?" Facade glanced toward his wrist. "I was hoping you could tell me."
Herald gave him a flat look. "I woke up yesterday without knowing my own name." Facade nodded once. "Right."
Facade opened a scroll and compared something written there with the ring before reaching for another. Herald watched him read the same passage twice. "What happened to me?"
"The Pathway responded before the ritual called for one." Herald frowned. "Meaning?"
"Something inside you was already connected to it strongly enough that merely placing you in a receptive state was enough." Facade’s voice remained even, but his eyes returned to the same line again.
Herald noticed. "That shouldn’t have happened." Facade did not disagree, so Herald looked toward the ring. "What answered?"
Facade hesitated. "The Yamawadi."
The word struck somewhere deeper than memory. Herald’s fingers pressed into the chair while a sensation he could not name moved through his chest.
Facade noticed immediately. "You’ve heard that name before?" Herald answered too quickly. "No."
Facade studied him for another moment. "The Pathway of Lord Yamaraj." The room disappeared before Herald could respond.
────────── ??? ──────────
The floor vanished beneath Herald, and darkness opened below him. He fell without wind against his face, without the drop in his stomach that should have come with falling, until cold water exploded around his body.
The splash reached his ears a heartbeat late.
Herald pushed himself upright, coughing as black-red water closed around his knees. Ash drifted across the sluggish current, yet the river made almost no sound as it moved past him.
Then the smell arrived. Blood came first, rot beneath it, and burnt flesh last, thick enough at the back of his throat that he swallowed and tasted bitterness.
Crooked pillars rose beyond the banks and vanished into darkness. Their reflections in the river moved a fraction too late whenever Herald shifted his head, as though even the water needed time to understand what it was reflecting.
A scream came from somewhere to his right. The sound stopped, and only then did a shadow move between the pillars in that direction.
Herald stood completely still. Broken prayers followed from farther away, overlapping with whispered regrets from people he could never see, while the black-red current pressed steadily against his legs.
The place felt empty despite everything hiding inside it.
Then Herald saw himself.
Another Herald knelt farther along the riverbank with a noose held loosely in one hand. Before him sat a supernatural being dressed in immaculate robes and heavy golden ornaments, a crown resting upon his head while an enormous decorated buffalo stood beside him.
Herald stared between the beast and the crowned figure. He did not know why another version of him knelt there, or why his body had gone colder than the river around his legs.
The being looked furious.
The kneeling Herald lowered his head. "Was I... unworthy?"
Pain struck before an answer came.
His other self collapsed with a scream, and the noose slipped from his hand into the black-red river. An ebony staff crowned by a black jade skull struck the stone before him.
Herald’s breath caught as recognition cut through everything else. My staff. He knew it with a certainty stronger than anything his missing memory had given him since waking in the desert.
"Then bear this." The crowned being’s voice hardened while the kneeling Herald clutched his head. "Your deeds, your name, every bond you carry—I take them from you."
The other Herald’s breathing broke apart. "Fancy... Peril..." he gasped, followed by more names Herald could not recognize.
Some of them vanished almost as soon as he heard them. Herald tried to hold onto one unfamiliar name and found nothing there a breath later, not even the shape of the sound.
His other self clawed at his temples. "My memories... No... my memories..."
Herald pushed toward the bank, but the water resisted him. Each step carried him forward less than it should have, and the river seemed to deepen without ever rising above his knees.
"Let what is buried remain buried." The crowned being’s words passed through the screams until every other voice weakened beneath them. "Those who would return it to you will share the price."
Herald stopped fighting the river.
The kneeling version of him shook against the stone, his fingers still locked around his own head. The crowned being looked down at him without moving.
"Then walk again." The command fell across Naraka, and the place began to come apart.
────── ??? ──────
The crooked pillars lost their edges first, breaking into drifting ash before the darkness swallowed them. The shadows between them disappeared next, followed by the voices whose owners Herald had never seen.
The river remained beneath his knees for one final moment, but its reflection vanished before the water itself did. Herald looked down at nothing and still felt the current pushing against his legs.
Then even that sensation disappeared.
── ??? ──
The crowned being remained.
Everything else had collapsed into darkness, yet Lord Yamaraj still sat before the kneeling Herald as though Naraka itself had vanished around him and left only judgment behind.
Then his head turned.
Not toward the Herald kneeling before him.
Toward Herald.
· ??? ·
Their eyes met.
Pain exploded through Herald’s skull before he could move. His sight split into fragments, his knees buckled beneath him, and agony tore through his head so violently that his mouth opened without producing a sound.
Somewhere beneath that pain, something buried inside his emptied mind recognized those furious eyes. Lord Yamaraj. The name surfaced with absolute certainty just before the last trace of Naraka disappeared.
Herald woke screaming, his body pitching sideways before Facade caught him by the shoulders. His hands trembled violently, his stomach heaved, and for several breaths he could still smell blood, ash and burnt flesh even though Divyabhawan’s chamber surrounded him again.
"Herald. What did you see?" Facade kept hold of him while Herald fought for air, but Herald could not force an answer past his throat. His eyes had already found the ebony staff resting against the wall, its black jade skull suddenly far more familiar than he wanted it to be.
For two days, Herald had wanted his memories back. Now, with his hands still shaking against the chair, he was no longer sure he wanted to know what else was buried there.