The transition was as sharp as a ritual blade.
For a month, Vyan’s world had been a monotonous, shifting sea of red—a liquid nightmare of heat and dust.
But as he crested the north of the Sun-Scars, the sand died.
It didn’t fade; it stopped abruptly, meeting a wall of jagged, black volcanic rock.
This was a landscape of scorched basalt, a labyrinth of obsidian pillars and charred stone that looked like the skeletal ribs of a fallen titan.
The rain had done more than quench his thirst; it had reborn him.
The sacred ash, once his mother’s ghostly signature upon his skin, had been washed away, returned to the thirsty earth of the desert.
What remained was a boy the color of polished bronze.
Vyan looked leaner, his frame stripped of all childhood softness.
His muscles were stretched tight over his bones like the silver strings of a veena, and his eyes—massive and golden—were wider, vibrating with an alert intensity.
For the first time, a flicker of something other than terror stirred in his gut: curiosity.
The jungle was a memory of green shadows; the desert was a reality of red heat.
But this black canyon was a mystery, a dark throat waiting to be explored.
He entered the passage, his bare feet clicking against the hard volcanic floor.
The silence here didn’t hiss like the sand.
It waited.
And then, he saw him.
In the center of the narrow passage sat a figure so still it could have been a gargoyle carved from the basalt itself.
It was an old man, withered and frail, his body looking like a sun-dried root tangled in saffron rags.
The robes were tattered, bleached to a pale bone-white by a thousand suns—the unmistakable mark of a Dharma sage.
Vyan froze.
His heart hammered against his ribs—not with the “needle-pain” of hunger, but with the sheer shock of a human face.
It had been a while after his mother’s death since he had seen another soul.
To Vyan, this old man looked a ghost returned to the living world.
The monk’s hair was a wild, snowy mane that spilled over his shoulders like a frozen waterfall.
His eyes were closed, the lids sunken, but as Vyan’s shadow fell across the stone, the old man tilted his head.
He didn’t look; he listened.
Slowly, a trembling hand rose, palm open in a gesture of peace.
”A traveler?”
The voice was a melodic hum, a sound so rich and calm it seemed to smooth the jagged edges of the canyon walls.
”Blessed be the Great Light,” the man whispered.
“I am but a poor servant of the Dharma, left behind by my caravan. I have prayed for a righteous soul to cross my path.”
Vyan stared as the man’s eyes opened.
They were thick with white cataracts—two dead, milky moons staring into a void.
Vyan’s guard didn’t drop, but it softened.
Dharma.
His father’s path.
His mother had spoken of it as the way of order and light.
Looking at this frail, blind elder, Vyan felt a surge of duty.
He took a breath, his voice cracking as he used it for the first time in an eternity.
”Namaste!!”
The word echoed off the black rocks like a bell.
“My name is Vyan. I was born on the darkest night of the year.” He stepped closer, his bronze skin glowing against the black basalt.
“Humble old sir, what are you doing in a place where even the wind seems to have died? You speak of a caravan. Is there a settlement nearby? Are there others like… like us?”
The old man, Ansh, let out a long, wheezing sigh that sounded like wind through dry leaves.
He adjusted his grip on a dark wooden staff, and that was when Vyan noticed it.
The man’s right sleeve was tucked and pinned into his saffron robes.
Below the elbow, there was nothing but a stump of scarred, twisted flesh.
”There are cities of light, child,” Ansh whispered, his sightless eyes drifting toward the canyon walls.
“Great citadels where the Dharma is law and the bells of the temples never stop ringing. I was a scribe in the city of Trishnapur. I spent my life weaving the sacred texts into scrolls of gold. But when the Great Drought came, the caravans became desperate. Bandits—men who have forgotten the path of dharma—attacked us. They took my eyes so I could not identify them, and they took my one hand so I could no longer write the truth.” Oh I didn’t tell you my name, my name is Ansh.
Vyan’s chest tightened.
The injustice of it burned like acid.
He thought of his mother, standing tall and warrior-like, and then he looked at this broken old man.
”I am so sorry, sir.
That is a cruel fate for a man of the Law.”
”Cruelty is but a shadow that flees from the light, child,” Ansh smiled, his face a map of deep, gentle wrinkles.
“I have sat in this canyon for three days, certain that the Great Lord would send a guide. And here you are—a boy of fire. You carry a heavy burden at your hip, but your heart seems heavier still. Will you help a blind man find his way back to the road?”
Hope, bright and dangerous, flared in Vyan’s gut.
“Yes. I will help you. We can journey together. I… I have water, and I know how to find the roots that hide beneath the rock.”
”A blessing,” Ansh murmured, bowing his snowy head.
“A true blessing from the Dharma.”
Vyan turned his back to the old man, shielding his eyes as he scanned the jagged horizon to find the easiest path through the volcanic rock.
”We should move before the sun reaches its peak, sir.
The heat here stays trapped in the stone.”
Behind him, the air instantly grew frigid.
The melodic, grandfatherly hum of Ansh’s voice vanished, replaced by the sickening sound of a wet, clicking throat.
The old man didn’t move his posture, but his cracked, gray lips pulled back so far they split, a thin line of blackish blood leaking over a row of jagged, rotten teeth.
He flicked a unnaturally long tongue out, tasting the air, tracing the boy’s scent with the grotesque accuracy of a pit viper.
His milky, dead eyes didn’t just track Vyan—they began to pulse, a foul, violet light swirling deep behind the cataracts.
Look at him, Ansh’s inner voice screeched, a cacophony of scratching needles.
Look at this flawless, unblemished vessel.
Look at the feast.
A spasm of agony ripped through Ansh’s torso, making his remaining hand twitch violently against the staff.
Inside his chest, his spirit-channels were a charred wasteland.
As a Grade 3 Yogi, he was completely out of Prana, his internal pool reduced to a dry, cracked well.
This current body was a wretched, decaying prison.
The stump of his right arm throbbed with the ghost pain of old butchery, his spine was a column of agonizing, rusted iron, and the rotten flesh of his lungs felt like it was sloughing off with every breath.
He was dying.
He knew he had a year or two, maybe few months before his core utterly collapsed into ash.
But the universe had just thrown him a lifeline.
With his hidden divine tool using his vision, the black volcanic rock disappeared.
The world became a shifting grid of gray destiny threads, and right in front of him, Vyan stood out like a roaring celestial bonfire.
To Ansh, the boy wasn’t just a child; he was a divine furnace.
The sheer volume of raw Prana pouring off Vyan’s bronze skin was so dense, so unrefined, that the ambient air around the boy literally tasted like heavy ozone and sweet metal on the back of Ansh’s dry throat.
He is brimming, Ansh marveled, a ravenous, manic ecstasy twisting his ruined soul.
His vessel is full to the lid!
A twelve-year-old amateur walking around with the spiritual density of a temple master, and the little idiot is completely oblivious.
Ansh had felt that explosive surge of heat from miles away.
In the dead, quiet expanse of the wastes, Vyan’s presence was a roaring signal fire.
Ansh had spent the last drop of his life force, tearing his muscles and crawling through the sharp basalt of this canyon, praying to find a wounded beast or a dying cultist to drain.
To find a healthy, entirely naive child was a miracle from the darkest depths of the underworld.
I must not rush, Ansh cautioned himself, his inner malice coiling tight like a spring.
A Grade 3 must be surgical.
My spirit-channels are too frayed, too brittle.
If I try to execute the Soul-Binding ritual and force my consciousness into his flesh right now, his raw, unguided energy will violently reject me and blast my remaining soul into fragments.
No…
I must play the lamb.
I will walk quietly in his shadow.
I will let this stupid, soft-hearted whelp feed me, protect me, and drag my pathetic weight out of these dead lands.
I will wait until his guard is completely shattered, when he thinks he finally sees the gates of a safe city…
and then, I will unravel his soul thread by thread, slide into his skin, and claim that glorious body for my own.
”Child?” Ansh called out.
Instantly, the violent, suffocating pressure vanished.
The split in his lips smoothed over, and his voice returned to that sweet, trembling, heartbroken Dharma hum.
“Are you still there? My ears are old, and the wind here plays cruel tricks on a lonely man.”
Vyan turned back, a small, fiercely determined smile on his bronze face, his golden eyes filled with innocent purpose.
“I’m right here, sir. Just hold onto my shoulder. We’re leaving now.”
”Lead the way, Vyan,” Ansh whispered, reaching out his one, liver-spotted hand.
His bony fingers sank deep into the boy’s thin shoulder, gripping the meat of his arm with a sudden, icy strength that felt less like an old man seeking balance, and more like a iron shackle snapping shut.
As they stepped into the deep, suffocating shadows of the canyon, both of them merged into a single silhouette, moving toward a dark horizon that only the monster could see.
“Welcome to The Sovereign Of Kaliyuga! New chapters dropping daily.”