The volcanic throat narrowed until the sky above was nothing more than a jagged ribbon of violet and gray.
The heat of the day didn’t dissipate; the basalt walls held it, radiating a dry, suffocating warmth that made the air feel like it had been cooked in a closed kiln.
Vyan moved with the steady, rhythmic gait of a creature born to the wild, but his pace was drastically slowed by the dead weight anchoring his left side.
Ansh’s grip was surprisingly firm for a dying man.
The old man’s one remaining hand—a gnarled, liver-spotted claw—clutched Vyan’s shoulder, his fingers digging slightly into the muscle as if anchoring his very life force to the boy’s vitality.
”You move with the grace of the forest, child,” Ansh murmured, his breath trailing over Vyan’s ear, smelling of old dust and the bitter tang of copper.
“I can feel the earth trembling beneath your feet before you even step. Tell me… did your father teach you the feather steps?”
Vyan wiped a heavy bead of sweat from his brow with his free hand, his golden eyes scanning the treacherous obsidian ledges ahead.
“My father died before I could walk the stones with him, sir. My mother taught me to move. I try to imitate her. She always said the earth is a predator, and if you don’t respect the friction, it will trip you and consume you.”
”A harsh philosophy,” Ansh chuckled, a dry, rhythmic sound that rattled deep within his hollow chest like loose pebbles in a gourd.
“A terribly violent way to view the sacred ground. The Dharma teaches that the earth is not a predator, but a divine foundation. If your breath is pure and your mind is aligned with the cosmic law, the stone will rise to meet your feet like a mother lifting her child.”
The old man tilted his head slightly, his white, milky cataracts gleaming in the fading light as he leaned a fraction closer.
“Tell me, little one… was your mother born to the path of the Asura?”
The question struck Vyan like a physical blow.
He stumbled over a jagged lip of basalt, his posture instantly fracturing.
His mind flashed to the terrifying, 6’3″ silhouette of his mother, her ash-covered hands, and her predatory, Asura-like eyes.
His throat went tight.
”She…” Vyan swallowed hard, his voice dropping to a defensive whisper.
“Yes. She was an Asura. But she was absolved of everything. She wasn’t like the monsters in the stories.”
Ansh felt the sudden, violent spike in the boy’s pulse through the fingers dug into his shoulder.
A deep, sickening satisfaction pooled in the old man’s gut, but his face remained a mask of grandfatherly warmth.
He let out a soft, compassionate sigh.
”Ah, do not worry, my child.
I do not judge,” Ansh said, his wrinkled lips curving into a gentle, reassuring smile.
“The Great Light shines upon the lotus and the weed alike. If she raised a boy as righteous as you, then her soul surely found its peace.”
As they continued their slow trek, Ansh began to subtly shift his weight.
It was a precise, calculated movement.
He purposefully threw his center of gravity into Vyan’s left flank, forcing the twelve-year-old’s internal Prana to automatically flex and compensate for the sudden, erratic imbalance.
To Vyan, it simply felt like a blind, crippled old sage growing exhausted from the brutal terrain.
But to Ansh, it was an expert medical diagnostic.
There, Ansh thought, his sightless eyes rolling back slightly in a wave of dark pleasure.
Magnificent.
Every time he stabilizes his footing, his marrow pulses like a struck anvil.
Prana doesn’t just sit idle in his belly; it flows through his pathways like a river of liquid gold.
It’s completely unchanneled, entirely raw, and deliciously dense.
But how is his vessel sustaining it without bursting?
Is it his breathing?
His lineage?
They reached a small, hollowed-out alcove in the basalt wall just as the sun dipped entirely below the canyon rim.
The darkness didn’t fall from the sky; it seemed to bleed upward from the deep, icy cracks in the volcanic stone.
”We stop here,” Vyan decided, his voice echoing sharply off the enclosure.
He carefully guided the “sage” down, helping him sit against the smooth, black rock.
Vyan reached into his tattered linen sling and pulled out a small, dried Spirit-Root he had salvaged from the damp earth of the Sanctum.
It was shriveled and caked in red dirt, but it still hummed with a faint, sugary luminescence.
He broke it in half, the fiber snapping with a small puff of glowing essence, and pressed the larger piece into Ansh’s waiting palm.
”Eat this, sir.
It has the life of the sun in it.
It will help your chest.”
Ansh looked down at the root—not with his useless eyes, but with his acute Yogi’s perception.
Through his inner sight, he saw the vibrant, pale threads of energy clinging desperately to the dead fiber.
It was peasant forage, but in this dead wasteland, it was an treasure.
He brought it to his lips, his hand trembling with a perfectly rehearsed display of frail gratitude.
”You are too kind to a broken vessel, Vyan.
To share your precious life-bread with a blind stranger…
this is the highest manifestation of the Dharma.
Surely, the gods are watching your steps.”
As Ansh chewed the bitter, vital root, he watched Vyan through the gray, predatory veil of his hidden Asura-vision.
The boy sat cross-legged a few paces away, the cold, golden sphere of the Yantra resting heavily in his lap.
Vyan closed his eyes, inhaling the freezing night air, and began the rhythmic, mechanical cycles of breath his mother had beaten into his muscle memory.
Vwoom.
Vwoom.
Vwoom.
The Prana inside Vyan began to cycle with terrifying efficiency.
To Ansh’s hidden vision, it was like watching a master blacksmith stoke a demonic furnace.
The energy erupted from the boy’s gut, surged up the column of his spine, and radiated outward through his skin in visible, golden waves of heat.
Ansh’s stump of an arm began to itch violently—a fierce phantom pain that signaled his spiritual hunger was reaching a manic, uncontrollable breaking point.
He could not wait.
He needed a taste.
Leaning back against the stone, Ansh quietly released a single, invisible thread of his own prana from his sleeve.
It was a “Probe Thread,” a Grade 3 technique thinner than a spider’s silk, designed to hook into a victim’s soul aura and silently sip the overflowing Prana without awakening their senses.
The violet thread drifted through the stagnant air of the alcove, inching closer and closer to Vyan’s glowing shoulder.
Just as the tip of the malicious thread brushed the outer perimeter of the boy’s aura, the golden sphere in Vyan’s lap violently hummed.
A low, heavy, resonant frequency vibrated through the basalt cavern.
Vyan’s eyes snapped open, the yellowish-red pupils flaring in the dark.
The “Metallic Heat” in his blood instantly surged, turning from a quiet hum to a defensive, roaring fire.
”Did you hear that, sir?” Vyan asked sharply, his bony fingers instantly tightening around the metal casing of the sphere.
His body coiled, ready to spring.
Ansh recoiled internally, violently snapping his Probe Thread back into his saffron rags a millisecond before it could be incinerated by the Yantra’s sudden ward-pulse.
His heart hammered against his ribs—not with fear, but with an insatiable, burning greed.
”The wind, child,” Ansh lied smoothly, his voice returning to that sweet, comforting silk without a single tremor.
“The basalt canyons are ancient, full of hollow tubes and false chambers. They are known for their deceptive voices. It is merely the stone cooling down from the daytime heat. Do not let the shadows play tricks on your young ears.”
Vyan relaxed his posture, but his gaze remained fixed on the dark, yawning mouth of the canyon ahead.
The innocence in his face seemed to harden into something old and cold.
”My mother said the shadows don’t trick you,” Vyan whispered, his voice a flat, icy rasp that sounded entirely unalike a twelve-year-old boy.
“She said they only show you exactly what you’re already afraid of losing.”
Ansh smiled into the darkness, his liver-spotted hand reaching out to gently rest on the boy’s shoulder once more.
”Your mother was an exceptionally wise woman, Vyan,” Ansh whispered, his fingers slowly tightening back into the boy’s flesh.
“We shall see what the shadows choose to show us tomorrow.”
As Vyan finally drifted into a light, defensive sleep, he didn’t notice that the old man’s hand never left his body.
The devil stayed perched on his shoulder, keeping him warm, waiting for the furnace to burn just a little bit brighter before the feast began.
“Welcome to The Sovereign Of Kaliyuga! New chapters dropping daily.”