Mokshabhumi had no horizon.
That was the first thing Aryaan had learned about living in the great artificial city suspended among the stones of the asteroid belt.
There was no east where the sun rose, no west where it disappeared, and no distant mountain range against which a person could measure the passage of a day.
Beyond the enormous transparent composite walls of the habitation sectors stretched an endless blackness scattered with stars, drifting asteroids, industrial platforms, navigation beacons and the occasional silent movement of a spacecraft.
Yet Mokshabhumi had learned how to imitate a sky.
Every residential sector followed an artificial circadian cycle.
At the beginning of each morning, the ceiling panels gradually shifted from the deep blue of pre-dawn to a pale gold intended to resemble sunrise over ancient Earth.
Aryaan had never seen a real sunrise.
Neither had Lane.
Ron claimed he had.
Although everyone knew he was lying.
“It’s definitely coming from the east.”
Aryaan stopped.
Lane, walking beside him, stopped too.
Ron did not.
He took another three steps before noticing that his cousins were no longer beside him.
He turned.
“What?”
Aryaan pointed towards the enormous viewport at the end of the concourse.
Ron looked.
A brilliant sphere of light was rising beyond the station’s outer ring.
Ron smiled.
“See?”
Lane stared at him.
“That’s Gaia.”
Ron blinked.
“Yes.”
“Gaia doesn’t rise.”
Ron looked back at the planet.
Then at Lane.
Then at Aryaan.
“Okay, technically, it doesn’t.”
Aryaan folded his arms.
“Then what exactly did you mean by ‘the sun is rising’?”
Ron considered the question with the solemnity of a philosopher contemplating the meaning of existence.
“Vibes?”
Lane continued walking.
Aryaan followed.
Ron hurried after them.
“Wait. You can’t just abandon me because I was scientifically imprecise.”
“We can,” Lane said.
“You’re my twin.”
“That has nothing to do with it.”
“It has everything to do with it.”
Aryaan glanced over his shoulder.
“Actually, I’m beginning to think Lane has a point.”
Ron looked betrayed.
“Both of you are becoming toxic.”
“You’ve been saying that for three years,” Aryaan replied.
“And I have been correct for three years.”
Aryaan smiled.
The argument continued behind him as they walked deeper into Mokshabhumi’s central residential ring.
This was how most mornings began.
Not with meditation.
Not with solemn contemplation of humanity’s glorious future.
And certainly not with the discipline expected of students approaching graduation from one of the most advanced academies in the known solar system.
It usually began with Ron saying something ridiculous, Lane pretending not to care, and Aryaan attempting to prevent the situation from escalating into an incident that would eventually reach the Academy authorities.
It was, in its own way, tradition.
The three boys had grown up together for so long that strangers often assumed they were brothers.
Technically, they were cousins.
Aryaan was an only child.
Lane and Ron were identical twins.
Their fathers were biological brothers, and that connection had made the three boys inseparable from childhood.
After the disappearance of their parents, the distinction between cousin and brother had mattered even less.
Two families had gradually become one household.
And the man who stood at the centre of that household was not their father.
He was Devdutt.
Their Guruji.
The word had started as a joke when they were small.
It had stopped being one somewhere along the way.
Aryaan had never been able to identify the exact moment.
Perhaps it had been when Devdutt taught him how to breathe through pain after his first serious Kundalini awakening.
Perhaps it had been when Devdutt sat beside Lane through an entire night after Lane’s first uncontrolled spatial episode.
Or perhaps it had been the time Ron had broken three ribs trying to jump between two moving maintenance platforms because someone had dared him to do it.
Devdutt had not shouted.
That had somehow been worse.
But Devdutt had never raised the boys alone.
His younger sister had been there too, along with her husband.
To the three cousins, they were simply Aunt and Uncle.
They had cooked for them, attended Academy meetings, handled fevers and broken bones, confiscated dangerous equipment, mediated arguments, and learned—often painfully—that three boys with unusual abilities should never be left unsupervised near experimental machinery.
Devdutt had been their Guruji.
His sister and brother-in-law had been the ordinary, grounding presence that made the household feel like a home.
Aryaan pushed open the residence door.
The first thing that hit him was the smell of breakfast.
The second was a voice.
“Ron.”
Ron stopped.
Aryaan stopped.
Lane stopped.
All three looked at one another.
Ron whispered, “How did she know?”
“Because you’re predictable,” Lane said.
“That’s rude.”
“It wasn’t meant to be complimentary.”
Aryaan entered.
Devdutt’s sister stood in the kitchen with her arms folded.
She was not particularly tall, nor intimidating in the conventional sense.
She didn’t need to be.
The three boys had been raised under the combined authority of Devdutt and his sister, and if Devdutt represented the quiet, contemplative side of discipline, she represented the much more practical principle that stupidity had consequences.
Behind her stood her husband, carrying a tray.
He looked at Ron.
Then at the broken strap hanging from Ron’s Academy bag.
Then back at Ron.
Ron immediately hid the strap behind his back.
His aunt sighed.
“Ron.”
“Good morning.”
“What happened to your bag?”
“Nothing.”
Her husband placed the tray on the table.
“Ron.”
“Why is everyone saying my name like I’m under investigation?”
Aryaan removed his shoes.
“Because you usually are.”
Ron pointed at him.
“That’s slander.”
His aunt pointed towards the table.
“Sit.”
Ron sat.
Immediately.
Aryaan and Lane exchanged a glance.
Neither commented.
They had learned something important while growing up in this house:
There were battles one could win.
There were battles one could lose.
And then there were battles where the wisest strategy was not to participate.
Their aunt turned towards Aryaan.
“You’re late.”
Aryaan checked the time.
“By four minutes.”
“Four minutes is late.”
“We had a training assessment.”
“So?”
“So we were delayed.”
“By what?”
Aryaan hesitated.
Lane answered.
“Ron.”
Ron turned.
“Why are you like this?”
Lane looked at him.
“Because I’m your twin.”
“That doesn’t answer anything.”
“It answers everything.”
Their aunt put a plate in front of Aryaan.
“Eat.”
Aryaan sat.
Lane took the seat beside him.
Ron immediately reached across and stole something from Aryaan’s plate.
Aryaan slapped his hand away.
“Get your own.”
“I did.”
“Then eat yours.”
“Yours looked better.”
“It’s the same food.”
“Yours has better vibes.”
Aryaan stared.
Ron smiled.
Their uncle silently moved Ron’s plate farther away from Aryaan.
“Thank you,” Aryaan said.
Ron looked wounded.
“Even you?”
Their uncle smiled.
“Especially me.”
The room settled into familiar chaos.
For a few minutes, it was simply a family.
That was perhaps the strangest thing about their home.
Outside its walls, the three boys were considered exceptional.
Inside, they were still the children who had once broken a window because Ron had insisted that a maintenance drone was “definitely friendly.”
They had all lost their parents.
But they had not grown up without adults who cared for them.
Devdutt’s sister and brother-in-law had made certain of that.
They had cooked for them, argued with them, attended Academy meetings, treated injuries, listened to excuses, celebrated victories and stood beside them during the years when the absence of their parents became something heavier than grief.
Devdutt had provided guidance.
His sister had provided structure.
Her husband had provided an astonishing amount of patience.
Together, they had built something resembling a family.
Something imperfect.
Something noisy.
Something that had survived.
Aryaan looked around the table.
For a fleeting moment, he wondered what his mother would have said if she could see him now.
He immediately pushed the thought away.
He had become good at that.
Not forgetting.
Just postponing.
There was a difference.
“Your graduation assignment begins today,” his aunt said.
The three boys looked up.
Ron swallowed.
“Today?”
“Yes.”
“I thought it was next week.”
Lane looked at him.
“You’ve had the schedule for four months.”
Ron frowned.
“I don’t remember that.”
“Of course you don’t,” Aryaan said.
Ron pointed at him.
“See, this is why I need emotional support.”
“You need a calendar.”
“Calendars are emotionally unavailable.”
Aryaan stared.
His aunt closed her eyes.
Their uncle looked towards the ceiling.
Lane quietly continued eating.
“What’s the assignment?” their uncle asked.
Aryaan answered.
“Field reconnaissance.”
“Where?”
“Multiple locations.”
“Which ones?”
“We’ll get the coordinates at the Academy.”
Their uncle nodded.
His expression changed slightly.
Aryaan noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You did the face.”
“What face?”
“The face you make when you know something.”
His uncle smiled.
“You’ve spent too much time around Devdutt.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be.”
Aryaan narrowed his eyes.
His aunt interrupted.
“Eat your breakfast.”
Aryaan sighed.
There were certain conspiracies in this household that apparently had a chain of command.
The Academy occupied one of Mokshabhumi’s largest internal sectors.
Unlike traditional educational institutions of the pre-WW3 era, it had no classrooms arranged by age, no endless rows of desks and no curriculum devoted to memorising information that could be retrieved from a neural interface in less than a second.
The old world had believed education was about accumulating knowledge.
The post-apocalyptic world had become less sentimental.
Knowledge was abundant.
Survival was not.
The Academy’s purpose was therefore different.
Its students were trained to become something humanity had never before possessed in such numbers:
people capable of surviving beyond the limits of ordinary human biology.
The Academy did not merely teach mathematics, physics, history, or interstellar navigation.
Those things were foundational.
The real curriculum began beneath them.
Kundalini cultivation.
Pineal activation.
Chakra alignment.
Wormhole navigation.
Spatial awareness.
Telepathic communication.
Combat.
Biological adaptation.
Elemental resonance.
Temporal sensitivity.
And, for those with the aptitude, disciplines inherited from ancient civilisations that had survived the collapse of Earth.
Among them was Huaxian cultivation.
The Huaxians had once been the people of the civilisation that humans now associated with ancient China.
Their descendants had preserved a Taoist tradition that regarded cultivation not as domination over nature, but as alignment with the Dao—the underlying way through which existence moved.
Some students considered it philosophy.
Others considered it superstition.
The Academy’s instructors knew better.
A properly trained Taoist cultivator could influence internal energy, manipulate elemental resonance, reinforce the body and, at higher levels, interact with forces that ordinary physics struggled to describe.
Then there were the body cultivators.
They followed a different path.
They did not seek harmony first.
They sought refinement.
Strength.
Density.
Endurance.
Some pursued traditions derived from the legendary Immortal Golden Buddhist Body, believing that the human body could be transformed into something capable of resisting forces that should have destroyed flesh.
The Academy tolerated every serious tradition.
It encouraged experimentation.
But it demanded one thing from all of them.
Control.
Because power without control was not advancement.
It was merely a more efficient way of killing yourself.
Aryaan, Lane and Ron had learned that lesson earlier than most.
And that was precisely why the Academy’s instructors had begun watching them.
Not because they were the strongest students.
They weren’t.
Not yet.
There were students capable of overpowering them physically, students with superior elemental resonance, and others whose telepathic control was considerably more refined.
The three cousins were still, by any conventional measure, young practitioners hovering slightly above the beginner threshold.
But they were strange.
All three possessed talents that had appeared before the Academy had taught them how to exist.
Aryaan had demonstrated an unnatural sensitivity to temporal disturbances.
Lane’s relationship with space was instinctive enough to frighten some instructors.
Ron possessed a peculiar tendency to stumble into things that should have remained hidden.
The Academy had never classified the last one as a talent.
Ron disagreed.
“It’s called destiny.”
Potter leaned against the wall beside him.
“It’s called being an airhead.”
Ron looked offended.
“There’s a difference.”
“Yeah.”
Potter nodded thoughtfully.
“Destiny usually has better coordination.”
Ron stared at him.
“You’re supposed to be my best friend.”
“I am.”
“Then why are you attacking me?”
“Because friendship without bullying is just customer service.”
Ron considered this.
“That’s actually deep.”
Potter grinned.
“Thank you.”
Aryaan walked towards them.
“Where are Lane and the others?”
“Bonita’s arguing with Mitchell.”
“About?”
“Whether Mitchell cheated.”
Aryaan sighed.
“Did she?”
“Obviously.”
Mitchell’s voice came from behind him.
“I heard that.”
Potter turned.
“Good.”
Mitchell walked towards them.
She was one of the most visually striking people in their year, though her appearance was difficult to assign to a single species.
She was a crossbreed, born from two interstellar lineages, and carried traits from both.
Her parents’ racial abilities had given her unusual sensory and energy-processing capabilities, while later mutations had begun to emerge as she grew.
Exactly how far those mutations would take her remained unknown.
That was one of the reasons the Academy medical division watched her closely.
Mitchell hated being watched.
Aryaan knew better than to mention it.
“What happened?” he asked.
“She cheated,” Bonita said.
“I did not.”
“You altered the resonance field.”
“Because the resonance field was unstable.”
“You altered it.”
“I stabilised it.”
“You stabilised it in your favour.”
Mitchell crossed her arms.
“Prove it.”
Bonita stared.
Then pointed.
“You see? That’s exactly what a guilty person says.”
Mitchell smiled.
“That’s exactly what an innocent person says when someone accuses her without evidence.”
Bonita looked at Aryaan.
“Tell her.”
Aryaan stepped backward.
“No.”
Bonita blinked.
“Why?”
“Because I’m not getting involved.”
“You’re the negotiator.”
“Exactly.”
Potter nodded solemnly.
“He has finally achieved wisdom.”
Aryaan glared.
“Don’t encourage him.”
A voice came from behind.
“Too late.”
Saiyuki approached.
She moved with the controlled precision of someone who had spent years training in an inherited combat discipline.
Her family descended from the people of ancient Japan, and unlike many traditions that had been diluted by the centuries, hers had retained much of its old structure.
She had learned stealth, body control, weapon techniques, and the principles of what her family simply called the old way.
Aryaan had once asked whether that meant she was a ninja.
She had stared at him for ten seconds.
He had never asked again.
Behind her came Riyansh.
He was built differently from the others.
Not merely muscular.
Dense.
His body cultivation had already begun altering the way he moved.
He carried himself like a person who had spent years learning that his own body was both weapon and armour.
Bonita followed.
She was not conventionally beautiful by the standards that dominated most station media, and she had long since stopped caring.
Her tracking ability, however, was exceptional.
She could identify disturbances in terrain, energy residue, and movement patterns that escaped trained sensors.
She had once found Potter after he had hidden from the entire group for six hours.
Potter had considered it a personal violation.
Bonita considered it Tuesday.
Finally came Pointy.
The name had been given to him by Ron.
Pointy had never forgiven him.
He was another interstellar crossbreed, although his mixed lineage was considerably less obvious than Mitchell’s.
His racial traits manifested in subtler ways, and the Academy had yet to establish exactly which of his abilities were inherited and which had emerged through mutation.
Together they formed the core group.
Eight friends.
Eight different paths.
And, occasionally, eight different opinions about the same problem.
Aryaan stood at the centre of it almost without trying.
Not because he was the strongest.
Because when everyone else moved in different directions, they tended to look at him.
That was his talent.
Not telepathy.
Not temporal perception.
Not negotiation, although he was very good at that too.
He could make people listen.
Sometimes that was more dangerous than power.
A bell sounded.
The conversations stopped.
The Academy’s main holographic display activated.
The symbol of Mokshabhumi appeared.
Then the image changed.
A three-dimensional map of the solar system expanded over the hall.
Earth appeared first.
The planet was blue.
Beautiful.
And broken.
Large regions of the surface were obscured by environmental damage, atmospheric instability, and restricted zones.
The old Earth had survived World War III.
It had survived the wars that followed.
Humanity had not.
The planet remained habitable in fragments, but no longer in the way humanity had once understood the word.
The great migration into the asteroid belt had begun centuries earlier.
Artificial stations were built.
Then larger stations.
Then cities.
Mokshabhumi became one of the most important.
By the time of the Fourth World War in 3591, humanity had already begun thinking of Earth as something between a birthplace and a grave.
The war accelerated everything.
A century later, humans were no longer Earth-bound.
They travelled through wormholes.
They traded with alien civilisations.
They shared stations with species that had never set foot on Earth.
They cultivated ancient disciplines.
They modified their biology.
They experimented with consciousness.
And yet Earth remained at the centre of the oldest mystery of them all.
Why had it nearly died?
The Academy instructor appeared above the map.
“Your final-year field assignment will begin with reconnaissance.”
The display changed.
Locations appeared across the galaxy.
“Several recent conflicts have left biological and energetic anomalies across multiple worlds. Your task is to investigate the resulting mutations in flora and fauna.”
Ron leaned towards Aryaan.
“Does this mean we get to go to another planet?”
Aryaan nodded.
“Yes.”
Ron grinned.
“Finally.”
Lane looked at him.
“You’re going to get us killed.”
Ron turned.
“Why are you assuming that?”
“Experience.”
Potter whispered:
“Historically accurate, though.”
Ron punched him.
Potter ducked.
The instructor continued.
“You will not be expected to defeat the creatures you encounter. You will document mutations, determine their likely cause, and identify whether the mutation represents natural adaptation, external contamination, technological interference, or energetic disturbance.”
Aryaan’s attention sharpened.
Energetic disturbance.
That phrase appeared frequently in Academy reports.
It also appeared in some of the older research papers connected to his parents.
His parents had been researchers.
Not ordinary researchers.
They had spent years investigating the destruction of Earth and the possibility that the catastrophe had not been entirely natural.
Their work had eventually taken them beyond accepted theories.
Then they disappeared.
Aryaan had been young.
Too young to understand what that meant.
He remembered his father’s hands.
His mother’s voice.
The smell of old research equipment.
And one message.
A message that had been sent after their disappearance.
Do not look for us.
It should have been a farewell.
Instead, Aryaan had interpreted it as proof.
If they were dead, why warn him not to search?
If they had wanted him to believe they were dead, why leave a message at all?
Somewhere in the years that followed, that question had become an obsession.
His parents were alive.
He believed it.
He had no proof.
But he had something more dangerous.
Hope.
The instructor’s voice brought him back.
“The first locations will be distributed after today’s assessment.”
The map shifted again.
A region near Gaia appeared.
Aryaan’s heart tightened.
Gaia.
The planet was one of the most strategically important worlds in the region.
It was also one of the few planets openly resisting the Orion threat.
The Orions were not merely conquerors.
They consumed planetary cores.
A planet whose core was devoured did not simply die.
It underwent catastrophe.
Gravity destabilised.
Magnetic fields collapsed.
Atmospheric systems failed.
Entire ecosystems could be destroyed before the planet finally became a shell.
The Orions claimed they had discovered a way to increase their power by consuming planetary cores.
The Gaians believed otherwise.
They had once believed the answer lay in resonance.
Enhance yourself.
Do not consume the world.
Somewhere in that history was Sia’s burden.
She carried an inherited secret tied to an ancient mistake made by the Gaians—one that had eventually given the Orions knowledge they should never have possessed.
Aryaan glanced towards her.
Sia was watching the map.
Her expression was unreadable.
For once, Ron didn’t make a joke.
The instructor dismissed them.
The hall erupted into noise.
Ron immediately grabbed Aryaan’s shoulder.
“We’re going to Gaia.”
“We don’t know that.”
“We saw the coordinates.”
“They were one of the locations.”
“That’s basically the same thing.”
“No.”
Ron looked at Lane.
“Tell him.”
Lane didn’t even look up.
“No.”
Ron stared at his twin.
“Whose side are you on?”
“Mine.”
“Traitor.”
Aryaan laughed.
Then he noticed someone standing near the edge of the hall.
Devdutt.
He had no reason to be there.
Not officially.
The Academy had instructors, administrators, and visiting officials.
Devdutt was none of those.
He stood quietly, watching the students disperse.
His eyes met Aryaan’s.
Something changed.
Barely.
But Aryaan saw it.
Devdutt looked at the map.
Then at Aryaan.
Then towards the coordinates near Gaia.
Aryaan’s amusement vanished.
He pushed through the crowd.
“Guruji.”
Devdutt waited.
Aryaan stopped before him.
“What are you doing here?”
“Watching.”
“Why?”
“Because you are graduating.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
Devdutt smiled.
“You have inherited that habit from your mother.”
Aryaan went still.
Devdutt immediately turned away.
“Wait.”
Devdutt stopped.
Aryaan’s voice had changed.
“You knew her.”
Devdutt looked back.
“Of course I knew her.”
“No. I mean—”
“I understood what you meant.”
Aryaan’s pulse increased.
“Did she ever talk about the Academy assignment?”
Devdutt’s expression became more guarded.
“No.”
Aryaan studied him.
Devdutt was good at hiding things.
Very good.
But Aryaan had spent his entire life around him.
He knew the difference between Devdutt’s silence and Devdutt’s evasion.
This was evasion.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Many things.”
“Guruji.”
“Aryaan.”
The use of his name stopped him.
Devdutt’s voice softened.
“Your graduation is important. Don’t let your parents’ disappearance consume it.”
Aryaan’s jaw tightened.
“You told me for years that they were probably dead.”
“I told you that you had no proof they were alive.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
Aryaan stepped closer.
“And now?”
Devdutt looked at him.
For the smallest fraction of a second, Aryaan saw something in his eyes.
Fear.
Not for himself.
For Aryaan.
Then it vanished.
“Now,” Devdutt said, “I think you should finish your final year.”
Aryaan watched him walk away.
Lane appeared beside him.
“What did he say?”
Aryaan looked at his cousin.
“Nothing useful.”
Lane nodded.
Ron appeared on Aryaan’s other side.
“Great. My favourite kind of conversation.”
Aryaan looked between them.
“Do you ever arrive normally?”
Ron shrugged.
“No.”
Potter came up behind them.
“That’s actually his most consistent personality trait.”
Ron turned.
“Do you want to get punched?”
Potter grinned.
“Not particularly.”
“Then stop.”
“No.”
Ron raised his fist.
Aryaan stepped between them.
“Enough.”
Ron lowered his hand.
Potter smiled.
Lane sighed.
The group began moving towards the exit.
Aryaan remained behind for another second.
He looked towards the holographic map.
Earth.
Gaia.
The asteroid belt.
The distant worlds.
The locations where battles had recently taken place.
His parents had disappeared while investigating Earth’s destruction.
Now the Academy was sending its graduating students to worlds altered by battles and unexplained mutations.
Coincidence.
That was what a rational person would call it.
Aryaan had never been particularly interested in rational explanations when they failed to answer the important questions.
He turned to leave.
Then he stopped.
Something had appeared on the holographic map.
A location that had not been there before.
Deep inside the asteroid belt.
Near Mokshabhumi.
It appeared for less than a second.
A single coordinate.
Then vanished.
Aryaan stared.
He wasn’t sure whether anyone else had seen it.
He looked towards Lane.
Lane was already looking at him.
That was enough.
Lane had seen it too.
Ron hadn’t.
Potter hadn’t.
Aryaan turned back towards the display.
The coordinate was gone.
But he had memorised it.
And somewhere far beneath Mokshabhumi, behind layers of metal and rock that had been sealed long before Aryaan was born, something answered the brief flare of his awakened perception.
A faint pulse.
Once.
Then silence.
Aryaan did not know what it was.
He did not know why it had responded to him.
He did not know why his parents had disappeared.
He did not know what Devdutt was hiding.
And he certainly did not know that the answer to all three questions might be connected.
For now, he had an Academy assignment to complete.
A graduation to survive.
A group of friends to keep from killing one another.
And two cousins who were already arguing over who had stolen whose breakfast.
It was, Aryaan thought, probably going to be a long year.
He had no idea how right he was.