Three days later, the sky forgot how to be blue.
A colorless light stretched over the broken city like a sheet, flat and cold. No clouds. No birds. Just heat and a faint, almost inaudible humming that seemed to come from the air itself.
Somewhere far from Jagannath Mandir, in a cramped district where houses leaned on each other like tired men and children played barefoot in dust, people woke up as usual.
A mother scolded her son for not washing his face.
An old tea seller boiled water, talking to himself about a time when sugar was cheaper.
Two boys argued over a half-torn ball.
Life was still clinging.
Then the hum deepened.
Not enough to notice. Not enough to see.
It was like a breath being held.
A small dish tower on the roof of a government building flickered once, its lights turning from green to white. An invisible wave rippled out, low and perfectly measured, passing through concrete, flesh, bone.
The mother mid-lecture stopped.
The child froze as well.
The tea seller put the kettle down and stared at nothing.
The two boys dropped the ball and simply stood there.
No one screamed. No one fell.
They just… went quiet.
Eyes still open. Lungs still moving. Hearts still beating.
But whatever used to live behind their eyes was gone.
Nexus worked.
The first test had succeeded.
Elsewhere, in places no map could hold, seven beings stopped what they were doing at the same instant.
Ashwatthama paused with his hand around the hilt of his sword, in a battlefield that had never been recorded, surrounded by rusted weapons and the memory of wars only he remembered. For the first time in centuries, his expression changed from fury to something like dread.
Mahabali, seated in Pātāl Lok on his throne of gentled gold, halfway through offering flowers into an unseen flame, stilled. The marigold slipped from his hand.
Vibhishan, who had been standing at the edge of a drowned shore where Lanka once burned, watched a wave crash and felt his chest tighten.
Kripacharya stopped in mid-stride in a ruined gurukul where no children studied any longer, his old fingers curling around his staff till the knuckles turned white.
Ved Vyasa, in his quiet classroom of New Indraprastha, dropped the digital board writer he was holding. In front of him, a smartboard still showed half-written equations. No one noticed. His students' implanted eyes were fixed on their screens. They did not even blink.
Parashurama stood atop a mountain, axe raised, snow swirling around his ankles. He could feel something breaking far away, something not made of stone.
And Hanuman, crouched before Jagannath inside the old temple at Puri, opened his eyes fully.
All of them, separately, in their own worlds, thought the same small, heavy line.
The time is near now.
Inside Jagannath Mandir, the bells jingled once, as if tugged by an invisible hand.
The world outside had grown oddly silent. No distant shouting. No market chatter. Even the sea seemed to breathe more softly.
Parth felt it first, a heaviness pressing against his chest, like air had thickened.
Aarav sat at the temple steps, head bowed, fingers twitching faintly, as if trying to match a rhythm he alone could hear. Neel leaned against a pillar, listening to everything and not liking any of it. Sia, Avni and Meera all hovered close, a tight little cluster of restless hearts.
Hanuman ji rose.
He did not look surprised. Just deeply, deeply sad.
> "It has begun," he said softly.
Parth took a step forward.
> "Nexus."
Hanuman ji nodded once.
> "Their first test. On a small place. A small piece of the world. To see whether they can make a neighborhood of living corpses before they make a planet of them."
Meera swallowed. "And it worked."
> "Yes."
For a moment, no one spoke.
Sia broke the silence.
> "What about us? Will not we turn into non-human beings too if we ever come across this deadly project?"
Hanuman ji looked at each of their faces in turn, as if counting them in his own mind.
> "Some wires are older than machines," he said gently. "Some promises are older than yugas. You six are bound by stories that no chip, no wave, no Nexus can overwrite."
Parth exhaled slowly. "So what do we do now?"
Hanuman ji turned fully toward them.
His aura had always been calm, playful even, like a giant disguised as a devotee. Now there was something else in it. Something like standing in front of a mountain just before it decides to move.
> "Now, you leave."
Avni blinked. "Leave where?"
> "To Sambhala."
The word itself seemed to change the air.
A faint breeze curled through the mandir where there had been none.
Neel frowned. "Sambhala is a place that we can't reach just because we want to."
> "Nothing is impossible," Hanuman ji replied, "you will reach there, when you actually need to."
He took a step closer and lowered his voice, though there was no need. The emotionless people outside would not be eavesdropping.
> "Listen to me carefully. The Nexus pulse has begun. It will spread further. Slowly first, then faster. City by city. Sector by sector. The ones closest to the towers will fall first. But there are still pockets of earth that remain untouched."
He pointed outward, past the walls, past the streets, past the sand.
> "The people in this mandir. The villages around… eight, ten at most. Places where hearts still bow before God instead of screens. I can keep them safe. For a while."
Sia's voice shook. "For how long?"
Hanuman ji smiled. It was not a comforting smile, but it was honest.
> "Until I am called away to fight."
He folded his hands behind him.
> "You six will go to Sambhala. You will stand before my Prabhu Narayan and tell Him what you have seen. He already knows, but you must still speak. That is your duty. When the last avatar of Vishnu prepares for war, he does not do so alone."
Aarav raised his head, eyes shadowed by visions he could not share.
> "And when we return?"
> "When you return," Hanuman ji said, "you will help me bring as many pure souls as possible under shelter before the sky splits. You will fight. You will fall and rise. You will see things you wish you had never seen."
He paused.
> "Whether you reach Sambhala easily or not… even I cannot say. Even gods have places they do not peek into before the hour."
Parth took a slow breath, then nodded.
> "Tell us only one thing."
Hanuman ji tilted his head.
> "Will there be anyone left to save?"
Hanuman ji looked at the idol of Jagannath. For a moment, his expression turned almost childlike in its devotion.
> "As long as He is remembered," he murmured, "there is always something left to save."
That was enough.
It had to be.
They packed nothing. There wasn't much to carry anyway. The world had already taken everything that could be taken.
Sia picked up a small cloth bag with some dry food because practicality never dies completely. Avni tied her hair back and looped a thin chain with a little pendant around her neck, like armor made of memory. Meera lingered near the mandir door for a second longer than the others, fingers brushing the old stone as if to say sorry for leaving.
Neel took one long look at Hanuman ji.
> "We will Come back soon," he said quietly.
Hanuman ji chuckled softly.
> "I believe in that."
Aarav walked out without a word, but his steps were steady.
Parth was the last to bow.
For a moment, as his forehead touched the cool floor, he felt something like a hand on his head. Heavy. Warm. Unshakable.
When he lifted his face, Hanuman ji was already turning away, heading back toward the inner sanctum, lips moving in a mantra only gods remember.
They stepped out into a world that hummed without feeling.
They walked past people who moved like shadows along the road, buying nothing, arguing about nothing, loving no one.
Once, a small boy looked at them with real confusion in his eyes, as if he still had some tears left. His mother tugged him along, expression blank, not even noticing when he stumbled.
"Is this… everyone?" Avni whispered.
"Not yet," Parth said. "But soon."
They kept walking.
Out of Puri.
Past broken signboards.
Past rusted shells of cars.
Past an old school building with shattered windows and a playground where no one played anymore.
The further they went, the thinner the clusters of people became. The silence deepened.
When they finally reached open land, the sky felt too big.
Sia sighed. "How do you find a place that doesn't want to be found?"
Neel answered without looking back.
> "You don't."
She frowned. "Then what do we do?"
Parth glanced at the distant line of trees, at the way the heat shimmered on the horizon.
> "We walk until it finds us."
No one argued.
They just moved.
Somewhere very far from them, snow was inhaling sunlight.
On a plateau between jagged peaks, a man with an axe and a man with a sword stood facing each other, both breathing hard.
Parashurama's hair whipped in the icy wind, but he seemed rooted to the mountain itself. Scars crisscrossed his bare arms like maps of old wars.
Kalki's chest rose and fell with measured rhythm, his hand resting lightly on the hilt of the blade Shiva had gifted him. His eyes were not exhausted. They were alive with a strange, burning clarity.
The ground around them was a battlefield of training. Rocks split in half. Snow melted into dark slush where strikes had landed. The air still crackled from their last clash.
Parashurama spoke first.
> "You have learned to wield your strength without mercy."
Kalki stayed silent.
> "You have learned to restrain your strength without weakness."
Still silence.
Parashurama stepped closer, studying him.
> "Now you must learn to walk into a world that does not deserve saving… and save it anyway."
Kalki finally lifted his gaze.
> "The first pulse has already gone, hasn't it?"
Parashurama's jaw tightened.
> "You felt it."
Kalki nodded, once. "I saw a city fall silent. No blood. No fire. Just… emptiness."
Parashurama looked out over the edge of the cliff.
> "They have built weapons to erase the human heart without leaving a mark on the body. That is this yuga's evil. In others, the enemy came with chariots and swords. Now, he comes wrapped in wires and kindness."
Kalki's fingers curled around his sword hilt.
> "Then the time has come," he said quietly.
Parashurama did not answer immediately.
He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, then opened them with a gaze that seemed to pierce through the mountain, through the sky, straight into the far future.
> "Almost."
Kalki frowned. "How much longer?"
Parashurama's lips curved into something that was not quite a smile.
> "Until the last pockets of light find each other. Until the last few souls still capable of love stand together in one place. When that happens, Narayan will not need to be called. He will already be there."
Kalki looked down at his own hands, at the faint glow beneath his skin.
> "And what do I do until then?"
It looked like he knew the answer but asked to still look human. Parashurama lifted his axe again, settling into stance.
> "You train."
He swung.
Kalki blocked.The sound of metal against metal echoed across the empty peaks like a warning.
...
Back in the City of Glass, beneath a steel sky, a meeting had ended with polished smiles and hollow toasts. The Elites dispersed to their high towers and private sanctuaries, content in the knowledge that their project worked.
In one of the upper floors, two of them lingered.
A man with a diamond-studded watch refilled his glass.
A woman in a silver dress adjusted the bracelet that monitored her heart rate.
> "Did you feel anything?" she asked lightly.
> "Why would I?" he replied. "It was just a test on the outer district. Let the poor be peaceful for once."
The lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
They both went still.
"Power cut?" he muttered.
> "Impossible," she said. "We have backups on backups."
Something scratched.
Not on the door.
Not on the floor.
Inside the walls.
Thin, wet dragging sounds crept around the edges of the room, circling them. The air grew colder.
The man swallowed. "Hello?"
The ceiling vent shifted.
A hand came out.
Long, bony fingers with stretched gray skin and claws like broken glass gripped the vent frame. Then another hand. Then a face squeezed through, half human and half something else, jaws unhinged too wide, empty green eyes glowing.
Behind it, more eyes blinked in the dark.
Crawling, slithering, hungry.
The woman screamed.
The man dropped his glass.
No one outside the room heard them. Or if they did, they did not care.
By the time the door creaked open again later, the only sound was the slow drip of liquid on polished crystal tile.
A bloodied bracelet rolled in a small circle and fell still.
The creatures were gone.
The tower hummed awake again.
On a screen in another room, a status line blinked calmly.
NEXUS PHASE ONE: COMPLETE.
Far away, six silhouettes walked along a road that barely remembered being a road.
The sky above them looked tired.
Parth led, the wind pulling at his clothes.
Sia walked a little behind him, eyes scanning the distance, one hand absently touching the pendant at her throat.
Aarav's gaze was somewhere no one else could see, but his feet still followed the path.
Neel's face was calm, but every muscle was alert.
Meera tried not to look back.
Avni hummed an old bhajan under her breath, voice thin but steady, as if daring the air to forget divinity completely.
They did not know where Sambhala was.
They did not know who would live long enough to see it.
They did not know whether the earth would forgive being saved this late.
But their steps did not stop.
Because stopping now meant agreeing that the world deserved to die.
The road stretched on, eaten at the edges by dust and time.
The sky dimmed a little more, as if the light itself was bracing.
Somewhere ahead, beyond sight, beyond maps, a hidden valley waited.
Somewhere above, a white horse paced in a place between mountains and stars.
Somewhere beneath, a god of chaos smiled, gathering his children of hunger and silence.
And somewhere inside six human chests, six hearts still beat with fear, anger, love, stubbornness and faith.
The last ingredients needed for a war.
Now that everything was slipping out of control and hanging over the edge, only one question remained.
Would earth and the few who still remembered how to feel be saved…
or was this the last sunrise before the final night?