Flames coil upward in slow motion, like serpents tasting the sky. Nothing has shape. Nothing has edges. The world is made of color and sound, not matter. Everything is silhouettes burned into vision.
And amid that blazing red dreamscape, a formless woman stands before him, outlined only by her firelit aura. No face. No features. Only the impression of a presence—feminine, towering, ancient.
Across from her, another shapeless figure wavers like a mirage.
The camera is first-person.The viewer looks down.
Small fingers.Hands too tiny for the weight they carry.And at their feet, resting in ashes—
—a revolver, half-melted, half-shadow.
"So this is the end, huh?" he hears a child's voice say. His own voice—far younger, far thinner.
The flames flicker.The air tastes like smoke and endings.
"Why did I even pick that up…"
A rasping whisper bleeds through the crackling fire.
"Master… Master, where are you… I don't wanna die…"
A second formless shape emerges—feminine again, but smaller, short hair drifting like smoke. She feels familiar but unreachable, like a name on the tip of a dying tongue.
"Mother… is that you?" the voice asks, trembling. "I can't see you… I can't… remember anything. How you looked…"
And then—He sees her.
Another figure, even smaller. A child. Distorted into pure trembling outlines. But even warped by dream-logic, he knows who that is.
"Is that… her?"His breath breaks."…my little sister…"
He looks down again at his hands, tiny and shaking.
"…Am I in the afterlife?" He swallows, breath hitching. "Heaven…?"
Silence answers him, heavy as judgment.
He shakes his head slowly.
"No. I'm not in heaven."A tremor in the voice."I can never be in heaven. I don't belong there."
Something shifts.
The fire gutters out.The ground melts.And in its place—water rises.
A flood swallowing color, shape, sound.
He gasps as cold clamps down his lungs.He sinks.Sinks deeper.Sinks past the dark where memory has weight.
Above him—drifting like a vision—an apple.a sparrow.
Red and brown against the drowning void.
The sparrow turns its head.Tiny. Insistent. Alive.
CHIRPCHIRPCHIRP CHIRL CHIRPCHIRP—
The chirping grows louder—sharper—until it splits the water like a blade.
He jolts upward into the waking world.
Gasping.Drenched in sweat.Heart beating like it wants out.
And the sparrow's cry still rings in his ears.
Rudra jerked upright, breath still ragged from the dream, heart still thrashing like it hadn't realized he was alive. His first instinct was to touch his face—his right eye—expecting gore, pulp, ruin.
But the eyelid blinked.The vision was clear.No burst vessels. No popped orb. No blood.
He whipped his head to his hands—One palm was normal.The other… faintly blackened.Exactly like it had been minutes after the Bhramharakshas exorcism.
"HUH!!"
A voice cut in like someone barging through his skull.
"Oi, mate."
Riley was standing in his tent—dusty boots, rifle on his back, the exact expression of an Aussie who walked in expecting chill vibes and instead found horror movie lighting.
"You good? Your eyes just…" He made an expanding motion with his hands. "…did this whole thing, like balloons blowing up and then—fwip—retracting."
Rudra stared. "What the fuck does that even mean?!"
Riley shrugged. "Dunno, but it looked painful."
"Forget that," Rudra said, grabbing his coat. "We need to go."
"Woi, relax." Riley held up both hands. "Food's good, people good, we can find that Shakti Peeth in the morning. Chill."
"NOOOOO!!!"
The yell cracked the tent poles. Riley flinched so hard his hat nearly flew off.
Rudra forced himself to lower his voice, but urgency still knifed through every syllable.
"The Soviets sent someone. A woman. To deal with a Dark Young. But she's also after us."
Riley frowned. "…so Soviet sent a girl?"
"A woman," Rudra snapped. "At least in her 30s. Ice powers. You fought her. And you— YOU created a valley."
Riley sniffed his breath. "Mate… you been drinking? What valley?"
Rudra grabbed him by the shoulders. "YOU DON'T GET IT. SHE WASN'T WEARING A SHIRT. AT ALL. IN ZERO DEGREES. THEN SUDDENLY—SUDDENLY SHE HAD A WHOLE-ASS DRESS."
Riley blinked. "…so Soviet sent a girl without a shirt in zero degrees Celsius."
"YES!!"
That single word detonated the air.
Footsteps scraped the dirt. The tent flap flew open.
Serenkhand rushed in, breath sharp, eyes wide, hair still messy from sleep.
"Rudra!" she gasped. "I—I heard you shouting—what's wrong?!"
Rudra grabbed Serenkhand's shoulders with the intensity of a man who had just woken up inside a cosmic nightmare.
"There was an Aeon," he blurted out. "A fucking AEON. Do you understand—? She appeared out of nowhere, black skin, blue eyes, silver hair, halo—no legs—SHE GRABBED RILEY—she looked at me through his POV—she called me a peeping tom—and then my eye EXPLODED and—"
Riley clapped a hand on his shoulder like he was calming down a horse.
"Mate. Mate. Listen to me."
He said it slowly, like Rudra was seconds from sprinting into a wall.
"It was either a bad dream… or you finally developed schizophrenia."
He tapped Rudra's forehead as if checking a melon for ripeness.
"Or—and hear me out—maybe it's that fresh Mongolian Marmot ZaZa you've been smoking."
"I DON'T SMOKE MARMOT ZAZA!"
Serenkhand looked between them helplessly, like she had walked into a fever dream.
Riley kept going.
"Seriously, Red—Aeon? In this economy? Here? Why not say a bloody dragon swooped in and called you short while you're at it?"
Rudra shook him. "I'm telling you—SHE WAS REAL!"
Riley raised both eyebrows. "Right. And I'm secretly King Kangaroo of Australia."
"You literally turn into a lightning kangaroo—"
"That is RACIST against Australians—"
"NO IT'S NOT—"
Rudra dragged both hands down his face, forcing the tremor in his voice into something that sounded like calm. His right eye twitched so hard it looked like it was trying to moonwalk out of his skull.
"Maybe you're right," he muttered. "Maybe… it was a dream."Another twitch."Or maybe I'm just… retarded."
Riley didn't miss a beat.
"You just realised?" he said, patting Rudra's cheek like a disappointed gym teacher.
Serenkhand winced. "Riley…"
"Nah, trust me, he needs this," Riley said, then turned back to Rudra and grabbed his jaw with one hand to stop his face from doing origami impressions. "Oi—Red—stop twitching. Stop. Stop. It's unsettling. Looks like your eyeball's trying to send Morse code."
Rudra swatted his hand away. "IT'S NOT—IT JUST DOES THAT WHEN I'M—"
"Tweaking?"
"NO!"
Serenkhand whispered, "Is he dying?"
"No," Riley said. "This is just… Red." He gestured to Rudra like he was presenting a broken appliance on late-night infomercials. "Premium Indian Faulty Wiring™."
Rudra tried to breathe. The twitching got worse.
Riley leaned in, lowering his voice.
"Look… whatever you saw—Aeon, hallucination, Mongolian Marmot ZaZa—I don't care. But your face is doing a whole EDM light show right now, and it's making me panic."
Rudra stared at him.
Riley stared back.
Both terrified.
Both pretending not to be.
Serenkhand just slowly backed toward the door like, these two are going to give me a stroke before the Soviets do.
Rudra froze, finger trembling on the trigger, his body radiating a faint heat as he braced for the familiar ice-cold aura he knew too well. The door creaked open, and he swung the revolver toward the shadowy figure—
…but then paused.
It wasn't Nicole Romanov.
It was… a man, stout and round-shouldered, with a wild mop of hair and glasses catching the flickering firelight. He looked harmless—almost absurdly so.
"George… R.R. Martin?" Riley blurted, tilting his head.
Serenkhand's eyes widened. "He… he is important? Really important?"
Rudra slowly lowered the revolver, brow furrowed. "Important? Depends. If you mean he decides who lives, who dies, and who gets a direwolf… maybe."
The man cleared his throat nervously. "I, uh… I'm just on a trip. Needed some water."
Riley groaned. "Mate… an 80-something-year-old man alone out here. Kinda feel bad."
Rudra didn't reply. He simply stepped aside, revolver still in hand, as if daring the man to prove he wasn't some Soviet assassin in a literary disguise.
The firelight danced across the tent walls, the silence thick and heavy.
Then Rudra's voice cut through it, sharp as a blade. "Doing anything but writing WoW?"
"WHERE IS THE 6th BOOK GEORGE!!"
George froze mid-step, then muttered nervously, "I… I just did a favor for a sweet lady… she… wasn't wearing a shirt… threatened to ice me…I told her the ending of Asoiaf" His words stumbled out as he bolted, water bottle clutched in hand.
Riley blinked. "Man… he sure runs fast for someone his size and age."
Serenkhand murmured, "A shirtless lady?"
The air shifted. In an instant, the temperature leapt from freezing to scorching. Riley's eyes widened as he spotted Rudra standing, fists clenched, face tight with fury.
"Nicole!!" he roared, the heat around him shimmering like a living flame.