The chamber door sealed behind Kashyap with a hiss—
the sound of reality locking him into a truth he wasn't ready to hear.
Vasundhara walked ahead, her robes whispering across the metallic floor.
Viraj stayed behind him,hand always near his holster, eyes scanning shadows that didn't exist.
They entered a circular hall where floating screens projected images of cascading universes, each one marked with a shimmering red fracture.
Dozens of them.
Too many.
Kashyap frowned.
"This is impossible.The Continuum shouldn't be collapsing at this rate."
Viraj muttered,
"Tell that to the universe that disappeared last night."
Kashyap turned sharply.
"Another one fell?"
Vasundhara nodded gravely.
"AX-14.Seven billion lives… gone within eight seconds."
The silence hit harder than any weapon.
Kashyap clenched his fists.
"Then why are you focusing on Mandakini?She isn't doing this."
Vasundhara touched a glowing sigil.
A hologram of Mandakini appeared—fierce,sharp, eyes filled with a dangerous certainty.
"No," Vasundhara said softly.
"She is not destroying universes.She is… avoiding them."
Kashyap didn't understand.
"Why would she avoid entire universes?"
---
The screens shifted.
A new hologram formed—
one Kashyap had never seen.
A map of the Continuum, but twisted.
Warped.
As if someone had drawn two timelines over each other and forced them to overlap.
Viraj stepped forward, jaw tight.
"Because she comes from this."
He pointed at the warped structure.
"A universe that shouldn't exist.A paradox reality."
Kashyap stared at it.
A universe created from a fracture—
not born from cosmic expansion
but from an error.
"Someone created a universe illegally?" he whispered.
Vasundhara shook her head.
"No.Something was created inside it."
---
The air in the chamber changed.
A new voice echoed, footsteps approaching—calm, precise.
Agastya entered, carrying a glowing chronometric sphere.
Lines of pure time-energy swirled inside it like captured lightning.
He placed it on the central pedestal.
"Before we proceed," Agastya said, leveling his steady gaze at Kashyap,
"you must understand the paradox."
He tapped the sphere.
Mandakini's face appeared again—this time younger, afraid, standing at the heart of a collapsing star.
Agastya continued:
"She wasn't bornin a universe."
He looked at Kashyap.
"She was bornbetween universes."
Kashyap's pulse quickened.
"What does that even mean?"
Vasundhara explained:
"Her existence is a flaw.
A miracle.
A threat.
Everything at once."
Viraj leaned against a console.
"Imagine a child born in the vacuum between realities.No laws of physics, no time, no fate. That's Mandakini."
Agastya added:
"She is not bound to any timeline.She can cross universes without a gate. She can sense fractures before they appear. And worst—"
He tapped the sphere again.
The image flickered.
Mandakini stood over a burning world, eyes glowing like twin supernovae.
"—she can collapse realities just by interacting with them."
Kashyap stepped back, breath caught in his throat.
"No…she didn't seem like a destroyer. She spared me. She tried to stop the collapse in AX-19."
Agastya nodded.
"Exactly.She fights her nature."
Vasundhara's voice softened.
"That's why she avoided all collapsing universes.
Not to hide—
but to protect them from herself."
The revelation struck Kashyap like a gravitational wave.
Mandakini wasn't a threat.
She was a woman carrying a cosmic curse—
one she never asked for.
But Agastya wasn't finished.
He tapped a final sequence.
A new hologram projected into the air.
Kashyap stared.
It was him.
Fighting Mandakini on a floating corridor of fractured time.
Viraj cursed under his breath.
"That's the future timeline we recovered this morning."
Kashyap's eyes narrowed.
In the hologram, Mandakini looked devastated…
almost as if she recognized him.
Almost as if she knew him.
Agastya turned to Kashyap.
"You are linked to her.
More deeply than you realize."
Kashyap's voice tightened.
"How?"
Agastya placed a hand on the chronometric sphere.
"Because in one timeline…
you were the one who created her."
The words detonated in the silence.
Kashyap staggered.
"What?"
Vasundhara nodded slowly.
"The paradox universe…it originated from you."
---
The floor beneath Kashyap vibrated.
A deep tremor.
Lights flickered.
Sirens blared.
Viraj checked his scanner and swore loudly.
"Fracture surge incoming!Something is entering this universe—at high velocity!"
The walls shuddered again.
A wave of raw temporal energy smashed into the chamber.
Agastya shielded the sphere.
Vasundhara braced against the consoles.
Kashyap alone stood still.
He knew this energy.
He had felt it in that corridor.
A whisper echoed across the chamber—soft but urgent:
"Kashyap… move."
Mandakini's voice.
Then, in the center of the hall—
A vertical tear split open in mid-air.
Pure white light poured out.
A silhouette stepped through.
Mandakini.
Exhausted.
Bleeding.
Eyes burning with warnings too large for words.
She looked directly at Kashyap.
"They're coming."
Kashyap's heart hammered.
"Who?"
Her answer was a single word:
"The ones who want to erase me."