Rain had thinned into a mist by the time Manraj and Zoya reached the main road. Cars hissed past like beasts with dull eyes, unaware of the storm curling beneath the city's skin.
Manraj kept touching his temple—
not because it hurt,
but because something inside it had moved.
That memory.
That fragment.
That boy's hand pulling him back from fire—
It shouldn't exist.
It wasn't supposed to exist.
Zoya watched him quietly, her brows drawn.
"You're remembering something, aren't you?"
Manraj swallowed. "I don't know if it was real."
"It was."
Her voice was firm in a way that made him look up.
They walked beneath a flickering streetlamp.
The world dimmed when the bulb buzzed out…
And in that darkness—
Manraj heard it again.
A whisper.
Not the Old Tongue from before.
Something colder.
Older.
A memory that didn't belong to him.
"Run."
He staggered.
Zoya grabbed him.
"Manraj!"
But he wasn't seeing the street anymore.
He was inside a white void—
flat, cold, endless—
and fire spiraled around him in chains.
A child cried.
A circle of runes burned.
Shadows screamed against the light.
And Surtr's voice thundered:
"This one must forget."
Manraj gasped back into the real world, knees buckling.
Zoya held him up, her breath quick and uneven.
"What did you see?"
He couldn't speak.
Not yet.
Not with the taste of ash still sitting in his lungs.
Zoya's fingers tightened.
"Manraj… something is breaking in you. And whatever sealed your past—
it's losing control."
He finally managed to whisper:
"Zoya… someone erased me."
Her eyes widened—fear, pity, and something else flickering inside them.
Silence settled between them.
Not the silence of quiet.
The Silence that Zoya carried inside her—
the one she did not yet understand.
The air around them shifted.
Lights dimmed.
The city sound dulled, like someone clamping hands around the world's ears.
Manraj stepped back.
"Zoya… what's happening?"
She shook her head.
"I—I don't know."
But the shadows at their feet bent toward her.
Just slightly.
Just enough to obey.
Zoya blinked hard, terrified of herself.
"Manraj… I think something in me woke up."
A
nd far away, in a forgotten temple,
a pair of glowing white eyes snapped open—
as if answering her.