The river looked wrong in daylight.
It flowed. It glittered. It carried plastic bottles and flower garlands and dead leaves in the slow, patient way rivers did.
But Manraj could still see where it had opened.
He stood on the repaired section of the embankment, fingers clenched around the rusted railing, watching the water slide past like nothing had ever split it into a throat.
Nobody else on the path flinched.
Morning joggers. Office workers cutting across the bridge. A chai cart rattling along the lane behind him. Life went on in its usual, disinterested way.
Only he flinched when the light hit the surface just wrong.
The scars were still there—if you knew how to look.
Thin lines of paler stone where the bank had been "reconstructed." Patches where the concrete color didn't quite match. A faint circular crack pattern, like something enormous had pressed up from underneath and then… stopped.
Like a fist that had changed its mind halfway through breaking through the skin of the world.
"Stop staring at it like it's going to apologize," Zoya said behind him.
Manraj didn't turn.
"Feels like it should," he muttered.
"For what? Existing?" she asked, coming up beside him. "Join the club."
The wind off the water caught her hair and shoved it into her face. She blew it away with a sharp huff and leaned on the railing, elbows resting thoughtfully.
She looked… almost normal.
Burgundy hoodie. Black jeans. Glasses a little askew. A coffee cup cradled in both hands.
If you ignored the faint shimmer around her fingers—the one that made the air quieten a fraction when she got too annoyed—you could pretend she was just another person out for fresh air.
Manraj tried.
Failed.
His chest twinged as if something under his ribs remembered the water-voice calling him by a name that didn't belong to this life.
Eryth.
He shook his head, forcing his eyes off the river.
"Any news?" he asked.
Zoya didn't pretend not to understand.
"I checked the tunnels again," she said. "Or what's left of them."
"And?"
"They're gone," she said. "Sealed. Like someone erased the entrance and then got lazy halfway down."
He swallowed.
"And Azhar?"
She took a slow sip of coffee to delay the answer.
When it came, it was flat.
"Still gone."
The word didn't hit like a surprise. It hit like a bruise being pressed, just to check if it still hurt.
(It did.)
"He's not dead," Manraj said quietly.
Zoya glanced at him over the rim of her cup.
"You're sure?"
He didn't know how to explain it.
There was a part of his awareness now—a small, fragile thread—that reached into places normal senses couldn't touch. A feeling like standing in a very large, very dark room and knowing there were other breathing things in it, even if you couldn't see them.
Azhar was one of those breaths.
Faint. Far away.
But there.
"Yeah," Manraj said. "I'm sure."
Zoya looked back at the river.
"Good," she said. "I'd hate to start this phase of my life with a corpse count of one."
Manraj huffed out something that might have been a laugh, if it weren't so tired.
They stood in silence for a while.
Cars passed overhead on the bridge. A dog barked at a pigeon it had no chance of catching. Somewhere behind them, a vendor shouted about hot samosas like it was an emergency.
The world really didn't care that the river had almost eaten them.
Zoya set her cup on the railing between them.
"So," she said. "Any flashes today?"
He knew what she meant.
He lifted his hand unconsciously to his chest.
The symbols were still there, faint under his skin. In the bathroom mirror they looked like pale scars traced across his ribs, curving toward his sternum. Sometimes they burned. Sometimes they hummed. Sometimes they lay quiet for hours, letting him pretend he was still a guy whose biggest problem was rent.
This morning, they had woken him up before sunrise, pulsing in a slow pattern like a heartbeat trying to keep time with something far away.
"Not… flashes," he said. "More like… reminders."
"Of Root Daddy?" she asked.
He grimaced. "Don't call it that."
"Your primordial problem parent? Your cosmic disappointment father? Your river ex?"
"Zoya."
She smirked, but the edge in her eyes softened.
"Okay," she said. "Describe it."
He leaned more weight onto the railing, staring at his reflection in the water—two eyes, one normal, the other ringed faintly with white, like someone had drawn a halo around the amber.
"It feels like…" He searched for words. "…like the world is counting something. But sideways."
"That's not an answer, that's a poetry slam," she muttered. "Details."
He closed his eyes.
"There's this… pressure," he said. "Not a voice. Not yet. Just… expectation. Like something is waiting behind a door. And every few hours, someone knocks from the other side to check if I'm still here."
"Root checking its favorite mistake," she said.
"Maybe," he said. "Or…"
He hesitated.
"Or?" she pushed.
"Or a clock," he said finally. "Like it's making sure I know time is moving."
Zoya went very still.
The river murmured below them.
"Time," she repeated. "As in… a countdown."
He opened his eyes again.
Her gaze was on him. Serious now. Almost afraid, which he didn't like.
"Tell me what you feel exactly." Her voice had that clipped edge she used when she was hunting patterns.
He frowned.
"Zoya, it's not—"
"Exactly."
He sighed.
"Fine. It started last night," he said. "I woke up at 2:17. Chest burning. Symbols lit up. And for a second, I saw… numbers."
"In your head?"
"On the ceiling," he said. "Or in my eyes. I don't know. White. Fading fast. Forty… and a mark I didn't recognize."
Zoya's knuckles tightened on the railing.
"And now?"
"Now it's thirty-nine," he said.
"There's a number on your chest?" she asked.
"Not written like that," he said. "But… when I breathe, I can feel it. Thirty-nine of something. Pushing down."
She stared at him like she could see the countdown through his hoodie.
Azhar's voice floated up from memory—soft in the aftermath of the first battle, shadows low around him:
Forty days. That's all we have.
Manraj swallowed.
"Zoya?"
"Yeah," she said mechanically. "I heard it too."
He frowned.
"Heard what?"
"His warning." She tapped the side of her head. "I don't forget things that scare me."
She turned her back to the river suddenly and leaned her spine against the railing, eyes scanning the street instead.
"You said it feels like a door," she said. "Something behind it. Something waiting."
"Yeah."
"Good," she said. "Then we treat it like what it is."
"And what's that?"
"A timer," she said. "Forty days of… whatever this root tantrum phase is. Forty days until the door finishes unlocking. Or until it breaks the frame."
"Comforting," he muttered.
"Not trying to be," she said.
He watched her for a second.
Her hair was still damp at the ends from her shower. Her glasses were sliding down her nose again. There was a faint bruise just under her jaw where the river had slammed her against stone.
She looked more tired than he'd ever seen her.
"Zoya," he said quietly. "You okay?"
She blinked at him like she'd forgotten people could ask that.
"Define 'okay'," she said. "I can walk. I can drink coffee. I can make fun of your dramatic chest issues. So yes, I'm… functioning."
"That's not what I asked."
"I know."
They held each other's gaze for a moment.
She exhaled.
"I see things," she admitted. "Since that night. Since the void. Since you said you chose yourself."
"What kind of things?"
"The river isn't just water," she said. "Not for me. There are… shadows in the current. Echoes. Sometimes when I blink, I see the guardian's mask half-buried down there."
He swallowed.
"Is it actually there?"
She shrugged, a humorless half-smile creeping in.
"Do you want the comforting answer or the honest one?"
"Honest."
"Sometimes," she said. "Sometimes I think it's just memory. Sometimes… I think it's watching to see if you change your mind."
He looked back at the water.
"I won't," he said.
"I know," she said. "That's the problem."
A crow cried overhead, cutting through the quiet in a harsh, ugly sound.
The world resumed around them.
Someone's ringtone blared. A motorbike backfired. A kid laughed too loudly at a joke his friend made.
Manraj straightened.
"Azhar said forty days," he said. "Root's on a clock. I'm on a clock. You're… stuck between both. What do we do with that?"
"We don't wait," Zoya said.
She pushed off the railing and finished her coffee in one long, determined swallow.
"If we sit still, it drags you under again. If we move, maybe—just maybe—we find a way to use the time against it."
"Use it how?" he asked.
"We learn the rules," she said. "Root rules. Shadow rules. Silence rules. Whatever Eirys is now. Whatever you are now."
She tapped his chest, just above the symbols.
"We make your core less of a doorbell and more of a lock."
He tried to picture that.
Failed.
"Feels a little ambitious," he said.
"Good," she said. "Ambitious goals keep people alive."
He gave her a look. "That's not how the quote goes."
"It is now."
She flicked the empty cup into a nearby bin and pulled her phone out of her pocket.
"You up for being a lab rat?" she asked.
He snorted.
"Do I get a choice?"
"Technically? No," she said. "Realistically? Also no."
She opened a notes app. On the top line she typed:
DAY ONE — RIVER INCIDENT AFTERMATH
ROOT COUNT: 39
"Okay," she said. "Experiment log starts now. Rule one: You tell me every time that countdown shifts. No bravado. No lying. No 'I'm fine' tragedies."
He rolled his eyes.
"Rule two," she added, "I try not to pass out every time I push my Silence too hard."
"That one's for my health," he said.
"Mutual benefit," she said. "Rule three…"
She hesitated.
"…we don't pretend Azhar is dead. Until we see a body, he's in the 'extremely annoying missing' category."
Manraj felt something unclench in his chest that he hadn't realized was tight.
"Deal," he said.
Wind lifted off the river, carrying a damp chill.
Zoya pocketed her phone and started walking along the path.
"Come on," she said. "We have forty days to annoy a primordial god and maybe break reality again. We should at least get breakfast first."
He fell into step beside her.
"Zoya?"
"Yeah?"
"When this countdown hits zero…" He trailed off. "What do you think happens?"
She didn't answer immediately.
When she did, her voice was quiet.
"I think the Root stops knocking," she said. "And starts kicking the door in."
He swallowed.
"And us?"
She glanced at him, eyes steady.
"Us?" she said. "We make sure we're not standing in the doorway."
---
Later that night, the river dreamed.
Deep under the calm surface, where concrete met ancient stone, something shifted.
Not the guardian.
That shape was broken, fragments of his mask scattered through the silt like discarded teeth.
Not the entity.
That presence had been forced deep—back into corridors of pressure and dark.
This was thinner.
Sharper.
A shadow that had learned how to exist without light.
It moved along the drowned tunnels, testing the new boundaries like a thief testing a lock.
Far above, on a rooftop miles from the river, Manraj startled awake, chest burning with a "38" that wasn't a number but still felt like one.
Across the mattress, Zoya's phone buzzed with an alarm she'd set herself:
DAY ONE → DAY TWO
The countdown had begun.
The shadow by the drowned tunnels laughed once—rough, disbelieving.
Azhar wiped river-mud from his face, sucked in a breath of water that tasted like air, and whispered into the dark:
"Forty days, huh…?"
The dark pressed closer, listening.
"Fine," he said. "Then let's see what I can break from this side."
The river flowed on.
The city slept.
And the second phase of their war—
Forty Days of Shadow—
began