The road looked painfully ordinary.
Motorcycles. A fruit vendor arguing with an elderly woman. A stray cat weaving between trash bins. People laughing like nothing beneath their feet had just tried to drag a boy into a forgotten grave.
Manraj wiped the sweat off his forehead with a shaking hand.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this," he whispered.
Zoya didn't answer.
She stood with her back to a shuttered shop, one hand braced on her knee, the other pressed hard over her own heart as if forcing it to keep calm. Her Silence buzzed softly around her fingers — strained, jagged, like a signal with static.
She finally looked up.
"Manraj," she said softly, "you need to tell me what you felt."
He shook his head. "You saw what happened."
"No." Her voice sharpened. "I saw shadows coming out of a well. I didn't feel whatever those things were doing to your core."
He hesitated.
Then—
"It wasn't one pull."
Zoya froze. "What?"
"It was…" He searched for the words. "…like dozens of hands inside my chest. Not grabbing — not yet — but mapping. Like they were trying to figure out which part to pull first."
Zoya swore under her breath.
"That means they recognized something in your core. Something specific."
Manraj shook his head hard. "No. They recognized something missing."
Zoya's eyes snapped toward him.
"…the word they kept saying."
"'Unfinished,'" he whispered. "They weren't calling to me. They were calling to whatever the Root left incomplete."
A chill crawled down Zoya's spine.
"So the Under-Root knows what you're supposed to become."
Manraj clenched his jaw.
"And I don't."
The silence that followed hit like a stone.
Not because of fear.
Because of the truth.
Zoya suddenly grabbed his hoodie and pulled him close.
"Listen to me. You don't belong to them. You don't belong to the Root. You don't belong to any of this."
He blinked in surprise.
"You chose yourself once," she said. "You'll do it again. And again. And however many times it takes."
He nodded shakily.
"Okay."
"No," Zoya said sharply, "not 'okay.' Say it."
He exhaled.
"I choose myself."
She released his hoodie.
"Good. Now let's survive long enough for that to actually matter."
---
THE CITY LISTENS
They walked side-by-side down the narrow lane, staying close to the crowds, careful to avoid alley shadows.
Everything felt wrong now.
A parked scooter vibrated slightly — but no truck had passed.
A shop's metal shutter rattled — but no wind blew.
A dog growled at a patch of empty air.
Zoya's voice dropped low.
"They're testing the surface."
Manraj swallowed.
"How long until they reach the streets?"
"That well was chained with three layers of iron," Zoya muttered. "And they bent it like plastic."
"So… soon."
"Yeah."
Manraj's chest throbbed again, a dull ache spreading outward like a bruise being pressed.
"Thirty-one," he whispered.
Zoya looked like she wanted to punch the number out of reality.
"Okay," she said. "Think. We can't go after the Under-Root. The tunnels are older than the city. They branch into places we can't map."
"Then what do we do?"
"The same thing Azhar would do."
Manraj looked at her slowly.
"And what's that?"
Zoya exhaled.
"…we look for the weakest link."
He frowned. "Meaning?"
"If something huge is waking, it has to spread. It has to expand through cracks. Through thin walls. Through points the Root didn't reinforce."
She pointed at the ground beneath them.
"This city has dozens of old dump-sites, sealed foundations, forgotten aquifers, collapsed wells. The Root used all of them."
Manraj blinked.
"Wait — this city is built on top of Root discard sites?"
Zoya nodded grimly.
"Yeah. That's why Azhar was assigned here. Why the guardian was here. Why the entity was able to form in the river."
"And why the Under-Root is waking now…"
"Because you're here," she finished quietly.
Manraj looked down at his shoes.
At the road.
At the world he thought he knew.
"Zoya… I'm not ready for this."
Zoya didn't sugarcoat.
"No one is. But you're what it wants. And that means you get a say."
He closed his eyes.
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"No," she said. "It's supposed to make you focus."
She grabbed his shoulder and pulled him around a corner.
"Come on. We're checking the next site."
"What site?"
Zoya took out her notebook.
"The oldest one," she said.
"The first place the Root ever threw something away."
Manraj stiffened.
"And where's that?"
Zoya stopped.
Right in front of a boarded-up temple gate.
Faded paint. Cracked stone. A sign that read:
CLOSED FOR RENOVATION — 1952
DO NOT ENTER
Manraj stared.
"…here?"
Zoya nodded.
"The Temple of the First Echo."
He swallowed.
"What did the Root dump here?"
Zoya looked him dead in the eyes.
"Something it couldn't kill."
---
THE BREATH BENEATH THE STONE
They stepped through the broken archway.
Manraj felt it instantly — a cold pressure settling onto his shoulders like a shawl woven from ancient stone and older secrets.
Zoya whispered:
"Manraj…"
"Yeah?" he murmured.
"Don't touch anything."
The temple interior was half-collapsed, the center flattened into rubble. Dust covered every surface. But beneath the dust, faintly carved into the stone…
Symbols.
Root symbols.
Older than the ones on his chest.
Older than the river.
Some were scratched out violently.
Some filled with soot.
Some broken by intentional hammer strikes.
Zoya crouched beside one.
"These are severance sigils."
Manraj frowned. "Meaning?"
"They're used when the Root doesn't want something to be connected to it anymore."
He stepped back.
"How many are there?"
Zoya scanned the ground.
"…all of them."
Manraj swallowed hard.
"So whatever was dumped here — the Root didn't just discard it."
Zoya nodded, eyes wide.
"They exiled it."
A faint tremor rolled through the floor.
Soft.
Like a breath under stone.
Manraj felt the number shift—
31 → 31 → 30
He grabbed Zoya's wrist.
"It's here."
She didn't look at him.
Her gaze was locked on a cracked stone altar in the center of the room.
"Manraj," she whispered, "this place isn't abandoned."
"What?"
Zoya stepped closer to the ruins of the altar.
She touched the stone—
then jerked her hand back.
Manraj's heart dropped.
"What happened?"
Zoya stared at her fingertips, eyes widening in horror.
The dust on them wasn't dust.
It was ash.
Fresh ash.
The altar hadn't decayed.
It had just burned.
Recently.
Zoya took one slow step back.
"Manraj."
"Yes."
"We need to leave."
"What's wrong?"
She didn't blink.
"This isn't where the Root dumped something."
Manraj felt the bottom of his stomach drop.
"…Zoya?"
Her voice trembled.
"This is where something crawled out."
The temple floor shifted underneath them.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Like something massive turning in its sleep.
The number in his chest pulsed—
30
Manraj grabbed her hand.
"Zoya—we run NOW—"
They turned—
Just as a low whisper filled the air behind them:
"…lig ht… un fin is hed…"
Zoya didn't look back.
She pulled him through the gate.
They sprinted out into daylight—
breathless terrified alive—
as something moved beneath the ancient temple stone.
Not rising.
Not attacking.
Just waiting.
Counting with him.
And the countdown continued.