Descent Begins
The entrance wasn’t marked on any map.
Because the map would have had to bleed to show it.
They stood at the edge of a ravine outside Chitrakoot—once holy, now forgotten, fenced off and overgrown with bramble and ash trees.
Makardvach stood at the front, outlined in morning mist, the gada on his back faintly pulsing.
Rishabh knelt, whispering to the earth.
Lanka stood still behind him. Silent.
Like someone approaching his own funeral.
“Under here?” Megha asked, raising an eyebrow.
Akshay peered through his visor. “I’m picking up subterranean energy flows… but they’re backward. Almost like—”
“Like something is pulling space inward,” Rishabh finished. “That’s Paatal Lok. It doesn’t open like a door. It inhales.”
Lanka stepped forward, holding a dagger—small, black, barbed.
“This gate was sealed during the Vanara War. One of three closed from the inside. The only one that opens again… with blood.”
“No sacrifice,” he said. “Just contact.”
He sliced his palm and pressed it to a carved stone beneath the vines.
The earth shuddered.
Quietly.
But with finality.
A ring of ground sank, revealing spiraling stairs into a breathless dark.
Megha activated her shoulder light.
It barely reached five feet.
“Looks friendly,” Akshay muttered.
Makardvach didn’t hesitate.
He descended first.
The walls tightened.
The air thickened.
Not stale—
Watched.
His bracer flickered.
VANARA BLOOD CONFIRMED.
ENTRY UNLOCKED.
But then—
⚠️ UNRECOGNIZED PRESENCE DETECTED: LANKA
Makardvach turned.
Lanka met his gaze.
“I’m not the same thing I was,” he said. “Let’s hope the gate knows that too.”
They reached the bottom after what felt like hours.
But it didn’t open into a cavern.
It opened into a courtyard.
Twisted.
Mirrored.
Where gravity bent wrong, and shadows didn’t follow.
Makardvach stepped out first.
The gada flared.
Paatal Lok wasn’t welcoming him.
It was acknowledging him.
The Map of Thorns
The corridor beyond the courtyard changed shape with each step—narrow, then wide, then collapsing inward.
The light was wrong.
Not absent.
Just… used up.
Lanka led, holding a folded scrap of black leather.
When he opened it, thorns writhed across the surface—shifting, rearranging like living veins.
Akshay squinted. “That’s not a map.”
“It’s a wound,” Lanka replied.
Megha studied the ground.
Occasionally, a word appeared beneath their feet.
Not written—whispered.
Rishabh murmured counter-chants as they walked.
“This realm doesn’t want direction. It wants confession.”
“I don’t have anything to confess,” Makardvach said, gripping the gada tighter.
“You will,” Rishabh said simply.
Suddenly, the path twisted upward—like the ceiling had become the floor.
Akshay stumbled. Megha gasped.
Makardvach slammed the gada into the ground.
The path stabilized.
“The gada still grounds you,” Rishabh said.
Lanka added, “It’s not the gada that grounds him.”
A hiss echoed ahead.
The thorn-map pulsed red.
“Danger?” Akshay asked.
“No,” Lanka replied. “Worse. Memory traps.”
Megha frowned. “What’s the difference?”
“If we trigger them, we don’t die.
We just remember things that kill who we were.”
At the fork, the map failed.
Left—heartbeat rhythm.
Right—spiraling fog.
Lanka stared at the tangled thorns, then at Makardvach.
“This path isn’t for me to choose.”
He pointed. The thorns had parted, forming the shape of Makardvach’s mark.
Rishabh nodded. “It’s for him.”
Makardvach stepped forward.
The fog rippled.
The wall whispered:
Makar.
The name his mother used when afraid.
Makardvach narrowed his eyes.
“This way.”
Not because it was safe—
But because the thorns had stopped hurting.
Speak No Memory
Silence ruled here.
Not absence—law.
Each footstep echoed… in the wrong direction.
Above every doorway:
SPEAK NO MEMORY
DO NOT NAME WHAT WAS
Akshay muttered, “Sound’s not bouncing right.”
Makardvach turned—
“Don’t—”
But it was too late.
The air snapped.
Like a page turning in a book they hadn’t written.
Suddenly—
A battlefield.
Ash-filled sky.
Jungle.
Burned trees.
Screaming.
Hanuman, descending, aflame and furious.
But they weren’t seeing him.
They were inside someone else.
Crawling through mud.
Coughing blood.
“He doesn’t die.
He doesn’t bleed.
He doesn’t fear.”
Makardvach froze.
“I know this.”
Megha clutched his arm.
“This is Kalnemi’s memory.”
Hanuman walked past them, eyes locked on a broken demon rising from ash.
Kalnemi.
Burned.
Smiling.
Defiant.
“You’ll always win, monkey.
But we will always come back.”
Hanuman struck.
The earth cracked.
Kalnemi shattered.
But his dying thought rippled:
“You didn’t kill me, Devotee.
You split me.
And every piece has waited.”
The jungle peeled away.
Stone returned.
So did the corridor.
Akshay was gasping on the floor.
Rishabh helped him up.
Makardvach said, quietly, “We weren’t supposed to see that.”
Lanka added, “But the gate showed you. Only you.”
Makardvach looked at his palm.
Hanuman’s sigil now glowed there.
A gift?
No.
A warning.
The Guardian Below
The corridor ended.
Not with a door.
With a wall of skulls—fused into a perfect arc.
Grinning.
Still.
At the center, a glowing golden handprint.
Makardvach pressed his palm to it.
The wall folded back.
A chamber opened—circular and vast, lit by memory itself.
In the center knelt a colossal figure—Vanara-shaped, armored, sealed by etched mantras.
It held a staff taller than any weapon they had seen.
Its eyes were shut.
“Vaajran,” Rishabh whispered. “Hanuman’s last construct. The Still-Fist. Guardian of blood and vow.”
“Mechanical?” Akshay asked.
“No,” Rishabh said. “Spiritual. Powered by duty.”
Makardvach stepped forward.
The guardian stirred.
Its eyes opened—white fire.
The chamber boomed with a voice that came from every wall:
“YOU WHO BEAR HIS MARK.
SPEAK THE CODE OF THE BLOOD.”
Makardvach answered:
“Makardvach Rathore.
Descendant of Anjaneya.
Son of the windline.
Bearer of the bound seal.”
“STRENGTH MEANS NOTHING WITHOUT PURPOSE.
WHY DO YOU DESCEND?”
Makardvach paused. Then:
“To free what was betrayed.
To protect what remains.
To remember what the gods buried.”
Silence.
Then:
“CORRECT.”
The guardian rose—slow and sacred.
It stepped aside.
The path opened.
But as Makardvach passed, the voice spoke one last time:
“If you fail, I will bury your name with the rest.”
The Prison of Souls
The door to the Vault of Souls didn’t open out.
It opened down.
Stone unfurled like a spine.
Each step groaned.
They descended into a dome so large it had its own horizon.
And there—
Voices.
Light-shaped.
Not ghosts.
Not illusions.
Vanara souls.
Caught in their final breath.
They hovered midair in spirals—chanting a four-line hymn older than language.
Megha fell to her knees.
Rishabh dropped his staff.
Akshay wept.
Lanka turned away.
Only Makardvach stood.
The gada pulsed, not with anger—
With harmony.
“They’re not gone,” Megha whispered. “They’re paused. Suspended post-death. Batteries.”
Rishabh added, “This is Kalnemi’s cruelty. He halts the soul. They can’t ascend. Can’t return. They’re fuel.”
Makardvach stepped forward.
The chant grew louder.
Then—
Every soul turned.
Their eyes glowed.
Not with fear.
With hope.
“Descendant…”
“Breaker of chains…”
“Son of our song…”
They began to chant his name.
“Makardvach…
Makardvach…”
The spirits drifted toward him.
Not to possess—
To touch.
He stood still.
And let them.
The moment their light brushed his skin, the gada ignited.
Golden swirls spun upward, drawing the spirits into a pattern of light.
Not freedom yet.
But acknowledgment.
And the pact?
It shivered.
Somewhere deeper in Paatal Lok—
Kalnemi opened his eyes.
Makardvach turned.
“We free them.”
Megha asked, “How?”
He raised the gada.
“They’re bound by echo.
So we answer with truth.”