Plague in the Blood
Raktanjali struck next. A subtle poison, released into Varanasi’s breath, infected the innocent—twisting their blood into chaotic fragments of Vanara lineage. This was no ordinary attack. It was targeted erasure.
The first signs were ignored.
A fever.
A cough.
A tremble in the limbs.
The city’s doctors assumed it was a seasonal virus. Solvable. Temporary.
But by the second night—
The infected screamed in their sleep.
Not in pain.
In voices not their own.
In the makeshift clinic behind Dashashwamedh Ghat, Makardvach stood beside a cot where a boy thrashed against leather straps. His eyes were white. His arms pulsed with dark veins. When he opened his mouth, the sound was not human.
It was a chant.
Faint.
Garbled.
Ancient.
Megha held her tablet close, trying to translate.
“This isn’t a possession,” she murmured. “It’s… a memory. Fragmented Vanara code. Echoes.”
Akshay frowned. “How does a human boy have Vanara memory sequences in his bloodstream?”
“They’re replicating divine blood markers like viruses,” he said, tapping at his wrist console. “But unstable ones.”
Makardvach turned to Rishabh.
“Is this from the pact?”
“No,” Rishabh whispered. “It’s worse. This is Raktanjali.”
He looked at them all, voice steady and grim.
“She’s not trying to kill them. She’s trying to rewrite them. To corrupt the very idea of what a Vanara is.”
“Why?” Megha asked.
“Because if you twist the bloodline, you erase the prophecy. You void the pact. You break the link… between Makardvach and Hanuman.”
That night, the wind over Varanasi stilled again.
Across rooftops and alleyways, candles flickered—
Then went out.
A figure stood atop a spire of the Vishalakshi Temple.
Draped in silks the color of dried blood.
Eyes hollow and glowing.
Lips sewn with invisible threads that whispered when she moved.
Raktanjali.
The Blood Witch.
Her fingers danced in the air, invisible runes spinning from her nails—dripping red mist into the air like venom made visible.
She whispered:
“Let the children of wind choke on their ancestors.”
In the safehouse, Makardvach gripped the gada, knuckles white.
The energy flowing through it had changed.
Not resisting the curse.
Not yet.
But aware of it.
Afraid?
No.
Grieving.
Echoes in the Vein
To stop Raktanjali’s curse, Makardvach had to reach into the memories spiraling inside the infected. Using mantra invocation, he tapped into the Vanara ancestry locked within—but each healing drew him closer to an unbearable truth: their pain was his.
The clinic air thickened with incense and dread.
Twenty-three patients.
Unconscious.
Their skin slick.
Their hearts erratic.
Makardvach knelt among them, the gada resting across his thighs. Its inscriptions pulsed faintly like breath under skin.
Rishabh chanted softly behind him, calming the space. Megha sprinkled sanctified water over the cots. Akshay fine-tuned the sound dampeners.
Lanka watched from the back.
Worried.
Silent.
Makardvach closed his eyes.
Whispered:
“Om Hanumate Namah.”
The gada flared.
A woman in her thirties jerked upright, mouth open in a soundless scream.
He continued:
“Shree Ramdootaya Swaha.”
And then—
A battlefield.
Sky torn.
Ash falling.
A dying Vanara crawled through the wreckage.
“I failed him… we failed the vow…”
Makardvach saw his own reflection in the warrior’s shattered shield.
And then he was back.
The woman gasped.
Stilled.
Her pulse—normal.
One cured.
Twenty-two to go.
“The curse is anchored in ancestral memory,” Rishabh whispered. “Each carries a spiritual Vanara spark.”
Akshay blinked. “So the curse hijacks that—and destabilizes the body?”
Megha nodded. “Makardvach is overriding it… by awakening the true memory.”
One by one, he entered them.
Saw ancient betrayals.
Vanaras imprisoned.
Executed.
Forgotten.
Each vision struck him.
Each one changed him.
By the time he reached the final child, his lips trembled.
“Bhoot-pishach nikat nahi aave—Mahavir jab naam sunaave…”
The air shimmered.
The child exhaled.
The curse broke.
Makardvach leaned back.
Not unconscious.
Just… filled.
Rishabh knelt beside him.
“You’ve done what no one has ever done.”
Makardvach looked up.
“They weren’t fragments,” he said.
“They were lives.”
Raktanjali’s Reflection
Far beneath the bone-woven towers of Paatal Lok, Raktanjali stood before her mirror.
Not glass—but living blood, suspended between bones carved from Vanara ribs.
She watched him heal them.
Undo her work.
A thousand red threads trailed from her fingertips.
Each thread snapped.
twang
twang
twang
“Impressive,” she whispered.
Kalnemi’s shadowed face rippled in the still pool.
“He breaks too easily,” she said. “I wanted him fractured. Instead… he remembers.”
“Then don’t poison the blood,” Kalnemi said.
“Bind it.”
That night, a woman in a red sari walked barefoot to an old astrologer’s home.
She knocked.
He answered.
He could not scream.
She entered.
Laid out blackened runes carved from ancient teeth.
Whispered:
“Let us not poison the Vanara.
Let us offer them a choice.
Let them remember everything.
At once.”
Inside her eye, the mirror showed one image:
Makardvach.
Kneeling.
Screaming.
As ten thousand Vanara deaths flooded into his soul—
Unfiltered.
Unforgiven.
She smiled wider.
“Let’s see if the fire remembers how to drown.”
Devotion in Disarray
Makardvach stood in the safehouse courtyard, drenched in sweat.
Not from heat.
From memory.
Flash—
He was on a battlefield, leaping through arrowfire.
Flash—
Chained in a dark cell, whispering Rama’s name.
Flash—
Watching his mother die for a scroll wrapped in flame.
Ten thousand lives.
Ten thousand deaths.
He staggered.
Dropped the gada.
Collapsed.
Inside, Rishabh felt it before he heard it.
He ran.
Found Makardvach convulsing, Vanara glyphs spiraling in the air above him.
Rishabh dropped to his knees.
Placed a hand on Makardvach’s chest.
And whispered:
“Remember the breath.
Remember the wind.
You are not their pain.
You are their passage.”
Makardvach jerked.
Then stilled.
Then whispered:
“I’m… here.”
His eyes opened.
Human.
Exhausted.
“She’s still in them,” he murmured. “I felt her watching me. She didn’t curse me. She marked me.”
A Mantra Reborn
In the hours after, the safehouse became a temple.
Not from reverence.
From dread.
Megha pored over ancient scrolls—some bark, some metal, one carved into a tooth.
She searched for a chant not of destruction.
Of anchoring.
“There was one,” Rishabh said. “Spoken once. During the Betrayal.”
Makardvach meditated in the corner.
But the gada was silent.
Still.
“She’s not cursing me,” he said. “She’s mapping me.”
Then Megha found it.
A torn scroll.
Spiraling Vanara script.
“Om Karunabindu Vanaraya Rakshaka.”
Makardvach’s eyes opened.
The gada pulsed.
Steady.
Golden.
“Speak the rest,” he said.
Rishabh nodded.
“Om Karunabindu Vanaraya Rakshaka.
Jeevan-lekha antarnaad mein sthira ho.
Na bhool, na baadhak, na bandhan ho.
Na kaal, na paap, na rakshas chahe.
Naam teri dhvani. Smriti teri shakti.”
Makardvach breathed it in.
The mark on his chest glowed.
Then bloomed.
A full Vanara seal, wrapping across his shoulder and ribs—divine circuitry of light.
Wherever she was, Raktanjali screamed.