CHAPTER 12: THE FINAL SEAL
The city screamed.
Buildings twisted and groaned, their steel foundations bending like dying trees under the weight of something unseen. The roads fractured, great veins of black-red Halāhala pulsing from the cracks like the arteries of a wounded beast. Streetlights flickered, then shattered, their sparks swallowed by the rising darkness.
And then—
The ground collapsed.
Entire blocks of the city sank into the abyss. Structures that had stood for decades folded in seconds, devoured by the chasm tearing through Imphal’s heart. The air reeked of decay, the scent of burning metal and something far worse—something ancient, something wrong.
People ran, screaming.
Cars veered off roads, tumbling into newly formed voids. Power lines snapped, electricity arcing wildly before vanishing into the growing shadows. Fires erupted, casting long, jagged silhouettes against the chaos.
It was no longer a city.
It was a graveyard in the making.
And at the center of it all—
Ravana stood atop the ruins of the collapsed temple, arms spread wide, robes billowing in the unnatural wind. His eyes burned with power, his lips curled in reverence as he beheld his masterpiece.
“The age of men ends tonight.”
Beneath him, the abyss pulsed.
Something stirred in the depths.
Something awakening.
Something hungry.
Narakasura.
Ajit was still moving.
His body screamed in protest, his breath ragged, his ribs still bruised from Alha’s last strike. But none of it mattered now.
The city was falling apart.
And he wasn’t fast enough.
Ajit sprinted through the collapsing streets, leaping over fissures that yawned wide beneath him, dodging debris as buildings crumbled into dust.
Everywhere he looked—panic, destruction, death.
A bus teetered on the edge of a chasm, its passengers trapped inside, screaming.
Ajit moved.
He leapt, landing hard on the roof of the bus, his fingers digging into the metal as it lurched violently beneath his weight.
“Everyone out! Now!” he barked, punching through the emergency exit.
Terrified hands grasped for him.
He pulled a woman free, then a child, lifting them onto solid ground as the vehicle groaned under its own weight.
Another tremor.
The bus tilted further.
Ajit clenched his jaw.
One last man—an elderly shopkeeper, struggling to reach the exit.
Ajit lunged for him, fingers brushing his sleeve—
But then—
The bus tipped.
Falling.
Ajit had no choice.
He grabbed the man and jumped.
The vehicle plunged into the abyss below, swallowed whole by the endless dark.
Ajit barely landed, skidding onto solid ground, his arms wrapped tightly around the old man.
He looked up.
The city was still dying.
And he was running out of time.
Laxman stood at the edge of the abyss.
He wasn’t running.
Wasn’t saving anyone.
He was watching.
The chaos. The destruction.
The rebirth.
His eyes gleamed as he saw the black-red veins of Halāhala pulsing beneath the city. The thing beneath the surface—Narakasura—was stirring, waiting, its presence vibrating in his bones like a second heartbeat.
He didn’t fear it.
He welcomed it.
And in that moment, he knew.
This was what he had been meant for.
Not Ajit.
Not Naga Man.
Him.
He turned his gaze upward—toward Ravana, who still stood atop the ruins, his arms outstretched as if conducting the destruction itself.
Laxman’s fingers flexed.
His Halāhala tendrils lashed at the air.
He should have felt rage.
Hatred.
Should have wanted to tear Ravana apart for using him.
But he didn’t.
Because Ravana had given him exactly what he wanted.
Power.
Purpose.
Laxman stepped forward, standing at the edge of the abyss, his voice calm, unwavering.
“Tell me,” he said.
Ravana looked down, his expression unreadable.
Laxman’s lips curled into a smile.
“How do we wake it up?”
The world was cracking apart beneath him.
Laxman stood at the very edge of the abyss, staring into the roiling black-red depths of the Halāhala-tainted chasm. It pulsed like a living thing, twisting with unnatural motion, something coiled deep within it, something ancient shifting in its slumber.
A tremor ripped through the ruins, another building toppling in the distance, sending clouds of debris spiraling into the air. Fires raged unchecked. A temple bell, long rusted and forgotten, crashed into the streets below, its final toll drowned out by the screams of the dying.
The city was coming apart.
And no one—not Ajit, not the government, not the so-called protectors of this world—could stop it.
But he could.
Laxman knew he could.
He could feel the Halāhala inside him reacting to the abyss, to the rising force beneath the earth. It called to him. It recognized him.
Because he wasn’t just a man anymore.
He was the only one strong enough to control this.
The only one worthy.
Ravana stood atop the ruins, hands still raised, his robes fluttering in the unnatural wind. His voice had become a low, rhythmic chant, each syllable sending another pulse of energy into the abyss below.
Laxman’s hands clenched into fists.
“This fool still thinks he’s in control.”
He could hear it now—the heartbeat beneath the city, the slow, thunderous pulse of Narakasura.
It was waking.
But not fast enough.
Ravana thought he was orchestrating this, guiding the rebirth of something unstoppable.
But Laxman knew better.
If Narakasura truly awakened, unchecked, unchained— the destruction wouldn’t stop at Imphal.
It wouldn’t stop at India.
It wouldn’t stop at all.
And if that happened, Laxman wouldn’t be a king.
He would be a corpse.
No.
He had to be the one to harness this power.
He had to take it before Ravana lost control.
Because only he—Laxman Patel, host of the Halāhala, stronger than Ajit ever was—could wield it.
And if Ajit was too weak to do what was necessary…
Then Laxman would do it himself.
Even if it meant breaking his brother apart.
Ajit saw it before anyone else did.
Laxman wasn’t waiting anymore.
He was moving.
And Ajit knew, instantly, instinctively, what he was about to do.
“LAXMAN, STOP!”
But Laxman was already leaping forward, diving toward the abyss.
Ajit ran.
His body screamed in protest—his ribs still aching, his muscles raw with exhaustion—but he pushed through it, his feet slamming against the broken stone, propelling himself forward with everything he had left.
He had seconds.
Maybe less.
He lunged.
His fingers closed around Laxman’s wrist.
And for a moment—just a moment—Laxman’s eyes flickered with something unreadable.
Then—
The Halāhala reacted.
A tendril lashed outward, wrapping around Ajit’s arm like a serpent sinking its fangs in.
Pain erupted through Ajit’s body as the corrupted energy surged through him.
His grip slipped.
And Laxman fell.
Straight into the abyss.
The moment his body touched the corrupted void, everything changed.
The Halāhala inside him erupted.
A shockwave blasted outward from his body, tendrils of energy exploding in all directions.
The abyss shuddered.
The city screamed.
And deep below—
Something stirred.
Something opened its eyes.
Laxman had just done what Ravana couldn’t.
He had fully awakened Narakasura.
And now, nothing would ever be the same again.
The earth convulsed.
The abyss swallowed Laxman whole, and for a moment—a single, stretched-out, breathless moment—Ajit thought it was over.
That the city had fallen.
That Laxman had fallen.
That he had failed.
But then—
The abyss screamed.
The sound wasn’t human.
It wasn’t even of this world.
It was something deeper, something older, something that had been waiting for this moment for centuries.
Ajit stumbled backward, the sheer force of the sound rattling through his bones. The ruined streets of Imphal fractured further, entire blocks sinking, crumbling, vanishing into the ever-growing void.
And then—
Laxman rose.
Or at least—what used to be Laxman.
Ajit’s stomach twisted.
Because the thing rising from the abyss, wrapped in writhing tendrils of black-red Halāhala, wasn’t his brother anymore.
It was something else.
Something monstrous.
Laxman’s body had shifted, twisted, stretched. His arms were longer, his fingers clawed, black as obsidian, sharpened like fangs. His once-human eyes had become pits of molten red, flickering like dying stars. His veins pulsed, the Halāhala no longer just inside him—but erupting from him, moving like living serpents around his form.
And beneath him—
The shape of something greater.
A shadow, vast and terrible, stretching outward from the abyss, its form coiling endlessly beneath the ruined city.
The outline of a colossal serpent.
Its scales like blackened steel, its fangs as long as temple spires, its eyes endless voids.
Narakasura.
It wasn’t just awake.
It was here.
Ajit’s breath hitched.
Because he knew now.
Ravana had never been trying to summon Narakasura’s army.
He had been trying to turn Laxman into Narakasura himself.
And it had worked.
Ajit staggered back.
His mind was screaming at him to run—but where?
There was no city left to run to.
Laxman—or what used to be Laxman—tilted his head, eyes locking onto Ajit with something inhuman.
And when he spoke, his voice was a thousand voices at once.
“You should have let me fall, brother.”
Ajit’s pulse thundered.
His hands curled into fists.
And deep inside him—something cracked.
A presence. A force. A power he had buried, ignored, resisted.
But now—it surged forward.
The Nagamani burned.
Ajit gasped, doubling over, his entire body convulsing as golden light ripped through his veins.
It wasn’t like before.
This wasn’t just the Nagamani enhancing his abilities.
This wasn’t just power.
This was something else.
Something divine.
Something meant to counteract the Halāhala itself.
His skin glowed. His blood turned to liquid fire. His bones hummed with raw energy.
The Nagamani wasn’t just granting him more power.
It was transforming him.
The serpents of old, the divine kings of legend, the forgotten warriors of an age when gods still walked among men—
Ajit became all of them at once.
He felt his body shift, change, grow.
His vision sharpened. His senses expanded. The world was no longer just sights and sounds—it was a battlefield of infinite possibility.
And when he stood—
The city saw him.
A new Naga Man.
His once-green suit had turned gold, etched with markings that pulsed like veins of lightning. His eyes—no longer human—shone like twin suns. Spectral tendrils of pure energy coiled around him, shifting between wings, whips, shields.
And when he spoke—
His voice carried across the entire city.
“LAXMAN,” he called.
The creature that had once been his friend turned.
Ajit exhaled.
And attacked.
The city was breaking apart.
The sky had turned an impossible shade of black-red, the heavens themselves recoiling from the birth of something unnatural. The air was thick with ash and fire, the streets beneath Ajit’s feet crumbling into the abyss.
And in the chaos—
Atop the shattered ruins of the old temple—
Ravana stood waiting.
Ajit’s new form radiated golden fire, his every breath sending waves of divine energy rippling outward. The weight of the Nagamani’s true power surged through his veins, making every movement feel both impossibly light and infinitely dense, as if the very laws of the world were shifting around him.
His golden eyes burned.
And they were locked onto Ravana.
“You wanted to awaken Narakasura,” Ajit said, his voice carrying like a thunderclap. “You wanted to break the world.”
Ravana smirked.
“Break it?” he mused. “No, Ajit. I wanted to fix it.”
Ajit’s hands curled into fists.
“You turned Laxman into a monster!”
Ravana spread his arms, gesturing to the hellscape around them.
“I gave him what he was meant to have,” he said. “Power. Freedom. Purpose. And he took it, didn’t he?”
Ajit’s breath shook with fury.
“You used him.”
Ravana took a slow step forward. His black-and-gold robes billowed in the wind, the ember-like glow of his eyes flickering.
“And what did you do?” he asked.
Ajit stiffened.
“You feared your own power,” Ravana continued. “You let yourself be bound by rules, by doubt, by weakness. You were given the strength of gods, and you—”
He spat the next word.
“Hesitated.”
Ajit’s rage flared.
“You think hesitation is weakness?” His voice crackled with barely contained energy. “You think restraint is failure?”
The golden tendrils of the Nagamani pulsed, coiling around his arms like living fire.
Ravana smiled.
“I think you’re about to prove me right.”
Then—
He moved.
A blur of motion, faster than any human eye could track.
Ajit’s senses—expanded, sharpened beyond mortal comprehension—caught it just in time.
A streak of shadow and fire shot toward him.
Ajit twisted, dodging at the last second.
Ravana’s palm struck the ground where he had just been—and the city itself convulsed.
A shockwave erupted, obliterating the temple ruins beneath them, sending an entire district of Imphal collapsing into the abyss.
Ajit countered instantly.
He lunged, his tendrils snapping forward—golden light against black flame.
Ravana caught the strike midair.
His fingers wrapped around the spectral energy, holding it like it was nothing, the force of their collision splitting the air apart in an explosion of power.
Ajit pushed.
Ravana pushed back.
They stood locked, golden radiance clashing with endless darkness, two forces battling for the fate of the city itself.
Ajit clenched his jaw.
“You’re nothing without the Halāhala,” he growled.
Ravana laughed.
“Who said I needed it?”
And then—
He burned.
His body erupted in black-red fire, his muscles expanding, the sheer force of his energy warping the air around him. His fingers dug into Ajit’s spectral tendrils, twisting them, corrupting them, turning light to shadow.
Ajit’s eyes widened.
Because Ravana’s power—
It wasn’t just Halāhala.
It was something else.
Something older.
Something that had been waiting for this exact moment.
And now—
It had found its vessel.
Ravana’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“You think I awakened Narakasura?”
Ajit’s breath caught.
Ravana smiled.
“Narakasura awakened me.”
Then—
The sky collapsed.
Ajit barely had time to react before Ravana struck him full-force, the impact sending him hurtling miles across the city.
Ajit crashed into a skyscraper, the glass exploding outward as he plowed through steel and concrete, debris tumbling around him as the entire building began to collapse.
He barely managed to recover, flipping mid-air, tendrils lashing out and gripping onto the falling structure.
He landed hard, rolling across the broken ground, gasping for breath.
The golden glow of his veins flickered.
Ravana’s voice echoed from above.
“Come on, Naga Man. Stand up.”
Ajit gritted his teeth.
He wasn’t done.
Not yet.
He pushed himself up, golden flames surging through his limbs.
And then—he launched himself back into the fight.
The sky split apart.
Not with lightning.
Not with thunder.
But with something older.
Something that had been waiting.
Ajit barely had time to react before the world itself trembled, the weight of an unfathomable presence pressing down on the city. The air thickened, turning heavy and wrong, vibrating with something that did not belong in this world.
The last seal was gone.
And now—
Narakasura was free.
Ajit felt it before he saw it.
A pulse, deep beneath the earth.
A sound that didn’t come from the air, but from the bones of the city itself.
The ruins of Imphal shook violently, entire streets ripping apart as black-red veins of Halāhala exploded upward, forming jagged spires of corrupted energy. Entire districts sank, swallowed whole by the abyss that had been growing beneath them.
Ajit could see the people—those still alive, those still running, those screaming in terror.
And at the center of it all—
A shape.
A vast, endless shadow rising from the abyss.
Narakasura.
It wasn’t a single form.
It wasn’t even a thing.
It was an event.
A storm of living shadow and hunger, twisting and stretching across the ruins, its form constantly shifting between solid and immaterial.
For a moment—just a moment—Ajit saw its true face.
A serpent’s skull, impossibly massive, crowned with jagged, obsidian-black horns. Eyes like dying suns, burning in the void.
A mouth that never stopped moving, as if constantly whispering to itself, chanting words no human could understand.
And the moment Ajit saw it—he knew.
This wasn’t just a monster.
This wasn’t just Halāhala given form.
This was something beyond time, beyond death, beyond gods.
And now—
It was awake.
Ajit felt the weight of it in his skull, a presence pressing against his mind, trying to unmake him just by existing.
The Nagamani inside him flared violently, fighting back.
But it wasn’t enough.
Not yet.
Ajit gritted his teeth.
He had to move.
He had to stop it.
But before he could—
Narakasura spoke.
“You are late, little god.”
Ajit froze.
Because it wasn’t just speaking.
It was speaking inside him.
The voice was in his blood, in his bones, in every cell of his body.
And then—
It moved.
A titanic limb—if it could even be called a limb—lashed out from the abyss, formed from the writhing black-red energy of the Halāhala itself.
It struck faster than thought.
Faster than Ajit could dodge.
The impact was cataclysmic.
Ajit felt himself torn from the sky, slammed into the ruins of a collapsing skyscraper. The building detonated on impact, sending shockwaves through the city, the ground caving beneath the force of the blow.
Ajit couldn’t breathe.
Every bone in his body screamed.
His vision blurred.
And above him—
Narakasura kept rising.
It had barely noticed him.
Like he was an insect.
Like he was nothing.
Ajit’s hands shook.
Because he had faced gods before.
But this—
This was the first time he had ever felt small.
And then, above him—
Laxman laughed.
Laxman wasn’t falling anymore.
He was rising with it.
Suspended in the air, his body was no longer his own—his flesh blackened by the Halāhala, his form shifting, merging, dissolving into the storm that was Narakasura.
But his eyes—
They were still Laxman’s.
And they burned with something terrifying.
Ajit tried to move. Tried to say something.
But Laxman spoke first.
“You see it now, don’t you?”
His voice echoed through the ruins, layered, distorted—half his own, half Narakasura’s.
Ajit gritted his teeth.
“You’re being used, Laxman!” he shouted, forcing himself to stand. “It’s not making you stronger—it’s consuming you!”
Laxman grinned.
“Am I?”
And then—
He lifted his hand.
Ajit felt it instantly.
A pull.
A force dragging at his skin, his blood, his bones.
Because the Halāhala—even the remnants inside him—was answering Laxman’s call.
Ajit staggered.
His golden aura flickered.
And deep inside him—
The Nagamani screamed.
Far above, Ravana watched.
And he smiled.
Because this was always the plan.
Laxman had been the key.
Ajit had been the obstacle.
And now—
They would destroy each other.
While Narakasura claimed the world.
Ajit had seconds to decide.
Either he stopped Laxman now—
Or there wouldn’t be a world left to save.
He took a breath.
Then—
He attacked.
The night had swallowed the city whole.
What had once been Imphal was now a cratered wasteland, a ruin of shattered stone and molten steel, veins of black-red Halāhala pulsing beneath the ground like a dying beast’s last breath. The abyss stretched outward, its tendrils reaching through the streets, devouring what remained of civilization.
And above it all—
Laxman hovered.
His body had become something half-human, half-nightmare. The Halāhala had fused with him completely now, its tendrils wrapping around his form like a grotesque cocoon, shifting, pulsing, seething. His arms stretched unnaturally, his hands elongated into clawed obsidian talons, and where his veins had once been, now only black-red energy coursed beneath his skin, crackling like molten fire.
His face—
It was still his.
But only barely.
His eyes were not eyes anymore.
They were voids.
Twin wells of burning crimson, reflecting something that wasn’t just him.
Something greater.
Something hungry.
Ajit stood below, staring up at what his friend had become.
His golden aura flickered, battered by the sheer weight of Narakasura’s presence. The city trembled beneath them, the ruins sinking further, the very air thick with the stench of burning stone.
And then—
Laxman spoke.
“You still don’t understand, do you?”
His voice was layered now—his own, and something deeper, something ancient, something that carried the weight of countless centuries.
Ajit’s fingers curled into fists.
“Laxman,” he called, his voice barely above a whisper. “This isn’t you.”
Laxman tilted his head, smiling.
“Isn’t it?”
Ajit’s jaw tightened.
“You’re still fighting it,” he said. “You’re still you. I can see it.”
Laxman let out a low chuckle.
“You’re wrong, Ajit.”
His arms stretched outward.
“The old Laxman is gone.”
The Halāhala pulsed around him, shifting, growing, merging.
Ajit could feel it now.
The final stage.
The moment of surrender.
If Laxman gave in completely—
If he stopped fighting—
Narakasura would take him fully.
Ajit’s breath shook.
“Fight it,” he pleaded. “You don’t have to let it win.”
Laxman laughed.
And then—
He dropped from the sky.
Ajit had no time to react before Laxman crashed into him, a streak of black-red lightning, a force beyond human comprehension.
The impact was cataclysmic.
Ajit barely managed to block the first strike—a downward claw aimed directly at his chest. His golden tendrils surged, forming a shield, but Laxman’s power tore through it like paper.
Ajit flew backward, crashing through the wreckage of a fallen building.
Pain exploded through his body.
But he didn’t stop.
Didn’t have time to stop.
He rolled with the momentum, flipping mid-air, golden flames erupting from his back like wings. He twisted, redirecting his energy, pushing off the collapsing debris and launching himself straight back at Laxman.
They collided in the air.
A single strike.
A single moment.
Golden fire against black-red shadow.
The shockwave obliterated everything.
HIGH ABOVE THE CITY—
Ravana stood at the edge of the collapsing temple, watching the battle unfold.
His work was done.
Narakasura was here.
Laxman had become his vessel.
And now—
It was time for the final step.
Ravana lifted his arms, his body crackling with stolen energy. The Halāhala was shifting now, moving away from the ruined streets, funneling toward the abyss, drawn toward its true master.
It was time to complete the cycle.
“Rise, my lord,” Ravana whispered.
“This world belongs to you now.”
The abyss shook.
The air turned to fire.
And below—
Laxman let go.
AJIT KNEW THE EXACT SECOND IT HAPPENED.
Because Laxman’s aura shifted.
The last flicker of humanity inside him burned away.
The Halāhala wasn’t inside him anymore.
He was inside it.
And in that moment—
Laxman Patel ceased to exist.
What remained—
What rose—
Was Narakasura.
Ajit felt his soul fracture.
Because he had come here to save his friend.
But now—
He was staring at something that could no longer be saved.
The black-red storm engulfed the city, the final transformation reaching its peak. The night itself twisted, space warping around Laxman’s new form as he stood, his body no longer bound by mortal limits.
He wasn’t a man anymore.
He wasn’t even a god.
He was a force of nature.
And Ajit was too late.