The Gurukul stone corridors had always whispered, but now they echoed.
It wasn't in words—not quite. But Adityaveer noticed it in the chill between mantras, in the spaces between chants. In the silence that fell when no one else was speaking, yet the world did not feel still. The sandstone beneath his feet seemed to pulse faintly, as if remembering steps no longer walked.
Three days had passed since he and Advika assembled the prototype in the herb storeroom. Since then, their systems had remained strangely active—even in their dreams. At night, numbers scrolled behind his eyelids. Simulations ran unbidden. Once, he awoke with the blueprints for a magnetic copper seal etched into his memory, with no idea where the inspiration had come from.
Across the courtyard, Advika experienced her own visions—sigils unraveling in fire, chanting in unfamiliar tongues, mechanisms of light folding into mandalas. But it wasn't only dreams. The world around them had begun to respond.
On the morning of the fourth day, a gust of wind knocked over the brass incense tray in the lecture pavilion—despite no breeze. During evening meditation, the lamps flickered in unison, casting elongated shadows of two students—hers and his—against the back wall. And no one could explain the growing cracks along the Gurukul's north pillar, which had stood unbroken for centuries.
Some said it was coincidence. Some whispered about cursed omens.
But the Acharya of Archives, a blind seer named Rishyasringa, merely frowned and traced the veins in the floor with his fingertips. His lips moved without sound.
That night, after the vesper chants, Adityaveer returned to the herb room. He had come alone. The prototype was gone—Advika had hidden the final version under a false floorboard in the storeroom across the herb wall. But he wasn't looking for it now.
He was listening.
He closed his eyes. The system's HUD shimmered into place.
[ENERGY FLOW: DILATED]
[REALITY THREADS: DISTURBED]
[SYNCHRONIZATION STABILITY: 0.78%]
It was rising.
He walked to the far wall and pressed his palm flat against the stone. At first, nothing. Then—
A whisper. Not in words. In impressions.
A clash of stars. A cry in three tones. A spear of light piercing through layers of space like folded silk.
He gasped and stumbled back.
At that moment, the door creaked open.
Advika entered, holding a small clay pot of neem oil. She paused when she saw him, then stepped forward quietly. "It's getting stronger."
He nodded, still catching his breath. "It's like… something just touched me. Through the wall."
"I think we're waking it."
She set down the pot and walked toward the same wall. Instead of touching it, she knelt and began tracing the cracks along the base.
"Stone doesn't split like this unless something beneath it shifts," she murmured. "This… isn't erosion."
Adityaveer leaned closer. "Do you think it's the systems?"
She looked at him. "No. Not just them. Us."
He frowned. "Our systems are tools. They simulate, calculate—"
"No," she cut in softly. "They also bind. They link. To something larger."
He hesitated. "Larger than what?"
She held his gaze. "Larger than this world."
A long silence passed.
Outside, a soft rain began to fall, its rhythm echoing like distant drums.
That night, the systems pulsed stronger than ever.
In the senior monk's wing, Rishyasringa sat cross-legged, his face turned to the eastern wall. The scrolls of forgotten aeons lay unrolled before him, though he could not see. His fingers moved across braille-like indentations—ancient impressions of cosmic data, inherited from the Saptarishi Codex.
"Two presences," he whispered, "awakening beneath a blind sky…"
The candles flickered. His face remained still.
"Not fate-born. Not chosen. But stitched together by silence and fire."
One of the junior monks approached cautiously. "Acharya, shall we increase surveillance?"
"No. Observation without interference," Rishyasringa replied. "The fabric must tear itself. We may only witness the seam."
The next day, the gurukul's atmosphere turned heavy, as if the air itself had grown thicker. During the logic debates, words felt slower. During martial training, footfalls echoed louder. A palpable hum pulsed beneath the stone floors.
Adityaveer and Advika sat opposite each other at the lunch grove, their food untouched.
"I tried to meditate this morning," he said.
"And?"
"I kept hearing a second voice."
Her eyes sharpened. "Inside your head?"
He shook his head. "No… behind it. Not me. Not the system. Something else."
She nodded slowly. "Same. Except mine was singing."
They exchanged a look that said more than language could. Something was watching them. Not malicious, not kind—just ancient. Patient.
"Do you think we opened something?" he asked finally.
She looked toward the distant hills. "No. I think… we reminded it we exist."
That night, it finally broke.
Not through blood or thunder. But through a dream they shared.
It began in a void.
Adityaveer stood on a circular battlefield of glass and starlight. Around him stretched infinite reflections of himself—some wounded, some older, some wearing armor carved with unknown glyphs. At the center stood a structure, floating in mid-air—part temple, part machine, spinning with a low hum.
Across the battlefield, Advika stood—older, dressed in a robe woven with constellations. She held a staff of firewood entwined with golden snakes. Around her, flames danced upward and formed symbols of forgotten magic.
Neither could speak.
But when they moved—toward the center—the battlefield cracked.
A voice boomed from above.
"UNDECLARED CLAIMANTS. GENETIC MERGE: 2. ROOT CONFLICT DETECTED. STAGE ONE INITIATED."
Then everything shattered.
They both awoke gasping—miles apart, in separate rooms—yet completely certain they had been in the same dream.
Adityaveer's heartbeat raced like a war drum. The system blazed in his vision:
[BATTLEFIELD UNIVERSE ENGAGEMENT LEVEL: 1.03%]
[UNIVERSAL ENTITY AWARENESS: AWAKENED]
[PHANTOM TERRAIN LINK ESTABLISHED]
He scrambled up, grabbing his slate and chalk. On it, he drew the structure from the dream. The spinning device. The temple-machine. It was real—somewhere. And they had been summoned.
Across the courtyard, Advika did the same. Her drawing bore an uncanny resemblance. Different perspective, same object.
The battlefield had marked them.
By the morning, their bodies had stabilized—but the world hadn't.
When Adityaveer stepped into the courtyard for sunrise prayers, he noticed several students whispering, pointing toward the herb wing.
He followed.
There, across the garden path, someone had smashed open the door to the hidden storeroom. The floorboards were ripped apart. The prototype was gone.
His stomach dropped.
One of the senior acolytes—a grim-faced boy named Anay—stood in the doorway, holding the broken copper coil.
"Who built this?" he barked.
No one spoke.
Advika arrived moments later, her face calm but eyes burning. She stepped forward and said clearly, "I did."
Anay narrowed his eyes. "Impossible. This is crafted. Precision. Heat-resistant grooves. No novice did this."
"I had guidance," she said coolly.
Adityaveer stepped forward. "From me."
Gasps rippled through the gathered crowd.
Rishyasringa's voice echoed from the rear arch. "Bring them both."
The Acharya stepped into the circle, his blind gaze somehow more piercing than any sighted man's.
"You are not under punishment," he said softly. "But you are no longer unseen."
He raised a scroll and unrolled it before them.
On it was a drawing—ancient, faded, burned at the corners.
And in the center, a familiar image: the machine-temple from their dream.
Both children stared in disbelief.
"You've seen this," Rishyasringa said. It was not a question.
Advika nodded. "Last night."
Adityaveer added, "In the battlefield."
The old man inhaled slowly, like someone who had been waiting a long time to hear those words.
"The battlefield is not a place," he said. "It is a test. A filter. A forge."
He turned toward the others. "In every cosmic cycle, there are few souls… whose genes align with systems of more than one origin. Those souls become… cracks in the glass of reality. And through them, the Creativerse watches."
Adityaveer's throat felt dry. "We didn't ask for this."
"No one does," Rishyasringa replied. "But some are born with paths carved in their silence."
He looked up at the heavens, though blind. "The war has not yet begun. But the board is set."
He turned away. "Return to your studies. But know this… nothing around you is as asleep as it seems."
The courtyard dispersed.
But Advika and Adityaveer stood frozen in place.
And far above the spires of Gurukul, a ripple passed through the cloudless sky.
Not of wind. Not of storm.
But of attention.