I stared at her, waiting for the punchline, waiting for the corner of her mouth to twitch and ruin the terrifyingly blank expression on her face. When the silence stretched out, filled only by the aggressive hum of the engine and the wind rushing past the windows, I let out a short, awkward laugh that sounded entirely too loud in the confined space.
"Okay... that's... that's a good one," I managed to say, my voice cracking slightly. "So what's next? Thor's gonna ask for an Uber? Hanuman's following me on Instagram?"
Her hands just tightened on the leather steering wheel, her knuckles turning a stark, bloodless white, and that was the exact moment the jokes died in my throat because I realized with a sickening drop in my stomach that she wasn't joking. She was terrified.
She didn't dump a massive lore explanation on me. She just spoke in quiet, jagged pieces, choosing every single word like it was a landmine.
"Your parents," she started, her voice barely rising above the hum of the engine. "They didn't die in a car crash, Krish."
I stared at her, my brain completely stalling. "What?"
"They were murdered," she said, her knuckles turning stark white on the steering wheel. "I watched it happen. I swore on their graves I'd keep you alive."
The anger hit me before the grief did. It was a hot, blinding flash of betrayal that made my hands shake against my seatbelt.
"You lied to me," I choked out, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. "My entire life? What else is fake?"
She kept her eyes locked on the winding road, her voice terrifyingly calm. "The stories we call myths. The Mahabharata. The Devas, the Asuras, the Rakshasas."
"Auntie, what are you talking about?"
"They aren't fairy tales, Ayaan. They're history. They just hid from humanity."
My brain was spinning, desperately trying to find a logical anchor in a sea of absolute insanity. "Okay, fine. Myths are real. Great. Why are monsters chasing us right now? Why me?"
She swallowed hard, her jaw ticking. "Because your parents belonged to an ancient order. Meruzhen."
"Meruzhen?" I repeated, the word feeling heavy and wrong on my tongue. "What is that?"
"An alliance," she whispered. "And I was part of it, too."
"Then why are we running?!" I yelled, panic finally cracking my voice. "Why did my seventeenth birthday suddenly turn me into a target?"
She finally looked at me, and the sheer, crushing weight in her eyes made my breath hitch.
"Because you're not fully human, Krish."
The car suddenly felt entirely too small, the walls closing in on me. "What does that even mean?"
She looked back at the dark road ahead, delivering the final, world-shattering blow.
"It means you're a demigod."
While my brain was busy short-circuiting, the world outside the windows was quietly dying. The sleek, amber-lit streets of elite Hyderabad bled into empty highways, the highways dissolved into sprawling warehouses, and the warehouses eventually gave way to dense, suffocating forests. The streetlights vanished, leaving us in a tunnel of headlights cutting through absolute darkness, and the silence of the woods felt heavy, almost predatory.
Naomi kept checking the rearview mirror, her jaw locked tight as she yanked the wheel to take a sharp, unmarked dirt road, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper when she finally admitted, "They found us."
I looked out the window and saw it—a massive, impossibly fast shadow keeping pace with the trees, too huge to be a dog, too wrong to be a bear, moving with a fluid, terrifying grace that made my blood run cold.
Then there were three of them, then five, leaping through the canopy and running parallel to the car, and Naomi’s panicked breathing told me everything I needed to know: they weren't just chasing us, they were herding us.
The ambush ended with the sickening crunch of metal and wood as a massive, ancient tree crashed down across the dirt road, giving her exactly zero seconds to brake. She swerved hard, the tires screaming against the loose gravel, and the world spun into a chaotic blur of shattering glass and deploying airbags before the car slammed into a ditch and died.
The silence that followed was ringing and absolute, broken only by the hiss of the radiator and a deep, guttural growl that vibrated right through the soles of my shoes. Something stepped out of the treeline, and my brain refused to process the whole picture, only catching fragmented horrors: it was too tall, its limbs were crooked and elongated, its eyes reflected the moonlight like a predator's, and it wore ancient, tarnished ornaments that clinked softly as it smiled a smile full of too many teeth.
Naomi kicked her door open, shoving me toward the tree line with a sharp, "Run," but when I just stood there, frozen and hyperventilating, she let out a breath that was almost a laugh and muttered, "I knew you wouldn't."
Then my aunt, the woman who spent her days arguing with me about transition cuts in my videos, became a weapon. She didn't fight with flashy, cinematic martial arts; she fought with a brutal, terrifying efficiency, using the environment, throwing dirt, breaking joints, and moving with a lethal muscle memory that proved she had done this a thousand times before.
I tried to help, grabbing a heavy branch and swinging wildly, but a massive, clawed hand swatted me aside like a ragdoll, sending me crashing into the rocks and tearing a deep gash down my arm.
I lay there in the dirt, gasping for air, completely powerless, watching as one shadow became three, and three became six, surrounding us in a tightening circle of nightmares. They weren't trying to kill her; they were just clearing the path to get to me.
The sheer, overwhelming terror and grief inside me hit a critical mass, and something deep in my chest snapped open, answering the chaos. It wasn't me who reacted; it was the world. The air began to vibrate with a low, mechanical hum, and ancient, glowing geometric symbols burned themselves into the soil beneath my bleeding hands.
Golden lines drew themselves across the forest floor with blinding precision, snapping together like the gears of a machine that had been asleep for millions of years. Two massive, glowing triangles materialized in the air, rotating and interlocking to form a perfect, terrifyingly complex hexagonal gateway. There were no sparkles, no whimsical magic; it looked like sacred mathematics, engineered architecture folding reality itself to reveal a blinding, unrecognizable light on the other side.
Naomi stared at the impossible geometry tearing through the forest, her eyes widening as she realized the gateway hadn't just opened; it had chosen him, and she knew with absolute certainty that she couldn't follow.
"I'm not leaving you!" I screamed, scrambling to my feet and grabbing her arms, but she just reached up and grabbed my shoulders, her hands warm and steady despite the blood on her face.
"Listen to me," she said, her voice cutting through the roar of the monsters and the hum of the portal, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "Everything I did, every lie, every birthday, every hug... was because I loved you. Not because I had to. You were never a mission, Krish. You were my son in every way that mattered."
I completely broke, sobbing as I pulled her into the same hug I’d been giving her since I was ten years old, and she hugged me back with that same familiar, one-armed squeeze, her hand cupping the back of my head just like always.
She kissed my forehead softly, offering me the exact same smile she’d given me that morning over pancakes, and whispered, "Happy birthday, kiddo."
She shoved me backward, not with violence, but with a final, desperate push, and I stumbled toward the blinding light of the gateway just as the first Rakshasa lunged. She intercepted it, throwing herself into the mass of claws and teeth, buying me the single second I needed before the portal began to collapse in on itself.
I screamed her name, trying to turn back, but the gravity of the gateway was absolute, pulling me forward into a void of weightless silence. There was no up or down, just a blur of golden geometry, ancient chants, and the rushing sound of wind tearing through my ears, until I crashed violently onto cold, hard stone.
The impact knocked the air out of my lungs in a brutal rush, and as I tried to push myself up, my vision doubled and fractured. I could only make out the towering, impossible silhouettes of architecture stretching into an alien sky, distant figures rushing toward me, and lights that defied every law of physics I knew.
My vision narrowed to a single point on the stone beneath my hands—a massive, intricate emblem carved deep into the rock—and as the darkness finally swallowed me whole, I didn't even know what it meant.
ns216.73.216.179da2
and then Add to home screen.