Kiran floated in a dream, but it did not feel like sleep.
It felt like possession.
He opened his eyes but they were not his.
Kiran had no body of his own. He was drifting, spiraling downward through the corridors of time, until he landed heavy, breathless into the skin of another.
A memory.
No, more than that a life.
The life of the ancient younger brother.
He stood on a cliff of obsidian stone, wind howling around him. Below, the forest burned. To the west, the mountain of light gleamed faintly where his elder brother and his Seven Lotus Disciples trained in harmony, awakening their chakra gates with discipline and reverence.
The younger brother watched them from afar.
His fists clenched.
Once, he had stood beside that light. Once, the path of chakra had felt like home.
But now?
Now it was chains.
The vision blurred and shifted. Kiran found himself underground deep beneath the roots of the world, in a cavern that pulsed with unnatural life.
Around him, seven figures knelt his own disciples. Not chosen for virtue, but for rage. For sorrow. For pain.
They had once followed the chakra path too. But the younger brother had shown them another way—one that didn't require balance, patience, or the Earth Spirit's approval.
"Why beg for energy," he had told them, "when you can take it?"
And so they began the experiments.
The first demon was summoned in silence. A thin, whispering shade of greed. It twisted in its summoning ring, offering bargains no child should understand. The disciples recoiled yet the younger brother stepped forward.
He did not bind it to the earth.
He sealed it into his flesh.
The pain was unimaginable.
Kiran screamed he, through the younger brother's mouth. The pain of raw, spiritual corruption poured into bone and blood.
But it passed.
And power remained.
He stood, not broken, but remade.
Then came the others.
Seven demons. Seven trials. One for each sin, each broken piece of the human soul.
One by one, the younger brother fed these demons into his disciples, molding them like blacksmiths mold metal through suffering, flame, and fear.
Each disciple bore their sin as a brand within them:
Rakshav, who bore the Demon of Wrath, screamed in battle like thunder incarnate.
Vira, who swallowed the Demon of Lust, became beauty and venom twined as one.
Gorak, the quiet one, took in Sloth and with it, a power that fed on stillness and shadow.
And so it went.
Their chakra paths died that day. The Earth no longer sang for them.
But the demons did.
Kiran watched it all, helpless and stunned. Not only the violence, but the devotion.
The younger brother loved them. Truly. These weren't just pawns. They were his family, his chosen.
He gave them everything his knowledge, his power, his burden.
"My brother will claim the heavens," the younger whispered to his seven. "We shall claim everything else."
The final scene burned itself into Kiran's soul.
A massive seal, drawn in precise, ancient geometry, sprawled across a temple's blackened floor. It was the culmination of everything the final piece.
Here, the younger brother summoned a Tier 8 Demon, one not of this world but from the deep, collapsed parts of existence where rules fray and time bleeds. Hell.
It came not with a roar, but with laughter.
A cruel, knowing laughter. As if it had been waiting.
The demon did not resist.
It did not scream.
It stepped into the younger brother like a second skin, perfectly.
The ritual ended in silence.
The younger brother rose, now more than man.
Eyes of crimson-gold. Veins that glowed. Bones that hummed with otherworldly frequency.
"Let my brother become divine,"* he whispered.
"I will become inevitable."
"My brother was given the light. So I will take the dark."
The vision shattered.
Kiran jolted upright, back in his own body, bathed in sweat, lungs heaving.
But the knowledge remained.
He remembered the names, the symbols, the rituals.
He knew how the demons had been summoned.
How they were bound.
The knowledge was sealed inside him. The path. The process. The whispers.
And worse… he understood why.
The jealousy. The grief. The sense of being discarded.
It had all been so human.
And that made it all the more dangerous.
He looked across the valley, where Aryan trained alone, unaware.
Kiran's jaw tightened.
"He can't know."
Because deep inside, a part of him still heard the laughter of that Tier 8 demon.
And it no longer felt like memory.
It felt like invitation.
Dawn crept slowly over the horizon. The mountain air was sharp, carrying the scent of pine and cold stone. Birds sang somewhere in the distance but their songs sounded distant, like echoes from a dream that hadn't quite ended.
Aryan stirred first, sitting at the edge of the plateau, legs folded, eyes on the valley far below. His posture was still, but his fingers drummed lightly against his knee—his body remembering the quake that had rippled through the ground when the Root had opened.
The Earth had trembled for him.
And yet... his heart felt heavy.
He heard footsteps behind him soft but deliberate. It was Kiran.
Neither spoke.
Kiran moved past him and stood at the edge of the cliff, the wind tugging slightly at his cloak. His eyes looked hollow, sunken into some distant place Aryan couldn't reach.
"You didn't sleep," Aryan said quietly.
Kiran gave no answer at first. He just closed his eyes as if the wind could carry something away from him.
Then, finally: "No. I saw...something."
"So did I," Aryan replied. His tone was calmer. "A gate opened. I felt the earth's breath rise through me. Like it had been waiting for ages."
Kiran didn't respond to that. His jaw tensed slightly.
Aryan turned to him, watching. "What did you see?"
A pause. Too long.
"Nothing worth remembering," Kiran lied, too quickly.
Aryan's gaze narrowed not in suspicion, but in quiet hurt.
The wind picked up again, fluttering the prayer flags near the old shrine. Between them, the silence grew heavier.
There was a new distance between them now. Something unseen. Like a crack beneath the surface of still water. Not yet deep—but widening.
Aryan stood, brushing dust from his palms. "We should eat. Train. The next gate has to be unlocked."
Kiran gave a nod, slow and uncertain. But he didn't turn. His eyes remained fixed on the trees far below, their shadows crawling outward with the morning light.
As Aryan walked back toward the firepit, a single thought pulsed quietly in Kiran's mind:
"He doesn't know what's inside me now...and I can't let him find out."
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End of Chapter 6
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