Dawn came wrong.
The sky bled orange through clouds that shouldn't exist—thick, swirling, pressing down on the gurukul like a hand preparing to squeeze. Aryan hadn't slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw threads. Silver lines screaming, then silence. A gap in reality where Vikram's connection used to exist.
I did that.
He sat hunched in his corner of the sleeping hall, arms wrapped around his knees. His palm throbbed. The mark had darkened overnight, edges spreading like ink in water, creeping toward his wrist.
Around him, disciples stirred. Mats rustled. Someone coughed.
Neel walked past without looking at him.
Just like last night.
By dawn, the Swamis will know.
Vidyut's warning echoed. But the sun had risen, and no one had come. No guards. No summons. Just this strange, heavy morning—as if the world itself was holding its breath.
Then the drums began.
The Summoning
Not the morning drums. These were deeper. Slower. A rhythm Aryan had never heard in his four years at the gurukul—each beat separated by five heartbeats, each strike resonating in his molars.
The disciples stopped mid-routine. Hands froze over half-folded mats. Eyes met in confusion.
"What—"
"All disciples to the summoning circle." A teacher's voice, sharp and wrong. "Now."
Not the courtyard. The summoning circle. Aryan had only seen it once—a ring of carved stone at the gurukul's northern edge, where the boundary fires burned highest. Where, according to whispered stories, the old Swamis used to call things that shouldn't be called.
His blood went cold.
Dev appeared at his side. The boy's face was carefully blank, but his eyes tracked Aryan's mark.
"They're not testing us today," Dev said quietly. "They're testing you."
The Circle
The summoning circle was older than the gurukul.
That was the first thing Aryan noticed. The stones were worn smooth by centuries of feet, but the carvings beneath remained sharp—geometric patterns that hurt to look at directly. The boundary fires crackled at the circle's edge, flames too blue, too still.
Mahajan stood at the center. Beside him: Swami Vakrath, the stone-eyed elder who'd judged the first trial.
And between them—a pit.
Not deep. Perhaps knee-height. But the darkness inside didn't behave like darkness should. It moved. Breathed. Watched.
The seven volunteers arranged themselves around the circle's edge. Aryan took his place between Dev and the crooked-nose boy who'd called him Scroll-brain. Vikram was absent—his arm, someone whispered, still wouldn't close properly.
Because of me.
"Today," Vakrath announced, "we test spirit."
His voice carried no warmth. No humanity. He spoke like a man reading funeral rites.
"Spirit is not strength. It is not courage. It is the truth you carry when all else is stripped away." His stone eyes swept the line. "You will each speak that truth. You will each be judged."
"By who?" someone asked.
Vakrath smiled.
It was the worst thing Aryan had ever seen.
"By what."
He raised his hands toward the pit.
And spoke.
The Dakini Rises
The words weren't Sanskrit. Weren't any language Aryan recognized. They scraped against reality like nails on bone, syllables that shouldn't fit in a human throat.
The pit answered.
Smoke first. Not wood-smoke—something thicker, sweeter, carrying the smell of temple flowers left to rot in summer heat. It curled upward in spirals that moved against the wind.
Then the hand.
Gray flesh. Long fingers. Nails black and curved like talons. It gripped the pit's edge and pulled.
The Dakini rose.
She was wrong. Every part of her was wrong. A female form, yes—but stretched, distorted, as if something had tried to remember what a woman looked like and failed. Her ribs showed through skin that glistened like oil. Bone jewelry clattered at her wrists and ankles—finger bones, Aryan realized with horror. Human finger bones, strung on thread that pulsed with faint light.
Her eyes were empty. Not dark—empty. Holes where sight should be, yet somehow seeing everything.
And her tongue—
Gods above, her tongue.
It uncoiled from her mouth like a serpent, gray and glistening, lengthening past her chin, past her chest, coiling in the air before her. At its tip: a mouth within a mouth, tiny and toothed and hungry.
"Dakini of the cremation grounds," Vakrath intoned. "Judge these souls. Taste their truth."
The Dakini's tongue twitched.
She smiled.
The smell of rotting flesh hit Aryan like a fist.
The Judgment Begins
"First volunteer. Step forward."
The crooked-nose boy walked into the circle. His face was green, but his jaw was set. Stubborn even now.
The Dakini drifted toward him. She moved wrong—not walking, but flowing, her bare feet trailing through air inches above the stone.
Her tongue extended.
The boy flinched but held still. The tongue's tip wrapped around his wrist once, twice, tightening like a living rope. The tiny mouth at its end pressed against his skin.
Tasted.
The boy gasped. His eyes rolled back. For three heartbeats, he hung suspended, mouth open in a silent scream.
Then the Dakini withdrew.
"Truth," she spoke, and her voice was wind through empty temples. "He fears being ordinary. He fears dying unmourned. He fears—" Her head tilted. "—snakes. How pedestrian."
She released him. The boy collapsed, gagging.
"Adequate," Vakrath declared.
Adequate. The boy had just had his soul licked and this was adequate.
The next disciple stepped forward. A thin girl with sharp eyes.
The process repeated. Tongue. Taste. Truth. The girl feared drowning. Feared her mother's disappointment. Feared childbirth.
"Honest," the Dakini purred. "But boring."
Third. Fourth. Dev walked into the circle with his chin high, but even he trembled when the tongue wrapped his wrist. His truths were clinical—fear of failure, fear of weakness, fear of being second-best.
The Dakini laughed. The sound was flies buzzing in summer rot.
"Next."
Aryan's legs moved without permission.
The Void-Touched
The boundary fires dimmed as Aryan entered the circle.
The Dakini turned toward him. Her empty eyes widened—or perhaps the holes simply gaped, stretching like mouths in surprise. Her tongue recoiled, coiling tight against her chest.
"You," she breathed.
Not a greeting. An accusation.
"Tell me your truth," Vakrath commanded.
Aryan opened his mouth. Nothing came out. His throat was locked. His hands trembled at his sides.
The mark on his palm burned.
The Dakini floated closer. Her smell preceded her—corpse-flowers and old blood and something sweeter, sicker, underneath. Her tongue extended, slower this time. Cautious.
She's afraid.
The thought struck Aryan like lightning. This thing—this nightmare given flesh—was afraid of him.
The tongue's tip touched his wrist.
Dissolution
Pain.
Not his pain. Her pain. A scream that existed only in the space between thoughts, vibrating through every thread Aryan could sense.
The Dakini shrieked.
Her tongue dissolved.
Not withdrew—dissolved. The gray flesh touching his skin bubbled, blackened, flaked away like ash. The tiny mouth at its tip opened in a silent scream as it unraveled, thread by thread, reality rejecting its existence.
The Dakini recoiled. She scrambled backward through the air, her remaining tongue-stump thrashing, black ichor spraying across sacred stone.
"VOID-TOUCHED!"
Her voice was hurricane and earthquake and the silence between stars.
"VOID-TOUCHED! THE UNMAKER WALKS! THE THREADS REMEMBER HIM!"
She turned to Vakrath, empty eyes blazing with something that might have been terror.
"There are things that cannot be burned, only buried. Things that run when YOU run—because they enjoy the chase. THIS BOY IS ONE OF THEM! THIS BOY IS—"
She stopped.
Looked at Aryan.
And fled.
The pit swallowed her. The smoke reversed, sucked downward. The smell vanished. The boundary fires roared back to full height.
Silence.
The Weight of Truth
No one moved.
Aryan stood in the circle's center, arm still extended, wrist still glistening with black ichor where the Dakini's tongue had died. His mark pulsed—darker now, spreading visibly toward his fingers.
"What—" The crooked-nose boy's voice cracked. "What the hell was that?"
Vakrath's face was stone. But his hands—pressed flat against his thighs—trembled.
"The trial is complete," he said. His voice was hollow. "Aryan passes."
"Passes?" Dev stepped forward, his careful composure finally cracking. "That thing called him void-touched! It called him an Unmaker! It—"
"SILENCE."
Mahajan's voice. Not loud—but absolute. The air itself seemed to still.
He stepped into the circle, robes stirring in wind that didn't exist, and faced Aryan. His stone face held no surprise. No confusion.
Only grief.
"Everyone out. Return to the sleeping hall. Speak of this to no one."
The disciples scattered like startled birds. Dev hesitated, met Aryan's eyes for one long moment, then turned and walked away.
Aryan and Mahajan stood alone in the summoning circle.
The Revelation
"You knew," Aryan whispered. His voice was someone else's—dry, cracked, ancient. "You knew what I was."
Mahajan didn't deny it.
"I've known since the day you arrived." He didn't approach. Stayed on his side of the circle, as if the space between them was a wound neither could cross. "When the forest fire chose to mark you. When Vidyut found you unconscious in the grove. When the river bent around you instead of through you."
"Then why—" Aryan's voice broke. "Why let me stay? Why let me think I was normal?"
"Because you are normal." Mahajan's voice cracked on the word. "You're a scared boy with a power he didn't ask for. A power that was put inside him before he could consent."
Aryan's heart stopped.
"What?"
Mahajan closed his eyes.
"I made a promise," he said slowly. "A long time ago. To a man who did something unforgivable—and couldn't face the consequences. I promised I would watch over his son. Protect him until he was ready to learn what he is."
The world tilted.
"My father—"
"Tomorrow is the craft trial." Mahajan turned away. His voice was ice. "Whatever happens there, do not let them see the full extent of what you can do. The Dakini was bound—she cannot speak of what she witnessed. But if the others learn—if the council learns—"
He stopped.
"What happens if they learn?"
Mahajan didn't answer. He walked out of the circle, into the morning light, leaving Aryan alone with the dying boundary fires and a truth that tasted like poison.
My father did something unforgivable.
He put this inside me.
The thing that even demons fear.
The summoning circle grows cold. The boundary fires dim. And in the pit where the Dakini fled, something stirs—watching, waiting, remembering the boy who made a spirit's tongue unmake itself.
She will return.
They always do.