The air in the cavern didn't smell like air. It tasted recycled, scrubbed of life, tasting of copper and old dust.
Ranveer knelt by the pool. The water was black, still as oil, indifferent.
He leaned forward, bracing himself on the granite. His breath hitched—a harsh, wet rasp that didn't sound like his own lungs. It sounded like a piston misfiring. A mechanical hiss vented from somewhere near his jaw, disturbing the surface of the water.
The ripples settled. A stranger floated in the dark reflection.
No face. Just plating. Matte-black and seamless, fused to the neck like a second skin. Where his eyes should have been, two slits of crimson light burned, steady and unblinking. It wasn't a helmet. It was a tomb.
Ranveer brought a hand up.
Clink.
Metal on metal. He expected the rough friction of stubble, the warmth of flesh. Instead, he felt cold, unyielding alloy. Panic, sharp and sudden, spiked in his chest. He clawed at the mask. His gauntlets screeched against the faceplate, sparks skittering into the water.
He pulled. He needed it off. He needed to breathe real air.
It didn't budge. It wasn't sitting on his skin; it was anchored. He could feel the pressure points, deep hooks woven into the bone of his skull, maybe even deeper. Into the grey matter.
A scream built in his throat, but the synthesizer turned it into a low, distorted static.
He struck the water.
CRACK.
It wasn't a splash. The force displaced the entire volume of the pool in a violent upward column, shattering against the stalactites high above. The stone beneath his fist didn't just break; it disintergrated to grit.
"Panic burns fuel."
The voice was dry. Bored.
Ranveer spun. A whine—high-pitched and electric—screamed at the base of his neck as his optics locked onto the sound.
The Masked Man was perched on a limestone ledge, maybe ten feet up. He was wiping down a rifle, not even looking down. He looked small. Fragile.
"What is this?" Ranveer asked. The words vibrated in his ribs, a bass-heavy growl that felt like gravel grinding in a mixer. "What did you do?"
"Salvage," the man said. He tucked the rag away. "I kept the useful parts. Discarded the rest."
Ranveer moved before he thought.
He launched himself upward. No wind-up, no effort—just a blur of black iron. His hand, a segmented claw, closed around the limestone ledge.
The rock exploded. Dust choked the air.
But the ledge was empty. The Masked Man was already on the cavern floor, his cloak settling around him like dust.
"Tactics, soldier," the man said, looking up at the monster he'd built. "You're running on adrenaline. The suit runs on math. You're fighting your own chassis."
Ranveer dropped back down. The impact shook the teeth in his head. The floor cracked, spiderwebbing out from his boots.
"I died," Ranveer said. The memory washed over him… cold tiles, fading light, the smell of antiseptic. "In that hallway. I felt it."
"You did." The Masked Man walked closer. He didn't flinch. "Ranveer Singh flatlined at 03:42. Total organ failure. You're the surplus. The minutes I stole back."
Ranveer froze. The red slits of his eyes narrowed, focusing on the small man.
"Why?"
"Because the dam is leaking." The Masked Man tapped a pouch at his belt. "I hold keys to doors that act as bulkheads. But keys turn both ways. And something is scratching on the other side."
He circled Ranveer, studying the plating like a mechanic inspecting a transmission.
"Gods. Demons. Things that eat physics. They're watching. And they're starving." He stopped, staring right into the red abyss of the visor. "Humanity is soft. We bleed. We hesitate. We need a wall."
Ranveer looked at his hands… Black. Lethal. Dead.
"I am a weapon."
"You're a plug," the Masked Man corrected. "To stop the flood."
Ranveer's fists clenched, the servos whining in protest.
"A flood of what?"
"Things," the man said softly, "that the world isn't ready to believe in."
Swarglok
It was too bright. It was always too bright.
Gold bled across the horizon, relentless and perfect. The towers of Swarglok didn't just stand; they pierced the violet nebula like needles, smelling of ozone and crushed lotus flowers. It was the smell of absolute, suffocating power.
Indra, King of the Devas, slouched in the Storm-Seat.
The throne, carved from the fossilized bones of thunderclouds, hummed a low frequency against his spine. He swirled a goblet of Soma. The nectar looked like liquid sunlight, thick and syrupy. He watched it swirl, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm of aggressive boredom. Static popped in his beard.
"Stagnation," Indra rumbled.
The air shivered. A minor Gandharva slammed into the diamond floor, knees cracking against the gems.
"Lord of the Skies," the messenger wheezed.
Indra tipped his head back, drowning his throat in Soma. It burned, a pleasant numbness. "Talk, Chitraratha. And make it interesting. I'm about to start striking lightning at my own reflection."
"The Void-Asuras," the messenger choked, forehead pressed to the cold floor. "From the Iron Hells."
Indra waved a hand, a lazy arc. "The dust-lickers? Let them eat their rocks."
"They've changed the diet, My Lord."
Indra paused. He lowered the cup.
"How?"
"They want… warmth. The blood-fire. They hit the Star-Vine colonies. Thousands of souls in iron pits. Farming them." The messenger shuddered. "Their warlord, Kravyad, says dust is for insects. Meat is for gods."
Indra sat up. The Storm-Seat flashed a dark, bruising grey.
"Meat is for gods?" Indra's eyes, usually a lazy blue, sharpened. "I decide the menu."
"We need to intervene," the messenger whispered. "The treaties—"
Indra exhaled, a gust that rattled the heavy pillars. "Send Varuna. He likes drowning things."
"Varuna is holding a planet together in the North."
"Vayu?"
"Racing comets."
Indra groaned, rubbing his temples.
Surya.
He didn't speak. He just shoved his will outward, crossing light-years in a fraction of a second, slamming against the solar core.
Shine of my existence. Go burn some trash for me.
The reply was instant, hot, and blinding in his skull.
Busy, King of Kings. Surya's mental voice was steady, annoying in its calmness. The sages in Satlok are mid-ritual. If I look away, the fire dies, and the balance tips. I gave my word.
Indra grimaced.
"Rituals," he muttered aloud. "While demons eat the neighbors."
Priorities, Indra, Surya fired back. Let the thunder handle the noise.
The connection snapped. The heat faded.
Indra stood up.
The diamond floor groaned under his weight. His joints popped—loud, like cannon fire. He looked at his hands. Broad. Smooth. Callous-free. Perfect instruments that hadn't touched anything real in eons.
A grin split his beard. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of a hurricane finding a trailer park.
"Fine," he said. "I'll bloody them myself."
He walked past the trembling messenger, heading for the Great Hall.
The Kalachakra—the Wheel of Time—dominated the center of the room. A monstrosity of brass gears and celestial mechanics, grinding against reality itself.
Indra stepped onto the platform. The machine screamed, sensing the voltage in his blood. The gears blurred into a ring of pure, violent energy.
"Open," Indra said.
The air tore. A jagged wound ripped open in the center of the room, revealing a vortex of crimson and black.
Indra stepped into the tear. The universe swallowed him whole.
The Iron Hells
Gravity here didn't just pull; it crushed.
The air was thick with sulfur and methane, a yellow fog that burned the throat. The sky was a low, bruised ceiling of toxic clouds raining acid on the grey soil.
In the crater of a dead volcano, the Asura camp sprawled like a gangrene infection. Bone-ships leaked plasma into the dirt. Iron cages swung from obsidian chains, packed tight with blue-skinned colonists weeping into the filth.
Kravyad stood in the center of it all.
Thirty feet of grey flesh and black spikes. He held a struggling captive in one hand, lifting the creature toward a mouth that looked like a woodchipper made of bone.
"More!" Kravyad roared. The sound shook the methane clouds. "The fear makes it sweet!"
His army cheered, banging spears against shields. A cacophony of rust and hate.
High above, the pressure dropped.
The heavy clouds didn't drift apart; they fled. They ripped away from a single point in the sky.
A hole opened.
Indra fell. He didn't slow down. He didn't float. He dropped like a meteorite wrapped in silk.
BOOM.
He hit the crater floor.
The shockwave pulverized the rock, turning the nearest hundred demons into red mist and shrapnel. The ground liquefied, rolling out in waves of dust and force.
Silence slammed into the valley.
The dust drifted, lazy and slow.
Indra stood in the center of the impact crater. His white robes were pristine, untouched by the grime. He stood loose, arms hanging by his sides, rolling his neck.
Crack.
Kravyad lowered the captive. The warlord's yellow eyes narrowed, sniffing the air.
"A Deva," he sneered. His voice sounded like stones grinding in a darker. "You lost, little spark?"
Indra didn't look at him. He looked at the cages. At the blood soaking into the grey dirt. He took a deep breath, tasting the rot, the fear, the sulfur. It was disgusting.
It was exhilarating.
"You mentioned a menu," Indra said. His voice was quiet, but it cut through the noise, vibrating in the teeth of every living thing in the valley.
Kravyad laughed, a rumble deep in his chest. "I did. You look like dessert."
Indra stepped forward. The ground trembled.
Kravyad roared. "Gut him!"
A dozen Void-Asuras charged—hulking brutes in scrap-iron armor, swinging axes the size of tree trunks. They closed the distance in seconds, shrieking for blood.
Indra didn't even raise his hands. He just smiled.