✦ THE ECLIPSE ✦
At dusk, the forest road transformed into something both beautiful and unsettling.
Twisted branches clawed at the darkening sky like skeletal fingers, while pale mist crept along the narrow path, coiling around stones and roots as if it possessed a will of its own.
The air felt heavier here—thick with damp soil, silence, and an unease that refused to be named.
Arjun had fallen silent.
For several minutes, he walked beside the road without truly seeing it. His gaze drifted beyond the trees and hills, fixed on some distant, unreachable point where no path existed at all. It felt as though something beyond this world had whispered his name, tugging at his thoughts with quiet insistence.
Gopi noticed almost immediately.
He slowed his pace, furrowing and nudged Arjun with a sharp elbow, breaking the silence. "What's wrong with you? You look like you're miles away. Speak up before you wander so far into your own head"
Arjun blinked, the vacant look in his eyes clearing like mist. He shook his head slightly, a faint, apologetic smile touching his lips. "It's nothing unusual," he said softly. "It's just… the stories the priest told back at the temple. They've stayed with me longer than I expected."
Gopi let out an open scoff, kicking at a loose stone on the path. "You're still stuck on those? I can't believe it. Arjun, they're just ancient tales—exaggerated myths to keep the villagers frightened and the children obedient. Nothing more."
Arjun didn't take the bait. He remained calm, "I'm not saying they're true," he replied, his voice steady. "But I can't exactly call them false, either. Until something is proven, choosing a side feels…
meaningless. To me, truth and myth are the same thing—at least until reality decides to separate them."
It was an odd answer for a twelve-year-old, yet Arjun had always been that way—quiet, observant, endlessly curious. Slender and olive-skinned, with hazel eyes that reflected more than they revealed, he carried a depth that felt far older than his years. On his left wrist, just below the palm, rested a strange birthmark shaped like a coiled serpent. No one knew its origin. No one dared guess its purpose.
Beside him walked Gopi—taller, broader, and far more expressive. A shy boy with a good heart and strength, always wavering between fear and courage. Trouble seemed to find him even when he stood perfectly still.
He kicked a dry pebble along the path and muttered, "i don't believe a single word the priest had spoken. My father always said priests fooled people with imaginary stories, feeding on fear and blind faith".
Arjun offered a careless shrug, his boots kicking up the dry dust of the path. "It's 1970, Gopi," he said, "India has been free for two decades. We have satellites, medicine, and steel. The age of science doesn't have room for monsters in the dark".
But Gopi didn't answer. He had come to a dead halt, his frame suddenly rigid.
"Arjun," Gopi whispered, his voice cracking like dry parchment. "Look up."
Arjun tilted his head back—and the world seemed to tilt with it. Only moments ago, the moon had been a silver coin, bright and serene against the velvet sky. Now, a jagged, unnatural darkness was crawling across its face, swallowing the light inch by inch.
The eclipse had begun.
"The Chandra Grahan," Arjun breathed, the priest's warnings suddenly echoing in his mind with the force of a physical blow.
Gopi swallowed hard, his eyes wide and glassy. "My grandmother... she used to whisper about this," he stammered, his voice trembling as he recounted her tales. "She spoke of Rahu, the celestial shadow, devouring the light. She said when the moon bleeds a hellish red, the gates of Asurlok swing wide, and things that should not be under this sky begin to slip through the cracks."
Arjun tried to force a smile, though it felt brittle on his face. "Your grandmother sounds just as skilled a storyteller as the Pandit," he remarked quietly, trying to anchor himself to his logic.
But Gopi didn't laugh. He shuddered, a cold sweat breaking out across his brow. Despite his modern clothes and his schoolbooks, something primal and ancient was twisting inside his chest. The forest around them had fallen into an unnatural, suffocating silence. The very air felt too tight, too watchful—as if the trees were leaning in to listen.
"Home," Gopi choked out, his eyes darting toward the shadows. "Arjun, we have to go home. Now."
Arjun nodded, the bravado of the 1970s vanishing in a heartbeat. They turned to run—and the world shattered.
A violent, predatory gust of wind tore through the forest road, howling with the voice of a wounded beast. Above them, the heavens tumbled and screamed. A jagged vein of lightning split the sky open, a blinding, merciless white that seared their retinas. Crows erupted from the canopy in a shrieking black cloud of panic, while from the deepest thickets, the cries of wolves and dogs rose in a chorus of raw, shivering terror.
"The moon!" Gopi shrieked, pointing a trembling finger upward. "Arjun, look at the moon!"
Arjun looked. His heart missed a beat, and the blood in his veins turned to ice.
A colossal skull-shaped visage glowed in the sky, its surface burning with grotesque pinkish-red light. Ghostly vapors spiraled around it as it devoured the moon whole. When the moon vanished entirely, only a blood-red orb remained, wrapped in crimson clouds that painted the earth in a hellish glow.
The skull's hollow eye sockets burned as they stared down upon the world.
✦ SOMETHING HAD COME ✦
Along the forest road, people stood frozen, staring upward in disbelief. No one spoke. No one breathed. The mind simply refused to accept what the eyes were seeing.
Then a thunderous hysterical laughter echoed accross the sky and the earth.
High above, monstrous and unrestrained, laughter rippled through the night—sharp enough to pierce the soul. It shattered reason, cracked courage, and tore at sanity itself.
Pandemonium broke out with the suddenness of a dam bursting. The air was no longer filled with the quiet rustle of the forest, but with the raw, jagged sounds of human terror. Adults screamed, their voices thin and reedy against the roaring wind, while children wailed in a blind, instinctive panic. Every living creature—from the birds in the canopy to the cattle in the fields—fled in a frantic, directionless swarm, driven by a singular urge: to get away.
But Arjun did not flee. He pivoted on his heel and broke into a desperate, lung-searing sprint toward the very heart of the chaos.
"Arjun! Have you lost your mind?" Gopi shrieked, his voice barely audible over the howling gale. He skidded to a halt, watching in horror as his friend raced toward the village. "The forest is open! We have to run away, you idiot! Why are you heading back?"
"My mother!" Arjun's voice drifted back, strained and fierce. "She's still in the house!"
He didn't slow down, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "She's been sick all day, Gopi—too weak to even sit up! She's been bedridden since dawn. I can't leave her to face this alone!"
"She'll find a way!" Gopi bellowed, his eyes darting toward the black silhouettes of the trees. "The neighbors will help! Arjun, come back!"
"She can't move, Gopi!" Arjun's voice broke, a flash of pure, agonizing fear crossing his face. "Not fast enough! I won't let her die in the dark!"
Gopi stood frozen for a heartbeat, his knees knocking together, his entire soul screaming at him to save himself. He looked at the retreating back of his friend, then at the hellish, bleeding moon above. He let out a string of panicked curses, his face twisting in a mask of frustrated terror, and then he bolted after Arjun.
"You're insane! Completely, utterly mad!" Gopi yelled as he drew level with him, his lungs burning. "If we die tonight, I'm going to haunt you for eternity, do you hear me?"
Despite the cold dread clutching his chest, a faint, fleeting smile ghosted across Arjun's lips. It was a brief spark of warmth in the middle of a winter storm.
"Shut up!" Gopi snapped, seeing the look. "Don't you dare smile at me! Just run faster before whatever is in that sky finds us first!"
✦ HELL ON EARTH ✦
As they reached the village outskirts, the last remnants of their childhood innocence were destroyed in a single, horrific heartbeat. The world had just turned dark and predatory.
From the bleeding sky, winged monstrosities descended like vultures made of shadow. They snatched men mid-stride, their talons sinking into flesh with sickening ease before crushing them as though they were mere insects. Bodies burst apart with a wet, visceral thud, like overripe fruit hitting stone. Above, the clouds seemed to weep fire; embers rained upon the thatched roofs and golden fields, turning lifetimes of labor into drifting ash within seconds.
Then came the giants. Towering demons, some reaching five meters in height, thundered through the narrow streets. Their faces were grotesque masks of goblin-like hunger, their jagged, mismatched teeth glistening with saliva and gore as they plowed through the fleeing crowds. Blood did not just spill; it painted the walls of the village in a frantic, macabre Jackson Pollock of red.
Children's screams were cut short by the sound of rending bone. Families were torn asunder in the time it took to draw a breath.
In the shadows of the granaries, some creatures had already begun to feed, hunched over the fallen while the living watched in a paralysis of soul-crushing horror.
"Why?" Gopi wailed, his voice fracturing into a high, thin reed of sound. "Arjun, why is this happening?"
Arjun could not answer. The ground trembled beneath them. Flames scattered. Screams rose from every direction—a mother dragging her child, an old man limping with blood pouring down his face.
Human agony merged into a single, endless cry.
Tears streamed down Gopi's cheeks as he asked "what humanity had done to deserve such torment".
Arjun's throat constricted, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. A toxic mixture of helplessness and white-hot rage finally burst free.
"it is because we humans are weak—too weak to fight back".
He looked up at the suffocating crimson sky, his eyes burning with a defiance.
"Why are they so strong?" he screamed into the void, his voice a jagged blade of sound. "Why are we made so fragile?"
He screamed the question into the crimson sky.
The sky did not answer.
The only answer was a sound that chilled the marrow in their bones: a low, booming laughter vibrate from the very throat of the earth itself.
✦ A SHADOW IN THE CHAOS ✦
Through the choking smoke and falling embers, a lone figure stumbled toward them.
A woman.
Gopi noticed her first. His eyes widened, his breath catching in his throat.
"Arjun—look! Look!" he cried out, his voice bursting with sudden, desperate hope.
It was his mother.
Her shawl fluttered behind her like a torn battle-flag, scorched at the edges. Ash smeared her face, and sweat clung to strands of hair plastered against her forehead. Yet despite the terror raging around her, her eyes—wide and glistening—still held fierce resolve.
Arjun's expression shattered. Tears that had been born of fear turned instantly into fragile joy. In that moment of devastation, seeing her alive felt like a miracle.
She reached them and pulled both boys into a fierce, trembling embrace, clutching them as though her arms alone could shield them from the collapsing world.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, her voice soft yet quivering with fear.
"We came looking for you," Gopi replied quickly. "We ran back to find you."
Her face hardened instantly.
"That was foolish," Smita snapped, though her words trembled with relief. "Do you have any idea how dangerous this is?" Her hands tightened around them. "You should have run. You should never have come back."
She pulled away slightly and lifted her gaze to the sky—toward the vast, blood-red eclipse and the monstrous silhouettes circling like vultures overhead. Her breath hitched.
"There's no time," she said urgently. "Listen carefully. Gather as many people as you can and take them to the temple complex." Her voice grew firm, commanding. "Anyone who wants to survive must reach the temple walls before the eclipse ends."
Arjun shook his head. "Why, Ma? What's there?"
Her voice cracked. "I can't explain. There isn't time."
Gopi stepped forward, forcing himself to stand tall despite his shaking legs. "Aunt, you go first," he said. "Take others with you. If you stay, Arjun won't leave."
Smita hesitated. She knew it was true—knew her son's stubborn heart too well. Time was slipping away like sand through her fingers.
She cupped Arjun's face, her hands trembling, tears shining in her eyes.
"Stay together," she whispered. "No matter what happens—do not leave each other."
Then she turned and ran towards the temple road.
Her figure vanished into smoke, fire, and screaming crowds surging toward the temple.
Arjun stood frozen, watching until she disappeared completely.
It was the last time he saw her so clearly.
...