✦ HUNT FOR THE AVATAR ✦
Across the burning village, the chaos shifted into something colder—methodical.
Groups of demons descended into the streets like predators organizing a hunt.
Winged creatures swooped low while hulking asuras and demonic horse-backed army blocked escape routes, herding the terrified survivors toward open grounds and broken crossroads. Young men and boys were seized first—dragged screaming from hiding places, torn from their mothers' arms, yanked out from beneath carts and shattered doors.
There was no mercy.
Iron-like claws clamped around wrists and throats. Resistance was met with bone-crushing blows. Those who tried to flee were struck down instantly, their bodies discarded without a second glance.
Soon, dozens were forced to their knees.
A winged demon glided above them, its shadow stretching long and suffocating across the ground. One by one, the captives were hauled forward. Rough hands twisted their arms outward, exposing their palms and wrists under the blood-red glow of the eclipsed moon.
The demon leaned close, its molten eyes scanning each trembling hand with feverish urgency.
Nothing.
A snarl of rage escaped its throat.
The first execution was swift—and horrifying.
A boy no older than sixteen was engulfed in black flame, his scream cutting off mid-cry as his body collapsed into ash. Panic erupted instantly. Some captives begged. Some sobbed. Others froze, unable to comprehend what awaited them.
Still, the inspection continued one by one.
Another wrist. Another rejection.
Another life erased.
"No… no…no...none of them," the demon screamed, its voice vibrating with fury.
"None bear the symbol."
With a violent beat of its wings, it rose into the air and turned toward its legion. Its command rang out like a death sentence.
"Find the boy marked with the serpent symbol. Search every road. Every house. Every shadow. Bring him to me alive."
The asura army bowed in fear and scattered, vanishing into smoke and fire.
Behind them, the ground was littered with bodies—young lives extinguished in seconds.
And somewhere in the fleeing masses, unaware and unmarked by fate's cruelty just yet, the true target continued to run.
✦ THE ROAD TO THE TEMPLE ✦
They ran— toward the only sanctuary that remained in a world gone mad.
The road to the temple was no longer a familiar path; it was a gauntlet through a dying villagers. A predatory wind hurled hot ash into their eyes, stinging like needles, while behind them, the crackle of burning thatch sounded like the snapping of dry bones. The path was a graveyard of broken things: splintered carts, discarded heirlooms, and the silent, twisted shapes of those who hadn't been fast enough. Above, the moon—now a bruised, hemorrhaging eye—cast shadows so long and distorted that the very ground seemed to reach up to trip them.
Arjun's lungs felt as though they were filled with liquid fire. "Why?" he wheezed between ragged gasps. "Why did she send us to the temple? Why there?"
Gopi didn't slow his pace, his eyes fixed on the horizon where the temple's silhouette was seen. "The Pandit… he said the walls were divine," Gopi managed, his voice thin and sharp with desperation. "He said no Asura, no matter how powerful or mysterical, could ever breach the threshold. Yesterday, it could have been a bedtime story. Tonight, it's the only truth we have left!"
Arjun's mind, sharpened by the cold reality of the slaughter he had just witnessed. "Can stone and incense truly stop those… things?" he shouted over the roar of the inferno. "They crush men like beetles, Gopi! How can a wall save us?"
Gopi turned his head for a fraction of a second, with sweat and terror on his face. "If the demons are real enough to kill us," he snapped, "then the legends guarding that temple are real enough to save us! We have nothing else to believe in, Arjun! Nothing!"
For a fleeting, surreal moment, a jagged sound tore from their throats—a broken, hysterical laugh. It wasn't born of humor, but of a shared, terrifying realization of their own insignificance. It was a sound that proved, despite the terror and bloodshed, their spirits hadn't quite been snuffed out.
But as the road narrowed into the throat of the village, the air grew heavy and cold. The smoke thickened into a suffocating shroud, turning the world gray and featureless.
And then, the flickering orange light vanished.
A vast, suffocating shadow dropped over the path like a funeral shroud. Their boots skidded on the dirt as their steps faltered, the sudden, absolute darkness more terrifying than the fire they had fled.
✦ THE DEMON ✦
The earth trembled and buckled.
With a sound of a collapsing mountain, a monstrosity dropped from the sky, slamming into the road with enough force to send shards of stone and hot embers gevouring the air. Arjun and Gopi were thrown backward, their boots skidding through the soot as they scrambled for balance.
Arjun's gaze climbed the creature with a sickening, involuntary fascination. He traced the cracked, obsidian-like talons that had shredded the road, up the towering, muscular frame, to a head crowned with jagged, obsidian horns. Its eyes were twin pits of serpentine fire, glowing with a cold, predatory intelligence. Beneath its leathery skin, veins of dull, rhythmic crimson pulsed.
Its wings unfurled, vast enough to blot out the blood-red sky. A barbed tail scraped against the ground behind it with a sound like a knife on a wetstone.
Then it laughed—slow and deliberate. A sound that crept into their bones and refused to leave.
Arjun's heart hammered. Gopi's legs trembled, locked by terror.
The road behind them burns.
The demon's smile widened, revealing rows of teeth like serrated daggers. it loomed over them, its massive frame radiating an oppressive, gravitonic force that seemed to bend the very air. Those glowing red eyes drifted over the boys, sharp and searching, scanning them with the clinical detachment of a butcher at a market.
It was looking for something.
The forest seemed to recoil in its presence; the leaves turned brittle, and the shadows stretched into twisted, agonizing shapes. Then, with the suddenness of a lightning strike, the demon's gaze snapped downward.
Its eyes locked onto Arjun's left wrist.
The Serpent Symbol.
For a heartbeat, Everything fell silent.
Then a hysterical laugh tore through the forest, ripping violently from the demon's throat. as the creature raised a clawed finger and pointed directly at Arjun's hand, its laughter thick with madness and triumph.
"Ahh… look at this!" He sneered, his voice a guttural rasp that dripped with mockery.
"The universe truly does have a sense of irony."
"The boy I have hunted for decades across every dimension suddenly appears before me—without warning, without preparation.
Tell me, child… do you have any idea what kind of destiny is crawling right behind you?"
Arjun trembled, fear threatening to shatter him. Yet something deep within forced him to stand firm. Gathering the last fragments of his courage, he broke the silence.
"Who are you?" he demanded, his voice shaking but steady enough. "What do you want from us? What are you looking for?"
He met the demon's gaze directly—fear burning in his chest, but defiance blazing in his eyes.
The demon paused.
Amused.
A slow smirk curved its grotesque face as it stepped closer, the ground crunching beneath its weight.
"Hah. Fascinating," he murmured, "You are the first mortal I have encountered in an age who does not simply crumble into a heap of terror at my feet. But then, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I know exactly what hides beneath that fragile skin."
Arjun clenched his fists. "What nonsense are you speaking? How could you possibly know who I am?"
The demon's eyes flared, two pits of stoked embers. "I can see the gears of your small mind turning, boy—wondering what this 'mad creature' is babbling about. But listen well. What I am about to reveal will shatter the foundations of your world until nothing remains of the life you knew."
The creature raised a singular, jagged claw, pointing once more to the mark on Arjun's wrist. "That symbol is no mere birthmark.
Anyone who bears that mark is no common man." The demon leaned in.
"He is an Avatar."
The words struck like thunder.
Both boys stared at each other, stunned—confusion and disbelief etched across their faces. The meaning refused to settle in their minds.
Before either of them could speak, the demon lunged forward, stretching its clawed hand toward Arjun. The air thickened instantly, heavy and suffocating.
The demon's claw pressed against Arjun's hand.
And everything exploded.
The serpent symbol glowed; it ignited. A brilliant, blinding cobalt-blue flame erupted from Arjun's skin, swallowing him in a pillar of celestial fire. His eyes flared wide, transformed into twin beacons of that same terrifying, radiant light.
A violent shockwave of raw, unfiltered energy tore outward with the force of a collapsing star. Trees were snapped like dry twigs, and the very soil was stripped from the earth. The demon—was hurled backward like a broken ragdoll, crashing through the dense branches before slamming into the jungle floor with a sickening thud. It let out a guttural groan of agony, half of its body burnedand smoked from the divine contact.
Gopi could only stare, his jaw hanging slack, his mind reeling. Arjun stood in the center of the scorched clearing, a silent sentinel wrapped in fading embers, his eyes still shimmering with a dying blue light.
"Arjun!" Gopi finally shrieked, his voice a mix of primal terror and religious awe. "What in the gods' names was that? Did you know? Did you know you were carrying a sun inside you?"
There was no answer. Arjun stood motionless, a hollow vessel.
"Hey! Speak to me!" Gopi scrambled toward him, panic surging as he realized Arjun's gaze was vacant. "Are you even in there?"
Arjun's eyelids fluttered. The cobalt glow vanished as quickly as it had arrived. He gasped, his knees buckling as he surged back into consciousness.
"Gopi…" he wheezed, clutching his chest. "What… what just happened?"
Gopi gaped at him, his hands waving frantically at the smoking crater where the demon had been. "What happened?! You just blasted a five-meter demon across the jungle with blue fire, and you're asking me for the details?!"
Arjun shook his head, dazed and shivering as the adrenaline began to sour in his veins. "I swear to you… I felt nothing but heat. But it doesn't matter." He looked toward the shadow in the trees where the beast lay groaning. "We have to go. Now. Before that thing remembers how to stand."
Gopi didn't need a second invitation. They turned and dived into the dense, tangled maw of the jungle, abandoning the road and vanishing into the safety of the shifting shadows.
✦ THE HUNT BEGINS ✦
High above the burning forest, the crimson clouds still churned violently around the eclipsed moon. From that blood-stained sky, two winged silhouettes circled like carrion birds drawn to slaughter.
They had felt it.
The eruption of power.
The sudden surge of something ancient—something forbidden.
With a thunderous beat of leathery wings, the two demons descended rapidly, cutting through smoke and ash until they reached the epicenter of the blast. The forest floor below was scorched black, trees snapped like broken bones, the earth torn open as if struck by divine wrath.
At the center of the devastation lay their leader.
The once-dominant demon now writhed inside a smoldering crater, its body half-burnt, flesh cracked and blackened, crimson energy leaking from its wounds like molten lava. Smoke rose from its charred form as it snarled in pain, claws digging furiously into the soil.
The two lesser demons touched down beside their fallen commander, they knelt instinctively, their heads bowed.
Rage, pure and corrosive, burned in the leader's eyes—a volatile mixture of agony and absolute disbelief.
"That power…" the creature hissed, its voice a jagged rasp that shook with a terrifying blend of fury and starved hunger. "There is no more room for doubt. The scent is unmistakable."
It struggled to heave its charred torso upward, the scorched obsidian of its skin flaking away like burnt parchment. Its glowing eyes blazed with a renewed, fanatical obsession.
"Go," the commander snarled, spitting a mixture of black blood and hot ash onto the ruined earth.
He pointed a trembling, taloned finger toward the lightless depths of the trees and bushes.
"Search every shadow. Sift through the dirt of this wretched jungle. The two boys… they cannot be allowed to reach the sanctuary. The Avatar must not escape."
Its voice dropped into a venomous whisper "Bring them to me alive. I want to see the light break in those blue eyes myself."
The demons offered a final, subservient bow before launching themselves skyward. The snap of their wings sliced through the stagnant air like the crack of a whip. They vanished into the charcoal clouds, fanning out in a wide, lethal arc to encircle the forest.
The hunt had truly begun.
...