Perhaps we had no idea what awaited us there.
I was leading Siya and my companions straight toward danger. Strangely, there was no fear in my heart—only a restless unease. A storm of questions churned within me, questions whose answers I knew lay hidden in that room we were about to uncover. Yet one thought disturbed me more than the rest: What if there was nothing there? What if this entire journey was built on a dream I had overthought, a mirage born from desperation?
But it was too late to turn back now.
The decision had already been made.
We set our course for India.
As soon as we arrived, we began searching for the mountain known as Devnagari. The locals spoke of it in hushed voices, as if the mountain itself could hear them. From them, we learned countless legends—ancient tales passed down through generations. As I listened, an inexplicable sense of familiarity washed over me. It felt as though these stories were not merely about a place, but about me. As if my existence was somehow woven into their fabric.
I listened carefully, trying to decipher the meanings hidden between their words. Certain phrases echoed in my mind, repeating themselves like whispers carried by the wind, as though they were trying to tell me something I had long forgotten.
One thing became clear:
this mountain was hiding secrets.
Situated in the northern state of Uttarakhand, Devnagari had buried within itself stories older than time—stories that history had either forgotten or deliberately erased.
The next morning, we began our ascent.
At first, the mountain appeared ordinary. Rugged, silent, ancient—but nothing extraordinary. Yet the higher we climbed, the more unsettling it became. The air felt heavy, lifeless. This was not the mountain described in legends. There was no greenery, no sign of the miraculous herbs that ancient texts claimed grew abundantly here.
No Sanjeevani.
According to mythology, this mountain was once alive with healing energy—herbs capable of restoring life itself. But now, it stood barren, stripped of vitality, as though something had sucked its soul dry.
Lost in these thoughts, I continued forward… until my steps suddenly stopped.
A single phrase echoed in my mind.
"Sanjeevani herbs."
I froze.
What if the destruction of the world hadn't been sudden or accidental?
What if it had started right here?
What if the misuse of these very herbs—meant to heal—had instead corrupted life itself?
A terrifying possibility took shape in my mind.
What if humans, in their hunger to conquer death, had tampered with something they were never meant to control? What if those ancient herbs had been extracted, modified, experimented upon—twisted into something unnatural?
Could that be how the first mutations began?
Could this be the origin of the monsters… the altered humans… the engineered horrors we now faced?
History had always been selective. Humanity remembered what it wanted to remember and erased what threatened its pride. Perhaps the legends of Devnagari were not myths at all, but warnings—warnings that had been ignored, exploited, and rewritten to suit ambition.
I looked around. The mountain felt… violated.
Ali seemed to sense the change in me.
"You felt it too, didn't you?" he asked quietly.
I nodded. "This place isn't dead," I said. "It's been drained."
Clara scanned the surroundings, her hand instinctively tightening around her weapon. "Drained by whom?"
I already knew the answer, even before I spoke it.
"By us," I said. "By humans."
The silence that followed was heavier than any sound.
If this mountain truly housed the hidden facility Siya had spoken of, then it wasn't just a laboratory—it was a crime scene spanning centuries. A place where mythology had been harvested, where divinity had been dissected in the name of progress.
Suddenly, the stories made sense.
The gods retreating.
The miracles fading.
The world collapsing into chaos.
This wasn't divine punishment.
This was the consequence of misusing history.
As we climbed higher, the terrain changed subtly. The rock beneath our feet bore strange markings—too precise to be natural, too old to be modern. Symbols carved long ago, now eroded by time, yet still visible to those who knew how to look.
Siya stopped beside one such marking. Her expression hardened.
"This is it," she said. "They didn't just build a facility here. They built it on top of something sacred."
Something ancient.
Something powerful.
And something that should never have been disturbed.
I felt a chill run through me.
If the past had been weaponized once, it could be done again. And if the truth buried inside Devnagari came to light, it would not just explain the end of the world—it would decide whether a new one deserved to begin.
The mountain loomed above us, silent and watchful.
And for the first time, I understood.
Some histories are not forgotten.
They are misused.