[Present Timeline — After the Fall of Shambhala]
The world was ash.
The ground around Ahaan was no longer stone or sand—it was glass, molten and re-forged by something that no mortal weapon could conjure. The air shimmered with the scent of smoke and ozone, each breath carving through his lungs like blades. High above, the clouds were still bleeding light from where the figure had hovered—a silhouette crowned in fire, descending like judgment itself.
He remembered the light swallowing everything.
He remembered the sound—like an entire city exhaling its last breath.
Now, there was only the echo.
Ahaan stirred, his hands trembling as he pushed aside the debris. His vision blurred—scorched ruins where Shambhala's metallic walls once gleamed, pillars torn apart, silver fragments drifting like dead snow. He coughed, and tasted iron. His mind swayed between now and then—the explosion, the scream, the fall.
Somewhere behind the collapsed archways, a low groan. Ahaan staggered toward it—limping, gasping—and found Aryan, half-buried under a sheet of fractured alloy. His chest moved. Alive. Further ahead, Abhi, his arm twisted but breathing, unconscious. Relief—warm, shaking—flooded through Ahaan's veins. He knelt between them, whispering hoarsely:
"You're not gone… not again… I won't lose you too."
He raised his eyes.
In the distance, through the haze of ruin, the citadel of Shambhala still floated—untouched, untremblingly—its obsidian towers piercing the storm clouds. Somewhere inside that citadel, the masked ruler watched them fall.
Ahaan's fists clenched, blood dripping from his palms.
"You'll pay," he whispered.
"You'll pay for him… for all of it."
The wind carried ash like confetti—funeral dust for gods.
[Flashback — Years Earlier]
Rain. The kind that never ended.
A boy no older than four, barefoot, crouched beneath a dying streetlamp, clutching a broken toy. Behind him, a woman's figure—a shadow draped in torn silk—walked away. She never turned back.
He remembered crying until his throat bled.
No one came.
Days blurred into hunger, hunger into silence, silence into the kind of stillness that becomes a shell. Until one night, under the same relentless rain, a stranger knelt before him—robes stained with mud, eyes reflecting both sorrow and warmth.
"What's your name, child?"
"...I don't know."
"Then let it be Ahaan," said the man, smiling faintly. "It means dawn. Because that's what you'll become."
The man's name was Siddharth.
[Training and Brotherhood]
Years folded into each other under Siddharth's tutelage.
Ahaan learned to read the stars, to forge circuits and weapons, to wield not just strength but restraint. Siddharth wasn't a warrior; he was a philosopher with scars. He spoke of balance, of the world beneath Shambhala—Bhutala—and the corruption festering above.
Ahaan never understood then why Siddharth kept looking toward the sky, whispering prayers to gods he claimed had long fallen.
Their family grew.
First came Aryan, a boy with eyes that burned even when he smiled—haunted, fierce.
Then Abhi, quick-tongued, bright, carrying a kind of warmth that lit every dark corner.
Three brothers—not by blood, but by the bond of shared nights and silent promises. Siddharth forged them, not into soldiers, but into believers—believers that even in a world of ruin, light could be built from hands once meant for war.
They fought, they failed, they laughed—until the day they disobeyed.
[Fragmented Memories — The Assault on Outfit X]
Gunfire. Smoke. Screams in a tongue he couldn't recognize.
A flash—Siddharth's voice, yelling something he couldn't hear over the roar.
Then Varik's laughter, low and cruel, echoing through the compound like rusted metal scraping against bone.
Ahaan remembered trying to drag Aryan away.
He remembered Abhi's arm bleeding.
He remembered the explosion—the moment light devoured the sound.
And Siddharth—turning, smiling one last time before the world turned white.
Then nothing.
[Present — Back to Ashes]
Ahaan blinked the memory away. The ruins of Shambhala shimmered again before his eyes, heat waves dancing over what was once their victory. He pressed his forehead to the cold metal beside Aryan and whispered:
"You said destiny can be rewritten, Siddharth…
But if it's written in blood—whose blood will it take this time?"
The silence that followed was heavier than grief—it was oath.
Ahaan rose. The wind carried the last embers of Shambhala across his face, glowing like dying stars. He turned toward the floating citadel, its shadow swallowing the horizon.
"Three embers remain," he said quietly.
"And fire remembers its own."
"When darkness births its own end, the stars remember their light."
Ahaan stood amid the ruin—motionless, the stormlight flickering against his silhouette.
Behind him, the faint crackle of energy still hummed from the city's broken veins.
He looked once more at his brothers—motionless but breathing—and felt that same pulse of fate burn through his chest.
Somewhere, beneath the debris, a faint heartbeat echoed.
The scene stilled…
A flicker—
A single breath.
Aryan's fingers twitched.