The Agnihotri mountain, Arka-Dham, groaned as its gravity-defying foundations began to rot into grey ash. The sound was like a million old violins snapping at once—a high-pitched, structural scream that resonated through the clouds. In the center of the shattered throne room, Vikramaditya lay in a pool of his own cooling, golden blood. His right hand—the hand that had touched the Sun, the hand that had commanded the "Rudra Flame"—was simply gone. It hadn't been cut; it had been erased by Harish's battered katana as if it had never been a part of reality, leaving a stump that didn't even have the dignity of a scar.
Harish stood over him, his ink-stained apron fluttering in the scorched wind that smelled of ionized ozone and burnt spices. He didn't look like a god; he looked like a tired service worker at the end of a double shift, the kind of man who just wanted to sit on a plastic crate and eat a cold samosa.
"I could erase your soul, Vikram," Harish said, his voice a low, vibrating hum that bypassed the ears and spoke directly to the Patriarch's marrow, vibrating his very DNA. "I could turn your entire lineage into a footnote that no one remembers. But a daughter shouldn't have to watch her father become smoke. That is a trauma even I don't want to stock on my shelves. It's a high-maintenance item with a terrible shelf life. I'm giving you a chance to be useful for the first time in three centuries. Don't waste it."
From a concealed chamber behind the solar dais, a door hissed open. Shanti, the hidden princess of the Agnihotri lineage, stumbled out. Her eyes were wide, reflecting the ruins of her world—the golden pillars now reduced to heaps of charcoal and the solar gems shattered into worthless glass. But as she looked at Harish, her brain recoiled.
Harish had already reached into the collective consciousness of the world, twisting the light and the "data" of the air. To Shanti, and to the billions watching via satellite, Harish was no longer a boy from xxxxxxxxxxx. He was a Faceless Ghost—a towering, ethereal blur of white mist and static that seemed to exist between the frames of reality, a visual glitch in the matrix of the universe.
"Father!" Shanti screamed, her voice lost in the roaring vacuum of the mountain's descent. She tried to rush forward, but her feet felt like they were encased in lead. The "Ghost" simply stepped past her, leaving a trail of absolute silence in his wake.
Harish walked to the edge of the floating mountain and stepped off. To the world, the "Sage of the Mist" simply dissolved into the clouds, a myth returning to the ether. In reality, Harish descended in a straight, invisible line, cutting through the smog of the city and landing silently in the damp, trash-strewn alleyway behind xxxxx, India.
He exhaled, the "Demon King" aura snapping back into the cage of his chest like a coiled spring. His eyes lost their violet shimmer, returning to a dull, overworked brown. "Finally," he muttered, checking his cheap, scratched wristwatch. "If I hurry, I can say I was stuck in traffic during the 'Sage' attack. Kaelen will buy it if I mention the road blockade near the metro station."
However, in his rush to edit the memories of four billion people, Harish had committed a tactical error. He had forgotten to adjust the memory of Takeo Kusanagi.
Takeo stood in the ruins of the shop, his eyes burning with a clarity that felt like a curse. Because he had been holding Harish's intent through the katana during the fight, his mind had become "anchored" to Harish's true frequency. While the rest of the world saw a "Sage of the Mist," Takeo saw exactly what had happened: The "clumsy" clerk had just dismantled a deity with a stick-fighting move.
"I am looking at a man who just edited the universe's source code because he was worried about a girl's feelings," Takeo whispered to the empty air, his hands still trembling as they clutched his scabbard. "He didn't just win a war; he rewrote the dictionary so the word 'defeat' only applies to his enemies. And now? Now he is walking through the door and apologizing for being ten minutes late? The Master is not a God—Gods want worship, they want monuments, they want the smell of burnt incense and the sight of bowed heads. The Master just wants to make sure the inventory of turmeric is correct and that the milk doesn't go sour before Tuesday. That is a much more terrifying level of power. A God might destroy you for a sin, but the Master might delete you for being an inefficient use of shelf space. I am the only one who knows. I am the high priest of a grocery store, and my deity is currently worried about a leak in the milk fridge and the price of biodegradable plastic bags. How am I supposed to breathe? Every time I see him reach for a mop, I feel like I'm watching a galactic supercluster being recalibrated. He handled that katana like it was a mere extension of his arm, but the intent... the intent was like the weight of a billion suns being compressed into a single toothpick. He didn't even break a sweat. He looked bored. He looked like a man who was thinking about whether he should buy the two-for-one deal on laundry detergent on the way home. I saw the Patriarch's fire—it was a legendary flame, a spark of the primordial sun—and Harish just... breathed on it. He literally puffed his cheeks and blew out a solar flare like it was a birthday candle. And then he deleted the man's hand. He didn't cut it. He removed the 'possibility' of the hand ever being there. My brain is melting. If I try to explain this to the Global Alliance, they'll put me in a padded cell, but if I stay silent, I am complicit in the most elaborate cover-up in human history. I am currently the only witness to a cosmic crime, and my only instruction is to make sure the lentils are sorted by color. The irony is so thick I can taste it—it tastes like oxidized copper and despair."
Takeo leaned against a stack of canned chickpeas, his knees buckling. He looked at the door, waiting for the "clerk" to return, wondering if he should bow or just hand him a clipboard.
In the high-security bunker of the Human Alliance, located deep beneath a mountain range that actually stayed on the ground, the President was currently engaged in a heated debate with the Council of Sovereigns. The air was thick with the smell of recycled oxygen and the sweat of powerful men who had realized they were irrelevant. The screens displayed the "Faceless Ghost" on loop—a grainy, terrifying blur that seemed to mock their surveillance tech.
"It's clear," the President of the Human Alliance shouted, his sweat-stained collar making him look like a man who had been through a car wash and then sat in a sauna. His tie was loosened, hanging like a noose, and his hoodie—which he wore for 'informal' crisis meetings—clutched at his protruding belly as he paced the room, avoiding the mirrors because he couldn't stand the look of fear in his own eyes. "The Agnihotri Clan had an ancient grudge with this 'Sage.' Our intelligence suggests that centuries ago, the Agnihotris stole a secret flame from this entity's mountain. This wasn't a terrorist attack; it was a Collection Agency visit from the Heavens! We are looking at a being that doesn't care about our borders, our nuclear deterrents, or our trade laws. He just deleted the most powerful fire-user in the hemisphere because of a debt! Do you understand the implications? If this being decides that the United States owes him for 'emotional damages' caused by a stray satellite, he could wipe out DC before we can even launch a tweet! Look at the footage! The sensors didn't just fail; they returned data that said 'NULL.' The atmosphere around the mountain didn't just change; it became absent of all known elements for three seconds. That's not magic, that's administrative deletion of the physical plane! We've spent trillions on the 'Star-Shield' project, and this... this thing... just walked through it like it was a wet paper towel. And you, Sovereign Marcus, you want to 'study' him? Study what? The way he turns our reality into a corrupted PDF file? You send a task force up there, and he'll probably decide that the Human Alliance is a 'legacy software' that needs to be uninstalled. We are talking about a creature that treats gravity as a suggestion and the laws of thermodynamics as a polite request that he's too busy to answer. He didn't even use a weapon! He used a piece of wood! A stick! He humilitated a Tier-1 Clan with a branch he probably picked up in a park! If we even look at him the wrong way, he might decide we're all 'Out of Stock' and hit the 'Empty Trash' button on our entire species. No. We do nothing. We treat the Sage like a natural disaster—like a hurricane that can think and has a grudge. We provide disaster relief to the survivors, we tell the public it was a 'localized rift anomaly,' and we pray—every single one of us—that he doesn't decide he needs a new set of lawn furniture made from our mineral reserves."
The Sovereigns sat in stunned silence, their holographic projections flickering as the President's rage vibrated the floor. They knew he was right. In the face of a God who mops, diplomacy was just a fancy way of saying "please don't erase me."
Back at xxxxx, the door to the shop creaked open, the bell chiming with a cheerful ting that felt wildly inappropriate given the state of the world. Ravi was sitting on a pile of salvaged rice bags, grumbling about his insurance premium and nursing a bruised shoulder from when the shop had shaken.
Harish walked in, looking slightly disheveled. He was dragging a broken, handless, and spiritually hollowed Vikramaditya by the collar of his singed silk robes. The Patriarch, who had once commanded the "Rudra Flame" and looked down upon the world from a floating mountain, was now shivering, his eyes darting toward Harish with a terror that surpassed human comprehension. He looked like a man who had seen the bottom of the abyss and realized it was made of linoleum.
"Harish! Where have you been?" Ravi yelled, his face turning a shade of purple that matched the bruises on his arm. "The sky turned red, a Ghost slapped a mountain, and you were... where? Hiding in a fridge? I've been sitting here in the dark, worried that the ceiling was going to collapse on the premium basmati, and you stroll in ten minutes after the apocalypse ends! Do you have any idea how much the insurance is going to go up after a 'Sage' attack? They'll call it an act of God, and we don't have 'Deity Coverage'! And who is this... this bum you're dragging along? He looks like he fell out of a dumpster at a costume party. Why is he wearing silk? And why is he crying? We don't have time for charity, Harish! We have a window to fix and a thousand cans of soup to reorganize because of the 'Sage' tremors!"
"Traffic was crazy, Dad," Harish said, sounding incredibly bored, his voice as flat as an unplayed record. "The Metro was shut down because of the 'atmospheric distortion,' and I had to walk three blocks. But look, I found a solution to our labor shortage while I was navigating the debris. This is... uh... Four. He's an ex-CEO who lost everything in the 'Sage' attack. His company went bankrupt, his mountain—I mean, his office—collapsed, and he's looking for a fresh start. He's very motivated. He doesn't even want a salary, just a place to sleep and some leftover biscuits."
Ravi squinted at Vikramaditya, leaning in so close that the Patriarch could smell the old man's ginger tea. He poked Vikramaditya in the chest with a dirty broom handle. "He looks like he's seen a ghost. A very large, very angry ghost. Look at his eyes—there's nothing in there but static and regret. Can he even work? He looks like he's about to faint if I sneeze on him. And what happened to his hands? Industrial accident? Did he lose them in a 'high-stakes merger'?"
"He has seen a ghost, Dad," Harish said, heading toward the back room to change into a fresh, crisp apron. "He really has. It was a very educational experience for him. As for the hands, let's just say he's 'downsized' his capabilities. But don't worry, Four is a quick learner. Four, show my dad how you can sweep using the pressure of your stumps and your chin. We need the front entrance spotless by 5 PM, and I want the ginger jars reorganized by heat-level. If you do a good job, maybe I'll let you handle the 'Expired Dairy' section tomorrow."
Vikramaditya looked at the broom on the floor. He looked at Harish's retreating back—the back of the Demon King who had erased his power with a yawn. He realized that Harish hadn't just taken his hand and his mountain; he had replaced his throne with a mop and his "Rudra Flame" with a bucket of soapy water. To keep the Agnihotri clan from ever rising again, Harish would keep the Patriarch exactly where he could see him: Right next to the discounted biscuits, serving the very people he once considered "fuel."
"Well?" Ravi barked, shoving the broom into Vikramaditya's chest. "Are you going to sweep or are you waiting for the Sage to come back and do it for you? Move it, Four! We're losing sunlight, and the floor isn't going to polish itself!"
Vikramaditya, the man who had once burned cities, slowly knelt, gripped the broom handle between his arms, and began to sweep. Each stroke was a prayer for mercy.