The warehouse was quiet except for the occasional creak of rusted metal. The group had taken a moment to catch their breath after the chaos of the temple and the near attack in the streets. But for Vihan, there was no peace. His mind was racing, spiraling deeper into the past.

  He leaned against a wooden crate, gripping the pendant that had never left his side since childhood. The weight of it pressed against his palm like an anchor, tethering him to memories he had tried to forget.

  The visions, the voice in the temple, the feeling that he had always been running toward something—or away from it.

  As Zara and Asha discussed their next move in hushed voices, Vihan let himself drift back into the past, back to the moment when everything had changed.

  Vihan never knew his father. His mother never spoke of him, and he never asked.

  All he knew was that they had always been moving—city to city, home to home, never staying in one place for too long. Some nights, he would wake up to his mother hastily packing their few belongings, her hands shaking as she told him they had to leave. “It’s not safe here anymore,” she would say. “We have to go.”

  And Vihan, no matter how much he wanted to ask why, never did.

  But everything changed the year he turned ten.

  His mother had taken a job as a librarian at a small, rundown school in Mumbai. For the first time in years, they had stability. Vihan was enrolled in classes, he made friends (or as close as he could come to having them), and for once, his mother smiled without the weight of fear in her eyes.

  But the feeling of unease never left him.

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  It wasn’t just the nightmares—the burning cities, the voice that whispered his name—it was the feeling that they were being watched. Followed.

  And then, one night, his world collapsed.

  It was late. Too late for his mother to still be at work. He had fallen asleep waiting for her when a sudden knock at the door jolted him awake.

  Not a normal knock.

  It was urgent. Panicked.

  Vihan scrambled out of bed and unlocked the door. The moment he did, his mother stumbled in, her face pale, her hands clutching a thick, leather-bound book—the very same Bhagavad Gita he had taken from the temple today.

  “Vihan,” she whispered, her voice raw with fear. “Take this. Hide it.”

  He blinked, confused. “What’s going on?”

  His mother turned to the door, bolting it shut. “They’re coming.”

  Vihan’s stomach twisted. “Who? Why? What’s in the book?”

  She knelt in front of him, gripping his shoulders, her eyes more serious than he had ever seen them. “One day, this book will come back to you,” she said softly. “And when it does, you must protect it. No matter what happens. No matter what anyone tells you.”

  Vihan shook his head, his young mind struggling to process what was happening. “But why, Ma? What’s so special about it?”

  His mother hesitated, as if deciding how much to tell him. “It holds answers, Vihan. Answers that some people would kill to keep hidden.”

  The words sent a shiver down his spine.

  Before he could ask anything more, a loud crash echoed through the apartment.

  The glass window shattered.

  Then everything went dark.

  Vihan snapped out of the memory with a sharp inhale. His fingers dug into the pendant, his breath unsteady.

  He had never understood that night. His mother had disappeared before he could process what had happened. The only thing he remembered was the book, and the strange symbols she had told him to guard with his life.

  The very same book he now carried.

  His mother had known something. She had been running from someone. And if the Council of 9 had been looking for the Bhagavad Gita even back then...

  A sick feeling churned in his stomach.

  “What is it?” Asha’s voice broke through his thoughts.

  Vihan exhaled shakily. “I think I know why I’ve been seeing these visions,” he admitted. “I think my mother was hiding something from me.”

  Zara raised an eyebrow. “And now you’re ready to find out what?”

  Vihan nodded.

  The past was no longer just haunting him.

  It was demanding answers.