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Deep Forest – Near Midnight
Rudran moved silently through the trees, stepping over roots like old scars, past moss that clung like breath. The forest here was darker—too dark. Even the moonlight seemed to hesitate.
Shadows drifted behind him—not flailing, not glowing. Just present. Like ink stretched thin across the air.
They didn't follow.
They guided.
Like nerves pulled outside his body, they sensed something just beyond reach.
And he could feel it too.
Not rage.
Not fear.
Hunger.
Not entirely his.
But not entirely not.
He didn't know what drew him, but the want behind it pulsed through the roots of his bones. These shadows weren't chasing strength.
They were hare for hunt.
---
Between crooked trees, the ground dipped into a hollow. At the center—a crack in the air. Violet. Faint. Like reality itself had split and was leaking light.
The grass around it had shriveled. The air shimmered like heat on metal. Even the trees leaned away, backs turned to something ancient.
And around it...
Monsters.
Misshapen. Crawling. Wrong.
One dragged a deer carcass, its organs trailing like melted wax. Another clung upside down to a tree, limbs twitching without joints—like a puppet made from teeth and meat.
His breath caught.
> Run, his mind screamed. You're not a fighter. You've never killed.
But then, deeper—
A voice rose.
Not the shadow's.
His own. But older. Worn. True.
> "If you run now… what will you do when it's your brother? Your mother? Your friends?"
He didn't answer.
He stared at the crack.
The shadows behind him pulsed—like they already knew.
> "So that's why you brought me here…"
Not to train.
Not to test.
To fight.
To feed.
To awaken.
His hands quivered—but not from fear.
From invocation.
The shadows didn't just coil.
They gathered.
Like priests before a pyre.
Something was being summoned.
---
Then—his foot moved.
Not by will.
His breath hitched.
His limbs fell silent.
Thought slipped like blood through cracked stone.
> "This step… it's not mine."
His voice was a whisper drowned in dread.
> "My feet move, but I gave no command."
His breath caught in the hollow of his chest.
His fingers twitched—but they were no longer his own.
The shadows didn't wrap around him.
They moved through him.
> "It's not guidance. It's possession… polite enough to let me watch."
He tried to pull back.
Nothing answered.
Even fear was trapped behind glass.
> "I wonder… if I stop trying to guide it… will I vanish entirely?"
A chill bloomed at the base of his spine, rising like smoke into his skull.
His heart pounded a warning—
But the body ignored it.
It moved with purpose.
Muscles puppeteered by an ancient will.
> "The shadow has taken the reins."
"I am not the warrior—I am the path it walks."
And somewhere deep, sacred and terrifying
—
Something began to awaken.
The forest hushed.
The wind held its breath.
Even the monsters paused, as if remembering an old fear.
It wasn't power awakening.
It was remembrance.
The return of something sacred—and wrong.
No words were spoken.
Yet across every shadow, a silent chant echoed:
> He who walks without light,
He who sees through the veil,
He who binds the rhythm of death—awakens.
From that silence, a name rose.
Not given—but returned.
Heavy with meaning.
Dripping with fate.
---
[Core Sutra Awakens: Netra-Tamas – The Shadow Eyes]
His vision didn't blur—it fractured into clarity.
Dark rings spun in his pupils.
Violet glyphs shimmered like etched flame.
His irises turned black, and within them, a wheel spun silently.
Netra-Tamas—the eyes that see darkness for what it is.
And with it…
He saw.
The prāṇa inside the monsters—like fire-veins.
Their rhythm. Their weight. Their breath.
Their mistakes.
> "I can read them. Every step. Every flaw. Like a dance I've always known."
One monster twitched—
Another name surfaced.
---
[Weapon Manifestation: Vṛntaka – Chain of the Shadow's Will]
It didn't fall from the sky.
It grew from his arm.
Not metal.
Not forged.
Born.
A crescent blade—obsidian-dark, liquid-sharp—attached to a shifting chain of smoke and shadow.
It hissed softly, like breath between teeth.
Weightless—until it struck.
> Vṛntaka: The kusarigama born of restraint and wrath. A weapon that judges rhythm, not rage.
He'd never seen it before.
Yet somehow, he knew.
Every angle.
Every snap.
Every swing.
> "It doesn't belong to me.
I belong to it."
His fingers tightened around the hilt.
Not by decision.
> "My hands obey a force I cannot name."
Then—
---
[First Kill: The Lurker]
Humanoid—but too tall.
Skin peeled like tree bark.
No eyes—only sniffing slits.
> Nishṭhā-Chhāya – Stillness of Shadow.
Rudran vanished from the world.
The creature twitched, confused.
Too late.
Snap.
Vṛntaka sliced once.
The monster dropped.
> "That wasn't me.
Something older moved my blade—an echo from the void, thirsty and patient, making its first kill through me."
---
[Second Kill: The Stalker]
A hiss behind him.
It leapt from the trees—jaws twitching, limbs spasming mid-air.
No thought. No command.
Only response.
> Pāśa-Chhāya – The Binding Noose.
The chain launched—not as a whip, but a living trap.
Tendrils split, snared it mid-leap.
It slammed down with a screech.
Then—silence.
The shadow drained into Rudran like vapor.
> "I feel it crawling behind my ribs…
A hunger that isn't mine, but wears my name."
And then the Shadow whispered:
> "Not hunger.
Remembrance.
Not yours alone.
Ours."
---
[Third Kill: The Screamer]
It charged.
Low to the ground.
A screech that fractured sound.
Netra-Tamas pulsed.
Rudran saw it—
A pause.
Half a heartbeat before the cry.
He moved.
Clink. Slice.
The chain curved.
The sickle sang.
And it was done.
---
[Fourth Kill: The Spinner]
It dropped from above.
Silent as death.
Its stomach split into a maw.
Teeth glinting.
Limbs webbed like a cage.
Rudran didn't flinch.
The shadows surged.
They wrapped him like armor—cold, still, quiet.
> Nishṭhā-Chhāya.
He became stillness.
> Pāśa-Chhāya.
The chain struck, coiling like a serpent.
Mid-air, the tendrils caught.
Crushed. Pulled. Ended.
The sickle whispered through the dark.
A clean arc.
A final breath.
Ashen silence followed.
---
[Fifth Kill: The Coward]
It ran.
Rudran didn't.
He vanished—became absence.
Reappeared behind it.
Slice.
Head gone.
He stood still.
Breath ragged.
Fingers twitching.
Not from fear—
> From control.
---
> Netra-Tamas shows the rhythm.
Pāśa-Chhāya binds it.
Nishṭhā-Chhāya conceals me within it.
---
He raised his head.
Eighteen monsters remained.
This time, his voice did not tremble:
> "Let's begin."
---
The killing was clean.
Too clean.
And the more he struck, the more he felt it.
The shadows didn't just react.
They exulted.
Not in war.
In hunt.
Rudran staggered after the final corpse dropped.
Sweat beading.
Heart hammering.
> "That's enough... right now, give me back my body—"
But the body didn't listen.
The shadows wrapped around his legs like vines.
Climbed his spine like a whisper.
Guided his gaze to the crack.
It pulsed. Waiting.
> "Stop… There's not a single monster left out here—"
And then, softly—his shadow whispered:
> "The true ones wait inside.
The hunt is not over.
We must finish.
We must feed us."
He didn't resist this time.
Because he knew:
Resistance had always been an illusion.
And Rudran knew—knew—this was the edge of something he would never come back from.
So he chose.
If he couldn't stop the storm—
He would ride it.
One step.
Then another.
And without hesitation—
Rudran walked into the crack.
---
Chapter 7 – End
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