The World Watches
August 15, 2010
9:00 PM IST
Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai — Final Match, WarFall Global Finals
The floodlights hanging over Wankhede had never seemed so bright, their cold glare slicing across the stadium like spotlights over a stage built for gods. The air itself seemed tighter, as though it was holding its breath alongside the eighty thousand bodies packed into the stands, all eyes locked on the center stage.
Every screen inside the stadium showed the same thing — the final pre-match lobby, the last hundred players of the tournament standing shoulder to shoulder, weapons idly cycling, waiting for the airship doors to open.
Some players bounced on their feet, nervous energy twitching in their fingers. Others stared at the floor, silent, heads bowed. But inside Ashura Syndicate's pod, the four players sat still, silent, unmoving — as though the chaos outside no longer mattered.
PhantomRift's fingers hovered over his controller, loose and relaxed. There was no trembling now. No shallow breaths or tension in his shoulders. The weight of playing for India had been lifted two days ago, burned away in the heat of the hunt. Now, there was only the match itself — the next shot, the next callout, the next step forward.
ShadowWolf leaned back slightly, rolling his neck, the faintest crack sounding through the pod. VortexX adjusted his headset once, muttering something under his breath — but not loud enough for anyone to catch.
This wasn't a squad preparing to win.
This was a squad that had already decided they would not lose.
The countdown ticked past thirty seconds, the Omnilink global viewer counter flashing in the corner — 312 million and climbing.
"Final match," RJ Menon's voice echoed across the speakers, clear but reverent. "For the crown, for the country, for everything."
The airship's doors swung open.
They fell.
---
The landscape of Emberfall Ridge was familiar now — every jagged outcrop, every collapsed lava tube, every field of black stone burned into muscle memory. They didn't need to think about rotations anymore. Their bodies already knew.
But this time, they weren't playing to survive.
They were playing to finish.
ShadowWolf hit the ground first, landing clean against a basalt ledge, his rifle already drawn. PhantomRift hit five meters behind him, VortexX landing wide, taking the outer lane. They'd rehearsed this push a hundred times — but never against this prize.
Northern Lights had landed at the same ridge, just ten seconds earlier — the same arrogant landing they'd made all tournament, assuming no one would contest them.
They were wrong.
PhantomRift gave no callout.
He didn't need to.
VortexX opened with a frag, the grenade tumbling over the edge, bouncing twice before exploding at FoxHound's feet. The blast sent his body sideways, his sniper rifle clattering off the edge of the cliff, useless before it ever fired a shot.
"FOXHOUND IS DOWN!" RJ's voice cracked with the weight of it. "ASHURA STRIKES FIRST!"
The crowd roared, but the squad didn't pause to listen. They were already in motion, chasing the survivors down the slope, cutting off rotations with smoke grenades, forcing Northern Lights to either fight blind or retreat into open ground.
VortexX was faster, his SMG chewing through Liberty's health bar in seconds. ShadowWolf caught NightShade at mid-range, a single clean burst ending the fight before it started.
It wasn't a battle.
It was a reckoning.
"NORTHERN LIGHTS ELIMINATED!" Pulse's voice carried over the noise, disbelief clashing with awe. "INDIA JUST TOOK OUT THE NUMBER ONE TEAM — BEFORE THE FIRST CIRCLE!"
But Ashura Syndicate didn't celebrate.
They just kept moving.
---
RyuHan was already waiting.
The Crimson Dragoons captain stood at the mouth of a collapsed tunnel, his sniper braced against a jagged rock, his team in perfect layered formation — high cover, low cover, mid-lane crossfire. It was a kill box, the kind that had won Crimson Dragoons dozens of global tournaments.
It lasted exactly forty seconds.
VortexX's grenades found the high lane, flushing out the cover. ShadowWolf swept low, cutting through the flank. PhantomRift led the central push himself, his rifle never leaving RyuHan's silhouette, even as the South Korean captain tried to reposition.
The burst took him in the chest.
Crimson Dragoons were gone.
The Indian crowd's roar turned into a wave — not cheers anymore, but something louder, heavier, the voice of eighty thousand people who had swallowed two days of humiliation and now saw it repaid in full.
But there was no break.
Shirokaze and Tengu's Wrath were already pushing.
PhantomRift saw them first.
"No breaks," he said, voice calm in comms.
VortexX's laugh was short and sharp. "Good."
The final fight blurred into shapes and gunfire, two squads dancing through lava mist, trading grenades and shotgun bursts across molten cracks. There was no high ground, no choke points — just four against four in hell itself.
VortexX took the first hit, staggering back, but PhantomRift's smoke dropped instantly, cutting the battlefield in half. Blind fire ripped through the fog, one burst catching Shirokaze in the chest.
ShadowWolf caught the flank, his shotgun finding the last Tengu player crouched behind broken cover.
The killfeed flashed.
The match was over.
"TENGU'S WRATH ELIMINATED!" RJ couldn't breathe, couldn't find the right words. "ASHURA SYNDICATE WINS THE FINAL MATCH!"
The screen filled with a single banner, stretching across every feed — inside the stadium, across Omnilink, on every device from Kolkata to Riyadh to Los Angeles.
ASHURA SYNDICATE — WARFALL GLOBAL CHAMPIONS.
The Indian crowd didn't cheer.
They screamed.
---
Inside his pod, PhantomRift didn't move for a moment. His hands stayed on the controller, his eyes locked on the screen.
Then he exhaled, just once.
It was done.
August 15, 2010
11:30 PM IST
Marine Drive, Mumbai — Public Viewing Zone
The rain held off, as if even the monsoon knew tonight wasn't meant to be washed away. Every inch of Marine Drive, from Nariman Point to Chowpatty Beach, was packed with bodies — a sea of faces reflecting the flickering glow of giant screens erected along the promenade.
The final match was over, but no one had left.
The feed was still running — slow-motion replays rolling across every screen, showing the last bursts of gunfire, the smoke grenades blooming like flowers in Emberfall's volcanic haze, the killfeed painting Ashura Syndicate's name over and over again in gold.
At first, the crowd was silent, processing what they'd seen. A team that had been humiliated, hunted, and written off had risen from 40th to 1st, tearing through the best in the world.
Then, somewhere near the water's edge, a single voice rang out.
"Jai Ashura!"
It was a child's voice, high and shrill, cutting through the static hum of disbelief.
Another voice joined. Then ten more. Then hundreds.
"Jai Ashura! Jai Ashura! Jai Ashura!"
The chant rolled up the boulevard like a tide, gaining speed, power, and meaning, until the entire stretch of Marine Drive — tens of thousands of people, from street vendors to corporate executives, rickshaw drivers to college students — was shouting it in unison.
The giant screens switched from the match feed to a single counter — the Omnilink global concurrent viewership number, updating in real time.
398 million.
The crowd surged closer, everyone pressing to see.
399 million.
The chant grew louder.
"Jai Ashura! Jai Ashura!"
400 million.
The moment the counter flipped, a cheer erupted so loud it seemed to shake the very foundations of the city. Fireworks burst above the Arabian Sea, reflecting off the dark water, their colors flickering between Ashura Syndicate blue and silver.
It wasn't just a celebration. It was a coronation — not just of a team, but of a country that had spent decades watching the world win, and now found itself standing at the top.
A young boy, the same one who'd started the chant, stood high on his father's shoulders, his plastic toy rifle raised toward the sky like a soldier saluting his army. His voice, now hoarse but proud, led the next chant.
"India ka game hai!"
The crowd answered, a wall of voices crashing back.
"India ka game hai!"
The sea breeze carried their voices across the bay, up the packed lanes, through open windows where families who'd never cared about esports before sat glued to their TV screens, watching history in real-time.
A game had done this.
A game born in India, played by Indians, won by Indians.
And for the first time, the world wasn't dismissing it.
The world was watching.
---
Back in Jadavpur, standing on his balcony, Aritra Naskar could hear it, even from kilometers away. The faint echoes of Jai Ashura! carried through the humid night air, rippling across Dakhuria Lake.
Lumen hovered silently beside him, its holographic screen flickering in the dark.
"Confirmed," Lumen's voice was soft, almost reverent. "Global concurrent peak — 400 million."
Aritra didn't smile.
He simply stood there, hands in his pockets, listening.
This wasn't the end.
This was the beginning.
---
Perfect — here's Chapter 160, Part 3 — Fireworks in the Sky, seamlessly continuing from the Marine Drive celebrations into the victory ceremony at Wankhede Stadium, where Ashura Syndicate steps onto the global stage to claim their crown.
August 16, 2010
12:05 AM IST
Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai — Victory Stage
The roar from Marine Drive had become its own storm, rolling through the humid night air and spilling into the open-air corridors of Wankhede, mixing with the chants and cheers of 80,000 fans inside the stadium. But on the freshly-constructed victory stage, standing beneath a canopy of synchronized floodlights and holographic displays, there was a silence — a silence between breaths, the kind that only comes when a moment is too large to grasp all at once.
PhantomRift stood at the center of the stage, the trophy balanced between his hands, its polished silver and blue glass reflecting the shifting glow of the WarFall logo behind him. The trophy was lighter than he'd expected. All of it was.
ShadowWolf stood slightly to his right, his arms crossed over his chest, his lips pressed into a tight line. His face was blank, but his fingers trembled slightly — the adrenaline hadn't drained yet. VortexX stood at PhantomRift's left, his trademark grin tugging at his mouth, but his eyes kept flicking to the crowd, to the banners, to the sheer size of what they'd done.
None of them spoke.
There was no need.
The announcer's voice rang out, cutting through the layered noise, echoing off the stadium walls. "Your WarFall Global Finals 2010 World Champions…"
He didn't even need to say the name.
The crowd screamed it for him.
"Ashura Syndicate!"
The players didn't raise their hands in celebration. They didn't jump or yell. They simply stood there, four shadows under the spotlight, faces lit by the glow of their screens, bodies framed by a million flashing cameras, as the sky above them exploded into fireworks.
The first barrage of color erupted in Ashura blue, streaking across the sky and reflecting off the thin mist rising from the nearby sea. The second wave flickered silver, tracing the shape of the WarFall emblem before dissolving into falling embers.
Each explosion in the sky matched a moment — the first match comeback, the Northern Lights elimination, the final kill on Shirokaze. Each burst of light wasn't just fireworks.
It was a memory burned into history.
From the VIP skybox, Aditya Pratap stood with his hands pressed against the glass, the faintest shake in his fingertips, not from nerves — but from the weight of witnessing something he'd never thought possible.
Beside him, Rabin Halder's phone hadn't stopped vibrating for the past ten minutes. Sponsors. Government officials. Foreign media. They all wanted a piece of whatever had just happened in Mumbai.
And standing just a step behind them, arms folded, her expression unreadable, Ishita watched the players on stage, not as champions — but as the center of a new global economy.
The fireworks reflected in her eyes, but her mind was already moving, calculating every step between this moment and whatever Aritra had planned next.
Down in the crowd, fans didn't stop chanting.
"Jai Ashura! Jai Ashura!"
The drone-mounted cameras zoomed in on PhantomRift's face, capturing every detail — the faint crease in his brow, the cut on his lower lip from biting it too hard during the final match, the way his fingers wouldn't quite let go of the trophy.
For millions watching at home, it was the face of victory.
For PhantomRift, it was something else entirely.
It was proof.
Proof that after everything — the humiliation, the fear, the hopelessness — they were still here.
And the world had no choice but to see them.
---
Back in Jadavpur, standing on his balcony overlooking Dakhuria Lake, Aritra Naskar stood alone, his hands deep in his pockets, the soft glow of Lumen beside him. The distant crack of fireworks from Wankhede echoed through the sky, but Aritra's eyes weren't on the horizon.
They were on the water.
The reflection of those fireworks shimmered on the lake's surface — broken, distorted, but still unmistakably beautiful.
Lumen's voice broke the silence.
"Updated market valuation for Aegis Gaming — $3.7 billion."
Aritra said nothing.
"Global media coverage saturation — 93%. Projected legacy impact — historic."
Still nothing.
Then, finally, his fingers tapped lightly against the railing, a soft rhythm, matching the echo of the fireworks.
The game was over.
But the war — the real war — had only just begun.