Chapter 7: The Weight of Mirrors

B.S. 2082 Baisakh 1 – Kali Gandaki Gorge

The Amrita's visions clung to Jay like cobwebs. Even the wind here carried echoes—whispers of futures that might never be, pasts that refused to die. He sat cross-legged on a lichen-crusted boulder, watching a Sherpa girl pile pebbles into a miniature stupa by the riverbank. Her hands, small and chapped from cold, worked with ritual precision.

"For my baba," she said, not looking up. "He died last monsoon. The river took him."

Jay's Shankha mark throbbed. The Trishula lay beside him, its hum quieter now, almost penitent. "Does it help? Building these?"

The girl shrugged, tying a frayed khata scarf around her tiny shrine. "The monks say the river remembers. Maybe one day, it'll give him back."

A chill raced through Jay. The river remembers.

Meera and Anika argued nearby, their voices swallowed by the gorge's time-thickened air. "We need to move," Meera hissed. "The Puri could return any minute."

"Let them," Anika shot back. "Jay's not ready. Look at him—he's still shaking."

Jay wasn't shaking. He was unraveling. The Amrita's visions had carved fissures in his resolve, and the Kalpavriksha sapling—its silver leaves now brittle—watched him like a dying parent.

The Sherpa girl pressed a pebble into his palm. "For your aama," she said, mistaking his silence for grief.

He didn't correct her.

The Time-Loop – Baisakh 1, Repeated

Dawn broke. Again.

Jay blinked. The girl was gone. The stupa of pebbles lay scattered, the khata scarf tangled in a thornbush. Meera and Anika stood frozen mid-argument, their words looping like a skipped record.

"—could return any minute—"

"—still shaking—"

The Trishula vibrated. Jwala Devi, the ascetic guardian of the gorge, materialized from the mist, her body sheathed in blue flame. Her hair, a wild mane of smoke, billowed despite the windless air.

"You broke time," she accused, her voice crackling like burning cedar. "The Amrita's touch destabilized the suture. Now you live this day until you fix it."

Jay stood. "How?"

"By choosing." She thrust a gnarled hand toward the sapling. "Feed the Kalpavriksha your regrets, or let it die and condemn the gorge to timeless rot."

The sapling's roots pulsed faintly, its bark peeling to reveal a familiar face—Durga Giri's.

"Nati…" it whispered.

Loop 1

Jay grasped the sapling.

The world shifted.

He stood in a future Kathmandu, its skyline dominated by a black-lotus tower. His tower. Immortal, invincible, alone. The Trishula had become a scepter, its prongs dripping with primordial fire. Citizens knelt as he passed, their chants of "Maharaja Giri" tinged with terror.

Anika's corpse hung from Swayambhunath's spire, her vine-hair strangled by barbed wire.

"Power corrupts," the sapling hissed with Durga's voice. "Even you."

The loop reset.

Loop 3

Jay refused the sapling.

The gorge withered. The Kali Gandaki evaporated, leaving a scar of cracked earth. Centuries passed in blinks: civilizations rose and fell, languages dissolved into static, stars blinked out. Jay wandered, ageless, through the husk of reality.

He found the Sherpa girl's khata scarf, preserved in the dust.

"To outlive is to outgrieve," the sapling mourned. "Is this freedom?"

The loop reset.

Loop 7

"Enough." Jay fell to his knees, the Trishula's weight crushing his resolve.

Jwala Devi loomed, her flames dimming. "You see now. Immortality is not a path—it's a prism. Shatter your soul into endless maybes."

The Sherpa girl reappeared, rebuilding her pebble stupa. This time, Jay joined her.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Pema," she said. "Like the flower."

He placed his pebble—smooth, unremarkable—at the stupa's peak. "For my aama."

The sapling shuddered. Durga's face softened.

"Sometimes, nati," it whispered, "the bravest choice is to care for the world you have, not the ones you fear."

The loop shattered.

Jwala Devi studied Jay, her flames cooling to embers. "You're not the first Giri to hesitate. Your grandmother stood here too."

Jay stiffened. "When?"

"The day you were born." She gestured to the sapling. "She fed it her regrets—her fear of leaving you unprepared. Now it holds her memories. Her love."

The sapling's roots writhed, disgorging a relic: Durga's rudraksha mala, its beads cracked but still fragrant with sandalwood.

Meera snatched it. "Sentimental nonsense. We need to find the Amrita."

Anika blocked her. "Let him breathe."

Jay clasped the mala. A final vision struck—Durga in the gorge, young and trembling, choosing to bury her doubts in the Kalpavriksha rather than poison Jay's future.

"You don't have to be ready," her voice echoed. "Just be kind."

A horn echoed through the gorge. A figure in tattered Dashnami robes staggered into camp, clutching a Puri sigil dagger in his gut.

"Alessandro… lied…" he gasped. "The Amrita… it's not here. It's… with the girl."

Pema froze, her pebble stupa crumbling.

Jwala Devi's flames roared. "The child?"

The defector collapsed, dead. The dagger's hilt bore a carved name: Rajan Puri.

Anika cursed. "He's not Puri. He's Dashnami—my uncle."

Jay turned to Pema. Her eyes, once innocent, now glinted with ancient malice.

"Took you long enough," she hissed in Alessandro's voice.