Chapter 10: The Temple’s Pulse

B.S. 2082 Baisakh 3 – Manakamana Temple

The temple breathed. Its walls expanded and contracted like lungs, the carved deities on its wooden pillars shifting subtly, their stone eyes tracking Jay's every step. The air thrummed with the metallic tang of old blood and the sweetness of dhoop incense. Above the altar, King Jayasthiti Malla's corpse sat enthroned in macabre splendor, his mummified fingers curled around a rusted kukri. His jaw hung slack, a hive of luminous beetles spilling from his throat, their drone harmonizing with the temple's pulse.

"Truth or Mercy?" The guardian's voice vibrated through the floorboards, her root-sari hissing against the grain.

Jay hesitated. The staircase of blades glinted wickedly, each step inscribed with names of dead pilgrims. The silk bridge, meanwhile, swayed over a void where shadows whispered in unborn tongues.

Meera snarled, her Puri-corrupted arm now a gnarled branch, sap-blackened and studded with thorns. "Stop moralizing and choose!"

Anika gripped Jay's wrist. "The bridge. It's woven from vows. You can't trust blades forged by a king who sold his soul."

The first step onto the silk threads unraveled Jay's resolve. Each strand hummed with the lifeblood of devotees—a widow's promise to never remarry, a debt-sworn farmer's oath, a mother's plea for her child's survival. Their voices coiled around him:

"Cut mine," begged a thread brittle with age. "Let me love again."

"Sever his," hissed another, slick with spite. "Let the liar drown in his debts."

Below, the void yawned, its shadows morphing into spectral visions:

A village razed because a vow to share crops was kept.

A child spared cholera because a thread was severed.

Jay's Shankha mark burned. The Trishula, slung across his back, whispered: "All vows are cages. Shatter them."

A beetle-clotted chuckle echoed. King Jayasthiti's corpse tilted forward, beetles cascading to form a shimmering, man-shaped haze.

"I, too, chose Mercy," the king's specter croaked. "And bathed Nepal in blood for it."

The vision struck:

14th-Century Manakamana – The Pact

Young Jayasthiti, desperate to unite warring kingdoms, kneels before the temple's then-guardian. "I vow to spare the children of my enemies," he swears. The guardian severs a silk thread. That night, a rival king's heirs vanish—not killed, but enslaved, their fates warping into a lineage of Puri zealots.

"Mercy is a lie," the specter hissed. "Truth is survival."

While Jay wrestled with the threads, Meera lunged for the throne. Her branch-arm pierced the king's corpse, leaching centuries-old Vidya from his bones. The temple screamed. Walls bled amber sap. Pilgrims outside collapsed mid-prayer, their vows unraveling.

"Stop her!" Anika loosed an arrow, but Meera batted it aside, her eyes now hollowed by beetles.

"The Amrita isn't in the pool," Meera spat. "It's in the king's heart!"

She tore open Jayasthiti's ribcage. Inside, a lotus bloomed, its petals holding a single drop of Amrita—pure, primordial, alive.

A pilgrim woman burst through the temple doors, her toddler clutched tight. "Please!" she cried, thrusting the child's maala at Jay. "His thread's here. Cut it. Save him from the rot!"

The toddler's thread glowed—a fragile, golden strand. Severing it would spare him from Meera's corruption but erase his future.

Jay's hand trembled. The Trishula's voice swelled: "You cannot heal without breaking."

The temple's heartbeat accelerated, shaking the bridge. Shadows from the void surged, birthing a time-storm—a cyclone of half-formed eras where Meera ruled as a beetle-queen, Anika rotted into the Kalpavriksha, and Jay wandered as a wraith.

"Choose, Giri!" Meera gloated, the Amrita droplet hovering above her palm.

Jay severed the golden thread.

The toddler's laughter ceased. His mother wailed, dissolving into the storm. But the Amrita droplet shifted, flying not to Meera, but into the Trishula's core.

The temple stilled. The storm collapsed.

King Jayasthiti's specter bowed. "You chose… differently."

Meera lay broken, her branch-arm splintered. The Amrita had purged the corruption but left her hollow, her memories frayed. Anika cradled her, silent tears watering the temple's roots.

Outside, pilgrims stumbled, their vows altered but unbroken. The toddler's maala lay in the dust, its beads uncounted.

Jay knelt, the Trishula heavy with stolen eternity.

"One drop," it hummed. "A thousand more to go."