"There is no gift without fracture. There is no power without price."
The temple was silent now.
The Rakshasa-Vira had retreated. The battle was over, but no one had won.
Yash stood alone in the sanctum. Blood soaked his palms. Ash clung to his shoulders like memory. The divine mark on his chest — the one gifted by Kali — pulsed like a second heart.
He wasn't breathing hard.
He wasn't even breathing.
Something inside him had changed.
Outside, Mira stitched Rishav's wounds by dim candlelight. Ankita watched the river. Khushi, for the first time, didn't speak. She just held a cracked mirror — and in it, her reflection flickered between child… and something else.
No one noticed the stone beneath Yash's feet cracking. Not from pressure — but from time.
His presence was starting to warp reality.
Yash opened his eyes.
He saw the first Kalinaya fracture. Not with sight — but from inside. A spiral of broken timelines, of divine guilt, of forgotten wars. It wasn't just a power. It was a memory too big for one body.
His hands trembled.
A voice whispered within.
"You carry not just godmarks… but the mistake they buried.
You are not just a Vira.
You are the fracture incarnate."
His body arched back — white fire burned through his veins.
Not flame. Not electricity.
Reality itself pulsed.
From outside the temple, Ankita turned sharply.
The clouds above twisted. Mira dropped her tools. Khushi covered her ears — not from sound, but the silence before a scream.
And in the center of the sanctum:
Yash Roy's body lifted from the ground.
His skin cracked with golden lines. His hair turned deeper silver — almost liquid. Time stilled around him. Every breath outside slowed to a crawl.
He had become something else.
Not human. Not god.
Not Shakti-Vira. Not Rakshasa.
But something between.
Something broken. Something true.
When he landed, the stone beneath him had turned to glass. The mark on his chest had changed — not Kali's sigil alone, but a spiral, ancient and endless.
The symbol of Kalinaya.
And Yash understood.
The divine fracture was alive.
And now, it lived in him.