Chapter 65: Chhinnamasta’s Debt
[Location: Underground Shelter — Midnight After the Pact]
Yash couldn't sleep.
The pact weighed on him like wet ash — heavier than guilt, heavier than blood.
He sat alone near the tunnel's edge, where the black river sounds echoed faintly, whispering things too old for language. His hands trembled. Not from fear — but from something else.
The form was stirring.
Not Kali. Not Time.
But the goddess who had whispered from within the blood.
Chhinnamasta.
The headless one.
Flashback: His Second Awakening
That night during the Fall, when the shelter burned and Ankita bled and Yash had nothing left to give—he had felt her hand.
Not soft. Not gentle.
A grip around his spine. A pull up. A voice in his skull:
"You bleed. But you do not die."
"Then you are mine."
His second Vira form had ripped open that night. It hadn't been granted — it had been taken.
And now it wanted more.
Present: Signs of Fracture
Mira noticed it first.
"You're glitching," she said, her voice low. "Your divine resonance is echoing in two timelines."
Yash winced. "I feel her inside my skull."
"Which one?"
He didn't answer.
Khushi approached with a bowl of warmed rice. She handed it to Yash but didn't speak.
He didn't eat.
Instead, he whispered to her, softly: "If I forget who I am… run."
Khushi just shook her head.
"You won't."
Scene: The Dream Ritual
That night, Mira set up the Oracle relay again. She wanted more answers. But when the machine sparked, something strange happened.
Yash passed out.
And Mira saw the glyph on his chest bleed.
Inside the Dream
Yash stood in a temple made of bone and fire.
There were no walls. Only heads. Thousands. All staring at him. Silent.
At the center, Chhinnamasta sat — or hovered — above a pool of black blood, her neck spurting endless streams.
Her voice was thunder.
"You carry me. But you do not respect me."
Yash tried to speak. He choked on his own blood.
She walked toward him, unblinking.
"You use my power only when you are desperate. You fear what I represent."
He clenched his fists. "You're rage. Death. I don't want to become like you."
"Then why do you always return to me when the world breaks?"
Yash fell to his knees.
"Because no one else answers."
Chhinnamasta touched his forehead. The blood stopped.
"Then you owe me. A debt of pain."
Real World: Awakening
Yash bolted up, gasping.
The glyph on his chest had shifted. New lines. New markings.
Mira stepped back. "That's… not normal."
Khushi was crying quietly in the corner, hands over her ears.
Ekavir stood near the door, watching, unmoved. "Another form?"
"No," Yash said. "A price."
Scene: The Price of Form Three
He was stronger. That much was clear.
Faster reflexes. Better vision in darkness.
But the cost?
He couldn't stop hearing the final words of the dead.
Not in dreams.
In waking life.
Mira tested him.
"What did she say before she died?"
Yash didn't answer.
Mira pushed again. "The girl you couldn't save. The one by the temple fire."
Yash turned to her, voice shaking.
"She said: 'Tell my mother I wasn't scared.'"
He hadn't known that before.
Now he knew all of them.
Rishav's Observation (Internal)
"Yash is becoming quieter. Not out of grief. Out of saturation. He's… full of ghosts.
I don't know how long he'll hold together."
Khushi's Response
She drew a picture in charcoal. Of Yash holding his head. With black rivers coming out of his ears.
Under it, she wrote in child-scrawl:
"Too many voices. Give one back."
The Debt Is Paid
Chhinnamasta visited him again.
In vision. In silence.
She didn't scream this time. She watched him kneel.
Yash spoke first:
"I accept the third form."
She raised her own severed head.
"Then accept what comes with it."
Final Scene
Yash woke with tears down his face. Not his emotions.
Theirs. The ones who had died.
He turned to Mira.
"I need to build something. Before I collapse."
She frowned. "Build what?"
"A chamber," he said.
"For the voices."