Her voice echoed in the stone silence, soft but firm—
"I've been sent to destroy you… but I think I'd rather help you."
The woman stood unflinching. Her blade remained sheathed at her back, curved and elegant, glowing faintly with lotus-pink mantric light. Her eyes, however, were sharp enough to kill.
Luv stepped forward instinctively, his palm crackling with controlled lightning.
"Who are you?" he asked.
She tilted her head slightly, studying him—his golden eyes, his thunder-marked arms, his breathless aura of celestial inheritance. Then she looked at Astha, who hadn't moved an inch.
"My name is Vaidehi," she said. "Daughter of a lesser god. General of the Eleventh Skyspear Division… and once a loyal servant of Swarnalok."
Luv flinched. Swarnalok—the divine realm he'd fled.
Astha spoke at last.
"Then why are you here?"
Vaidehi sighed. Her hand slowly hovered over her blade, but didn't draw it.
"Because Swarnalok is fracturing. Some still believe in order. Others… in annihilation. I was ordered to assassinate you, Astha. Your name was deemed 'too loud' to remain. But then I saw what the gods did at Somdhara. What they erased."
Her voice cracked.
"So now, I choose to remember."
---
Silence filled the temple chamber again, this time not divine—just human.
Astha slowly relaxed Kālaratri. Luv didn't lower his guard.
"And you expect us to trust that?" Luv asked. "After trying to kill us?"
"No," Vaidehi said, unfazed. "But I expect you to understand that I didn't."
She nodded toward the statue behind them.
"You've entered the temple of Nishkala, the Hollow Memory. Every step deeper will peel away pieces of you. Names. Faces. Feelings. If you go far enough in, you won't even remember why you fight."
"That's why I came. Not as a warrior. As a guide."
Astha stepped toward her.
"Then guide us."
---
Deep Within the Temple
The trio moved through darkness lit only by glyph-light underfoot. Around them, walls whispered in languages they had never spoken. On one, Astha saw a vision etched into the stone:
A city burning under golden light.
A man with white hair, holding a dying child.
A woman screaming without a mouth.
He stopped.
"This is…" he began.
But the image faded. Forgotten.
"You saw your past," Vaidehi said gently. "But the temple tries to take it. The deeper you go, the more memory it consumes."
Luv growled, fists clenched.
"Then why the hell are we still walking?"
"Because," Astha said, "the gods sealed something here. Something they feared."
Ahead of them stood a sealed door, pulsing with mantras so ancient even Vaidehi stepped back.
"That's not a lock," she whispered.
"That's a sentence."
---
Astha raised Kālaratri.
"And I'm the executioner."
He struck.
The seal cracked.
And the temple breathed.
Wind erupted from the split glyphs as lightless energy flooded the chamber. The mantras screamed in reverse. Luv stumbled. Vaidehi drew her blade at last—revealing a thin, silver weapon made of fused starlight and thunderstone.
Behind the door…
A voice spoke.
"You remember too much, White Flame."
The door shattered.
And something stepped out.
Tall. Not monstrous—but wrong. Its body bent like melted metal. Its head was smooth, eyeless, with a red brand where a third eye should be. Its skin was carved with mantras of removal, each one flickering and unstable.
"I am the Record-Eater," it said calmly.
"And you've come too far."