Shadows at the Eclipse Door
---3 May 2021 — 3:00 AM
Ruined Shrine, Jungle Outskirts, Ujjain
The mud was gone, but the smell of rot still clung to Aadiv's hair, his skin, the torn cloth wrapped around his burned palm.
He didn't care. He wanted to feel it — the last taste of what he'd fed to the flame.
A reminder: the chain rune etched above his heart pulsed faintly, a thin thread of gold under his bruised ribs.
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Tonight, the shrine felt wider. The cracked pillars leaned in, roots above whispering like voices trapped between stone and sky.
He sat at the center, spine pressed to the floor, eyes half-lidded. The stone was cold against his back, but the ember in his chest burned steady — warm enough to remind him he was alive, yet close enough to the void that he could hear its breath.
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> Aadiv (a dry laugh, to the dark):
"Go on then. Open your mouth. Show me what waits behind you."
No answer.
Just the wind threading through the broken roof, hissing in the roots like an old man muttering curses.
---
He closed his eyes.
Sleep came slow, heavy — an ache behind his ribs that felt like the flame pulling his bones inward.
He fell.
---
He stood in a corridor — not stone, but something older. Ash instead of walls, bone dust for a ceiling.
Ahead of him: a door. Massive, impossible — shaped like an ancient mouth cut into the world's flesh.
No handle, no lock — just a circle of runes pulsing gold around its edges, shadows seeping through the cracks.
---
The ember in his chest flickered in this dreamscape — its glow mirrored by the rune-chain that slithered across his collarbone, tightening like a noose made of burning questions.
---
Something shifted behind the door.
A voice — his father's, his mother's, his sister's — all layered under the Voice that called him "my son."
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> Inner Voice (echoes, thunder inside the dream's hush):
"Knock if you wish to open the wound.
Knock if you wish to feed the flame.
Knock — and the shadows will kneel or devour you."
---
Aadiv's hand hovered an inch from the door. The runes flared — brighter, hungry. He saw flickers:
A glimpse of the Great Kurokagetsu's black blade — buried deep in roots, waiting.
A vision of his own body split by golden veins.
A city in flames — his city — a shrine reborn from ash.
---
> Aadiv (voice trembling, but steady):
"Not yet. Not until the chain is mine."
The shadows writhed at his feet — illusions curled into shapes: old faces, devoured predators, the trafficker he'd burned in the alleyway.
They whispered as one: "Name the chain. Feed the wound."
---
He slammed his fist against the door — the dream shivered.
The runes flared like a hundred golden eyes, but the door did not open — it cracked.
Just enough for cold, black air to bleed through — sweet with rot, sharp with power.
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> Inner Voice (a father's laugh wrapped in thunder):
"Sleep, my son. When the time comes — you will knock, and you will not flinch."
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Aadiv jolted upright — sweat freezing on his spine, breath ragged.
He was back on the shrine floor — roots creaked overhead, the Eclipse Chamber deep below pulsed once, like a heartbeat buried in the world's ribs.
The chain rune above his heart glowed faintly — a single link now split by a hairline crack.
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> Aadiv (voice low, a promise to himself):
"You want the chain? I'll bind it tighter.
And when I open your mouth, you'll choke on my flame."
---
The shrine stayed silent — but somewhere far below, the shadows coiled closer to the door, waiting for the Ash-Born to knock for real.
---
The door has cracked. The boy has seen what sleeps behind it.
Now every illusion, every kill, every rift feeds the chain — and the chain feeds the flame.
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