The crimson meter continued its relentless descent, and with it, the suffocating grip of agony loosened. Vikram should have been dead. His body should have been nothing more than a husk, yet a strange equilibrium held him aloft, balancing him on the precipice between death and something else entirely.
His heart—no longer within him—hovered in the air before his eyes, beating soundlessly in the stillness of the void. It pulsed with an eerie rhythm, unmoored from his chest, an impossible sight that defied every law of nature.
There was no pain now, only a hollow quiet that settled in his bones.
The red meter receded further, halving itself with each passing moment, and as it did, exhaustion struck him like a tidal wave. His limbs turned to lead, his breath grew shallow, and an unbearable weariness seeped into his very soul.
Yet even as his body screamed for rest, something inside him whispered: Endure. Just a little longer.
The red meter, now barely a fraction of its former dominance, flickered uncertainly. It hesitated, wavering on the edge of its final retreat. Then, at last, it collapsed entirely. The crimson hue vanished into the void, leaving behind only the sound of Vikram's own ragged breathing.
A pulse rang through the room.
His heart, suspended midair, changed.
Ancient runes carved themselves into its flesh—Old Norse, Greek sigils, glyphs from civilizations long buried under time's relentless march. Hieroglyphs twisted around its surface, forming intricate patterns that pulsed with unseen power. Arcane circles burned into existence, weaving together in a dance too complex for the mind to grasp.
Then, his heart shone.
A blinding radiance burst forth, illuminating the void, burning with an intensity that rivaled the sun. Vikram could feel it—the shifting of something deeper, something fundamental. His existence quivered at the threshold of transformation.
And then—
The world snapped back into place.
The dim glow of Kerala's evening lights seeped into his vision. The dark, suffocating void was gone. The walls of his room stood around him, his chair solid beneath his weight. The distant hum of traffic filtered through his window, grounding him in the reality he had known before all of this.
He was back.
Vikram exhaled, chest rising and falling in staggered relief. He flexed his fingers, confirming their presence, rolling his shoulders as if testing whether his body still belonged to him.
But just as the tension began to ease from his frame, the world twisted once more.
A voice—deep, grating, and soaked in malice—crawled into his ears.
"You don't think I would give something for free, do you?"
Vikram's breath hitched.
The air around him thickened, the warmth of Kerala's evening giving way to a suffocating chill. From the void between worlds, it emerged.
An obsidian mirror, fractured and jagged, surfaced before him. Runes and glyphs—dark reflections of the ones that had adorned his heart—crawled along its broken surface, twisting in an unholy display.
The mirror lurched forward.
A silent scream caught in Vikram's throat as the shards of obsidian pierced into his body.
Pain—far beyond anything he had ever experienced—ripped through him. It was not physical, nor was it the agonizing pull of flesh and bone tearing apart. It was deeper. Fundamental.
Something inside him shattered.
A dam, long built within the recesses of his mind, burst open.
The room blurred as his vision swam. A breath hitched, then another. His hands trembled at his sides, his body curling inward as an unfamiliar wetness traced the contours of his face.
He was crying.
Vikram had always thought of tears as something to be swallowed, emotions as something to be caged. He had built walls high and unshakable, ones even he dared not look beyond. Yet now, they crumbled with brutal finality.
Every wound he had buried, every scar he had ignored, every pain he had dismissed—rushed forth all at once.
Memories clawed at him, dragged him back to moments he had long pretended never happened. The laughter that had been used to belittle him. The loneliness that gnawed at his chest even amidst the roaring crowds of his success. The moments where the world had crushed him beneath its weight, and he had forced himself to smile through it all.
The facade shattered.
Tears slipped freely down his cheeks, tracing lines of unspoken anguish.
And for the first time, Vikram did not stop them.
He sat there, in the dim light of his room, his body wracked with silent sobs.
Something had been taken from him. Something he knew he could never reclaim.
And in its absence, an emptiness remained.