Time seemed to fracture. One moment, Kunal was staring up at the distant, menacing glint of light from the hillside, icy dread paralyzing him limb from limb. The next, the sun-drenched ruins, the vast sky, the very air he breathed seemed to recede, replaced by an internal hum, a pull from somewhere deep within his consciousness. It wasn't a conscious thought; it was an instinct, ancient and absolute, rising like a tide. A trance.
His hand, clutching the small, cool obsidian fragment he'd found, moved with a will of its own. He didn't consciously register turning back towards the ruined stupa wall, didn't consciously note how the etched lines on the stone fragment seemed to yearn for the corresponding geometric carving – the Ārambha symbol – he'd discovered moments before. His fingers, guided by an unseen force or a memory embedded in his very soul, found a small, almost invisible indentation within the larger carving. He pushed the obsidian fragment into it.
There was no loud click, no grinding of ancient gears. Just a soft, resonant thrum, felt more in his bones than heard with his ears. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then, the ground directly beneath his feet simply… wasn't there anymore.
With a startled cry choked off by dust and surprise, Kunal plunged downwards. The sensation was less of falling and more of being swallowed – a sickening lurch into darkness, the smell of disturbed earth and something anciently stale filling his nostrils. He hit the ground below sooner than expected, landing hard on packed earth with a painful thump that knocked the wind out of him and sent stars exploding behind his eyelids, jarring him violently back to himself.
The trance state vanished, leaving him gasping in utter blackness, his shoulder and hip screaming in protest from the impact. Dust rained down from the opening above, which seemed impossibly far away, a small patch of dimming sky visible for a moment before the disturbed earth likely slid back into place, sealing him in. He coughed, the dust thick in his throat.
Panic surged, hot and immediate. Trapped. Underground. Bhagavan! (Oh God!) Where was he? He fumbled desperately for the small flashlight Ananya had insisted he carry. His fingers closed around its cool metal casing in his pocket. Clicking it on, he swept the beam around, his breath catching.
He was in a confined space, but it wasn't a rough cave. The walls were smooth, dressed stone, clearly man-made, curving upwards towards the collapsed opening far above. It felt like a chamber, deliberately hidden. The air was cool, damp, and utterly still. He shone the light on the floor where he'd landed – packed earth, but beneath it, hints of flagstones. And glinting near his hand lay the obsidian fragment – the key. He snatched it up, pocketing it securely.
He took stock. Pain flared in his shoulder, but nothing felt broken. His backpack was still on. Flashlight worked. Burner phone? He pulled it out. Unsurprisingly, 'No Service' glared back at him. The panic button on his keychain – useless without a signal. The tracker Abhishek had sewn in? Also useless down here. He was completely, utterly cut off. "Akela. Phir se akela." (Alone. Alone again.)
Taking slow, deep breaths to fight the rising claustrophobia, he played the flashlight beam over the walls again. They weren't just smooth stone; they were covered in inscriptions. Faded, yes, but clearly visible. Not the Brahmi script from above, nor standard Sanskrit Devanagari. It was something else, a flowing, intricate script he'd never encountered, yet, terrifyingly, a part of his mind seemed to recognize its shape, its rhythm, even if the meaning remained elusive. Interspersed with the script were complex geometric diagrams that echoed the Ārambha symbol, but far more elaborate, hinting at advanced mathematics or cosmology. Kya hai yeh jagah? (What is this place?)
His flashlight beam snagged on something near the base of one wall. Not an inscription, but an object resting on a low stone shelf, seemingly untouched for centuries. He approached cautiously.
It was a metallic disc, about the size of his palm, made of a strange, dark, unidentifiable alloy that didn't reflect the flashlight beam so much as absorb it. Intricate patterns, similar to those on the walls, were etched onto its surface. In the very center was a depression perfectly shaped to fit the obsidian fragment he held. A mechanism? A device? It looked impossibly ancient, yet the precision of its design felt… advanced.
High on the ridge overlooking the ruins, a figure lowered a pair of high-powered digital binoculars, a frown creasing their brow. They zoomed in on the spot where the target had been kneeling moments before. Dust settled in the fading light. Nothing. The target had simply vanished. The figure tapped rapidly on a handheld device, checking readings. No active tracker signal from the estimated location underground. No audio transmission. Strange energy fluctuations briefly registered, then stabilized. The figure remained still for a long moment, considering. Then, they raised a secure communication device. "Observer One to Control. Target has deviated from expected parameters. Entered subsurface anomaly at grid coordinates [...]. Proceeding with passive observation protocols. Further instructions requested."
(Back to Kunal):
Kunal hesitated to touch the disc. Every instinct screamed caution. Was this part of the 'pattern' the man spoke of? Was the obsidian fragment meant to activate this? He thought of the man's words: 'Understand who you were... integrate the fragments.' Was this a lesson? A test?
He shone the light around the chamber again. Besides the shelf with the disc, there seemed to be only one other feature – a low, arched opening on the opposite wall, leading into even deeper darkness. A path? Mārgaḥ? Or just another dead end?
He needed to think. He couldn't get out the way he came in easily. Going forward seemed the only option, but blindly entering that dark passage felt incredibly dangerous. He looked back at the disc. It seemed to pulse with a faint, internal energy, or maybe it was just his heightened senses playing tricks. What secrets did it hold? What happened if he placed the obsidian key into the slot?
He recalled the memory flash: the monk teaching him about the Ārambha symbol, calling it a map, a beginning. This hidden chamber, the strange script, this disc… it all felt connected to that early lesson, a layer of knowledge hidden even deeper than the history of Prince Kunala.
His fear hadn't lessened, but a spark of desperate curiosity, the same drive that made him learn new skills, that pushed him towards the quantum dream, now urged him forward. Answers weren't just in dusty texts; maybe they were here, buried beneath millennia of silence.
He took another deep breath, held the obsidian fragment, and looked between the dark, waiting disc and the even darker passage leading further underground. The choice, once again, was his.
To be continued...