The dream began with falling.
Amaya plunged through layers of clouds that tasted like burnt honey, her stomach lurching as golden spires rushed toward her—then through her. Lanka's streets unfolded below in impossible geometry: bridges arcing like crescent moons, towers spiraling into the heavens, their peaks crowned with floating gardens.
And the noise. A thousand voices chanting in a language that cracked her teeth with familiarity.
"Asurya! Asurya! Asurya!"
She woke gasping, her sheets tangled around her legs, the taste of lotus oil thick on her tongue.
6:03 AM. The numbers on her phone glared red in the dark. Amaya fumbled for the lamp, her fingers brushing something cold and metallic.
The library book.
It lay splayed open on her nightstand, though she'd left it sealed in her desk. The page showed an illustration she hadn't seen before: the Pushpak Vimana mid-flight, its wings spread like a raptor's, crystal panels glowing along its hull. Beneath it, a new line of text pulsed faintly:
"Seek the key where the earth remembers the sky."
Amaya's breath fogged the air despite the humid room. Frost crept along the edges of the page.
The University Café, Noon
"You look like hell." Riya slammed her chai onto the table hard enough to slosh liquid over the rim. "Nightmares again?"
Amaya rubbed her sternum, where the dream's impact still ached. "Not nightmares. Memories." The word slipped out before she could stop it.
Riya's eyebrow arched. She leaned in, her voice dropping. "You've been muttering in your sleep. Last night you said 'The western gate won't hold' in something that sure as shit wasn't Hindi."
A shiver crawled up Amaya's spine. She'd dreamed of a flood that night—black water chewing through a carved stone gate, the screams of—
Her phone buzzed. A news alert:
"Marine Archaeologists Stumped by 'Anomalous' Sonar Readings Off Galle Coast."
The attached image showed a sonar scan of the ocean floor. Amid the blurry shapes, one stood out—a perfect, lotus-shaped depression. Exactly like the one in her dream.
Professor Menon's Office, 3:17 PM
"Galle? Don't waste your time." The professor didn't look up from his papers. "That's just the old Dutch shipwrecks. The ocean plays tricks."
Amaya set the printout on his desk. "Then why does this match the dimensions of Lanka's central temple in the Vishnu Purana?"
Menon's glasses slipped down his nose as he squinted. When his fingers touched the photo, the paper hissed. He jerked back. A perfect fingerprint of frost melted on the image.
Her Apartment, Midnight
The envelope slid under her door with no sound.
Inside: a one-way ticket to Colombo, departing tomorrow. No return date. No sender.
Amaya turned it over. On the back, in ink that shimmered like molten gold:
"Come home."
Beneath her feet, the floor trembled. Not an earthquake—something deeper, like the groan of a giant stirring from sleep.
Outside her window, the stars winked out one by one, swallowed by a storm that hadn't been on any forecast.