The water had no bottom.
Rudra had understood this within the first few seconds of finding himself here — wherever here was. He was standing on a surface that looked like shallow water, perfectly still, perfectly clear, stretching in every direction without a visible edge. Above him was nothing. Below him, through the water, was more nothing. Just depth without end, dark in a way that didn't feel empty so much as occupied by something he couldn't see.
Then he saw the shape.
It was in the middle of the water — ahead of him, at a distance he couldn't accurately measure, because distance worked differently here. It had no clear edges. No face he could resolve into features. Just a presence that took up space in a way that made the enormous emptiness around it feel like a backdrop rather than a setting.
He recognised it immediately.
"You." His voice came out without echo, absorbed by the space around him. "You are the one who killed Aagni."
The shape moved — not walking, not approaching, just suddenly closer than it had been. When it spoke, the voice was distorted, layered, like several voices occupying the same sound at slightly different frequencies.
"You remember me. Good. That means you remember our deal as well."
Rudra looked at the shape with an expression he could feel on his own face — something between recognition and the specific fear of a person who made an agreement in a desperate moment and is only now beginning to understand the full terms of it.
"I did my part," the shape said. "Now you have to do yours."
The water around Rudra's feet was perfectly still. Nothing moved. Nothing made any sound except the layered voice.
"What do I have to do for you?" he asked. The words came out quieter than he intended.
"The same thing I did for you." A pause that had weight to it. "You have to kill someone."
Rudra held this. Let it sit inside him in the space where, in normal circumstances, he would have protested immediately. He had known, somewhere in the back of his mind, since the moment he reached for the demon's hand on the wet road in Mumbai, that the price was not going to be small. He had simply chosen, in that moment, not to think too far ahead.
"Is it someone innocent?" he asked.
"No."
Something in his chest released slightly. Not completely. But slightly.
"Who?"
"You will know when the time comes." The shape shifted. "What matters now is that you understand this — the target is beyond what you are currently capable of. You will need to become significantly stronger. Stronger than any other Deva. Stronger than God itself."
The words fell into the silence of the endless water and stayed there.
Stronger than God itself.
Rudra opened his mouth to respond. The water rippled once — just once, a single gentle wave originating from nowhere — and the shape was gone. The space contracted. The light folded inward.
And then the ground.
---
On the training ground, Edward and Arjun were looking at Rudra's unconscious body with expressions that occupied the uncomfortable space between concern and grimness.
"Did it actually kill him?" Arjun asked.
He kept his voice level. He had been keeping his voice level for the past several minutes, which was taking more effort than it appeared to.
Then Rudra sat up and screamed.
Both of them stepped back involuntarily. The scream lasted about two seconds, then cut off, leaving a silence that felt abrupt after it.
"I guess not," Edward said.
"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!" Rudra scrambled upright and looked at both of them. Then he stopped.
There was something around them. Around both of them — coming off them, or rather, part of them, but visible now in a way it hadn't been before. A blue fire. Not literal fire — it didn't burn or flicker. It moved the way a flame moves but slowly, deliberately. Like breath. Like something living.
On Edward it was dense and calm. Settled, controlled, the blue deep and even, close to his body without straying. The soul of a man who had spent decades learning to master it.
On Arjun it was dim — present, visible, but faint. A small flame that had just been lit and hadn't yet found its confidence.
Rudra looked at his own hands.
His was neither of those things. It was large — significantly larger than Edward's despite Edward being a Deva — and it moved with a restless, aggressive energy, reaching further from his body, shifting and pushing outward as if it hadn't decided what shape it wanted to be. Like something that had been held in a very small space for a very long time and had just been released all at once.
He stared at it.
"What is this?" he said.
Edward chuckled — warm, genuine, the laugh of someone seeing the result of very hard work for the first time.
"That," he said, "is soul. You finally awakened it."
Rudra looked up. "How? You said five to six years minimum."
"Under normal training conditions, yes." Edward straightened. "But consider what I told you. Ordinary people sometimes access soul instinctively in genuine life-or-death situations — when the mind believes there is no other option. So I asked myself a simple question." He looked at Rudra with the expression of a man explaining something obvious to him and previously obvious to nobody else. "What if I used my astra to manufacture that situation? To take the danger to a level so extreme that the mind had no choice but to force the awakening whether the body was ready or not?"
"And it worked," Rudra said.
"Evidently."
"So why doesn't everyone do this?"
Edward's expression shifted into something mildly embarrassing. "Because until today, it was entirely theoretical. You are both the first people I have ever used it on."
Rudra and Arjun looked at each other.
'So we were lab rats,' Rudra thought.
He let it go. There were more pressing things.
"I saw something while I was unconscious," he said. He described it — the endless water, the shape, the distorted voice, the deal resurfacing, the target that couldn't be named yet, the instruction to become stronger than God itself. He kept his voice level, watching Edward's expression move through several things in sequence.
"That is rather remarkable," Edward said when Rudra finished. "What you encountered is most likely is the spirit of the Power Stone. The stone is not simply an object — it appears to have consciousness of a kind." He paused. "This is the first time I have heard of a stone interacting directly with its master. It has not been documented before."
Rudra looked at the stone against his chest. "Wait. The stone has a spirit inside it. Does that mean all God Stones are alive?"
"There is an old saying," Edward said. "'The master does not choose the stone. The stone chooses the master.'" He held up three fingers. "There are three ways to receive a God Stone. First — you are named as successor by the current owner. When they die, ownership transfers automatically. Second — you kill the current owner. Ownership transfers to whoever defeats them, because the stones tend toward strength." He lowered two fingers, leaving one. "Third — the owner dies without naming a successor. In that case, stone itself selects the next owner."
"But there is an exception." Edward looked at Rudra's stone. "The Power Stone will not transfer to a successor or a killer automatically. Regardless of how you come to hold it — inherited or taken by force — the stone itself must find you worthy. If it you have stone and doesn't follow any of those three the stone will be useless on your hand and it will nothing but an ordinary rock. And this rule is absolute to all 8 God stones."
Arjun, who had been quiet for a moment, spoke. "You said eight stones. In the meeting there were five Devas. Including Rudra's that's six. Where are the other two?"
Edward's expression changed — a tightening around the eyes, a stillness that hadn't been there before. He didn't answer immediately. He looked at Arjun, then at Rudra, then at nothing specific.
"Seventeen years ago," he said finally, "there was a war. We call it the Battle of Great Heavens. The last significant conflict between the Soul Fighters and the Ashura forces. In that battle, three stones were lost — including the Power Stone. The other two have not been recovered. Their current holders are unknown."
The weight of it settled over all three of them.
"Two God Stones," Rudra said. "Somewhere out there. With people we don't know."
"Yes."
"And if those people are connected to Horns —"
"That," Edward said, with the firm but not unkind tone of someone closing a door for a specific reason, "is not a discussion for today. Your soul is awakened — that is significant progress. But awakening is only the beginning. You need to learn to control it, direct it, build it." He looked at both of them. "That work starts now."
Neither of them argued.
Fire in their eyes were lighting brighter then ever. They want to get stronger and want to achieve theirs dreams. So they get back to that hellish training.
And just like six months flew by like a gust of wind and exam is frist infront of them.