Fifty floors up, Vikram pushed the heavy metal hatch open. He and Rohan crawled onto the polished marble floor of the executive penthouse. The room was vast, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows offering a panoramic view of the Mumbai coastline.
But the beautiful view was distorted. At the center of the penthouse sat a massive, three-pronged steel ring, spinning around a floating sphere of absolute blackness. The sphere didn't reflect the light of the room; it absorbed it, pulling the surrounding air into a tiny, localized vortex.
Standing in front of the console was Devendra Malhotra, wearing a crisp gray suit, his hair slicked back. Beside him stood Javed Khan, his broad shoulders covered in a shifting, liquid coat of compressed shadows.
"You're late, Rathod," Devendra said, not turning around. "But then again, your father was always late too. He thought he could stop the Vow with principles. He died realizing that principles don't generate power."
"Devendra," Vikram growled, his fists tightening as sparks of blue Prana began to crackle on his knuckles. "Shut it down."
"It's already done," Devendra said. He laid his palm on the golden biometric scanner of the console. "Why wait until midnight? Let the dark begin."
He pressed his hand down.
The black sphere at the center of the rings flared. A massive, silent shockwave of dark matter expanded from the penthouse, tearing through the glass windows.
Vikram fell to his knees as the wave hit him. The bio-electric Prana in his body sputtered, his nerves feeling like they were being crushed by an icy weight.
Outside, the lights of Mumbai died.
First went the neon billboards of Colaba. Then, the streetlights of Marine Drive. In less than three seconds, the entire southern peninsula of the city was erased from the night sky, plunged into a deep, freezing darkness. The temperature in the penthouse plummeted from thirty degrees Celsius to below zero in an instant. Vikram's breath turned into thick, white plumes, and frost began to bloom on the marble floor.
"No!" Rhea's voice screamed through the static in Vikram's earpiece, then her signal died. The radio went silent. The backup generators of the tower didn't even turn on; the dark-matter wave had absorbed the kinetic and electrical potential of every battery in the sector.
"Light is a temporary anomaly in a dark universe, Vikram," Devendra's voice echoed in the freezing darkness. "The dark always returns."
From the shadows, Javed stepped forward, his eyes glowing with a faint, predatory red light. "Now, Shishya. Let me show you what real shadow magic is."