The black droplets hovered around Vikram like a swarm of tiny insects, then rushed toward his chest.
The moment they touched his skin, Vikram screamed. The cold was blinding, a physical needle driving straight into his heart. His back arched, his muscles locking as the high-density dark photons flooded his spirit channels.
"Vikram!" Rohan took a step forward, but Mr. Desai caught his arm.
"Don't touch him!" Desai warned, his face pale in the flashlight beam. "If you disrupt the field now, both of your nervous systems will undergo cellular crystallization. He has to balance it himself."
Inside Vikram's mind, the war was raging. The chaotic dark photons were tearing at his myelin sheaths, trying to shred his neural pathways. His body was freezing, his fingers turning blue.
*Prana,* Vikram thought, his consciousness fading. *I need more voltage. I need to bridge the gap.*
He focused on the memory of his father's final fight. He remembered the quiet, intense focus of Amar's boxing stance. Strength wasn't about force; it was about connection.
He drew a deep, ragged breath, forcing his heart to pump faster. The bio-electric lines in his body flared, the blue sparks turning into a steady, intense white-blue glow. The high voltage enveloped the chaotic dark photons, taming them, forcing them into a stable, spinning orbit around his neural synapses.
The pain vanished.
A deep, absolute silence settled over Vikram's mind. The freezing cold felt natural now, a part of his own body.
He opened his eyes. They were glowing with a pale, silver-gray light.
"He... he did it," Rohan whispered, shining the flashlight at Vikram.
But the flashlight beam didn't hit Vikram. As the light reached his body, it bent, wrapping around his skin and reflecting off the air behind him. Vikram sat in the center of the ring, but he was invisible. Only a faint, watery distortion in the air marked his location.
He stood up, and the distortion vanished. He was completely gone, merged into the ambient darkness of the cave.
*Band IV: Wraith.*
"I can feel them," Vikram's voice said from the empty space. "The shadows. They aren't just empty spaces. They are my hands."
A footstep echoed, and Vikram materialized three feet in front of Mr. Desai, his body solid once more, a quiet confidence radiating from his eyes.