Nothing could have prepared them for what was on the other side of the door.
Rudra had constructed an image during the walk — something underground, probably, with the feeling of a place that knew it needed to hide. Functional. Institutional. The kind of space that communicated purpose without bothering with atmosphere. He had been ready for corridors and locked doors and the general aesthetic of an organisation that preferred not to be found.
What he stepped into was none of that.
It was a market. A living, breathing, fully realised market, stretching further in every direction than the alley outside had any right to contain. Stalls lined both sides of a wide cobblestone street, their owners calling out to passers-by in a mixture of languages, some familiar and some entirely not. The smells hit him first — spices and cooked food and something metallic underneath it all, the particular scent of a place where many people have gathered for a long time. The sounds came next. Voices overlapping, the clatter of goods being moved, the rumble of wheels on stone.
The buildings surrounding the market were unlike anything Rudra had seen in the city outside. Medieval in their architecture — heavy stone facades, wooden beams, sloped rooftops — but threaded through with technology that had no business being there. Screens embedded in the stonework displaying what appeared to be news or announcements. Vehicles parked in gaps between the older structures, their surfaces familiar but somehow wrong, adapted for streets that hadn't been built with them in mind. The effect was of two different eras occupying the same space without either one having fully won.
Like being dropped into the past, but the past had refused to stay there.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!!!"
The shout left Rudra before he had made any decision to shout. Every head in the immediate vicinity turned toward him — merchants, passers-by, a group of children who had been chasing each other between the stalls, all of them now looking at the person who had just announced himself at full volume in the middle of their market.
A strong chop landed on the top of his head.
"Ouch!"
"What," Edward said, in the tone of someone exercising considerable restraint, "did I tell you before opening the door?"
"I know, I know." Rudra lowered his voice, acutely aware of how many people were still looking at him. "But you have to understand that it is physically difficult not to scream after seeing — this." He turned to Arjun. "Aren't I right?"
Arjun looked at him with an expression that communicated, without requiring any words, that Arjun would not have screamed. That in fact Arjun had not screamed. That Arjun found the comparison somewhat uncharitable to himself.
Rudra felt the embarrassment settle over him and decided to redirect.
"What is this place?" he asked Edward.
Edward's irritated expression softened into something that looked, briefly, like genuine pride. He looked out across the market the way a person looks at something they have known for a long time and still find remarkable.
"This is Shambala," he said. "The city of beginning."
He began to explain, and what he explained changed the shape of everything Rudra thought he understood about the world.
The universe, as Edward described it, was not a single world but five — five realms arranged in a vertical order, layered like the floors of a building and referred to collectively by the ancient term *lok*. Each realm sat above the next in a structure shaped like a cylinder, and each had its own nature, its own population, and its own purpose within the whole. And those are:
Vaykund
V
Swarg Lok
V
Dev Lok
V
Bhoo Lok
V
Narak
At the very bottom is Narak. Not a place in any ordinary sense — more an absence shaped like a place. Time did not exist in Narak. Nothing moved, nothing changed, nothing was created or destroyed. It functioned as a prison, and it was used for exactly one category of prisoner — those who could not be killed by any means available to the Soul Fighters. If something could not be ended, it could be contained. Narak was the container.
Above Narak is Bhoo Lok. Earth. The world Rudra had been born into and had spent his entire life believing was the only one. The world of humans and monsters and streets and everything he knew. It sat at the centre of the five, which Edward implied was either a coincidence or deliberately designed, depending on who you asked.
Above Bhoo Lok is Dev Lok. This was where Soul Fighters operated from — but not exclusively. Dev Lok had its own population, its own cities, its own ordinary life happening alongside the work of the organisation. Shambala was located here. Had always been located here, for as long as the Soul Fighters had existed.
Above Dev Lok was Swarg Lok— a transitional realm, a waiting place. After death, a soul passed into Swarg Lok, where it remained until the conditions for its reincarnation were met. This could take up to a hundred years. The soul was not conscious of the wait in any meaningful sense, which Edward mentioned with the tone of someone offering what he understood to be a reassurance.
And at the very top, accessible only through Swarg Lok, was Vaykund. The highest realm. The place where God existed and from which everything below was observed and, occasionally, influenced. Edward did not elaborate on this last point.
---
The silence that followed the explanation lasted several seconds longer than comfortable.
Rudra looked at Arjun. Arjun looked at Rudra. Then they both looked at the market around them — the medieval buildings with their embedded screens, the vendors and their unfamiliar goods, the ordinary noise and movement of a city that existed in a realm above the one they had grown up in — and felt, simultaneously, the particular sensation of realising how small their understanding of things had always been.
Five worlds. Tens of thousands of years. A structure that had been operating the entire time he had been alive, the entire time his parents had been alive, the entire time anyone he had ever known had been alive, completely invisible to all of them.
It was not an unpleasant feeling exactly. But it was a significant one.
They were brought back to the present by the sound of the crowd shifting around them. People were noticing Edward. Not the way people notice a stranger in their midst — but the way people notice someone they know and respect and have a specific relationship with. Conversations paused. Passers-by inclined their heads. A group of merchants near the nearest stall turned and bowed, one of them saying clearly enough to carry: "God save you, Lord Voss."
The title landed differently now that Rudra knew what it meant.
Before he could think further about it, a guard in fitted dark uniform appeared ahead of them, moving with the purposeful stride of someone who had been waiting for their arrival. He stopped in front of Edward, brought his right hand to his chest in a crisp salute, and spoke.
"Lord Voss, your carriage is ready to depart."
"Thank you for your work," Edward said. He glanced back at Rudra and Arjun. "Come. We have somewhere to be."
They fell into step behind him. Rudra matched Arjun's pace and leaned slightly toward him. "Does any of this seem normal to you?"
"None of it," Arjun said, without any particular agitation. "I am choosing to treat that as interesting rather than alarming."
Rudra considered this approach.
"Who are we meeting?" he called ahead to Edward.
"The other Devas," Edward said, without slowing. "You will need to make a good impression on them in order to be accepted into the Soul Fighters."
Rudra processed this. "Wait — I thought you were requesting me to join. When did this become about impressing people?"
"It was my decision to bring you here," Edward said. "It is not solely my decision to let you stay. The other Devas have authority over who is permitted to enter the organisation." He glanced back briefly. "If they find you unsuitable, the most likely outcome is that they attempt to retrieve the Power Stone by other means."
"What does that mean, other means?"
A pause that carried more information than a direct answer would have.
"It means," Edward said, "that you should be on your best behaviour."
Rudra walked in silence for a moment, the sounds of the Shambala market filling the air around him, the impossible architecture of Dev Lok rising on either side.
'I think I may have made a bad decision,' he thought.
Arjun, who had apparently read the expression on his face without needing to be told what was in it, said nothing. But the corner of his mouth moved in a way that suggested he was finding the situation mildly entertaining, which was, in its own way, not very helpful at all.
The carriage was waiting at the end of the street.