The darkness was not merely an absence of light; it was a physical weight, a thick, suffocating shroud where the very concept of "sight" felt like a forgotten luxury. In this void, a splash of water echoed—a sharp, cold sound that vibrated through the silence like a blade striking bone. Voices moved through the air like particles of sentient dust, whispering secrets that the living were never meant to hear, secrets that tasted of copper and old rot.
From the depths of this gloom, a small, jagged chuckle erupted. It belonged to Kurozaro.
His form was wreathed in the flames of Nothingness—black fire that didn't give off heat, but consumed the temperature around it, leaving the air brittle and frozen. Above him, the Nakshatra stars twinkled in the constellations of Puppis and Vela, their light struggling to reach the southern horizon where he stood. His flames licked the air vigorously, turning the oxygen into a thin, metallic vapor that scorched the throat. He reached down, his hand tapping the dark water, sending ripples through the reflection of the cosmos.
"Both have met... but they are still not one," he whispered, his voice sounding like grinding stone moving over a grave. "The time has come to step on the land where the living and the dead are forced to breathe the same air. The soil is thirsty."
The Land of the black soil
On Earth—that cursed intersection of the mortal and the makhbly —Arush sat beneath the same stars, though they felt infinitely more distant, like cold eyes watching a slow execution. He was a silhouette of discipline carved into the night, sitting between the celestial lights above and the hellish secrets beneath him. Beside him sat the Maiden, her form shimmering with the pale, sickly light of a soul that had forgotten what it felt like to be warm.
"What information do you want from me?" she asked, her voice a hollow reed vibrating in a graveyard wind.
Arush didn't look at her. His gaze was fixed on Saturn, the cold ringed giant. He lifted a hand, pointing toward the planet with the steady, unmoving finger of a soldier. "It doesn't matter," he said, his voice flat and tactical, stripped of all adolescent softness. "What matters is this: will you help me without playing your games? No tricks. No poetic riddles. No half-truths."
The Maiden drifted closer, her eyes searching his, looking for the boy but finding only the steel of the "Titan." She reached out, her fingers—cold as mountain ice—brushing against the bronze Makar strapped to his chest. "Makar..." she whispered, her touch leaving a trail of frost on the metal. "Why this? Why the creature of the depths?"
A sudden, violent coldness spiked in Arush's heart, a physical sensation like a needle of jagged ice being driven into his valve. He stared into her eyes, unblinking, even as the frost spread. "Because a soul can dive deep," he rasped, the air turning to mist before his lips. "And I intend to go to the bottom of this, even if I have to drown for it."
The Maiden's expression softened into something resembling pity—the kind of pity one feels for a lamb walking toward the blade. She reached up, her phantom fingers arranging his hair, her touch so cold it felt like a chemical burn. She wiped a stray tear from his cheek—a tear he hadn't even realized had fallen, a silent protest from a body that was terrified even if the mind was not.
"I have a condition," she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial hum. "You will find my remains. You will unearth them from the filth where they have rotted for a century and you will burn them. I will stay with you, and for every piece of me you return to the fire, I will give you a piece of the story."
Arush's mind whirred with the cold logic of a strategist. Remains emit negative energy. It's a signature. A frequency. I can track that. He forced a smile—a grim, predatory expression—and reached out his hand to seal the deal.
As their hands met, the Maiden gasped. A spark surged through her ghostly nerves, a jolt of raw, living vitality. For a fleeting second, phantom blood seemed to rush through her cold veins, a warmth she hadn't felt since the spring of 1919. It was the meeting of the Sun and the Moon under a single, darkening sky.
"Where are they?" Arush asked, his grip like a vice.
"My soul is bound to these sacred groves and the land beyond," she replied, her form flickered as if the warmth was too much to bear. "Look to the borders. The places where the village ends and the Nothingness begins."
Arush gave a sharp thumbs-up, a modern gesture that looked alien in this ancient setting. He turned on his heel and walked back toward the village temple. "Meet me tomorrow," he called out, his figure being swallowed by the darkness, leaving only the lingering heat of his living soul to haunt the Maiden's frost.
The village of Rituals
The village was a labyrinth of mud and shadows, the very ground feeling like it wanted to pull his boots into the depths. As Arush walked back toward his accommodation, he passed the rice fields. Under the moonlight, the flooded paddies looked like vast, dark mirrors reflecting a sky that shouldn't exist. A cold breeze groaned through the stalks, sounding like a thousand dry throats trying to scream at once.
Standing before the temple gate—a massive wooden barrier scarred with deep nail scratches, some of which looked inhumanly high, and inscribed with Vedic spells that hummed with a low, defensive vibration—Arush felt a presence behind him.
"Where were you?"
The voice was Sanvi's. It wasn't the voice of a friend; it was the voice of a sentinel.
Arush turned. He saw the fatigue in her eyes, but also a growing suspicion that was turning into fear. He knew that if he told her about the Maiden now, the mission would fracture. Trust was a luxury he couldn't afford to lose, but the truth was a weight she wasn't ready to carry.
"How was the meeting?" he countered, his eyes scanning her for any sign of compromise.
Sanvi yawned, though her eyes remained sharp as glass. "Great. The villagers are starting a ritual tomorrow. It lasts five days. They say it's to prepare for the solar eclipse on the sixth day. They were... too quiet about it, Arush."
Arush's jaw tightened until the bone clicked. The sixth day. The day the vision of the blood-soaked marsh became reality. "Any specific details?"
"No," Sanvi said, looking at her boots, which were stained with the dark, iron-rich mud.
Arush stepped closer, his shadow looming over her, blotting out the temple lights. The air between them grew heavy, pressurized by a sudden, aggressive tension. He leaned into her ear, his voice a low, commanding growl that vibrated against her skin. "I have a job for you. Get information about this village. I give you full permission to use any means—personal, professional, whatever. Break their silence. I want the truth behind that ritual before the sun goes down tomorrow."
He pulled back, clicking his walkie-talkie with a sharp snap. "Arush here. Team, stay sharp. Keep the shovels ready and the blades sharp. We aren't just here to watch a ritual; we're here to dig up a war."
As he walked into the temple, Sanvi stood frozen. She had seen Arush angry, she had seen him lethal, but she had never seen him nervous. It was the nervousness of a man who realized the slaughterhouse he was walking into didn't just have cattle—it had gods.
the first remains
That night, Arush's sleep was a battlefield of imagery. He saw a coffin made of obsidian. He saw his own chest being crushed by a giant's heel, his energy turning into a black, viscous tar that poured out of his mouth. He saw the black soil of the village turning into a red, soaked marsh where human bodies didn't decompose—they dissolved into the earth, their bones turning into the very rice the villagers ate.
At dawn, he met with Vaidere. The predator looked at the young man and saw a ghost in the making.
"I'm working my own leads today," Arush said, his voice sandpaper-dry, his throat constricted by the phantom grip of his dreams. "I'm tracking the negative source. Get the villagers on our side. Squeeze them until they leak the secret of the eclipse."
Vaidere looked at Arush's hands. They were shaking slightly, not from fear, but from an excess of raw, nervous energy. He simply nodded.
Arush reached the sacred groves as the sun began to bake the humidity into a thick, choking fog. The Maiden appeared near the Peepal tree, her eyes wide with a desperate, haunting hope. "I know the boundaries," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the insects.
They walked for hours, crossing abandoned fields where the pallets of earth looked like the ribs of a giant. Snakes slithered through the high grass—king cobras that didn't hiss, but watched him with an intelligence that felt ancient. Arush closed his eyes, ignoring the sweat that stung his eyes like acid, trying to sense the "break" in the natural energy.
Finally, they reached a tree that looked like a monument to cosmic decay. Its roots crawled upward out of the soil like the legs of a necrotic insect. The leaves were a green so dark they were almost black, pulsating with a life force that felt predatory and hungry.
Arush collapsed against the trunk, his lungs burning. He took a sip of water, but it felt like drinking lead.
"Why do you do it?" the Maiden asked, her form drifting through the black leaves. "Why put your living flesh through this torture for a handful of ash?"
Arush started to laugh—a dry, hacking sound that ended in a cough. But the laugh died. A few feet away, partially obscured by the rotting, stinking roots, was a small cross made of graphite. It stood crooked, as if the earth itself had tried to vomit it out.
He didn't answer her. He saw it—a thrumming, dark energy buried five feet down. He grabbed his shovel and slammed it into the earth. The sound was like a gunshot. The air immediately grew heavy, the wind turning into a hot, sulfurous gale that smelled of burning hair. Arush didn't stop. He dug with a manic, disciplined fury, his muscles screaming, his hands blistering, until the metal hit something solid and hollow.
He dropped to his knees, clawing at the dirt with his bare fingernails until they bled, staining the black soil red. He unearthed a small, blackened coffin.
As he pried the lid open, a wave of pure, concentrated malice hit him like a physical blow. It was a psychic attack so violent it felt like a cardiac arrest. Arush fell back, clutching his chest, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"Arush! Say something!" the Maiden cried, her voice echoing in his fading consciousness.
Arush looked at the contents: a human skull, charred black as if by an internal fire; a few shattered rib bones; and a half-torn photo. He felt his heart stutter, his very life force being siphoned by the negative surge. He forced a bloody smile through the pain. "Deal... is a deal," he whispered before his eyes rolled back.
the story of 1919
When he woke, the sun was setting, casting long, bloody shadows across the grove that looked like fingers reaching for him. The Maiden was staring at the photo. Black tears were falling from her eyes, wetting the brown, weathered image of a smiling lady in a family portrait that had been torn in half, the faces of her loved ones lost to time.
Arush sat up, his chest still feeling like it had been crushed in a vice. He reached into the box and picked up the skull. As his living fingers touched the dead bone, a jolt of grief shot through him—a hundred years of starvation and pain transmitted in a single touch.
"Tell me," Arush said, his voice trembling with the effort to maintain his "sun" mask.
The Maiden turned her numb gaze to the blood-red horizon. "When the British
colonized us, they treated this village as a carcass to be picked clean. They took our rice for pennies while our children's bellies swelled with hunger. Then, on May 19, 1919, the Spanish Flu arrived. It didn't just hit; it devoured. The streets were graveyards where the living were too weak to bury the dead."
She gripped her hair, pulling at the phantom strands. "But the British didn't care. They demanded their revenue. They stripped the wedding rings off the fingers of the dead to pay for the tax. That was when the fire of Savarkar reached us. We realized that if we were to die, we would die as warriors, not as cattle. But we were a village of the dark arts. We chose a path that the British guns couldn't stop. We turned our pain into a curse. And at the center of it was Colonel Mackham."
"Mackham," Arush spat the name, the word tasting like bile.
"Find the other three remains," she whispered, her eyes flashing with a sudden, terrifying hunger for vengeance. "And I will tell you what we did to his soul."
The ambush
Arush placed the skull and ashes into a bag. His mind was a storm of tactical data, trying to map the village as it stood in 1919. Where would a British Colonel live? Where is the center of the pain?
As they moved back through the forest, the Maiden suddenly lunged forward, grabbing Arush's arm with a strength that shouldn't belong to a ghost, pulling him into the thorny brush.
From the darkness ahead, the glow of torches appeared. Arush went dead silent, his pulse slowing as his military training took over. He watched as a group of villagers—men he had seen smiling at him during the day—moved through the trees. They were carrying a white owl in a cramped cage, the bird's eyes wide with frantic terror. They carried buckets, and as they walked, a thick, dark red liquid—too thick to be water—slopped over the edges, staining the soil with a smell that made Arush's stomach turn.
Arush put a hand on the Maiden's trembling shoulder, a silent command for calm. He watched them approach a statue carved into a black rock—an Asur with eyes of jagged amethyst that seemed to track the movement of the torches. They began to chant in a distorted, rhythmic Vedic dialect, the vibrations so low they made Arush's teeth ache.
He checked his watch: 9:33 PM.
Something wasn't just waking up; it was being summoned.
Back at the village, Vaidere slammed a file shut, his face pale under the flickering lamp. "This place is a hub for the blackest magic, Sanvi. This isn't just religion; it's a factory for nightmares. If this energy manifests into Sinners, we're going to need more than shovels."
He looked at the empty bed in the corner, his hand going to his holster. "Where the hell is that bastard Arush? If he's dead, the whole mission goes into the Nothingness."
Beneath the red soil, the answer was already stirring—a source of energy that had waited a century to serve death after death. And it wanted more than just an owl's blood. It wanted the heat of a sun