The city hadn't changed, not in the few hours—or maybe centuries—it had taken Veyne to return.
The alley was still choked with filth and neon lights. The rain had washed away the blood, but not the memory. That scent still clung to his skin—smoke, fire, old blood… and something else. It was a divine weight, like he'd returned from another life.
Aranya was there, crouched beside the same rusting dumpster, drenched in the downpour. Her hair was slicked back, her eyes red with worry. She'd been waiting. Not because she had to, but because she believed.
She sprang to her feet when she saw him. "Veyne!"
He raised a hand, weak but steady. "I'm still me."
She rushed forward, then paused halfway. He looked… different. Eyes darker, like they'd stared into a burning sun and come back scorched. His breathing was calm, but the kind of calm that only comes after a storm.
"What happened to you?" she asked, stepping closer, inspecting the soot that coated his sleeves. "You were gone for hours. Days maybe. Time felt… wrong."
"I was where time doesn't work," he said, his voice low. "With the Watchers. The ones I freed long ago."
Aranya sat beside him, silently.
"They guided me through a rite," Veyne continued, voice steady. "Not to test strength, but understanding. They wanted me to remember why I was betrayed. Not just by people—but by an entire system. They needed to know I wouldn't become like them. Like the kings who rose and fell before me."
He looked at her, his expression softer now. "They showed me fragments… of Atlantis, or maybe Dwarka. I don't know anymore where the myth ends and memory begins."
"Dwarka?" she whispered. "You saw the city of Krishna?"
"A version of it. Not golden temples and flutes. This was something… sunken. Lost. Still alive beneath the water. And the teachings—those remain."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded, damp scrap of cloth. It was part of his old robe, somehow returned to him during the rite. Burnt edges, but on it was etched a mantra, one that pulsed like fire through the thread.
"Yada yada hi dharmasya, glanir bhavati bharata..."
"Whenever righteousness falters and chaos rises, I return..."
Aranya traced the line with her fingers, shivering slightly. "Bhagavad Gita. You remember this?"
"I lived it," he said.
The silence returned for a moment. The city screamed in the distance—trains, engines, drunken yells. But in this alley, it was quiet. Sacred.
"Why you?" she finally asked. "Why did the Watchers call you back?"
He turned his face away. "Because I left something unfinished. A world half-built. A betrayal unanswered. I was supposed to unite the factions, bring balance to a world choking on its own ambitions. But I failed. I let love blind me. Let loyalty deceive me."
"Your brother…" she said.
Veyne nodded. "Daemon. Seraya. Kael. Elias. They each played a part. But I've started to understand—it wasn't just about betrayal. It was about purpose. They feared what I would become. Or maybe they feared what they already were."
She looked into his eyes, soft and searching. "So what now? You just… go back and build an empire?"
"No," Veyne said. "I don't build. Not yet. First, I reclaim. Piece by piece."
He stood up, his strength returning.
"I'll start with Desire. The Saffron Hand."
"Will they follow you?"
"They don't have a choice," he said, a flicker of the old prince rising in his voice. "They already did once. And their faith was in a mask. Now they'll see the fire beneath."
Aranya stood too, brushing off her jeans. "I want to come."
"You already are," he said. "Whatever this is—Atlantis, fate, prophecy—you're in it. I think you always were."
She smiled faintly. "I don't know if I believe in fate, but I believe in stories. And this one? It's not finished."
"Then let's finish it."
They stepped out of the alley. The storm had passed. The lights were brighter now, reflecting in puddles like fragments of stars. Veyne could feel the Ashen Crown within him as they walked—pulsing, waiting. It wasn't ready to be worn. Not yet. But it was near.
So was the war.
The scent of incense coiled through the apartment like a patient snake—sweet at first, then heavy. Almost suffocating. Nalini sat cross-legged on a thick maroon rug, her fingers twitching around the beaded mala wrapped thrice around her wrist.
Behind her, three monitors flickered, silent, like witnesses to a crime they didn't dare interrupt. CCTV loops. Street cams. One was locked on a quiet alley in Byculla where two figures had recently disappeared from view—Veyne and the girl, Aranya.
Nalini's jaw tightened. "Not dead," she whispered. "He came back."
She reached forward, picked up a half-burnt clove cigarette, and lit it. Smoke joined the incense, layering the air like her thoughts—dense, unreadable, and dangerous. She leaned back, blowing out a long stream of grey mist that hung in the light like a veil.
Veyne Alaric. The name didn't belong in this timeline. Not anymore. She'd spent too long curating her empire, too long ensuring that the ancient bloodlines stayed forgotten and their symbols buried under layers of modern filth. And yet, there he was. Not only alive, but ascending.
"Aranya, you little fool," she muttered, dragging her nail across the desk. "You've touched fire, and you think it won't burn you."
The truth was simple, and Nalini knew it.
She had underestimated him.
The boy who stumbled out of an alley, bleeding and broken, had been easy to manipulate. He asked too many questions and relied too much on instinct. But now... now he looked at the world differently. Like someone who had seen beyond the veil and returned with secrets no one should possess.
And worse — he was remembering.
Her phone vibrated softly beside her. A single message.
"Devotees are shifting loyalties. The Hand is stirring."
— G
She tapped the screen once to dismiss it. No reply. No command. That was how she preferred to work — shadows in motion, plans in place long before questions arose.
The Saffron Hand. That bloody group of saffron-draped zealots had always been easy to stir. Feed them a myth, a whisper of divinity, and they'd kill for it. Die for it.
Worse — they'd follow a true heir, if one ever returned.
Nalini leaned forward and lit another stick of incense. Frankincense this time. Purifying. She didn't believe in omens, but she believed in patterns. Symbols. Smoke trails.
And right now, the smoke told her a story she didn't like.
She pulled out a file from a locked drawer — thick, red-bordered, marked with the crest of the Order. A sigil shaped like a spiral of seven thorns. The same symbol Veyne had once worn as a child — before the Order had abandoned him, erased him, rewritten history in its favour.
She opened the file.
Photos. Surveillance. Old pages torn from books no one should still possess. A sketch of the Ashen Crown. Her notes. Theories. Her handwriting scribbled across the edge of a page:
"If the Crown awakens, he will be the fire they cannot extinguish."
Nalini tossed the file across the table in frustration.
She had planned to use him. Bring him under her influence, twist his return into a headline, a spectacle. Another puppet for her theatre. But the moment he returned from wherever he went—she could feel it. Something had changed.
He was no longer stepping into her world.
He was building his own.
She looked up at the monitor. It now showed the gates of the Saffron Hand's sanctuary. The cult's inner circle was moving. Preparing. Some already whispering his name again—not in rebellion, but in reverence.
Karan Dev had gone silent. That, more than anything, alarmed her.
Karan was a manipulator like her. A survivor. He wouldn't submit easily… unless he saw something real. Something divine. Something that shook him.
She crushed the cigarette in a bronze ashtray and stood up. Her silk sari rustled like falling leaves as she paced the room, bare feet silent on the marble.
You can't control what you don't understand, she reminded herself.
And she didn't understand Veyne anymore.
The man who rose from ash was no longer a pawn. He was a king in exile. And kings, even crownless, attract worship — and war.
Nalini stood before a mirror and looked into her own eyes. Cold, sharp, calculating. But behind them, for the first time in years, there was something else.
Doubt.
"Perhaps," she whispered to her reflection, "I've been looking at this all wrong."
The Order had given her power, yes — access, knowledge, secrets no human should hold. But it had also chained her. Told her what was real, what was myth. What to serve, what to silence.
And now one of their ghosts had risen. A boy they left to die was turning the factions to his cause.
She could warn them. She could reach out to the upper circle of the Order. But they wouldn't listen. They thought in rules. Hierarchies. They'd see Veyne as a variable to eliminate.
But Nalini saw something else now.
A possibility.
If Veyne succeeded—if he survived—he would destroy everything they'd built. The lies. The structures. The control. But in its place, something new could rise. A throne built not of authority, but of truth.
She smiled. It was sharp and unreadable.
Maybe she couldn't control Veyne. But she could still decide what side of history she wanted to stand on.
In a locked chamber beneath her apartment, Nalini knelt before a circular stone etched with the same spiral sigil from the file. She whispered an ancient mantra—not for prayer, but for permission.
"Satyam eva jayate. Let truth rise. Let lies burn."
"Ashes speak when the living go silent."
The stone vibrated faintly. The sigil glowed red. The Order was listening.
And she would feed them a different kind of truth this time.
Back at the Saffron Hand headquarters.
The air inside the sanctum was thick with sandalwood and secrets.
As Veyne crossed the threshold of the inner hall, he could feel the pulse of the Saffron Hand again—though now, it beat differently. Less like a cult, more like a waiting army. The torches lining the carved walls flickered in synchrony, whispering to each other in tongues long dead. Symbols of fire, serpents, and hands in mudra formations etched deep into the stone seemed to shimmer when he passed.
Karan Dev walked beside him, quieter now. The man who had once loomed with arrogance now bore a robe of humility, literal and otherwise. Gone was the saffron-laced ego; what remained was a man confronted by something far older than faith.
"You walk like the flames know you," Karan muttered, glancing sideways.
"They remember who set them ablaze," Veyne replied, eyes scanning the inner sanctum. "And who extinguished them."
The two stepped into the chamber where it all began—the altar of Desire. Before them was the great seat, shaped like a blooming lotus wrapped in fire. It was symbolic. Not a throne of kings, but of influence. Here, the leaders of Desire had made deals in blood, bartered purity for power, and cloaked hunger in devotion.
Now, it would belong to him.
As Veyne sat down, the chamber lit with a soft hum—like the room was exhaling after years of tension.
Devotees and lieutenants of the Saffron Hand slowly entered. Some bore markings on their foreheads, others carried books or scrolls. All of them had one thing in common: uncertainty. They had followed Karan Dev. Now, they stood before a stranger their leader had bowed to.
Karan stepped forward, raising his hand.
"This is Veyne Alaric," he declared, voice strong despite his earlier silence. "He is the rightful bearer of the Ashen Crown. He has passed the Trial of Mirrors, walked the Watcher's Rite, and faced the Deacon of the Order. I submit to his guidance—and so will all who wish to walk the true path."
Murmurs broke out. One of the higher acolytes stepped forward, bold. "The Ashen Crown is a myth. A tale we use to tame fire with faith. Who is he to claim it?"
Veyne leaned forward. "I don't need your belief. I only need your eyes."
He raised his hand. A glow—no, not glow—a presence burst from his palm. A flicker of dark flame, laced with gold, formed the outline of a crown hovering just above his fingers. The temperature dropped instantly, and the air shuddered. Those who doubted, now fell to silence.
"Do you see it?" he asked them, voice even. "This is not your god. It is not your master. It is not here to rule you. It is here because I bled for it. Betrayed. Buried. Forgotten. But not broken."
The entire chamber went silent.
Karan knelt first. "From this day, the Saffron Hand belongs to you."
The others followed, hesitant but eventually overcome by what they had just witnessed. One by one, they knelt, pressing their hands into the ground in a forgotten rite once whispered only in the days of Atlantis.
As they did, Veyne felt the Ashen Crown settle on his head—not physically, but in the metaphysical space where his influence flowed. The connection was deeper now. The Crown of Desire, once elusive and fragmented, now hummed steadily with purpose. Not complete. But closer.
And yet, it was not joy he felt.
It was weight.
He stood and looked at Karan Dev. "I won't be a god to your followers."
"You already are, to some of them."
"Then I'll shatter that belief. And rebuild it into something honest."
Karan nodded, as if expecting nothing less.
Later that night, in a quiet chamber behind the altar, Veyne sat with Aranya and Karan. The map of the Seven Factions had been laid out. Most of it was blank—just colored symbols drawn on faded parchment. But Desire was marked with a bright orange flame now. One down. Six to go.
"We still don't know where the Order is based," Aranya murmured. "Their movements are elusive. Even the Deacon's realm gave us no direction."
"They are shadows in the daylight," Karan added. "They work behind others, always through intermediaries. Rumours say they operate through knowledge—control of minds, not bodies."
"And they sent the Deacon to kill me," Veyne said, half to himself. "Which means they fear me. Or what I might become."
Aranya touched the map softly. "You're not ready yet."
"I know."
"But you will be."
Veyne looked at her then. Not as a scholar. Not even as the girl who had found him in the alley. But as something far more rare in his life—truth. Aranya never flinched. She never worshipped. She simply stood, even when gods and betrayers were in the room.
"I will not be like them," he said quietly.
Before dawn, Veyne stood again at the edge of the sanctum. This time, alone.
The Ashen Crown hovered again—visible only to him now. It pulsed softly, like a heartbeat in the void. Not loud. Not arrogant. But patient.
"I know now," he whispered, staring into it. "This crown… it is not mine alone. It is the world's. I must earn it."
The flames on the walls flared once more, as if acknowledging the vow.
He turned back.
The Saffron Hand was his now. But the war was just beginning.
Later in the evening —
The night was cool. Not the kind that numbs the skin, but the kind that sharpens the senses. Mumbai's sounds were distant now—soft honks, quiet footsteps, late-night chaiwalas shouting at passing auto drivers. But here, in the underlevels of the Saffron Hand's sanctum, time felt like it had stilled.
Veyne walked alone, torchlight in one hand, the memory of flame in the other.
He had found the passage accidentally—though something told him it had been waiting for him. An old corridor, sealed behind a crumbling relief of Agni, the fire god. It hadn't been opened in decades. Maybe centuries.
The deeper he went, the more the air changed. Less incense, more salt. Less dust, more age.
The walls weren't made of the same stone as the sanctum above. These were older. Carved in spirals and script he didn't understand but somehow felt familiar. It was not Atlantean. It was… older than Atlantis.
He paused at a circular chamber at the end of the path. In the centre, a small stone platform—shaped like a chakra, with a trident and conch placed beside it. He stepped closer, running his hand over the stone.
The moment he touched it, the room sighed.
The walls flickered—then began to shimmer. Not torches. Not fire. Memories. The stone itself started to project images—no magic, just remembrance. A technology, or perhaps a divinity, lost to modern minds.
A city appeared. Gleaming towers. Floating structures. Crystal spires rising from the ocean's depths.
And then—chaos. Waves swallowing it whole. A great war. A trident cracking against a crown. Beings of flame and water locked in a spiral of death. And in the middle, a name.
Dwarka.
Then another.
Atlantis.
And finally, whispered by a voice long dead, but remembered by the Ashen Crown:
"They are one and the same. Forgotten by man. Preserved by betrayal. And protected by fire."
Veyne sank to his knees.
He had always believed Atlantis was the beginning. That it was the place from which he had ruled. From which he had fallen.
But this…
Dwarka wasn't just a myth. It wasn't just a footnote in a scripture. It was Atlantis—or rather, the form Atlantis took after it was swallowed by the sea.
He remembered now. Not clearly, not fully—but enough.
There had been a time when Atlantis wasn't just a city of power. It was a city of dharma. A city built on the teachings of a god—not a fire god, or a sun god, but one who spoke of karma, truth, and balance.
Shree Krishna.
The old teachings… the ones Aranya had begun to decode… the mantras, the shlokas—they weren't just philosophical. They were structural. Atlantis was built on the teachings of Krishna. His words shaped the factions, their duties, and their very essence.
But somewhere along the way, power had corrupted purpose. Desire turned to greed. Order turned to control. And the Crown, once a symbol of balance, had become a weapon.
He looked up, eyes burning.
"No more."
Back in the upper chambers, Aranya had been poring over an ancient manuscript she'd recovered from Karan Dev's vault. It was brittle, half-burned, written in a mix of Devanagari and something older.
At first, it looked like a hymn to Vishnu. But the more she read, the more she understood—it was a prophecy.
"When the king falls, and the city sinks,
A crown of ash shall rise from the brink.
Seven fires shall burn as one,
To cleanse the world of what it's become."
She rushed to find Veyne, only to stop when she saw the look in his eyes.
"You found it, didn't you?" she whispered.
"I think I always knew," he said. "Atlantis was never just a city. It was a test. And we failed."
Aranya nodded, voice trembling. "The texts speak of Dwarka as a divine city taken by the sea. But what if it didn't sink because of divine punishment? What if it was hidden?"
"Protected," Veyne said. "From us."
Veyne stood in the centre of the chakra-shaped altar again. This time, he placed his hand on the trident and whispered a single word.
"Awaken."
The chamber trembled.
From the walls, water began to pour—gently, like tears. The symbols lit up, and a voice—not the Crown's, not his—spoke in an ancient tongue. Aranya gasped. She could understand it.
"It's Vedic," she said. "But older. Mixed with Atlantean. It's saying… the king has returned, but he must earn his kingdom."
More than a kingdom, Veyne thought. A world.
He looked at her.
"This is just the beginning."
They returned to the surface by dawn. Nalini was waiting.
Her face was unreadable, but her silence was loud.
"You've changed," she said. "Not just stronger. Wiser."
"You were trying to control me," Veyne said, calm but clear. "But I was never yours to control."
Nalini didn't argue. Instead, she simply stepped aside. "Then lead. Let's see where this path of yours takes us."
He turned to the assembled followers of Desire.
"The next faction will not give in so easily," Karan Dev warned.
"Then we take it," Veyne said. "Not by war. Not by manipulation. But by truth."
Aranya smiled.
Somewhere deep beneath the city, in the drowned ruins of a forgotten era, the sea shifted—just a little. As if the past was watching.
And waiting.