The room was too small for what it held.

  Roots pressed against the outer stone like knuckles under skin, thick and slow, pulsing faintly with the Vana’s breath. The windows were open, but the air refused to move.

  Smoke from the river still clung to everything—wet ash, burned sap, something metallic underneath that made the back of the throat tighten.

  Jiv stood near the wall already having an inkling as to why everyone gathered. Just standing there as if the stone might give way if he shifted his weight .

  Acharya Mihir lay propped on cushions at the table’s edge, wrapped in a healer’s shawl that smelled faintly of bitter resin. His eyes were open, sharper than his body had any right to be. He watched Jiv the way one watches a fault line—patient, knowing it would move when it was ready.

  Iravati sat at the head of the table, hands folded. Her face was calm. Too calm. The kind of stillness that came from choosing not to feel something yet.

  Amar Bisht stood behind her, arms crossed, jaw tight.

  Sumayhu had taken a chair like he belonged there, fingers tapping once against the wood, interest bright and undisguised.

  The students hadn’t sat.

  Nandini stood with her shoulders drawn in, fingers worrying the edge of her sleeve. Shreyas hovered half a step behind her, silent. Aadyan’s posture was rigid, as if he’d already braced for impact.

  Swarit didn’t bother pretending patience.

  “What do you know?” he said.

  The words cut straight through the room.

  Jiv didn’t answer.

  For a moment, it seemed like he might refuse outright—like he’d fold back into humor or deflection or silence. Instead, his gaze dropped to the floor, to the thin crack where roots had split stone years ago and no one had ever managed to mend it.

  “I know pieces,” he said finally.

  His voice sounded different here. Lower. Stripped.

  “That’s not good enough,” Swarit said. “Not anymore.”

  Something flickered across Jiv’s face—shame, guilt and exhaustion.

  “I know what this leaves behind,” Jiv

  continued quietly. “I know the smell of it. The way mana goes quiet instead of dispersing. The way places feel wrong long after the bodies are gone.”

  Sumayhu leaned forward slightly. “Because you’ve seen it.”

  “Yes.”

  “When?” Iravati asked.

  The word landed gently. That was worse.

  Jiv closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again, the green in them looked darker, deeper—like forest shade where light never quite reached.

  “Before the Veils,” he said. “Before AstraVana. Before restraint was something people believed in.”

  Nandini inhaled sharply.

  Acharya Mihir shifted, the smallest movement drawing attention. “Tell them,” he said softly. “You don’t get to carry this alone anymore.”

  Jiv’s jaw worked.

  “I worked for someone,” he said.

  No titles. No dramatics. Just the weight of it.

  “A mage,” he went on. “Long-lived. Obsessive. Brilliant in the way people are when they mistake conviction for truth.”

  Swarit’s hands curled into fists.

  “He believed the world was unfinished,” Jiv said. “That gods had stopped halfway and left the rest to rot. That the Veils were lies we told ourselves because we were afraid of what power actually costs.”

  A shiver ran through the room, like the roots outside had shifted.

  “He talked about a final war,” Jiv continued. “The one reason on which veils were established to hone warriors to help Yuganta But, He believed he’d stand beside a god when it came. As an equal.”

  “And you believed him,” Aadyan said.

  Jiv laughed once. It wasn’t humor. It was a memory.

  “I was young,” he said. “And I was naive and too broken to understand ”

  Silence stretched tight.

  “What did you do for him?” Amar asked.

  Jiv hesitated.

  Then: “I found things.”

  “People,” Swarit said flatly.

  “Yes, places , energies , nexuses, anything that had power.”

  “He said it was protection,” Jiv went on, voice roughening. “That we were preventing worse disasters by redirecting excess. Power that would have destroyed villages anyway.”

  “And instead,” Nandini whispered, “it hollowed them.”

  Jiv didn’t deny it.

  “I didn’t kill them,” he said. “Not with my hands. He siphoned. Drew until there was nothing left to take. Some survived. Some didn’t.”

  “The Vana,” Iravati said quietly.

  Jiv’s throat tightened. “The Vana fought back.”

  The words fell like ash.

  “That was the last thing I remember clearly,” he said. “The forest tearing itself open to stop him. Bleeding. Burning. He died there.”

  “And you?How did you survive?” Shreyas asked.

  “I lived,” Jiv said. “And I buried it. Buried him. Buried myself. I changed my face until even I believed the lie.”

  Swarit slammed his palm against the table. “And now it’s back.”

  “Yes.”

  Sumayhu’s eyes gleamed. “The Hollow.”

  “We didn’t have a name for it then,” Jiv said. “But it believes the same things he did. That restraint is a weakness. That control is cowardice. That hunger is honesty.”

  Nandini hugged herself. “So what do we do?”

  Jiv looked at her.

  Then at Iravati.

  “We stop pretending this is something we can negotiate with,” he said. “It doesn’t want conquest. It wants unmaking.”

  Silence pressed in, thick and suffocating.

  Outside, the Vana shifted. Roots creaked softly against stone.

  Iravati met Jiv’s gaze and held it.

  “You’re not absolved,” she said. “But you are here. And that matters.”

  Jiv nodded once.

  No one spoke for a long moment.

  The truth sat in the room like a body no one wanted to claim.

  Iravati was the first to move.

  She rose from her chair slowly, as if standing too fast might crack something that had only just stopped trembling. When she spoke, her voice was steady—but it carried the quiet weight of finality.

  “Then we prepare for worse,” she said.

  The words landed without drama. No flourish. No comfort.

  Sumayhu exhaled through his nose, fingers tapping once against the table. “Preparation without information is how people drown,” he said mildly. “Before we charge into muddy waters, we need to know how deep they go.”

  Iravati turned to him. “You have something in mind.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “I do.” His gaze swept the room, lingering briefly on Jiv, then sliding away. “The East cannot be sealed and forgotten. Something interrupted the harvesting. That means it left traces.” A faint smile, sharp at the edges.

  “I’ve already sent word for my most gifted students. The kind who notice what others overlook.”

  Nandini stiffened.

  “You mean to send them back?” she asked.

  “To the borders,” Sumayhu corrected. “Not into the heart. Yet.”

  Iravati considered this for a breath longer than comfort allowed. Then she nodded once. “A joint team. Observational. No heroics.”

  She turned slightly, voice carrying. “And yes. The West will assist.”

  Sumayhu arched a brow. “Will they?”

  “They will,” Iravati said calmly. “Or they will explain—publicly—why they chose isolation while the world hollowed out.”

  That earned a thin, amused sound from him.

  She continued, gaze shifting to Amar Bisht. “Send recall orders. Any remaining warriors, scouts, or healers on extended expedition—bring them home. Now.”

  Amar nodded, then hesitated.

  “There is… one concern,” he said.

  The room’s attention turned to him.

  “My elder daughter hasn’t responded,” Amar said quietly. “Not to calls. Not to texts. Not even to emergency sigils.”

  The silence sharpened.

  Nandini’s breath hitched. “Appa—”

  Amar’s eyes flicked to Aadyan. “Do either of you know where she is?she last spoke to you.”

  Aadyan swallowed. His voice came out rough remembering her step sister.“She left at the start of semester.Said it was a short expedition. Pale reaches. She promised she’d check in.”

  “She didn’t,” Amar said.

  “No,” Aadyan admitted.

  Amar’s arms tightened across his chest.

  “She went further than planned,” he said. “Into the Pale Reaches.”

  The word landed wrong.

  Swarit went very still. Shreyas’s expression shuttered completely.

  “That place doesn’t let people leave unchanged,” Swarit said quietly.

  Nandini’s voice came sharp. “She chose that path. Don’t make this about—”

  “We are making it about patterns,” Shreyas cut in. “And she’s been circling this one for years.”

  Iravati’s jaw tightened, but she said nothing. Not yet.

  Instead, she looked at Jiv again.

  “You will not be part of the first team,” she said.

  Jiv nodded immediately. “Good.”

  That surprised her.

  “I’ll be more useful once they bring something back,” he added. “I recognize patterns better with evidence.”

  The meeting dissolved shortly after—orders given, messengers sent, tension left unresolved like an open wound.

  Towards the healing ward had dimmed into a low, breathing quiet.

  Lira stood beside Devika as she rewove a stabilization lattice around one of the eastern survivors. The man’s chest rose unevenly, each breath borrowed.

  “He’s holding,” Devika murmured. “For now.”

  Lira nodded, though her attention was elsewhere. The ward felt different—less chaotic, but heavier. As if something unsaid had settled into the walls.

  Devika didn’t look at her when she spoke.

  “They told me what Jiv said.”

  Lira’s fingers stilled.

  “What he remembered,” Devika continued. “What he didn't.”

  The words slid under Lira’s skin, cold and slow.

  “The Hollow?” Lira asked quietly.

  Devika’s mouth tightened. “That’s what Sumayhu called it. Jiv didn’t.”

  Lira closed her eyes. Images rose unbidden—empty bodies, wrong silences, the way mana felt scraped instead of spent.

  “And Aadyan?” she asked.

  Devika hesitated just long enough to answer honestly.

  “He didn’t take it well.”

  Lira exhaled shakily. Of course he hadn’t.

  She pressed her palm briefly to the ward’s edge, grounding herself.

  “I need to talk to them.”

  Devika nodded. “You’ll find them near the outer walkways. That’s where people go when they don’t want witnesses.”

  The outer walkway was loud at night.

  Wind scraped along the stone, carrying the distant hiss of the river and the low murmur of wards resetting themselves.

  The Vana below breathed unevenly, as if it hadn’t decided whether to sleep or watch.

  Jiv stood with his back to the railing.

  Aresh was there too — a few steps away, arms folded tight across his chest, fire quiet but not gone. It flickered under his skin like something listening.

  Aadyan came out last.

  He didn’t stop immediately. Didn’t speak. He just looked at them — really looked — and something in his expression hardened into shape.

  “So that’s it,” he said. “That’s what you’ve been sitting on all this time.”

  Jiv didn’t turn. “I told them what mattered.”

  “What mattered to you,” Aadyan shot back. “Not to us.”

  Aresh shifted. “If this is about—”

  “It is,” Aadyan cut in sharply, eyes snapping to him. “It absolutely is.”

  Silence snapped tight.

  Aadyan stepped closer, boots striking stone too hard. “Ever since you arrived,” he said to Aresh, voice controlled but vibrating underneath, “things have been burning. Wards failing. Mana behaving wrong. Now the East is hollowed and suddenly we’re talking about ancient hungers and forgotten wars.”

  “That doesn’t make it my fault,” Aresh said, jaw clenching. “You think I asked for any of this?”

  “No,” Aadyan said. “But I think you’re connected to it.”

  Lira reached them then, breath catching when she heard the words.

  “Aadyan—”

  He didn’t look at her.

  “I watched you in the training grounds,” he went on, eyes never leaving Aresh. “Your fire reacts to things before you do. It flares when it shouldn’t. It listens.”

  Aresh’s hands curled into fists. A thin line of flame traced his knuckles, unbidden.

  “You think I don’t know that?” he snapped. “You think I don’t feel it pulling at me?”

  “That’s not a defense,” Aadyan said. “That’s exactly the problem.”

  Jiv finally turned.

  “Enough,” he said quietly.

  Aadyan laughed — once, sharp and humorless.

  “Now you speak?”

  Jiv met his gaze steadily. “This isn’t on him.”

  “You don’t get to decide that anymore,” Aadyan said. “You forfeited that when you decided we didn’t deserve the truth.”

  The words landed heavier than a shout.

  “For two years,” Aadyan continued, voice low and precise, “you stood beside us. You trained with us. You laughed with us. And all the while you were carrying a history that could have changed how we prepared for this.”

  “I was trying to prevent exactly this,” Jiv said. “Fear. Suspicion. Division.”

  “And instead you manufactured it,” Aadyan shot back. “Congratulations.”

  Lira stepped between them without thinking, palms lifted.

  “Stop. Both of you. This isn’t helping.”

  Aadyan finally looked at her, and the anger cracked just enough to show something raw underneath.

  “You were drowning in the ward,” he said quietly. “And he knew. He knew what this thing does to people like you.”

  Jiv’s jaw tightened.

  “And still he stayed silent,” Aadyan went on. “That’s not protection. That’s arrogance.”

  Aresh looked between them, then said flatly, “If you think I’m the spark that lit this, say it outright.”

  Aadyan held his gaze.

  “I think you’re part of it. I don’t know how. And until I do, I don’t trust you.”

  The words burned hotter than any flame.

  Aresh swallowed, expression shuttering. “Fine,” he said. “Don’t.”

  He turned away first, fire flaring once at his heels before snapping back under control.

  Jiv watched him go — then looked back at Aadyan.

  “You want someone to blame,” Jiv said. “I understand that.”

  Aadyan shook his head. “No. I want someone to answer.”

  He stepped back, creating distance where closeness used to be.

  “You don’t get my trust by default anymore,” he said. “Not after this. Not when the cost of ignorance is bodies.”

  He turned and left.

  Lira stayed.

  For a long moment, neither she nor Jiv spoke.

  “You should’ve told us,” she said finally. Not angry. Just exhausted.

  “I know.”

  “And now?” she asked.

  Jiv looked out over the Vana, eyes reflecting green-black shadow.

  “Now,” he said, “we live with what silence buys.”

  Below them, something moved through the forest — slow, patient, unseen.