After a bit of walking through the labyrinthine streets of the city, Ayaan finally reached the bustling expanse of the central square. Exhausted, he sank onto a nearby stone bench, pulling his jacket tighter around himself as he prepared to wait for the promised vehicle. It was at this exact moment that he started feeling a strange, subtle burning sensation right in the centre of his forehead. It felt like a hot needle lightly pressing against his skin. Without thinking about it for too long, dismissing it as lingering stress, he closed his eyes and tried to steady his breathing. But the moment his eyelids shut, the subtle burning sensation on his forehead rapidly intensified, blooming into a scorching heat.
The city, which until now had felt trapped in an eerie, vacuum-like silence, suddenly erupted with sound. But this sensory overload was not limited to the ambient noise of the immediate streets; it was as if the acoustic boundaries of the entire world had shattered. Ayaan started hearing absolutely everything. The sounds he was processing, however, were entirely alien—nothing like the normal noises of everyday urban life. The auditory landscape kept violently shifting from a piercing, high-pitched frequency to a low, beautifully tragic melody that vibrated through his bones. His breath grew ragged and shallow. He felt an overwhelming sensation of vertigo, as if an invisible, heavy hand had suddenly grabbed the back of his head and was forcefully drowning him in deep, freezing water.
As he was violently trapped inside this suffocating sensation, a sleek, pitch-black Bentley smoothly pulled up to the curb directly in front of his bench. Finn Rivers had personally come inside the vehicle to pick him up. The moment the car came to a complete halt, Finn looked through the tinted window and saw Ayaan sitting stiffly on the bench, his chest heaving as his ragged breaths could be heard even over the idling engine. The private driver quickly stepped out of the car to approach Ayaan, naturally assuming the young man had simply fallen into a heavy, troubled sleep.
"Wait, don't wake him up," Finn Rivers commanded from the back seat, his sharp eyes tracking the rhythmic tremors in Ayaan's posture. Finn looked at Ayaan with an astonished, highly intrigued gaze, but he didn't utter another word, choosing instead to sit back and quietly wait for the young man to finish his transition.
As for Ayaan, the terrifying feeling of drowning was only getting stronger and stronger by the second. He felt a genuine panic rising in his chest, completely convinced that he was about to lose his breath and suffocate right there on the bench. Yet, the more he felt that crushing weight of drowning, the more his internal biology was radically rewriting itself. Deep within his veins, his very blood was changing.
The crimson fluid in his body was getting thicker and more dense, its spiritual weight multiplying. Unlike the rapid, frantic pulse of a normal human under high stress, the actual velocity of the blood flow within his vessels began to slow down to a heavy, deliberate crawl. Soon after this internal calibration completed, the intense burning sensation on his forehead slowly faded away, leaving behind a few glinting beads of cold sweat on his skin.
When he finally forced his eyes open, the suffocating water vanished, and he saw the luxury vehicle parked right in front of him. Through the glass, he saw Finn Rivers watching him. On the surface, nothing looked out of the ordinary. But what shocked Ayaan to his very core was what his newly awakened senses were mapping. Before, he had only felt a formless, ambient dread in the air. Now, his eyes could actively see small, ethereal threads of pure dread flowing and weaving all around in the open air like a microscopic web.
What the hell... what are these threads? Ayaan thought frantically to himself, his mind reeling. But, not wanting to look disrespectful or rude to his powerful contact, he quickly pushed his confusion aside and approached the rear door of the Bentley, offering a polite, slight bow to Finn Rivers as a formal greeting.
"Come in, come in," Finn said, gesturing toward the leather seat.
The moment Ayaan climbed into the cabin and closed the door, the Bentley accelerated smoothly, speeding away from the central square. As the city blurred past the windows, a sudden, familiar resonance caused Ayaan's mind to start vibrating.
"Ahh... finally some actual progress, kid," the ancient voice inside Ayaan's head spoke up, its tone carrying a rare note of genuine satisfaction. "It is not much, but it still represents a solid step forward."
'Eh? What progress are you talking about?' Ayaan demanded mentally. 'I don't see anything different about my strength.'
"Are you absolutely sure you don't see anything different, kid?" the voice chuckled darkly.
Hearing the entity's mocking question, Ayaan immediately thought back to the strange red lines he had noticed upon opening his eyes. Before he could firmly conclude that the vision had just been a psychological illusion born of exhaustion, his gaze drifted toward the car window. There, floating directly outside the moving vehicle, he saw the exact same threads drifting through the atmosphere. They looked like millions of tiny, independent snakes that possessed the unnatural ability to fly, navigating the wind currents of the city.
'What is this red thread that I am seeing? Can you actually tell me about it for once?' Ayaan asked the voice, his mental tone pleadingly. But, true to form, he received absolutely no reply.
'OI! Don't you dare ghost me as well! Tell me something!' He snapped inwardly. The voice, however, remained completely silent, retreating back into the shadows of his consciousness. Giving up entirely on communicating with the stubborn entity, Ayaan let out a quiet sigh and simply closed his eyes, leaning back against the leather seat.
Up in the northern mountain ranges, at an elevation even higher than the sun-peak mountain where Ayaan had spent months enduring his master's brutal training, the environment was entirely hostile. Down here, the peaks were perpetually covered in thick, pristine white snow, looking like a flawless bride meticulously prepared for her wedding day.
At the absolute, jagged edge of a freezing precipice, a massive, imposing man adorned with a heavy garland of weathered human skulls stood perfectly still. His piercing gaze cut through the swirling flurries, looking directly down at the distant, lush green silhouette of the sun-peak mountain far below.
"I can only hope you have trained him well, brother," the man murmured into the freezing gale, his voice echoing with an ominous power. "The thread of fate is already actively weaving. Don't you dare blame me for testing his mettle when the time comes."
Saying that, the imposing figure didn't turn back. He simply stepped forward, jumping completely off the sheer edge of the mountain into the abyss below.
After half an hour of constant, smooth movement through the shifting districts, the heavy luxury vehicle finally came to a complete halt, the sudden lack of motion causing Ayaan to open his eyes. As he looked through the windshield, his breath caught. Standing in front of him was a gargantuan, sprawling mansion that clearly spanned across multiple acres of prime, secluded land. Etched meticulously into the stone architecture at the very apex of the primary structure was a massive, fiercely detailed eagle head. But what struck Ayaan as incredibly bizarre was the fact that there were absolutely no physical security guards stationed around the perimeter, nor was there a visible iron gate blocking the driveway—a detail that deeply amused him.
However, the moment Ayaan stepped out of the Bentley and onto the gravel, the scene before him fundamentally shifted. What he saw made him fully realize why the higher-ups constantly compared his current state to an unhatched egg. If Ayaan had not just experienced that agonising, drowning transformation on the park bench, his human eyes would have perceived absolutely nothing but an open, welcoming driveway.
Instead, he could now clearly see that the entire mansion was completely enveloped and protected by a thick, shimmering wall of dense Prana. This spiritual barrier didn't just block entry; it was actively laced with razor-sharp, thorn-like energy structures rotating at a microscopic level. It was an invisible death trap. If any ordinary person or unawakened cultivator walked in there without knowing the proper frequency, they would be instantly sliced clean in half.
"Hmm. So, you can actually see it. Not bad, kid... not bad at all," Finn Rivers spoke up from behind him, observing the subtle shift in Ayaan's eyes and his sudden hesitation.
"Come, let's head inside then," Finn said smoothly. Waving his right hand in a casual, elegant arc, the dense wall of Prana immediately recognized his signature, parting down the centre to create a clean, safe opening for them to walk through.
The exact moment their boots crossed the threshold and they entered the mansion's grounds, the ambient atmosphere felt completely, fundamentally different from the outside world. The air was heavier, richer with energy. It felt as if they had stepped entirely out of the standard geography of the city and into an isolated, closed pocket space.
On the other side of the city, the brief meeting at the roadside tea stall had concluded. Professor Durga and Ishani's father finally stepped out from beneath the canvas awning, preparing to part ways and return to their respective duties. But before either of them could take a single step down the pavement, the exact same, suffocating wave of dread that Ayaan had experienced earlier rippled across the district.
The sudden, invisible weight hit the two veteran cultivators with the force of a mountain. In an instant, their powerful leg muscles began to shake violently, their knees buckling under an unearthly gravity that they couldn't comprehend. They stood paralysed, completely unable to walk or channel their internal energies.
From behind the counter of the tea stall, the old vendor, Rudra, quietly watched the two high-level figures struggle. His eyes narrowed into sharp, calculative slits. Without a word, he casually waved his weathered hand through the air in their direction.
Instantly, the suffocating pressure vanished. The invisible weight evaporated into nothingness, and both Professor Durga and Ishani's father felt their bodies return to absolute normalcy.
"Why... why on earth was there such a sudden, terrifying feeling of weakness?!" Professor Durga exclaimed, her usual icy composure completely shattered as she gripped her cane, looking over at Ishani's dad.
The older man could only offer a deeply confused, shaken expression in return, his mind completely blank as he realised that whatever force had just brought them to their knees was far beyond their understanding of Prana.