"Show me your stone."
Rudra reached into the collar of his shirt and pulled out the necklace. The stone caught the light of the room as he lifted it over his head — that familiar, deep colour that had never quite matched anything else he had seen. He stepped forward and placed it in Alistair's outstretched hand.
The old man held it close. He turned it slowly between his fingers, his eyes moving across the surface with the focused attention of someone reading something small and important. The room was completely quiet. Nobody spoke. Nobody shifted in their seat.
After a long moment, Alistair said, "This is indeed the real stone."
He turned it over once more. Then he looked up at Rudra.
"Where did you get this?"
Every eye in the room settled on Rudra simultaneously. Julius from across the table. Lucien with that expression that gave nothing away. Silas, who had returned to his seat but was watching with the bright, undivided attention of someone who expects something interesting to happen. Edward, standing slightly behind Rudra, carefully still.
Rudra felt the weight of all of it. He considered, briefly, saying something vague — something that answered the question without quite answering it. Then he decided against it. These people had already formed opinions of him. The only thing he had to offer that might change those opinions was honesty.
"I met an old man," he said. "He called himself a retired hero. His name was Arthur Grey."
The name left his mouth and the room changed.
It was instantaneous — not a gradual shift but a simultaneous reaction, every person in the room arriving at the same expression at the same moment. Shock, clear and unambiguous, on every face including Edward's, which told Rudra that Edward had not known this detail either. The silence that followed was the specific silence of people who have just heard something they need a moment to process.
Then Lucien stood up.
"ARTHUR GREY?!" His voice, which had been measured and controlled for everything preceding this moment, came out at full volume. "THE Arthur Grey?! You are telling me he gave you the stone?!"
"Uh —" Rudra looked around the room. "Yes. Is there a problem?"
"A problem?!" Lucien's composure, which Rudra had begun to think might be a permanent condition, had cracked open completely. "This boy is connected to Arthur Grey. Can we actually trust him? Can we trust anything he has told us?"
The questions directed themselves at the room rather than at Rudra specifically, which in some ways was worse — being argued about was more unsettling than being argued with. Rudra's mind was moving quickly, trying to assemble something useful from the reaction. Who was Arthur Grey to these people? Why did the name land like that — not with grief, not with respect, but with something that looked considerably more like alarm? Had Arthur done something? Had he been a traitor? Had he stolen the stone from someone?
There was no way to find out right now. The conversation was too heated and he was too central to it.
He said the only true thing available to him.
"I honestly don't know what Arthur did. I knew him for approximately two hours before a monster killed him. I don't even know why he gave me the stone."
This silenced the room. Not in a way that resolved anything — the doubt was still visible on every face — but in the way that a genuine statement of ignorance silences a room. Nobody could argue with it. Nobody could confirm it either.
Rudra stepped back to the edge of the space and listened.
What followed was an hour that tested his patience in ways the fight with Aagni had not. Edward defended him with consistent, careful arguments — citing the P.R.I.S.M. infiltration, the public fight, the sky being split, the observable evidence of the Power Stone responding to its holder. Julius responded to each point with the minimal, precise language of someone who has decided their position and is not interested in revising it. Lucien contributed questions that sounded reasonable and landed as accusations. Silas watched the whole thing with the expression of someone at a sporting event who hasn't decided yet which side to enjoy winning.
Some of the terminology went over Rudra's head entirely — references to events and names he didn't recognise, institutional procedures he had no context for. He stood and absorbed what he could and let the rest pass. His legs began to go numb somewhere around the forty minute mark. He shifted his weight quietly and said nothing.
No major progress. The argument went in circles. Edward's voice grew slightly tighter with each rotation.
Then Alistair, who had not spoken since asking about the stone, looked at Rudra.
"Come forward."
Rudra stepped to the centre of the room and stood in front of the head of the table. Alistair looked at him from the middle chair with those clear, unhurried eyes. The rest of the room went quiet immediately — the hour of debate folding away into silence the moment the old man chose to speak again.
"Who is the person you love the most?"
Rudra blinked. Of all the questions he had been bracing for — challenges to his loyalty, his record, his connection to Arthur — this was not one he had prepared an answer for.
'What kind of question is that?'
He thought for a moment. The answer was not difficult. "My father."
Alistair nodded slowly, as though this was the response he had expected. "Then imagine this. Two simultaneous monster attacks. Two separate locations. At one location — ten ordinary people you have never met. At the other location — your father." He paused. "Who do you save?"
Every eye in the room moved to Rudra.
He didn't deliberate. The answer was already there before the question had finished.
"Both."
Alistair blinked. Once, then again. Around the table, the other Devas exchanged looks that Rudra couldn't fully read — somewhere between confusion and something else.
"I think you misunderstood the question," Alistair said, his voice patient. "You can only save one."
"Why should I consider picking a side?"
The words came out at a volume Rudra had not planned for. He felt them leaving his mouth and had a fraction of a second to decide whether to pull them back, and decided not to.
"I may not have the luxury to save everyone. But the moment you pick a side, you have already let the other die. You have already given up on them. You have already decided their lives matter less." His voice had risen further. He was aware of it and kept going. "A HERO'S JOB IS TO SAVE PEOPLE!! IF I CAN'T DO THAT, I HAVE NO RIGHT TO CALL MYSELF A HERO!!!"
The last word landed in the room and stayed there.
Silence.
'Crap. I spoke too much.'
He looked around. Every Deva in the room was staring at him. Julius with an expression he couldn't read. Lucien with his mouth slightly open, which was the first unguarded thing Rudra had seen on his face. Silas with his eyebrows raised and something that looked genuinely close to impressed.
'Now I'm definitely going to die.'
Alistair had not moved. He was looking at Rudra with an expression that was strange in a way Rudra couldn't immediately categorise — not anger, not dismissal, but something that had turned inward, the expression of a man who has just heard something that sent him somewhere else for a moment.
The old man was remembering.
A different room. A different time. His father's voice, unhurried and certain, delivering something that had settled into him as a young man and never fully left.
*What is a hero, son?*
*A hero is someone who helps people no matter the cost. A hero saves everyone and does not let a single person die on his watch. And you have to become that — because you are a hero's son.*
He had asked that question to more candidates than he could count across more years than most people were alive for. He had heard clever answers, tactical answers, answers that demonstrated strategic thinking and institutional loyalty and the kind of carefully considered judgment that produced good fighters and reliable team leaders.
He had never heard that answer before.
Not once.
The laugh arrived before he made any decision to laugh — a full, genuine, delighted sound that filled the room and transformed it entirely, the kind of laugh that belongs to someone who has not been surprised in a very long time and has just been surprised.
"Hahaha — hahaha! I have been asking that question for years and I have never once heard an answer like that!"
The other Devas looked at each other. The tension of the previous hour evaporated in the space of three seconds.
Alistair stopped laughing. He looked at Rudra with something settled and clear in his expression — a decision that had been made and would not be revisited.
"I will let you join the Soul Fighters."
Every Deva in the room reacted. Julius's eyes moved sharply to Alistair. Lucien straightened. Even Silas looked momentarily startled, which was the first time Rudra had seen him startled by anything.
Alistair continued before anyone could speak. "If a person like this cannot become a Soul Fighter, then what is this organisation even standing for?"
The silence that followed was a different kind of silence from everything that had come before it — not the silence of tension or debate, but the silence of a decision that has been made by the person who makes decisions, and which everyone present understands cannot be unmade.
Rudra exhaled. Beside him, Arjun and Edward both had the same expression — quiet, contained pride, the kind that doesn't announce itself.
"However," Alistair said.
The relief that had just arrived made a tactical retreat.
"Making you a fighter directly would be unjust to every candidate who has trained for years to earn that position. Beyond that —" his eyes moved between Rudra and Arjun "— neither of you has an astra."
Rudra and Arjun exchanged a glance. Astra — a term they had heard in passing but never had explained. A weapon or tool, Rudra assumed, something specific to the Soul Fighters' system, something that apparently marked the difference between a candidate and a qualified fighter. He filed the question away for later.
"The Soul Fighters entrance exam runs once per year," Alistair continued. "You will sit it. If both of you pass, I have no reason to refuse you entry. If you fail —" he looked at the stone, which still lay on the table in front of him "— you will return the Power Stone to this organisation."
He looked around the table. "All in favour."
Every hand rose.
Rudra stood in the centre of the room and looked at the five raised hands and understood, with complete clarity, what the next six months of his life were going to be.
He thought of everything the past had cost him. The fights. Raj. The building and the street and the rain and the demon and the four months of unconsciousness after.
Six months to prepare for an exam that would determine everything.
'We better be ready,' he thought. 'There is no other option.'