Recap:
In the lost village of Nirghosh, Ansh touched an ancient altar, awakening echoes of himself and a vision of the village's last moments. The Watchers called him the Key, and through him, the convergence has begun. Ansh's mark disappears, but his shadow no longer obeys.
Ansh didn't wake up for two days.
Vaishnavi and Ishu took turns watching over him, hiding his condition from parents and teachers. They kept him in Ishu's attic, away from curious eyes.
On the second night, as thunder rolled outside, Ansh gasped awake.
"I saw it," he whispered.
Vaishnavi leaned in. "What?"
"A door beneath the school. Beneath the library. And a book... locked in a cage of light. It called me by a name I didn't recognize. But it knew me. It knew me."
Ishu grabbed his notebook. "What name did it use?"
Ansh shivered. "Sovaan."
The air in the attic went cold.
Vaishnavi's hands trembled. "That's not a name. That's a designation. In one of the glyph dictionaries, Sovaan means He Who Returns to Break the Cycle."
The next day, they snuck into the school library.
The librarian barely looked up as they slipped past shelves and descended into the restricted basement. No one had used the archive level in years. Dust choked the air.
"What exactly are we looking for?" Ishu whispered.
"Anything that hums," Ansh replied, his voice eerily calm.
They moved shelves, cracked open old trunks, and scraped mold off stone tiles. Then Vaishnavi found it.
A trapdoor. Metal. Sealed shut with three spinning locks—each engraved with the concentric circle symbol.
Ansh placed his palm on it.
It clicked open.
A spiral staircase led them downward. Walls flickered with moving shadows that weren't their own. The silence grew heavier the deeper they went.
At the bottom, a massive chamber opened around them. The architecture was impossible—walls bent inward like a dome seen from inside a mirror. Glowing veins pulsed along the floor.
At the center, floating above a glass pedestal, was the book.
It was chained with silver coils and bound in hide that shimmered between textures—sometimes bark, sometimes flesh.
The title was written in shifting script.
Ansh stepped forward.
The book spoke.
Not aloud—but inside their heads.
"Welcome back, Sovaan."
Ansh flinched.
"What are you?" Vaishnavi demanded.
**"The Chronicle of the Unraveled. The Record of All Keys. The Map of Cycles."
"You hold answers?" Ishu asked.
"I am answers. But answers carry a cost."
The chamber darkened. A figure emerged from the wall—a tall, androgynous being with no eyes, draped in decaying robes. The shadows recoiled from its presence.
"The First Archivist," Vaishnavi breathed.
It bowed to Ansh. "Your cycle approaches its zenith. You may take the book. But be warned: what you remember cannot be forgotten."
Ansh hesitated. Then reached out.
The moment his fingers touched the chain, time folded.
They stood in another world.
Dark sky, red stars. A landscape of twisted ruins and frozen titans.
In the distance, a mirror the size of a mountain floated mid-air—cracked down the center.
"This... is the First Cycle," the book intoned. "The world before the Watchers fell."
Ansh fell to his knees, gripping his skull.
"I remember! I... I was here! I was one of them!"
Visions flashed—Ansh walking among others cloaked in silver flame, holding a staff of bone and star-metal. Rituals. War. Betrayal.
He had opened the mirror before. He had shattered it.
"I was the one who let them in," he gasped. "I started the First Convergence."
Back in the chamber, Ansh collapsed.
Ishu caught him. Vaishnavi knelt and grabbed the book.
It no longer resisted.
But the chamber began to tremble.
"We triggered something," Ishu shouted.
A glyph burned into the floor. A timer? A warning?
"We need to leave!" Vaishnavi cried.
They scrambled up the spiral just as the ground cracked behind them. Screams echoed—some ancient, some recent. The trapdoor slammed shut behind them.
Back in the library, books flew off the shelves. The windows exploded outward.
They ran.
That night, back at Ishu's attic, they opened the book.
It now responded only to Ansh.
Inside were pages filled with scenes from other lives—every version of Ansh across time. Some were heroes. Others monsters. All were Keys.
"What does this mean for us?" Ishu asked.
Ansh closed the book slowly.
"It means we're running out of time. The next phase isn't coming. It's already here."