Recap:
After discovering a hidden book in a secret chamber below their school, Ansh unlocks a vision of the First Cycle, where he once shattered a cosmic mirror and triggered the Watchers' arrival. Now known as Sovaan, the Key, he begins to recover fragments of his forgotten past. But each answer births more danger, and the Watchers stir...
The following days felt... thin.
Reality, once firm, now flexed like old film—wavy, unreliable, threaded with whispers. Ansh noticed details that shouldn't exist: shadows moving faster than their casters, reflections in mirrors that lingered too long, streetlights blinking Morse-like patterns.
He didn't tell Vaishnavi or Ishu everything. Not yet. Because now, when he blinked, he sometimes saw another world superimposed on his own.
And worse—he remembered parts of it.
A fortress sculpted from thunderclouds. A silver river that flowed upward. Watchers kneeling before a great obsidian mirror...
He had led them there. Once.
"They're trying to breach," Vaishnavi said one night, pacing the attic.
She had circles under her eyes. Maps and notes littered the floor. The book they'd recovered—The Chronicle of the Unraveled—sat open, its pages reconfiguring even as they watched.
"The veil between our world and the Next is thinning. Every time you remember, Ansh, they push through more."
Ishu held up a newspaper. "Three people vanished yesterday. No signs. No struggle. Just... gone."
Ansh nodded slowly. "They're tests. The Watchers are tracing cracks. Preparing for a full breach."
Vaishnavi slammed her fist into the desk. "We have to seal them off. Reverse the convergence."
"I don't know how," Ansh admitted. "But maybe Sovaan does."
That night, Ansh returned to the chamber.
Alone.
The trapdoor resisted at first, but yielded under his hand. The spiral staircase pulsed with eerie blue light.
The book was waiting.
"You came alone," it said. "As Sovaan did before."
"Tell me how to stop the breach."
The pages turned. A new glyph surfaced—four interlocking circles.
"You must find the Four Anchors. Only they can hold the veil. Without them, this world becomes reflection."
"Where are they?"
"Scattered. Forgotten. One remains in Sompur. Beneath the Dusk Bell."
Ansh emerged from the library at dawn, his mind spinning.
He knew the Dusk Bell. A rusted, forgotten monument near the old railway line. It hadn't chimed in decades.
He rallied the others. By sunset, they were there—shovels in hand.
The bell stood crooked over a stone dais, its surface carved with vines and long-faded scripture. As they dug, the earth began to hum.
"I hear it," Ishu said, pausing. "Voices. Hundreds of them."
Vaishnavi gritted her teeth. "Keep digging."
Then metal rang out.
They struck a lid—a circular hatch etched with the four-circle glyph.
Ansh reached for it.
His hand burned.
The mark returned, flaring to life, brighter than ever. The hatch spun open.
Inside was a chamber no bigger than a bedroom, lit by ghostfire. In the center hovered a prism of light, suspended above a stone pedestal.
"That's it," Vaishnavi whispered. "The first Anchor."
Ansh stepped closer.
But then the walls shook.
A sound boomed from nowhere and everywhere—a bell tolling backward.
The prism flickered.
And the Watchers arrived.
They didn't walk. They unfolded—stretching out of thin air like shadows regurgitated from a hole in space.
Tall. Hooded. No faces—just shifting voids.
One reached toward Ansh.
Ishu threw a salt bomb Vaishnavi had rigged. It burst into flame, forcing the Watcher back—but only for a moment.
Ansh touched the Anchor.
The world halted.
He stood in a black field, stars blinking below his feet.
Opposite him was Sovaan—a version of himself clad in fractal armor, gaze glowing like dying suns.
"You've found the first tether," Sovaan said. "But the others are guarded by memory. Each step forward breaks a piece of you. Are you ready to lose who you are to become who you must be?"
Ansh clenched his fists. "I don't think I have a choice."
Sovaan smiled sadly. "That is the price of being the Key."
He raised his hand.
The prism ignited.
Back in the chamber, the Anchor flared.
The Watchers screamed—static and wind—and evaporated.
The earth fell silent again.
Ansh collapsed, drained but alive.
Vaishnavi caught him. Ishu grabbed the prism.
It was warm. Alive.
"One down," Ansh gasped. "Three to go."