Alex planted the seed on Tuesday morning, at 6:10 AM, in the back bedroom.
He had thought about it for three hours, lying awake after the kiln. The panel said it could not be moved once planted. So wherever he put it, that place would be the door for the rest of his life. Not the college, where a thousand people walked every day. Not the empty plot behind the market, where anyone could build a mall next year. Not the kiln, where the army now had a sealed crack and probably a guard post.
His house. The back bedroom, which had been his parents' room, which he had not slept in since the funeral. It had a lock on the door and a window that faced only the wall of the next building.
He took the seed out of his inventory. It looked like nothing much. A dark grey stone, smooth, the size of a mango seed, slightly warm. He put it on the floor in the centre of the room, where the bed had been before he pushed it against the wall.
[Plant Dungeon Master (Seed) here? Yes / No]
He pressed yes.
The seed sank into the floor tiles like they were water. There was no light. No sound. Only a small grey circle on the floor, about the size of a dinner plate, that looked like a shadow with nothing above it to cast it.
[Pocket Realm created · Size: Level 1 · Owner: Alex] [Grows with your Tier and with the cores you feed it.]
He stepped on the circle.
And he was somewhere else.
Grey. That was the first thing. Grey ground, flat and hard like packed clay. Grey sky with no sun in it and no clouds, only a soft even light that came from everywhere at once, so nothing had a shadow. The air was cool and smelled of nothing at all. Not dust, not rain, not the bakery at the corner of his lane that he could smell even in his sleep. Nothing.
He walked. It took him about two minutes to reach the edge, where the grey ground just stopped against a soft grey wall that gave a little when he pushed it, like the side of a balloon. He walked the edge all the way around. It was roughly the size of the college football field, maybe a little smaller, and perfectly empty.
He stood in the centre and shouted.
Alex- " Hello! "
No echo. The sound just went out and didn't come back.
He laughed, alone in the grey, and the laugh didn't come back either.
A training ground. That was the first thought. A place where he could fight a summon at full strength without anyone in the colony calling the police about the noise. A place to test Tier 6 without breaking windows.
The second thought was colder. A place to put people.
People who needed hiding. People who needed to disappear for a while.
People who needed to be frightened.
He took a handful of the grey rat cores out of his inventory and dropped them on the ground. They sank in like the seed had. The wall at the edge moved outward, slowly, a metre, maybe two. The light got very slightly warmer.
[Cores absorbed: 31 · Realm growth: 4%]
So it ate cores. He kept the Stalker's violet egg. That one he wanted to understand first.
When he stepped back out, he was in the back bedroom and the clock on his phone said 6:14. Four minutes. He had been inside for at least fifteen.
Time ran differently inside. Faster inside, slower outside, or the other way round, he would have to test it. Either way it was useful.
He locked the door of the back bedroom and went to make tea.
In the afternoon, after college, he went back in and tested it properly.
He set a timer on his phone and left it on the bed outside. He set a second timer inside, on his watch. Then he summoned the Tier 4 sparring monster, the grey long-armed thing with no face that he had been fighting in the back bedroom with silence spells for weeks, and for the first time he let it go at full strength.
It hit him in the chest and he slid back two metres. That was all. Two metres. Last week the same punch had sent him through a cupboard.
He hit it back once, with Tier 6 behind the fist, and it went across the realm and bounced off the soft grey wall.
They fought for an hour by his watch. When he came out, sweating, the phone on the bed said fifteen minutes had passed.
One hour inside. Fifteen minutes outside. Four to one.
He sat on the bed and laughed again, because he could think of fifty uses for that, and at least ten of them were exams.
On Tuesday, the video came out.
By ten in the morning it was everywhere. A soldier's helmet camera, shaky, the sound cut out in places, but clear enough. A masked man in a black coat catching an army truck in mid-air with one hand. A masked man walking backwards in front of an eight-metre grey thing, throwing fire into its face. A chimney falling.
The news channels called him the Kiln Ghost. Someone on Twitter called him Mask Bhai, and that one stuck faster. A Bengali channel ran the clip nine times in one hour with a red BREAKING strip and a man in a studio saying it was a special forces experiment. A Hindi channel said it was aliens. An English channel had a retired general who said firmly that it was fake, while the clip played behind his head and showed that it wasn't.
In the canteen, John watched it on his phone eleven times.
John- " Bro. Bro. Look at his shoulders. This guy has gym-going shoulders. "
Marina- " He has a coat on. You can't see his shoulders. "
John- " I can see them in my heart. "
Sara wasn't watching the video. She was watching Alex. He drank his tea and looked at the notice board.
The army released one line in the evening. An unauthorised civilian was present at an incident site and is not affiliated with the Indian Army. That was all. No denial of the monster. No denial of anything.
Varma's men did not come to Alex's lane. Mrs. Banerjee reported from her balcony that a white car had driven past once, slowly, and not stopped. Then it went away and did not come back.
Alex spent Tuesday night at his laptop.
He sorted the ledger photos into folders. One folder for every family. Names, amounts, interest, how much paid. He made a simple spreadsheet, the way his father used to do the household budget, with the borrowed amount in one column and the paid amount in the next, and a third column for the difference. Some of the numbers in the third column were so big that he checked them twice.
He did not sleep much.
On Wednesday, Vikram came back.
He walked into the first lecture ten minutes late with a white plaster across the bridge of his nose and two purple shadows under his eyes, and the whole room went quiet. Somebody at the back made a small sound, like a cough, that was actually a laugh. Vikram heard it. His face went red under the plaster.
He didn't sit in the third row. He came to the back and stood in front of Alex's bench.
Up close, he looked tired. And frightened, a little, under the anger. Like someone who had been shouted at a lot at home.
Vikram- " After college, you'll learn. "
Alex looked up at him.
Alex- " Learn what? "
Vikram- " My father wants to meet you. "
Alex- " Does your father know you tripped on your own feet? "
The laugh in the room was louder this time. Vikram's hand closed into a fist. The professor cleared his throat. Vikram turned around and walked back to his seat.
John leaned over.
John- " Bro, don't go anywhere after college. I'm serious. Come with me. We'll go to Sara's house. "
Alex- " I'll be fine. "
John- " You said that before the race. Then a crack opened in the ground. "
At 2:30, the last bell went.
Outside the gate, parked half on the footpath, was a black Scorpio with tinted windows and a garland of lemons and chillies hanging from the front bumper. Two men were leaning on it. Through the windscreen Alex could see a third person in the front passenger seat, with a white plaster on his nose, looking straight ahead. One of them was the man in the black T-shirt from Malhotra's office. His knuckles had scabbed over.
Students walked past and pretended not to see. A peanut seller moved his cart a little further down the road.
Sara grabbed Alex's arm at the gate.
Sara- " Don't. Alex, I'll call my father. I'll call the police. Just don't. "
Alex gently took her hand off his arm.
Alex- " Go home with John and Marina. I'll message you by six. "
Sara- " Alex. "
Alex- " By six. Promise. "
He walked across the road. The man in the black T-shirt straightened up and smiled, and opened the back door of the Scorpio with a little bow, like a waiter.
Goon- " Sir is waiting. "
Alex got in without being pushed. In the front seat, Vikram's shoulders went stiff. He didn't turn around.
Alex leaned forward between the seats, close to his ear.
Alex- " Good. Let's go see your father. "