Chapter 21 - Pillars of Era.
Time passed soon, the evening came and night followed, and Dhira woke up at night, the tent felt quieter than before, the air cooler, the faint crackle of a dying fire leaking in from outside. In front of him sat Dia, knees pulled close, absentmindedly tracing lines in the dirt with a small stick, while beside her rested the wooden mace, the same branch he had torn from the tree, now wrapped in strips of cloth, reinforced with some hardened resin that had dried along its cracks.
Dhira's eyes lingered on it for a second longer than needed before he spoke, voice still rough.
"What did you do to it?" Dia looked up, a little unsure, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
"I thought… it mattered," she said quietly.
"You used it to defeat that thing. I assumed it was some hidden artifact… maybe magic hiding its real form." Dhira let out a dry breath, almost a laugh but not quite.
"It's just a branch," he said, reaching for a fruit kept near him.
"Nothing special. You can throw it away." Dia hummed softly, not fully convinced, her eyes still drifting back to the mace like she didn't want to believe that.
As he shifted, the cloth around his arm slipped slightly, revealing dark veins spreading under his skin, like ink bleeding through paper. Dia's expression changed immediately, her fingers tightening around the stick.
"It's worse, after you drank soma it subsided but now it's back with vigour." she muttered, leaning closer without touching him.
"This… this isn't normal. I've never seen anything spread like this." Dhira didn't even look at it properly. He just took a bite of the fruit, chewing slowly.
"It's not an illness," he said flatly.
"It's poison." Dia blinked. "Oh… how come, where did you even get something like that?" She paused mid-sentence, her eyes widening slightly as something clicked.
"Wait… it was from Loky, right -" She stopped herself, hand quickly covering her mouth.
"I shouldn't have said that."
Dhira glanced at her, correcting without thinking.
"It's Loki. Not Loky." He swallowed. "And she didn't cause it. She just… delivered it." He takes another bite on the fruit tightened a little.
"The one behind it is Zeus." A sharp crack of thunder rolled across the sky the moment the name left his mouth. Dia flinched instinctively, her shoulders tensing as she looked up at the tent ceiling like it might split open. Dhira didn't react. He just stared ahead.
"He played me," he continued, quieter now.
"Set things up… pushed me where I needed to be." He exhaled slowly.
"They poisoned me." Dia frowned, trying to piece it together.
"Poison? That's why there is no cure for your illness." And then she remembered something.
"But… the rumors said he chose you. Made you his champion." Dhira shook his head.
"Rumors are easy to sell. Truth isn't." He tossed the fruit's seed aside.
"He offered. I said no. He didn't like that." A small pause.
"The rest followed."
Dia sat there for a moment, thinking, her fingers tapping lightly against her knee.
"So… to cure it…" she started slowly,
"We either need to reverse the poison or-" She hesitated, glancing at him. A third voice intersected.
"Or strong enough that poison won't work." Said Aatreya as he entered the hut. "You can see it yourself."
They both turned. Aatreya was already there, standing near the tent entrance like he had always been, one hand loosely resting by his side, gaze calm and unreadable. Dia straightened slightly.
"You mean… the place?" Aatreya gave a small nod. No explanation, no buildup. Just that. Dhira pushed himself up without another word, looked at the patched up branch and grabbed it out of habit more than needed, and stepped outside.
The night air was colder now as they moved toward the mountains, the path uneven, silent except for the sound of their footsteps and the occasional rustle of wind slipping through the rocks.
Soon they reached the entrance of a cave, its mouth half-covered by a massive stone door, old and worn, edges chipped like it had been opened too many times and yet not enough. Dhira stepped forward, placing both hands against it. His muscles tensed, veins dark under his skin, and with a low grind, the stone shifted, dust falling in thin streams as the door slowly gave way.
Inside, the cavern opened wide, far larger than it had any right to be. The air felt different, heavier, almost alive. At the center lay a vast blue pond, its surface shimmering softly, not like water reflecting light, but like it was glowing from within. The light moved, slow and deep, like something breathing beneath it. In the middle of that pond stood four pillars touching the top, two completely broken, jagged stumps rising barely from the ceiling, one half broken, cracked, as if holding on out of stubbornness, and the last… untouched. Smooth. Perfectly New, like it didn't belong with the others.
And between them, anchored in quiet stillness, stood a stone Shivling. The glow of the pond wasn't a reflection. It came from beneath, from something dense inside, something ancient. It was no other than Soma. Not drops. Not fragments. A pool of it.
Dia's steps slowed until she just stopped, eyes wide, trying to process what she was seeing. She rubbed her eyes once, then again, as if the image would change. It didn't. Her voice came out in a whisper, almost lost in the cavern.
"That's… not possible…"
And she heard Aatreya saying.
" The pond of ERAS, it was built by Lord Shiva itself."
" Each pillar of this cave symbolises an era, a yuga of the universe."
" Two eras have passed, one is about to and another is about to come. This pond symbolises the physical form of the universe and the starry sky of cosmos. Rumours say whoever takes a bath in this pond will live to see the end of the last era." And hearing this, dia asked, how many people had taken bath in it. And Aatreya said. " None so far." And dia asked, " Any reason?" And Aateya said,
" Many tried, many died trying, many didn't believe it, the pond wasn't intended to grant immortality, it was meant to represent."
And they all come near the pond, their reflection clear as day. Dia starred in amazement, Aatreya's face was covered in his pointed hood, and dhira couldn't recognize himself in the starry water, he was mesmerised by the beauty of it.
He heard aatreya saying. " The soma is deep.. Go and drink. One gulp can cure your poison. There isn't a poison strong enough to withstand it. Just remember, soma can have a maddening effect of consuming more than the body can take."
" History has seen many falls, it doesn't need another." And hearing this, Dia muttered.
" That's why God is always so angry."
Both men didn't care what she said, and Dhira without a word jumped in. The calm lake ripple, and the almost broken pillar seems to crack even further.
The small pond seemed deeper from what was outside, and inside of the pond also glowed like cosmos, and it looked like he was in space, the crystal clear water made sure of that. He reached down below and looked at the glowing huge reservoir of soma. It was immense. If the news of it got out even God's themselves wouldn't hesitate to grab it, and now it was all in front of him. He didn't hesitate.
Outside, Dia was watching the pond boredly, he had gone for too long. She voiced her thoughts and Aatreya said. Wait. And just after saying that, water on the surface seemed to go down, it lowered, and the cave seemed to get dimmer. "What the?" She said seeing the bizarre scene in front of her. " How could the pond's water could go down so fast?" She wondered and then it clicked the lowering water levels and dimming cave.
"No way." She said to herself. And aatreya said what she was thinking but not believing.
" He is drinking the pond dry."
" Is he gone mad? Didn't you tell him it'll have a maddening effect!" And Aatreya corrected.
" It'll have a maddening effect if he can't bear it."
Deep at the bottom of the pond Dhira was drinking the Soma like crazy , when he felt something off. He felt himself falling in darkness. He didn't know where he was going. Was it up or down? He didn't know. He started to feel lite all over, like something heavy he was carrying all his life, he finally dropped.
The world became quiet in the dark. The whole world became soundless and bottomless.
He gently closed his eyes .
" Dhira." He heard a low voice calling his name from afar.
His name echoed. Each echo held a different voice , different person.
"Dhira."
Then another.
Then it shifted, echoing the same.
"Warrior of Daansara."
Then it changed, another, and another, every title he had ever carried, every name he had ever been given, every legend built around him echoing through the void one after another, all in different voices.
The voices were calm. And they all sounded, almost disappointed.
"And now… you have fallen so far that you cannot even recognize yourself." Echoes stopped after this sentence.
The darkness rippled. A figure stepped forward.
It was him. The younger Dhira. Proud. Undefeated. Standing with the divine golden mace resting on his shoulder and something burning in his eyes that the current Dhira had not seen in himself for a long time.
The younger Dhira didn't speak. He rushed forward and the golden mace crashed into Dhira's chest, the ragged Dhira didn't expect an attack. His body folded and that attack launched him through the darkness. The world changed and he struck a mountainside hard enough to crack it and dropped to one knee.
Before he could recover the younger version was already there, ragged Dhira was rusted, he wasn't as fast , wasn't as agile as his younger self, and if showed . Another swing. Another impact. Another mountain shattered.
The voice came back, this time they kept speaking while the blows came.
"You ignored those who trusted you." A strike. "You abandoned your responsibilities." A strike. "You let admiration become pride." A strike. "You mistook strength for worth." A strike.
Each accusation was followed by a blow. Each memory became a wound that pained him like scars. Dhira felt himself sinking without water, somewhere deeper than the deepest ocean.
He was drowning beneath an ocean made entirely of his own mistakes, his own faults and guilt.
Then the voice asked one simple question.
"Who are you?"
Everything stopped.
The younger Dhira hesitated. The question moved through the silence. Who are you? The titles vanished. The cheers vanished. The stories dissolved. Only Dhira remained.
He stood slowly. Blood ran from his lip. His breathing was heavy. But his eyes were steady.
"I'm Dhira." He opened his eyes in the deep.
He was on the battlefield and his younger version was rushing at him. Dhira was rusted, but he hasn't forget how to fight. Dhira tilted to the left, the younger version missed the mark.
"I'm the brother of Vijay." Ragged Dhira cogged a fist, and punched.
The younger version stumbled. "I'm the friend of Manvar Rajraj." A jump kick followed to the face.
"The friend of fighter Raavi." Another strike across the chest.
"The friend of swordsman Jigya." The younger warrior attacked wildly now and Dhira met him without retreating, each of his younger self's moves dodged with precision.
"I am brother to some. Father to none. I was born a coward." Dhira punched his younger self on biceps, and The golden mace slipped from the younger version's grip. "And I'll die a warrior. Nothing can change that."
Dhira drove his shoulder forward and the younger version staggered back.
He pointed at himself. "I'm the fallen warrior." A step forward. "I'm the dead man walking." Then another. "I'm every title people gave me." Another. "And I'm every mistake I make." The younger Dhira rushed one final time. Dhira didn't step back. A tired smile crossed his face. Real and without performance.
"I don't care who they think I am."
The patched wooden mace appeared in his hand. Not divine. Not legendary. Just the branch. The weapon he had made casually.
"I was Dhira. I am Dhira. And I will always be Dhira."
Both charged. Younger self swings his Divine mace and the current just a branch. Wood met gold. The collision hit like thunder. A shockwave tore through the illusion, mountains shattering, the sky cracking open, the entire constructed world breaking apart at its seams.
The pond exploded upward.
Dia barely covered her eyes before a massive pillar of water erupted from the center of the cavern, shimmering droplets crashing against the pillars and walls. Then she saw the silhouette against the blue glow. The water cleared.
Dhira stepped forward bare-chested. Every scar gone. Every wound vanished. The dark veins that had spread through his skin for months were nowhere to be seen. His body looked like something recreated rather than recovered, every line of muscle present without appearing unnatural.
Water rolled off him as he raised his hands and gathered his loose hair and tied it behind his head with the practiced ease of someone who had done it ten thousand times. Against his chest the pendant of Lord Shiva rested still and unhurried.
Dia stared. For a long moment she simply stared, her mouth opened.
She had only ever seen him wounded or barely upright, covered in bandages or coughing blood in the dirt. Seeing him whole felt wrong in the way that good things feel wrong when you've spent too long without them. Like hearing a story about a man and finding him standing in front of you, smiling.
Dhira walked out of the pond. "What next." That was all he said in a confident war with a radiant smile.
Behind him the blue glow was fading. The pond was turning dark. Every drop of Soma was gone. The reservoir that had survived for ages had been consumed completely by a lone, single man.. Loki curse still existed but its grip had weakened to almost nothing and all faded. A blessing. And almost certainly a problem. Changes of that scale rarely passed unnoticed.
Aatreya handed him a cloth as he approached. "You drank it all."
Dhira wiped his face. "Yeah."
"What did I tell you about the maddening effects?"
Dhira stretched one arm then the other and looked at himself. "I don't see any."
"Your illness is gone."
"Figures." He walked past them and out of the cavern without another word.
Dia watched him go. Then she turned back to the pond. The water still held a faint shimmer but the brilliance that had filled the cavern was gone entirely. She walked to the edge and looked at the Shivling standing in the dimming light. She bowed slowly and held it. Then she straightened, turned, and left.
The cavern went quiet behind her.