✦ THE DEMON ✦
The earth trembled and buckled.
With a sound of a collapsing mountain, a monstrosity dropped from the sky, slamming into the road with enough force to send shards of stone and hot embers gevouring the air. Arjun and Gopi were thrown backward, their bicycle skidding through the soot as they scrambled for balance.
Arjun's gaze climbed the creature with a sickening, involuntary fascination. He traced the cracked, obsidian-like talons that had shredded the road, up the towering, muscular frame, to a head crowned with jagged, obsidian horns and pointy helmet. Its eyes were twin pits of serpentine fire, glowing with a cold, predatory intelligence. Beneath its leathery skin, veins of dull, rhythmic crimson pulsed.
Its wings unfurled, vast enough to blot out the blood-red sky. A barbed tail scraped against the ground behind it with a sound like a knife on a wetstone.
Then it laughed—slow and deliberate. A sound that crept into their bones.
Arjun's heart hammered. Gopi's legs trembled, locked by terror.
The forest seemed to recoil in its presence; the leaves turned brittle, and the shadows stretched into twisted, agonizing shapes.
The road behind them burns.
The demon's smile widened, revealing rows of teeth like serrated daggers. He loomed over them, its massive frame radiating an oppressive, gravitonic force that seemed to bend the very air. Those glowing red eyes drifted over the boys, sharp and searching, scanning them with the clinical detachment of a butcher at a market.
He was looking for something desperately.
"Look at you," the demon mocked, a low, guttural laugh rattling in its chest as it sneered down at Gopi. "Hair like a mangy ape, a bloated, doughy face, with the terrified expression of a cornered sewer rat. And these trembling legs... There is no life in these pathetic, trembling sticks. You aren't the one I'm looking for. Now crawl aside, you miserable little worm."
Then, with the suddenness of a lightning strike, the demon's gaze snapped upon arjun standing beside gopi.
"But you seems interesting". He pointed his finger towards arjun, His eyes began scanning him from head to toe suddenly locked onto his left wrist.
"The Serpent Symbol." He shrieked upon looking at his wrist.
For a heartbeat, Everything fell silent.
Then a hysterical laugh tore through the forest, ripping violently from the demon's throat. as he raised a clawed finger and pointed directly at Arjun's hand, his laughter thick with madness and triumph.
"Ahh… look at this!" He sneered, his voice a guttural rasp dripped with mockery.
"The universe truly does have a sense of irony."
"The boy I have hunted for decades across every dimension mindlessly suddenly appears before me—without any warning, without any preparation."
Than He looked directly into Arjun's eyes looming his shadow over him "Tell me, kid… do you have any idea what kind of destiny is crawling right behind you?"
Arjun trembled, fear threatening to shatter him. Yet something deep within forced him to stand firm. Gathering the last fragments of his courage, he broke the silence.
"Who are you?" he demanded, his voice shaking but steady enough. "What do you want from us? And what are you looking for?"
He met the demon's gaze directly—fear burning in his chest, but defiance blazing in his eyes.
The demon paused.
Amused.
A slow smirk curved its grotesque face as it stepped closer, the ground crunching beneath its weight.
"Hah. Fascinating," he murmured, "You are the first mortal in this world of weaklings I have encountered in an age who does not simply crumble into a heap of terror at my feet. But then, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I know exactly what hides beneath that fragile skin of yous. the very secret that sets you apart from the rest of all."
Arjun clenched his fists, glaring right back into the creature's eyes.
"One thing is clear, the uglier the face, the more mindless the garbage coming out of it," Arjun snapped, refusing to back down. "Instead of speaking in these worthless riddles, why don't you just say whatever you have to say clearly? Cut the trash talk, you oversized freak!"
The demon's eyes flared, two pits of stoked embers. "I can see the gears of your small mind turning, boy—wondering what this 'mad creature' is babbling about. I understand your frustration, But listen well. And don't panic, because what I am about to reveal will shatter the foundations of your world until nothing remains of the life you knew."
The demon raised a singular, jagged claw, pointing once more to the mark on Arjun's wrist. "That symbol is no mere birthmark.
Anyone who bears that mark is no common man." The demon leaned in.
"He is an Avatar."
The words struck like thunder.
Both boys stared at each other, stunned—confusion and disbelief etched across their faces. The meaning refused to settle in their minds.
"I had warned you before boy, that this revelation would leave you in utter disbelief" he passed a grin smile at them.
And before either of them could speak, the demon lunged forward, stretching its clawed hand toward Arjun. The air thickened instantly, heavy and suffocating.
The demon's claw pressed against Arjun's symbol on his hand.
As his claw pressed, the serpent symbol glowed; it ignited. A brilliant, blinding cobalt-blue flame erupted from Arjun's skin, swallowing him in a pillar of celestial fire. His eyes flared wide, transformed into twin beacons of that same terrifying, radiant light.
A violent shockwave of raw, unfiltered energy tore outward with the force of a collapsing star. Trees were snapped like dry twigs, and the very soil was stripped from the earth. The demon—was hurled backward like a broken ragdoll, crashing through the dense branches before slamming into the jungle floor with a sickening thud. It let out a guttural groan of agony, half of its body burnedand smoked from the divine contact.
Gopi could only stare, though he wasn't harmed in the explosion, his jaw hanging slack, his mind reeling. Arjun stood in the center of the scorched clearing, a silent sentinel wrapped in fading embers, his eyes still shimmering with a dying blue light.
"Arjun!" Gopi finally shrieked, his voice a mix of primal terror and religious awe. "What in the gods' names was that?
Arjun didnt answer his question or reacted upon hearing, he stood motionless, like a hollow vessel.
"Hey! Speak to me!" Gopi scrambled toward him, panic surging as he realized Arjun's gaze was vacant. "Are you.. are you alright, could you hear me?"
Arjun's eyelids fluttered finally. The cobalt glow vanished as quickly as it had arrived. He gasped, his knees buckling as he surged back into consciousness.
"Gopi…" he wheezed, clutching his chest. "What… what just happened?"
Gopi gaped at him, his hands waving frantically at the smoking crater where the demon had been. "What happened?! You just blasted a five-meter demon across the jungle with a massive fire of blue explosion, you were carrying almost a sun like lighting bolt inside you? and you're asking me for the details?!"
Arjun looked at the scorched, black hollow in the earth, then turned his vacant gaze back to his friend.
"Explosion..." he muttered. "Then why are you still standing there completely in one piece?"
Gopi clenched his teeth in frustration, completely speechless at the bizarre, timing of his remark.
Arjun than shook his head, dazed and shivering as the adrenaline began to sour in his veins. "I swear to you… I felt nothing but a strange warm heat spreading over my body."
He looked toward the shadow in the trees where the beast lay groaning. "Well, if Whatever you said is perhaps true, than We have to leave this place. Now. Before that thing remembers how to stand again."
Gopi didn't need a second invitation. Both of them immediately turned backwards riding on the bicycle and dived into the dense, tangled maw of the jungle in front of them, abandoning the road and vanishing into the safety of the shifting shadows.
✦ THE HUNT BEGINS ✦
High above the burning forest, the crimson clouds still churned violently around the eclipsed moon. From that blood-stained sky, two winged silhouettes circled like carrion birds drawn to slaughter.
They felt the presence of a sudden surge of high energy and the anonymous power.
And saw a coil of smoke rising from below the ground.
With a thunderous beat of leathery wings, the two demons descended rapidly, reaching towards the source, cutting through the smoke and ash until they reached the epicenter of the blast. The forest floor below was scorched black, trees snapped like broken bones, the earth torn open as if struck by divine wrath.
At the center of the devastation lay their leader.
The once-dominant demon now writhed inside a smoldering crater, its body half-burnt, flesh cracked and blackened, crimson energy leaking from its wounds like molten lava. Smoke rose from its charred form as it snarled in pain, claws digging furiously into the soil.
Both the flying demons touched down beside their fallen commander, they knelt instinctively, their heads bowed.
Unadultured Rage, pure and corrosive, burned in the leader's eyes—a volatile mixture of agony and absolute disbelief.
"That power…" the demon hissed, its voice a jagged rasp that shook with a terrifying blend of fury and starved hunger. "There is no more room for doubt. The scent is unmistakable."
It struggled to heave its charred torso upward, the scorched obsidian of its skin flaking away like burnt parchment. His glowing eyes blazed with a renewed, fanatical obsession filled with rage.
"Go," He snarled, spitting a mixture of black blood and hot ash onto the ruined earth.
He pointed a trembling, taloned finger toward the lightless depths of the trees and bushes.
"Search every shadow. Sift through the dirt of this wretched jungle. Those two boys… they cannot be allowed to reach the safety of that sanctuary. The Avatar must not escape. And whatever you do, do not dare return to me empty-handed. Otherwise, I won't hesitate to amputate your limbs and burn you alive, just like those poor villagers."
His voice dropped into a venomous whisper "Bring them to me alive. I want to see the light break in those blue eyes myself."
The frightened demons offered a final, low bow in fear, before launching themselves skyward. The snap of their wings sliced through the stagnant air like the crack of a whip. They vanished into the charcoal clouds, spreading out in a wide, lethal arc to encircling the forest.
The hunt had truly begun.
...