The makeshift leg held, but every step was a fresh lesson in torment. Akshat limped through the dense undergrowth, the wooden barrel scraping against roots and stones, the combat knife buried in his calf acting as a brutal anchor.
Pain radiated up his thigh with each awkward thrust forward, but the Initiator serum kept the worst at bay—bleeding minimal, bones knitting slowly beneath the surface. His right side remained a void: no arm, just a ragged absence that pulled at his balance. The magnum weighed heavy on his left hip, the hatchet and knife his only reliable tools.
Three hundred meters downstream, the river had quieted to a murmur, but the jungle pressed in, alive with unseen eyes.
"Master," Veronica's voice chimed softly through the glasses, her avatar flickering with concern. "Your left wrist device—the watch we recovered from the lab. It contains advanced bio-fabrication protocols. Attach it to the right stump. It can… compensate."
Akshat paused, leaning against a gnarled tree trunk. Sweat stung his eyes. "Compensate? What the hell does that mean?"
"Trust the process. The old master designed it like this."
With a grunt, he unstrapped the watch from his left wrist and pressed it against the torn flesh of his right arm. For a moment, nothing. Then came the sensation—tiny, writhing tentacles emerging from the device, cool and metallic at first, then warming as they interfaced with exposed tissue and bone.
They wove, layered, and fused. Muscle analogs formed, synthetic nerves threading through, armored plating smoothing over. Within minutes, a biomechanical right arm took shape: sleek, segmented, with articulated fingers that flexed with unnatural precision. It hummed faintly, power cells syncing to his biology.
Akshat stared at it, opening and closing the hand. The grip felt strong—stronger than flesh. "oh… it can do it," he muttered, a tired, disbelieving laugh escaping him. For the first time since the waterfall, something like hope flickered. Not whole, never whole again, but functional. He thought of his mother's scream, the arm in her hands, and clenched the new fist until the plating creaked. "Thanks, grandfather. Wherever you are."
He pushed onward, roaming the forest in widening circles. Hours blurred. He scanned for landmarks—anything familiar, a trail, smoke, ruins that might lead back toward civilization. The jungle offered only more green hell: twisted vines, distant animal calls, the occasional glint of abandoned tech half-swallowed by moss. His mind wandered to his family. Gunjan's face haunted every shadow. Ritik's protective rage. Kurana's calculations. They thought him dead. The grief they carried now… it fueled him more than the serum.
Deeper in, where the canopy thickened and light turned emerald, he found it.
An unknown circle etched into the ground, perhaps three meters across. Symbols, runes, mathematical encryptions layered in concentric rings—some glowing faintly with residual energy, others faded like ancient scars. It didn't belong here. Not in this reclaimed wasteland of broken cities and bio-cataclysm.
"Veronica," Akshat said, voice low. "Mark the coordinates. Scan and learn these image patterns, each and everything."
The AI's overlay activated, lenses whirring softly. "Done, Master. Analyzing… The formation is incomplete and has some missing key nodes. But I have an idea to complete it. The symmetry suggests—"
"Wait," Akshat cut in, crouching awkwardly on his barrel-leg. "First of all, how the hell does a formation circle like this end up in an abandoned area? This looks… magical or something insane."
Veronica's avatar tilted her head, digital eyes narrowing. "Mathematically, it corresponds to coordinates for the 32nd moon of the pole star of Vaelion."
Akshat blinked. "Just how the hell did you calculate this thing?"
"The old master liked to do these things," she replied simply, as if that explained everything. "Hidden puzzles, contingency anchors. Layers within layers."
He shook his head, standing with a wince. "I ain't doing timepass by completing some dumb circle. We need to find a way home, not play archaeologist in the middle of nowhere."
But as he turned to leave, curiosity gnawed at him. The circle pulsed faintly, like it was waiting. The biomechanical arm tingled in response. Resting against a nearby rock, he exhaled sharply. "Damn it."
He picked up the hatchet, using the flat backside to etch the missing patterns careful strokes guided by Veronica's overlays. Each line felt heavier than the last, as if the ground itself resisted or welcomed the completion.
"Master, are you certain?" Veronica asked, a note of hesitation in her synthesized voice.
"Shut up and guide me."
---
The final mark clicked into place. "See? What happened, Veronica?" Akshat said, stepping back with a smug, exhausted grin.
The biomechanical right hand born from the watch began to glow. Plates shifted and opened along the forearm with a soft mechanical hiss. A small, crystalline stone levitated out, drawn like a magnet toward the circle's center. It settled perfectly.
Light erupted. The entire formation ignited in radiant lines, energy crackling upward in veils of violet and gold. The air hummed with power.
"Master!" Veronica shouted, her avatar glitching with alarm. "It's a teleportation matrix! Get back—!"
Akshat stumbled, eyes wide. "WTF are you saying? How can magic exist in this world? This is bullsh.."
"The magic is not in this planet," she snapped back, voice rising in that cute, indignant tone she sometimes adopted during arguments. "It was stored in the stone! You just had to complete the horror show of an unknown circle, didn't you? I suggested completing the patterns for analysis, not for you to go full ritualist in the middle of a death jungle!"
"Oh, so now it's my fault?" Akshat shot back, half-laughing, half-angry as the light intensified around him. "You're the one who said 'I have an idea to complete it,' all mysterious and helpful! 'The old master liked these things,' you said. Like I needed more cosmic crap in my life after losing an arm and a foot!"
"Because you never listen to the full risk assessment!" Veronica's avatar puffed her cheeks in digital fury, a surprisingly cute expression for an AI. "I calculated the coordinates, warned about incompleteness, and you—Mr. 'I ain't doing timepass'—decide to scratch it out with a hatchet like it's therapy! What if it sent us into a star? Or worse?"
"Well, maybe if your offline maps weren't useless and your old master wasn't a cryptic bastard, we wouldn't be here!" Akshat retorted, bracing as the world blurred. Despite the anger, there was a strange affection in the bickering—it felt human, grounding amid the terror. "Next time, keep your ideas to yourself unless they come with a warning label the size of the Purple Sun God's ego!"
The light swallowed them whole. Akshat's eyes twitched violently behind closed lids, vertigo slamming into him like another fall from the cliff. Then, silence.
He opened his eyes.
Purple sky stretched overhead, vast and alien, dotted with unfamiliar constellations. A massive sun-like star dominated the horizon, casting a warm, reddish glow over everything. The soil beneath him was crimson, fine and dusty, crunching under his barrel-leg. Distant spires or ruins shimmered on the horizon—unnatural geometry that hurt to look at directly. The air smelled of ozone and something metallic, thinner than Vaelion's but somehow fresh.
Terror clawed up his throat. "Veronica… where the hell are we?"
The AI's avatar reappeared, looking equally stunned. "We are on the 32nd moon of the pole star💀"
Akshat sat there in the red dust, biomechanical hand flexing involuntarily, the weight of his broken body and newfound reality crashing down. Thoughts of his family—mourning him back home—twisted like a knife. He had completed the circle chasing a thread of curiosity, influenced by Veronica's guidance and his own stubborn need to understand. Now he was light-years away, or whatever the cosmic equivalent was, one-armed no more but still half a man, with a wooden leg and dwindling supplies.
"Great," he whispered, voice thick with a mix of dread, wonder, and bitter humor. "Just great. Mom… Dad… I'm sorry."
Veronica's tone softened after their earlier spat. "Master… we will find a way back. The stone's energy signature might still be traceable. But first, survive this place."
Akshat nodded slowly, pushing himself up. The pole star burned overhead, indifferent and ancient. Whatever trials awaited on this moon, the purge of his life had only just begun. He gripped the magnum with his new hand, eyes hardening.
"Survive," she echoed. "Then find the way home."