The entrance to the Ovilious Astra Building was massive.
Rana stood before it — gun raised, finger resting near the trigger, eyes methodically scanning the darkened windows above. His breathing was controlled, his posture alert. The outer walls bore the accumulated damage of years — deep cracks running like fault lines through the surface, burn marks scorched into the stone, blast patterns frozen in time like signatures of battles long concluded. And yet the building stood. Stubborn. Silent. As though it had always known that someone would come — and had decided, long ago, that it would not fall until that moment arrived.
Rana glanced back once.
Smog. Darkness. Nothing.
"I'm alone," he said — to no one, to himself, to the empty air that offered no response.
Then he stepped inside.
The atmosphere changed the instant his foot crossed the threshold.
The smog and cold of the outside world gave way to something entirely different — a silence that was heavy, dense, almost physical. As though the air inside these walls had not been breathed in years, had remained undisturbed and sealed, waiting in the dark for precisely this moment. Blue emergency lights blinked slowly along the walls — one... two... one... two — their glow landing in small, scattered pools across the floor, appearing briefly before dissolving back into shadow. Darkness claimed everything else — the corners, the ceiling, the spaces behind broken and collapsed machinery.
And within that darkness, in one particular corner, something stood.
Rana kept his gun raised.
Every step was deliberate. Every sound registered. Every shadow received its moment of scrutiny.
And then —
A feeling.
Sudden. Unexplained.
As though someone was watching.
Rana stopped immediately. His breathing slowed. His eyes moved left — then right — then straight ahead. The blue lights continued their patient blinking. The figure in the corner did not move. No sound came.
"Who's there?" His voice was quiet — both warning and question folded into two words.
Silence answered.
He looked more carefully at the corner. Was something there — or were these simply shadows playing against the walls?
Imagination, he told himself. I'm alone.
But the feeling did not leave.
It sat in the air like an invisible weight — neither on the floor nor suspended above it — somewhere in between. Present. Undeniable.
He swept the space one more time — systematically, methodically.
Nothing.
Rana drew a slow breath and moved forward.
In the darkness — the figure had not moved a single inch.
When Rana's gaze had passed over that corner, the figure had held its breath entirely. Muscles locked. Body compressed into the shadow as completely as possible.
Rana's eyes had paused there for one second.
One second only.
Then continued past.
The figure exhaled — so slowly, so carefully, that the sound did not exist.
Its eyes remained fixed on Rana's back — carrying an expression that belonged to neither anger nor grief. Something else lived there. Something without a name. Something that had been dormant for years — and was, only now, beginning to stir.
Rana reached the scanner.
The same wall. The same hidden panel beneath it.
He looked at his hand for a moment — then drove his fist into the surface.
Mechanical whirring followed. The panel slid aside. The scanner revealed itself — red and blue lights alternating in their familiar rhythm. The same interface. The same design.
But this time, Rana was not afraid.
This time, he was ready.
He placed his eye against the eye scanner. His palm against the hand scanner.
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One second of silence so complete that he could hear his own heartbeat — steady, insistent, real.
And then —
ACCESS GRANTED.
Green light flashed. The vault door activated — heavy, slow, deliberate — as though it were making its own decision about whether to open at all. A grinding of metal echoed through the corridor. Then the door opened fully, completely, without hesitation.
Rana stepped inside.
The vault was small.
Remarkably small — as though it had been designed to hold exactly one thing and nothing more. The walls were smooth and unscratched. The floor was entirely free of dust — as though some invisible force had preserved this space against the decay that had claimed everything else in the building. The ceiling was low.
And at the center —
A box.
Rana stopped.
His eyes settled on it — one second... two... three.
It was medium in size. Perfectly rectangular. Its surface was so smooth that Rana could see his own dim, distorted reflection in it — a ghost of himself staring back. No scratches. No dents. No markings of any kind. No lock. No keyhole.
Completely sealed. Completely perfect.
But what stopped Rana more completely than anything else —
Was its color.
Green.
Faint — but unmistakable. As though the metal itself was breathing. As though something lived inside it, pressing gently against the walls of its containment, wanting to emerge — but held in place. Sealed with care. Sealed with intention.
Rana extended his hand slowly.
He touched it. Then lifted it.
And at that precise moment, in the darkness across the room, the figure's eyes caught the faint blue glow of the emergency lights — just for a fraction of a second — before returning to shadow.
The box felt extraordinarily solid in Rana's hands.
Like iron — but it was not iron. The density was different. The weight carried itself differently. The moment his fingers made contact, a faint vibration passed through them — so slight it might have been imagination. But it might not have been.
"What is this?" he asked quietly — to himself, to the sealed room, to no one who could answer.
He held it in both hands and examined it — top surface, bottom, left side, right. Every angle. Every edge.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
His frustration surfaced — and in a moment of impulse, he set the box down on the floor. Just for a second. Just to look at it from a different angle.
The box hit the floor.
And bounced.
Rana froze for a full second.
His hands moved forward instinctively and caught it on the way back up — pure reflex, nothing more.
He stood there. Box in hand. Completely still.
This metal... bounces?
He tried it again — deliberately this time. He let it go.
It hit the floor. It bounced. It returned upward.
He caught it.
"How is this possible?"
He knew metal did not behave this way. No ordinary metal behaved this way. This was something else entirely — something unlike anything he had encountered. But what it was, he had no answer for.
And as for opening it —
There was no way.
He searched the vault thoroughly — every wall, every corner, every inch of the floor. Looking for a hint. A mechanism. A clue of any kind.
Nothing.
Only that box — with its faint green glow — patient, silent, sealed against him.
"Zaneath..." His voice dropped to almost nothing. A whisper addressed to someone who could not hear it. "Why did you seal this? And the way to open it... where did you hide it?"
No answer came.
Only the green glow remained — steady, continuous, unmoved. As though the box existed on its own timeline. As though it would open when it chose to — or when the right person asked in the right way.
Rana sat down where he was, the box resting in his hands. For the first time in this entire journey — he was genuinely stuck.
No weapon. No plan. No answer.
Only a green glowing box — containing, somewhere inside it, everything that the future of the universe might depend on.
And Rana had no way to open it.
In the darkness across the room — the figure had not moved.
It was watching.
Rana. The box. Rana's hands gripping the box — knuckles white, grip unyielding.
Something lived in the figure's eyes — that specific expression that belongs to someone who holds the answer. Who knows the solution. Who understands exactly what the sealed thing contains and exactly how it might be opened.
But the time had not arrived.
Not yet.
The figure took one step backward — deeper into the darkness, further from the light.
Not yet.
Rana emerged from the vault, the green box still in his hands.
The blue emergency lights of the corridor blinked on as before — but their glow seemed to carry a different weight now, as though the building itself were watching him, waiting to see what he would do next. He looked up at the building stretching above him — three thousand floors — and understood that searching it for a clue would be almost impossible. Still, he decided to try.
He moved toward the staircase and began working his way upward, floor by floor. Sixth floor... seventh... eighth... each one the same — broken machinery, dead screens, old dust accumulated over years of silence. No sign. No hint. No indication that the answer to the box's secret was hidden anywhere in those spaces.
After searching several floors, Rana stopped in the middle of a corridor. And then another memory surfaced — the first time he had come to this building, the fifth floor had been filled with a dense, impenetrable smog. So thick that nothing could be seen through it. But now the air on that floor was completely clear. Normal.
Rana looked at it for a moment, mildly confused, then said quietly —
"You could have kept that smog going a little longer... but thank you. Perhaps because of it, I found the Leader. And because of the Leader, I learned half of the truth."
But the box remained closed. And the answer remained out of reach.
After a few more seconds of thought, Rana made his decision — the answer, if it existed anywhere, was with the Leader. He secured the box carefully and turned back toward the base.
He did not know he was not alone.
In the building's shadows, an unknown figure was already moving — following him, step for step. It moved with such absolute silence that Rana could not hear it, could not detect it, could not feel its presence. As though it had the ability to decide, entirely on its own terms, when Rana could perceive it and when he could not. The figure maintained its distance, keeping pace without sound, without any sign of its existence — as though the darkness itself had chosen to walk beside it.
On the other side of everything —
Earth.
The house had its lights on. But inside, everything was in darkness.
His mother had not left the prayer room. Not in hours. The incense had burned out long ago — she had not noticed. She sat before the shrine with her hands pressed together, her eyes swollen, the dried traces of tears marking her cheeks like paths that had been travelled too many times.
She no longer had the energy to cry.
But the tears kept coming anyway.
"Bring my son back... just once more... please don't let anything happen to my Rana..." — she had spoken these words more times today than she could count. And yet each time she said them, the pain was identical to the first. As though she were saying them for the first time. As though grief did not diminish with repetition — it only accumulated.
Her voice had stopped producing sound. Only her lips moved now.
Only her lips.
His father was outside.
Not once — three times he had gone out. Every street. Every lane. Every place Rana had ever been — the college, the canteen, the empty plot where the warehouse had once stood, the park, his friends' homes.
Every place —
Nothing.
A report had been filed at the police station. The officer had said — "We're looking." But those words had landed so hollow that his father had felt as though they had been spoken into empty air, swallowed by indifference before they could mean anything.
Now he was walking back toward home — empty-handed, each step carrying more weight than the last, his eyes wanting to cry and being held back by the same quiet discipline that had carried him through every difficulty of his life.
"Rana..." he said — softly, to himself, to the empty road that stretched before him in the dark.
Just a name.
But inside that single name lived an entire life.
Riya was in her room.
Phone in hand — Rana's number on the screen. The call log was filled with missed calls, her name appearing again and again and again at the top of the list. Over and over. Without ceasing.
Switched off.
The number you are trying to reach is currently unavailable.
She had heard this message more times in the last twenty-four hours than she could count. And yet each time, it produced the same sharp and specific pain — as though she were hearing it for the very first time.
She placed the phone on the floor quietly. Then covered her face with both hands.
And she cried.
This time she could not stop it.
The tears that had been building for hours — contained, compressed, held back through sheer will — came out now. In silence. Without telling anyone. As though a dam inside her had finally reached its limit and given way.
"Bro..." she said through the tears — her voice fracturing, her breathing uneven. "Where are you? Where did you go?"
From outside came the sounds of relatives — some still searching, some inside the house trying to support her parents. Friends too — Aman, Neeraj — they were out looking as well. The entire neighbourhood had woken up.
But Rana had not been found.
Riya looked out the window at the dark night. The street lights were on — but tonight they looked different. As though the world outside was exactly the same as always, and only this house had been broken.
"Come back..." she whispered.
And then —
Something happened outside the house.
No one arrived. No sound came. No knock at the door.
But there was something — a presence. Invisible. Weightless. Yet unmistakably there.
Whatever it was — it had not come through the door.
Rana's room.
Dark. Completely dark.
But within that darkness, a figure materialized — slowly, gradually, as though being assembled from the air itself. No dramatic entrance. No sound of any kind.
Simply —
It was there.
Xyolithian.
His eyes moved through the room systematically. The bed. The table. The shelves. The phone charger still plugged into the wall. The clothes draped over the chair. A half-finished water bottle standing on the desk.
Everything was exactly as it had been left — as though Rana had only just stepped out. As though he would return at any moment.
But the room held no Rana.
Xyolithian moved forward slowly. He reached the bed. Extended his hand — and touched the mattress.
Cold.
Not the cold of years. The cold of hours.
He has been gone for some time.
He moved to the window. Looked out — relatives, friends, police — all searching. A woman was crying against the shoulder of a relative — his mother — while his father could be seen approaching in the distance, empty-handed, each step heavier than the last.
Xyolithian observed all of it.
He listened.
His mother's voice reached him —
"My son... where did my son go..."
Xyolithian's eyes softened — for one single second. Only one. Then they returned to what they had been before. Calculated. Cold.
He moved out of the room and into the corridor. His father's voice was audible now —
"The police are saying to wait until tomorrow... but I cannot wait..."
His mother's voice followed, barely holding itself together —
"This happened a few days ago too... and now again..."
Xyolithian stopped.
A few days ago too...
His mind made the connection instantly.
The warehouse. The portal. The gadget. Zyphoros.
He has gone there.
One second of internal silence — purely within himself. Outwardly, he remained completely still.
Then Xyolithian turned slowly — back toward the room. Toward the absence of Rana. Toward the empty space where a person was supposed to be.
His voice was barely above a whisper — so quiet that only he could hear it. But it carried a weight that the air itself seemed to register.
"Rana..."
A pause.
"...what have you done — hiding from me like this."
And then his tone shifted. Whatever softness had visited for that one second — it was gone.
"You have made a very serious mistake."
Another pause — longer this time, weighted with something being decided.
"And for this mistake..."
His eyes fixed on something distant — something that only he could see, that existed somewhere beyond the walls of the room and the limitations of this world.
"...you will have to pay the price."
Silence held the room.
His mother's crying drifted in from outside.
And Xyolithian — just as he had arrived, without announcement, without sound —
Was gone.
The story was now moving in two directions simultaneously.
On one side — Rana, who had no idea that a shadow was following him through the darkness of a dead planet.
And on the other — Xyolithian, who now knew with complete certainty that Rana was not on Earth.
He was somewhere else entirely