Veda opened his eyes.
White. Everywhere. Endless white. No walls. No floor. No ceiling. Just an infinite void of nothing.
He stood on what looked like his own reflection. The ground beneath him was clear as glass. When he looked down, he saw himself staring back. Same face. Same grey eyes. Same horizontal scar across the bridge of his nose.
"Did I die?"
"No. You are still alive."
The voice came from beside him. Veda turned. The Watcher stood there in the form of Young Veda. Floating. Arms crossed. That ancient smile soft on his lips.
"Right now your body is unconscious. That punch really hit you hard. It has been two days already. You have been sleeping."
Veda smiled. "Two days."
He looked around at the white void. Then back at the Watcher.
"What happened to my mother?"
"The Phantom Clan rescued her. She is safe. Right now your body is lying in a medical capsule in their facility. They are checking your body and soul, running every test they can think of."
The Watcher laughed softly.
"Your words shook the world, child. Everyone is waiting to know if it is actually true. If you really are the Seventh Contractor. So what are you going to do next?"
Veda said nothing.
The Watcher watched him. The silence stretched between them like a drawn blade.
Then Veda spoke. His voice was quiet. Cold. Final.
"A grave does not ask who stands before it. It simply opens."
The Watcher tilted his head.
"You are playing with fire. If you come too close, it may burn you."
Veda smiled. There was no warmth in it.
"What can fire do to a dead body? I am already a corpse walking. I have nothing left inside me except one thing. And that one thing will destroy everything if it has to."
The Watcher looked at him with no emotion. His ancient eyes were calm. Unreadable.
"The Cosmic Law is watching. The universe is watching. The Heavenly Lord is watching. They are all waiting to see how you play this game. What will your next move be? They want to know if this tree will grow tall enough to touch the sky, or if it will wither and rot before the first fruit appears."
Veda stared into the endless white.
"Then let them watch."
---
He opened his eyes.
Green liquid. Thick and warm. He was floating inside a glass capsule, completely submerged. Wires stuck to his chest, his arms, his temples. An oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose. Through the liquid and the glass, he saw people in white coats running, shouting, pointing.
"The subject is awake! Call the head! Report this to the clan immediately!"
Their thoughts flooded his mind. Uninvited. Loud.
We cannot believe his body has this much soul energy. Such pure energy, even the High Rankers do not have this kind of flow.
I need to tell my people about this. It was actually true. He really is the Contractor.
This is history. We are witnessing something impossible.
One of the white-coated men was sweating. His heart raced. But he was smiling. Fear and excitement mixed together in his chest like poison and medicine.
Veda's eyes narrowed.
Then he heard her.
She was outside the room. Her voice was raw. Desperate.
"Please, let me see my son. It has been two days. He is not an Asura. He is innocent. Please."
Mother.
Veda looked toward the door. Through the walls, through the chaos, he could feel her. Her face was pale. She had not eaten in two days. Her eyes were hollow. Her hands shook.
Around her neck, she wore a black ring.
An energy blocker.
They had put a limiter on her. Treating her like an animal. Not like a mother who only wanted to see her child.
The liquid in the capsule began to shake.
Outside, alarms blared.
"The energy reading is spiking! The subject is trying to break out!"
Veda did not try. He simply decided.
The glass cracked. Then it gave. The liquid poured out in a flood. He dropped to the floor, wires tearing from his skin, the oxygen mask falling away. He stood naked except for the wires still clinging to his legs. He ripped them off. One by one.
Soldiers in black uniforms rushed in. Weapons raised. Barriers formed around him. Five layers of shimmering energy.
"Do not move! You are still in custody!"
Veda looked past them. Through the door. He could still feel her. His mother. Crying.
"I need to see my mother."
"You cannot go anywhere! Stay where you are!"
He touched the first barrier. It shattered like glass.
The soldiers' eyes widened.
Five more barriers snapped into place around him. Thicker. Stronger.
Veda touched them. They did not break.
He looked at the soldiers. His voice was calm.
"I am only asking to see my mother."
"You cannot! You must remain here for further research!"
One of the white-coated men stepped forward. His face was red. His voice sharp and loud, the way small men get when they are suddenly given authority over someone they fear.
"Shut your mouth! You are not going anywhere! We need to run more tests on you. How dare you try to escape?"
He pointed toward the corridor.
"And someone tell that woman outside to leave. Kick her out if you have to. She is disrupting our work."
The room went quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that comes from peace. The kind that comes right before something breaks.
Veda turned his head slowly.
He looked at the man.
The man's confidence lasted about two seconds after their eyes met. Then it was gone. His mouth opened. Nothing came out. Whatever he saw in Veda's eyes was not anger. Not hatred. It was worse. It was the look of someone who had already decided and was simply waiting for his body to catch up.
The barriers exploded. Not cracked. Exploded. Energy tore through the room. The white-coated man turned to run.
He did not make it one step.
Veda crossed the distance before the man's foot left the floor. His hand closed around the man's throat and drove him backwards into the wall. Hard enough to crack the tiles. The man's head bounced off the surface. His legs kicked uselessly. His fists swung against Veda's arm like a child hitting stone.
"You spoke about my mother."
The man tried to say something. Veda's grip tightened.
"You said to kick her out."
"Please... let me go... please..."
"I am sorry... I am sorry..."
Veda tilted his head.
"Sorry is a word people use when they are afraid. Not when they mean it."
Tears ran down the man's face. His lips moved. No sound came out.
A soldier raised his rifle. "Let him go or we shoot!"
Another lunged with a blade.
Veda raised his free hand. An invisible wall of light erupted. The blade shattered. The bullets stopped in the air and fell like dead birds.
Veda looked at the man in his grip. The man's face was turning blue. His eyes had begun to roll back.
"You work so hard. You need some rest now. Let me help you."
He squeezed tighter. The man's mouth opened wide. His eyes lost focus.
"Have a sweet dream."
Veda raised his other hand. Made a fist.
Then he punched.
The man's head burst like a balloon. Blood sprayed across Veda's face, his chest, his arms. The body went limp. Veda let it fall.
The room was silent for one heartbeat. Then chaos.
"MONSTER!"
"He is not human! Sir Arjuna was right!"
"FALL BACK! FALL BACK!"
Veda straightened up. He looked at the soldiers, the researchers, the men with rifles shaking in their hands. He looked at all of them the same way. Like walls. Like furniture.
"So loud," he said.
The energy that left his body did not roar or explode. It passed through the room the way a cold wind passes through an open window. Quiet. Total. Everyone it touched simply folded. Soldiers. Researchers. Men mid-scream. They dropped where they stood. Eyes shut. Chests rising and falling. Alive.
Veda stood alone.
Blood on the floor. Blood on his face. Bodies around him like fallen leaves.
He walked to the door and opened it.
The corridor outside was long and white. Two soldiers stood guard. Beside them, his mother.
Priya saw the door open. She saw a man covered in blood walk out. Her son.
The two soldiers reached for their weapons.
Veda looked at them. Just looked.
Their hands froze on the hilts. Their bodies locked. Neither of them could explain it afterward. It was not a technique they recognised. It was not energy suppression or soul pressure. It was something simpler. It was the feeling a body gets when it understands, somewhere below thought, that the thing standing in front of it is not something it can fight.
Both soldiers stood trembling. Eyes wide. Hands still.
Veda walked past them without another glance.
Priya ran to him.
"Beta!"
Her hands went to his face. Her fingers came away red. Her eyes searched him, frantic, moving across every inch of him looking for the wound that must be there, the cut that must explain all this blood.
"What happened? Why are you covered in blood? Are you bleeding? Did they hurt you?"
Her voice cracked down the middle.
"How dare they do this to my child..."
Veda watched her face. He let her search. He let her hands move over him. Then he raised his bloody hand and touched her cheek gently.
"Mother. I am fine."
She shook her head. Tears kept falling.
"No. No, you are not fine. Look at you. We need to go. We need a doctor."
Veda glanced back at the two soldiers. Still frozen. Still trembling like men standing at the edge of a very long drop.
He looked back at his mother.
"Call the clan leader." His voice was low. Settled. The kind of voice that does not ask twice.
"I need to have a word with him."
Inside a dark room, Adhira Pratap sat in a high-backed chair. Before him, a wall of monitors displayed every corner of the facility. One screen showed Veda standing in the hallway, covered in blood, his mother clinging to his arm. Another showed the destroyed capsule room. Bodies on the floor. Blood on the walls. The wreckage of five barriers and one man's skull.
Behind Adhira, five figures stood in the shadows. Their faces were hidden. Only their voices emerged.
"He is like a wild beast. Uncontrolled. Unpredictable."
The first voice was deep. Calm. A man with broad shoulders and a scarred neck.
"Headquarters said they are sending their people to monitor this matter. They want eyes on him at all times."
The second voice was sharper. Younger. Impatient.
"Every kingdom is reacting. I have received messages from the Northern Territories, the Eastern Coalition, even the Island Nations. They all want to know the same thing. Is it true? Is there a new Celestial Contractor while the Sixth still rules?"
The third voice was a woman. She laughed. A loud, bright sound that filled the dark room.
"The energy readings are completely different from the Sovereign's Celestial data. Different from the other Celestials we have records of. The colour, the flow, the signature. It is something new. Something we have never seen."
The fourth voice was quiet. Almost a whisper. An old man, perhaps.
"The Sovereign has been ruling for three centuries. Three centuries of silence. Three centuries of watching. And now this boy appears. The timing is not a coincidence."
Adhira raised his hand. The room went quiet.
He looked at the monitor. The boy was staring directly at the camera. Not at the lens. Through the screen. Through the walls. Through the distance between them.
Adhira smiled.
"Many will come for him. That is not a question. The question is whether he survives them."
He leaned back.
"I do not know if this boy is a blessing or a curse. But I know this. He carries the Fourth Celestial. The one that slept in the Void for millions of years. That Celestial has awakened. And it chose him."
The woman's laughter had died. Her voice came out quieter now.
"The Fourth Celestial. I thought it was a legend. A story told to children."
"Legends do not shatter glass capsules," Adhira said. "Legends do not make soldiers freeze where they stand. Legends do not bleed and walk out smiling."
He pointed at the screen.
"The first five are dead. The Sixth still rules. And now this boy. His Celestial is different from all of them. I do not know what this means for the world yet."
"And the Sovereign? Does he know?" The young voice spoke again.
Adhira was quiet for a moment.
"The Sovereign knew the moment the boy's soul entered this world. He knew when the contract was sealed. He probably knew before the boy was born."
He stood.
"The question is not whether he knows. The question is what he will do about it."
He walked toward the door.
"Prepare a proper room for the boy."
He walked out.
The monitors flickered. Veda's face remained on the screen. His pale eyes caught the light and held it.