The night was unnaturally still.
Aryan sat on the roof of his home, the city below veiled in soft silence, moonlight bleeding across the skyline like a memory fading into shadow. He held the old iron chain in his hand—the one that had rattled during his awakening.
It wasn't just a chain anymore.
It was a relic now. A tether between the past and the present. Between him… and something older.
He closed his eyes, letting the cool wind wash over him. His mind drifted to Veer—the boy with dead eyes and no resonance. A puppet of something deeper. A weapon forged not by divinity, but by doctrine.
The Hunter's Creed.
"KAZIM," Aryan whispered. "What is the chain?"
The response came in a soft vibration of his phone. No text. No sound. Just a pressure, a presence, and then… a memory.
Flashes. A man in white robes. A ritual circle drawn in ash. A chain like his, wrapped in symbols not seen for millennia.
"Chains are not meant to bind," the voice finally said through the phone's speaker. "They are meant to protect."
Aryan gripped it tighter.
Across town, Aarna was not sleeping either. She was seated in a circle drawn from salt and turmeric, lit by four flames—north, south, east, and west. She was trying to access her resonance not through brute control… but through understanding.
Her power wasn't like Aryan's. It wasn't fury or force—it was intuition. The ability to connect invisible threads, to see what others missed.
As she breathed deeper, the candlelight flickered unnaturally, dancing in rhythm with her heartbeats.
And then she saw it.
A web. Not metaphorical, but literal—an ethereal map of connections between awakened souls. Like neurons in a global mind. At its center pulsed something black and ancient. Not evil… but wrong.
She opened her eyes and gasped. Her candles had all extinguished simultaneously.
She was being watched. Again.
The next day, Aryan and Aarna skipped classes. There was no point pretending this was a normal life anymore.
Instead, they returned to the ruins behind the old temple where Aryan first heard the divine voice. The place where the veil between worlds felt… thinner.
"KAZIM, tell us everything. No riddles this time," Aryan demanded, placing the chain on the temple floor.
The air around them shivered.
The phone screen turned black. Then, in glowing blue:
"There is a Circle. Older than the Creed. Older than the Hunters. They were the first to awaken."
Aarna stepped closer. "Are they alive?"
KAZIM's voice answered through the speaker now, hollow and low.
"Some are. Some have become more than alive. They do not hunt. They do not lead. They observe."
"Then what do they want from us?" Aryan asked.
"They are waiting… for one who can unite resonance and restraint. Power and peace. Fire and thought."
Aryan looked down at the chain, then up at Aarna.
"Are we being tested by two sides?"
"No," Aarna said quietly. "We're being chosen."
That evening, Aryan felt a tremor beneath his feet as he walked alone near the riverbank.
Not an earthquake.
A presence.
He turned—and there, in the distance, stood another new figure. Older. Dressed in simple robes. No aura. No fear. Just… serenity.
But his eyes—ancient. Infinite.
"You're not a hunter," Aryan said.
"No," the man replied. "I am a Seer. Of the Circle."
He stepped forward, his sandals not even disturbing the dust on the path.
"You carry the chain. You've begun the Path. But now… you must decide."
"Decide what?"
"If you will walk the circle willingly… or be dragged into it by consequence."
Aryan didn't answer right away.
Then he asked, "What happens if I fail?"
The Seer smiled.
"Then the storm will not break. It will consume."
That night, Aryan returned to his room. He placed the chain around his neck—not as armor, but as reminder.
He looked at his reflection in the mirror.
Not a boy anymore.
A storm in waiting.
And above all, a question burned in his mind—
Was the Circle watching… or waiting?