In the depths of the Earth, older than any empire, older than any god, something stirred. Not in the way of shifting tectonic plates or molten rivers of magma, but something else—something conscious. A pulse.
It had no name, for it had outlived all who once tried to name it.It had no form, for it had taken many.And tonight, under a rare celestial alignment unseen for millennia, it awoke.
Delhi, India — Present Day
Arjun Dev was running late.
Cadet Fourth Year, National Defense Academy—5'10", sharp black eyes that betrayed every moment of disobedience he'd never been caught for, and a jawline that had been broken once during combat drills. He wasn't the best in the batch, but damn near the most unpredictable. His superiors loved him. His instructors hated him.
And now, he was sprinting past sandstone arches in full uniform, cursing himself.
"Fifth bell already? Dammit!" he muttered, hopping over a low railing.
The reason for his tardiness wasn't laziness—it was obsession. Last night, Arjun had spent hours digging through a dusty box of his grandfather's war memorabilia. Letters from 1962. A rusted medal. A piece of parchment with a circular seal that no historian had ever identified. The old man had fought in the Sino-Indian War, but this seal wasn't Indian. Nor Chinese. It looked older. Alien, even.
As the Academy's lecture bell rang, echoing like an execution drum, Arjun ducked into the rear door of the auditorium. He gave a brief salute to the supervising officer, who rolled his eyes but said nothing.
The projector clicked on. The title slide read:"Conflict Beyond Time: Lost Wars and Forgotten Kingdoms."
Arjun froze.
He didn't know why, but his heart skipped a beat. The seal in his pocket—he hadn't even told anyone about it—matched the symbol in the background of that slide.
Beijing, China — Present Day
Liu Xue was reading a banned manuscript.
Not technically banned—just "lost" in a bureaucratic void of academic disapproval and mythological dismissal. But that never stopped her. 23 years old, with the posture of a dancer and the eyes of someone who rarely blinked, Liu was a postgraduate archaeology student at Tsinghua University.
Her mentor, Professor Wen, had reluctantly agreed to let her read The War of Clouds, an apocryphal scroll allegedly penned during the Tang Dynasty. It spoke of kingdoms swallowed by time, of kings who ruled over empires that weren't part of any known history.
And in the margins—written in faded red ink—a phrase:
"When the Earth sighs and the stars align, the chosen shall walk where gods have died."
She didn't know why the phrase struck her. It felt like a memory instead of a prophecy. And when she laid her hand over the scroll's edge, she felt warmth—not metaphorical warmth, but real heat.
Outside, lightning struck from a cloudless sky.
Somewhere Beneath the Himalayas
The pulse grew stronger.
Sensors buried deep under the Earth—forgotten Cold War remnants and ancient Vedic crystals alike—lit up like fireflies. Across seismology labs, defense bunkers, and forgotten temples, alarms went off. Nobody knew why. Nobody understood what they were detecting. But the world had changed.
Near Rohtang Pass — Midnight
Arjun was supposed to be asleep. Instead, he stood at the edge of a cliff, the sealed parchment in his hand.
It wasn't supposed to glow.
But it was. The circular seal—made of some waxy, unknown substance—now pulsed with the same rhythm as the deep pulse he felt in his bones. He turned it over. There were inscriptions now. Faint, like a whisper etched in breath on glass. They hadn't been there earlier.
Below him, the mountains groaned.
A tremor. Then another.
Suddenly, a crack split the Earth just a few meters away, revealing a massive staircase carved into the rock. Old. Ancient.
And at the same time, halfway across the world—
Siberia — The Edge of the Ural Mountains
Liu Xue blinked against the snowstorm. The scroll had led her here.
Not literally, of course. But once she'd translated enough passages, one phrase stood out: "In the land where rivers freeze even under moonlight, the Gate sleeps."
The Gate.
She didn't know why, but she was certain she'd find something here. Her Russian guide had refused to go any farther three hours ago. Now, she was alone.
She walked past a crag of ice, and something lit up beneath her feet.
A ring. Carved in stone, overlaid with a pattern identical to the seal Arjun held thousands of kilometers away.
And then—light.
Blinding, searing light.
Both Liu Xue and Arjun saw it at the same time.
A tower of illumination bursting from the Earth and sky, forming a pillar that pierced both Heaven and Time.
Elsewhere
Somewhere not bound by time or space, two voices whispered:
"The Bearer of the Blade has awakened."
"So has the Keeper of Memory."
"Will they choose unity… or war?"
"It does not matter. The Epoch Spiral has turned. The kingdoms shall rise again."
Unknown Location — Unknown Time
Arjun awoke on a stone floor.
His military jacket was scorched, the air smelled of iron and rain, and above him stretched a sky he did not recognize—reddish, with three moons. Three.
"What the—" he staggered to his feet. All around him were massive structures, half-destroyed but still majestic. Giant statues of armored kings. Temples to gods he'd never learned about. In the distance, war drums thundered.
Then he heard footsteps.
Someone was approaching. Light, precise. Calculated.
He turned.
Liu Xue stood there, her traditional winter coat now tattered, and in her hand, the scroll—now a blade. A literal sword.
"You…" she whispered. "I saw you. In a dream. Or… no. A memory?"
They stood, staring at each other. Two people from rival nations. From different lives. Brought together by something that defied explanation.
Then, the sky split again.
Above them, words carved themselves in flame:
"You stand at the Dawn of the Second World. Choose your Kingdom."
And with that, the world roared to life.