The chamber door thrummed with ancient power, its sacred symbols rippling like stars caught in a breath of wind. As Svetavastra stepped closer, the symbols shimmered, the intricate patterns shifting, twisting, as though they were alive, reaching for him. His heart hammered in response, each pulse matching the door's ethereal rhythm.
Behind him, Manu eyes held a pool of indescribable emotion.
"The door recognises you." His words were soft. "Only you can enter, because you are the true owner of the Divine Bow."
Svetavastra turned to look at Manu with his mind's eyes.
“The cardinal general of the North belongs to the yakshas,” said Manu. “When the Divine Bow replaced their position as the cardinal relic, the yakshas were not happy. But after the Great Drought when you—
Manu caught himself from speaking out something he didn’t want to bring up, not just yet.
“When Lord Purandhara salvaged the yaksha situation, he let the Divine Bow in their safekeeping,” he finished.
“Yakshas are fierce guardians of their hoards, that’s why we are experiencing so many illusions and trials. The chamber also might have powerful illusions in place.”
“I see,” said Svetavastra trying to process this information. There’s something amiss here. I’ll deal with it later. He took a moment and then said to Manu,
“Wait here? I’ll be back.”
Manu’s lips curved into a faint, weary smile.
"Always."
“He definitely likes you,” commented the cosmic form wryly. Svetavastra ignored her.
Always, was a simple word, yet it constricted Svetavastra’s heart. What is this feeling? Do I like him that much?
The preta stirred in the bracer on his wrist, "Be careful, No-god God. I don’t like this yaksha magic."
“I’ll be careful,” said Svetavastra.
He took a deep breath, then stepped forward. The door responded, dissolving into a silvery mist that drifted apart like smoke caught in a breeze, its power brushing against his skin. He hesitated, the sensation strangely intimate, almost like the door itself was watching him, weighing his worth. Then, with a step that felt both impossibly heavy and light, he passed through. The door reformed behind him instantly, solidifying into an impenetrable wall that cut off all connection to Manu.
The chamber beyond stretched into darkness, vast and cold, its boundaries lost in shadow. Svetavastra's eyes were drawn to the center, where a single point of golden light illuminated the divine bow, suspended above an endless void. It floated serenely, untouchable, its form elegant, the arc perfect and unforgiving. Light seemed to flow along its length, like molten sunlight, casting faint reflections on the surrounding stone.
“Wow,” said the preta in the bracer as it saw the Divine Bow.
“What a divine presence,” said the cosmic form.
Svetavastra took a step forward, and the air shifted—not gradually, but like reality itself had been torn and hastily stitched back together. The darkness gained texture, became almost liquid, pressing against his skin with the cold touch of ancient magic.
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Lord Purandhara materialized before him, his celestial armour casting fractured light across the chamber. The air around him hummed with divine authority, sending tremors through Svetavastra's very being.
"God of War," he said, his voice resonating with the weight of ages, "you seek the Divine Bow, but are you prepared for what it demands?" Each word fell like a hammer strike against Svetavastra's chest, stirring memories he didn't know he carried.
The preta's hiss from the bracer cut through the moment like ice through flame.
"No-god God, this is yaksha magic. An illusion." Its voice held an edge of panic, sensing magics far older than itself.
"But a powerful one," the cosmic form whispered, her usual sardonic tone replaced by something close to awe. "Look how it draws from your memories, your doubts. It's weaving truth with deception—the most dangerous kind of illusion."
Before Svetavastra could respond, reality shattered again. The chamber's darkness burned away like paper in flame, revealing a landscape of nightmare and memory. The Great Drought stretched before him in all its horror—the earth cracked and bleeding, the air thick with the copper tang of death. Corpses littered the ground like fallen leaves, their bodies twisted in poses of final agony. Men reaching for water that never came, women curled around children they couldn't save, elderly whose last breaths were filled with dust instead of prayers.
Among this tableau of devastation walked Atisha and the sight sent a shock of recognition through his core. She moved with the fluid grace of divinity, the Divine Bow in her hand gleaming like captured sunlight. But her divine face set in determined grief but there was something else there, something that made present-Svetavastra's breath catch in his throat. A shadow of doubt, perhaps? Or was it mercy?
Lord Purandhara's voice rolled across the landscape like thunder, each word heavy with judgment.
"You failed them once. Your hesitation, your mercy toward the drought-bringers, cost these innocent lives." The words seemed to make the corpses stir, their hollow eyes turning to stare at Svetavastra. "The Divine Bow requires absolute conviction. No half-measures. No compromise."
The illusion rippled again, reality re-weaving itself with threads of memory and nightmare. Now Manu stood before him, but not the Manu he knew. This one wore celestial robes that shifted like starlight on water, their divine patterns marking him as something more than the humble guide he claimed to be. His eyes burned with an emotion Svetavastra couldn't name—or perhaps dared not name. Recognition? Betrayal? Love turned to ashes?
"You don't remember, do you?" This celestial Manu's voice carried centuries of pain, each word a shard of broken trust. "What happened that day? What you chose?" The questions hung in the air like blades waiting to fall.
"These illusions feel so real," Svetavastra whispered, his mind's eye-straining against the layers of yaksha magic, trying to separate truth from deception. But the lines had become so blurred, the memories so tangled with possibility, that even his mind’s eye couldn't pierce through cleanly.
The chamber fractured, reality splintering into a thousand shards of memory. Each shard held a scene of failure, of loss, of choices made and prices paid. The massacre at the Temple of Nine Moons—blood running down sacred steps, prayers cut short by screams. The fall of the Western Sanctuaries—holy fires extinguished by tears and doubt. The day he lost his godhood—
In each scene, the Divine Bow appeared alongside Atisha, its presence both blessing and curse, salvation and damnation. The young goddess's face held questions Svetavastra couldn't answer, truths he couldn't—or wouldn't—remember.
"The yakshas remember," voices whispered from the shadows, a chorus of ancient grievance and bitter memory. Their words seemed to writhe in the air like smoke, taking half-formed shapes before dissolving. "We remember how the Divine Bow chose you over us. How you wielded it with such righteousness." The shadows pulsed with each word, growing thicker, more oppressive. "And how, in the end, you failed. Why should we trust you with it again?"
The scenes began to blur together, a kaleidoscope of guilt, doubt, and unremembered sins. Memory bled into memory, truth into lie, past into present, until Svetavastra could no longer tell where one ended and another began. Above it all, the Divine Bow floated in cruel radiance, tantalizingly close yet impossibly distant. Its golden light, once warm and inviting, now seemed to judge him with every pulse—each gleam an accusation, each flare a reminder of all he had forgotten, all he had lost, all he had failed to protect.