The battlefield was an ocean of shattered time—ruined spires, ancient banyans, and the glass towers of distant futures all overlapping where Devyasthana had stood. Kaaldev's laugh echoed, a cold iron bell, as he wove the chronostream through his fist, puppeteering past and future like tangled kites. Multiversal tremors rippled the ground: armies flickered in and out—Rajput elephant riders clashed with skyships from a tomorrow that would never come.
Rudra staggered, the pendant's light faltering. For a heartbeat, the ground was a Mumbai street after rain—bright and ordinary and safe. His late father offered him a cup of cutting chai in a memory, smiling with tired affection. Then the vision warped, scorched away by flames as corrupted swarmed across the city's map, the screams of hundreds echoing.
He fell to his knees. A shadow loomed: Kaaldev, eyes merciless. "It is over, celestial child. You and your broken world are dust."
Something grabbed Rudra's shoulder. Roohi, her face battered, eyes blazing. "Not while I still breathe," she snapped. She hurled a mind-spike, a blazing lance of force—Kaaldev slowed time, caught it, snapped it in half. "Brave, always. But you are yesterday's dream."
Shapes tore free of the chronostream: MG, wounded and bloodied, dragging a stumbling Jessica. Both were older—years seemed to have passed for them in a split second. MG grinned, teeth red. "You're late to your own apocalypse, Rudra!" He flung a flask at Kaaldev—time twisted and the explosion looped, detonating again and again, fracturing stone and shadow.
Jessica, aged but fierce, traced runes in the air. "I've seen our future—some of them, at least. Most end with you dead, Rudra. But not all."
Kaaldev's shadow thickened. "Do you not see? Every path ends in entropy. I am the final answer to hope."
Thunder cracked—across the shattered sky, allies appeared from across reality's seams. Amrita, spectral and defiant, led a charge of mystic archers, her fire-arrows burning in colors never seen before. Iqbal, now a cyborg from a timeline where magic and technology merged, unleashed a hail of electrified mantras that carved through corrupted and rakshasa alike.
But it was not enough. Every victory was rewritten—Kaaldev clapped his hands, and allies fell twice, thrice, a dozen times along the timeline. Each time they rose weaker, more broken.
Rudra watched in horror as Bunty—his oldest friend, the brother he'd chosen—was struck down by a clockwork manticore. He saw it as if in slow motion: Bunty's golden eyes wide with surprise, then unfocused as he fell, blood bright against the cracked earth.
"No!" Rudra screamed, surging forward, but the timeline looped. Bunty fell again. And again. Kaaldev forced him to witness every loss, every possibility of pain.
Roohi crumpled at Rudra's side. "It's… too much. He's unmaking us all."
Kaaldev stepped over the bodies, his staff now a whip of unravelling time. "Surrender, Rudra. I have undone love, courage, even destiny. I have unmade your mother's sacrifice in a thousand timelines."
Rudra's vision blurred with rage and grief. The pendant at his neck was nearly dark, but a whisper wormed its way through his mind—a memory: his mother, Savitri, singing him a lullaby.
*Sarva mangala maangalye, shive sarvaartha saadhike…*
Every auspicious thing. Every possible outcome. Even in ruin, there was hope.
He forced himself up as Kaaldev lashed out, striking Roohi across the chest. She flew back, landing with a sickening thud—her breathing shallow, blood pooling beneath her.
Jessica and MG made one last desperate charge. MG's body burst with energy as he detonated his last bomb, taking down swathes of corrupted. Jessica leapt through the flames, carving runes on Kaaldev's arm—only to be caught in the villain's grip. With a cruel flick of his staff, Kaaldev unraveled Jessica's thread, and she faded in a stuttering shimmer of light.
"NO!" MG howled, rushing to her, only to be caught in a timeless snare—a loop of grief, dying beside Jessica, and rising to repeat it.
The battlefield was all ash and silence. Only Kaaldev and Rudra remained, the rift still glowing in the heart of ruin.
"You are nothing but the last gasp of a dying age," Kaaldev jeered, advancing. "Your pain is my weapon. Surrender, and I shall erase your suffering, your friends, your world—mercifully, painlessly."
Rudra staggered, the weight of loss nearly crushing him. He looked at Roohi, motionless. At Bunty's lifeless form. At the broken lines of every friend he had ever known. His own power guttered.
Yet somewhere, deep within, the memory of his mother's voice echoed, unbroken.
*Even in the end, a new beginning waits. Even when all is lost, hope lingers in the unmapped corners of the heart.*
Kaaldev's staff was raised for the final blow. Lightning flickered across the rift.
And from the breach—from another impossible, untouched branch of time—a shadow stirred, a presence neither villain nor ally, unknown to either Kaaldev or Rudra.
The timeline trembled.
Kaaldev snarled, uncertain for the first time. "Who dares—?"
But in the space between moments, as the darkness closed in, Rudra's eyes found a single spark of blue—and somewhere, the future began to rewrite itself, just beyond Kaaldev's reach.