The sensation of falling had long passed. Now, Aryan stood still. Or at least, he thought he did. The ground beneath him wasn't solid, not anymore. It shimmered like broken glass and breathed like a living thing. Each step he took left behind faint, golden footprints that faded into ash.
He glanced around.
This place wasn't like the others.
The realm he now stood in resembled Earth—but only barely. It was a skeleton of a world that once was. The sky above was cracked, split with fault lines that flickered like dying embers. Buildings, roads, trees—all decaying in slow motion. A breeze blew by, and it sounded like time itself was sighing.
Aryan tried to speak.
Nothing came out.
His voice, his breath… it was like the world had muted him.
"Where am I now?" he thought, not even sure if the words stayed inside his head or drifted away into the lifeless air.
A sign caught his eye in the distance—half-covered in dust and rusted at the edges. He wiped it with his sleeve.
Ahmedabad.
His heart froze. This was his city. Or at least, it used to be.
But here? It was dead.
The roads were split open, and in the distance, the Sabarmati River had dried up, replaced by cracks that led into an abyss of glowing threads. A ghostly silence stretched across everything. Not a single bird, not a single human. It was like someone had pressed pause on life, then forgot to ever hit play again.
"This is what happens when time breaks down," a voice whispered—not loud, not angry, just… tired.
Aryan turned sharply, but no one was there. He wasn't surprised anymore. Voices had spoken to him in every trial. The Law wasn't just testing him—it was watching.
This time, it felt different.
Time wasn't angry.
Time was mourning.
Aryan moved slowly through the ghost city, careful not to disturb the fragile, floating dust that hung in the air like ancient memories. Every step was met with an eerie echo that didn't follow logic. Sometimes it repeated too late, other times too early—like time itself had forgotten how to keep pace.
A billboard stood crooked near the broken highway. It once showed a smiling family advertising a vacation in Gir Forest. Now, only half the family remained—torn away by wind or rot. Aryan shivered.
Was this a vision of the future?
Or something else entirely?
A sound stirred. Not sharp or sudden, but soft. A child's giggle, distant but distinct.
He turned toward it, heart pounding.
There she stood.
A little girl with long hair and blank eyes, standing barefoot on the ruins of what was once a footpath. She didn't blink. She didn't breathe. Her head tilted slowly, unnaturally, like a puppet yanked by invisible strings.
Aryan stepped back.
She raised her hand.
Time around her warped. The wind stopped, dust froze in mid-air, and the golden cracks on the ground began to pulse.
"Help…" the girl whispered.
It didn't sound like her voice.
It was dozens of voices layered on top of one another—men, women, children, elders—all echoing the same word in perfect sync.
Aryan's breath caught. He wanted to run, scream, cry—but he couldn't.
Because deep down, something about her felt… familiar.
Suddenly, she stepped forward, and the world fractured.
The building beside her collapsed in reverse—its pieces flying up into the air and reassembling, only to break apart again seconds later in a loop. The same car kept crashing into the same pole. A paper flew up, caught in a time loop, flapping forever.
This wasn't just a dying world.
This was a world caught in its final seconds, doomed to repeat them for eternity.
And Aryan? He was trapped inside it.
The girl raised her arm again, and Aryan felt a tug on the mark on his hand—the clock tattoo, once faint, now glowing like a sunrise after a long, dark night. The hands of the clock spun erratically, faster and faster.
Then it stopped.
The girl whispered, "Fix it."
And vanished.
Aryan gasped and fell to his knees. The weight of the realm hit him like a truck. Time here wasn't broken—it was shattered. No direction, no past, no future. Just endless ends.
He clutched his chest. A pressure was building. The clock tattoo had grown larger, stretching slightly up his wrist, and burning into his skin—not with pain, but with possibility.
He looked around. The world wasn't going to help him.
He had to fix this.
But how?
He closed his eyes and reached inside himself—not to find strength, but stillness. The lesson from the first trial. And flow—the second.
But here?
Here he needed something more.
He needed acceptance.
Not of his power. Of the responsibility that came with it.
Aryan stood, his knees shaking. He walked to the edge of the broken highway where the Sabarmati once flowed. The abyss below was glowing gold and violet, deep like a dream and infinite like regret.
He didn't know what he was doing. But he let the mark guide him.
The clock on his
hand clicked once.
Everything paused.
Then, slowly, Aryan raised his hand and willed the broken timeline to come together—not fully, not yet, but just enough.
A strand of light floated from his hand like a ribbon of time. It weaved itself into the cracks of the world. One by one, the buildings stopped collapsing. The endless car crash ended. The billboard flickered and reset.
The girl was gone.
But her whisper remained in the wind.
"Fix it."
The ribbon of light trembled in Aryan's grasp.
He clenched his fingers, trying to keep it steady, but the force was overwhelming. It wasn't just time flowing through that thread — it was memories, futures, grief, hopes, all compressed into a stream that weighed more than anything physical ever could.
The ghost city stilled.
For the first time since he had arrived in this twisted echo of the world, it was… quiet.
Truly quiet.
No shifting shadows. No whispers.
Aryan stood alone with the thread of time, glowing faintly in his hands.
He had done it. Not entirely, not perfectly—but just enough to prove one thing:
He was willing.
A soft vibration ran up his arm. The clock tattoo on his hand, which had once been just a circle of faint lines, now showed moving gears beneath the skin. One of the hands slowly ticked forward.
Only a second.
But in a realm where nothing moved… it was enough.
"Is this… it?" he muttered aloud.
A low voice responded—not from the sky, not from the ground, but from within the thread itself.
"You have touched what should never be touched."
The world didn't shake. It stopped shaking.
A shape emerged from the horizon. Not a person. Not a beast. But something vast, cloaked in flowing symbols, like a figure carved from time itself. Its eyes were hollow sundials, and its form flickered between states—young, old, dying, unborn.
It stared at Aryan.
He dropped the thread instantly. It vanished before it hit the ground.
The being floated closer.
Aryan couldn't move.
"Who… are you?" he asked, barely finding his voice.
The figure didn't answer.
Instead, it tested him.
A wave of memory crashed over Aryan. Images from his past—but they weren't quite his. A crying baby. A fire. Someone screaming. A woman's hand reaching out and being pulled away into darkness. And a pair of golden eyes… not human, not mortal.
Aryan collapsed, panting.
The figure loomed overhead.
"You are the child of borrowed time. You do not belong to this clock."
Aryan blinked. "What?"
But the figure had already begun to fade.
"You are not the only one."
And then, silence.
Aryan lay there for minutes. Or hours. Maybe days. It was impossible to know in a place where time meant nothing.
Eventually, the golden cracks in the world began to close.
Not from repair, but from departure.
The trial was ending.
The dust stopped floating. The sky unclouded. The buildings restored their shape.
And Aryan felt the mark on his hand grow warm. Looking down, his breath caught.
Where once there was only empty air, now lay an ancient bracelet — its band etched with intricate ruins, glowing faintly with a soft green light. At its center, a single stone pulsed rhythmically, as if alive, mirroring the slow beat of his own heart.
The bracelet felt weighty yet comforting, as though it held the essence of the Law itself — a tangible symbol of approval, a token of the bond between him and the currents of time.
As Aryan flexed his wrist, the ruins shimmered, briefly shifting in form like liquid light before settling back to their ancient script.
The Law of Time had chosen its vessel.
at that moment Aryan felt a surge of power that his fragile body cannot hold
Around him, the world seemed different — distorted, fragile.
Aryan's eyes snapped open.
The silence around him felt heavy, oppressive.
Something was wrong.
Something was coming.
And before the truth could settle, darkness swallowed everything.
In a flash, he was lifted from the ghost city and pulled upward—into blinding light. It wasn't teleportation. It was… resetting. The realm of Time was letting him go.
But not unchanged.
As he soared through the void, he heard the voice of the Law once more—not as a threat, but as a whisper.
"Control is earned, not given."
Back in the Real World
Aryan's body jolted awake.
He gasped for air like a drowning man breaking through the surface.
His skin was soaked in sweat. His muscles ached. His mind was fogged.
He was lying on the floor of an old abandoned warehouse where he had entered the meditation days ago. At least, that's what it had felt like. But time… how much time had actually passed?
He slowly sat up.
Something was different.
He didn't just feel older—he felt heavier. Not in body, but in soul. Like he had walked through lifetimes in a moment.
He looked down at his hand.
The tattoo was no longer just a mark. It had shape now. Layers. A faint tick echoed from it. Not always, not rhythmic—but it was there.
A sign.
The Law of Time had not only tested him.
It had accepted him. At least partly.
Aryan let out a tired laugh. Then a quiet sob.
He wasn't ready for this.
But ready or not… he had crossed the point of return.
As he stood up, the warehouse around him flickered for a split second. Just a shimmer, a barely noticeable pulse—like the world itself was… different.
His breath caught.
He turned toward the door.
And felt it.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
The air outside wasn't normal. The silence was deeper than it should be. The birds were gone. Even the breeze seemed to carry tension.
Aryan narrowed his eyes.
Had it been days since he left?
Or weeks?
He stepped toward the exit.
As he placed his hand on the metal door, a cold shiver ran down his spine.
Not from fear.
But from the unmistakable sense that something had happened while he was gone.
Something that would change everything.
And then—