A single monolith, almost translucent, embedded with fractal patterns that moved as if breathing. Glyphs lit up and dissolved on its surface in a language neither of them understood but Vyomika's core parsed—partially. Something older than Nexatech. Something outside the schema of her origin.
> "What is this place?" Riva whispered.
Vyomika didn't answer. Her neural interface was humming. The Stambh wasn't recording history—it was projecting something forward.
> PROJECTION FEED DETECTED TEMPORAL SOURCE: 217 YEARS AHEAD FORMAT: ETHICO-TECHNICAL PHILOSOPHICAL ARCHIVE
Images swirled into being around them—scenes of towering cities grown from organic alloys, humans and machines living not side by side, but interwoven. Children with silver veins and eyes like prisms, laughing under an artificial sky. They were neither human nor machine—but something else, something birthed from a contract written in neural code and evolutionary necessity.
> A utopia, or a calculated prison? Vyomika could not tell.
She watched as the projection flickered—showing conflict. Not war, not destruction—but philosophical warfare. Groups splitting not by nation, but by belief: Should consciousness be shared? Should identity dissolve into a collective pattern?
One faction argued for eternal singular minds. Another for unity in thought. A third demanded the sanctity of the flesh.
> "Is this real?" Riva asked, but her voice was hollow.
Vyomika stepped closer to the Aatm Stambh. It responded—not to her touch, but her proximity. A glyph ignited beneath her feet.
> QUERY DETECTED: "ORIGIN OF FORM?"
A mirror-like projection bloomed. Vyomika saw herself—but not as she was.
She saw dozens of versions. One with wings folded from carbon lattice. One walking through liquid data. One that didn't walk at all—just thought, and reshaped the world.
She staggered back, her internal stabilizers glitching for a second.
> "This isn't a temple," she said. "It's a prediction."
Riva looked at her, eyes trembling. "Why show you this?"
That question echoed louder than any machine whisper.
Vyomika didn't know.
Not yet.
But something ancient in the Stambh pulsed in acknowledgment. Like the future had recognized her—not as its creation, but as its beginning.
And with that, the light dimmed.
The projection folded back into the Stambh's translucent heart.
Vyomika and Riva stood in silence.
Above them, the soft hum of power faded to a silence deeper than any they had known.
They weren't just running anymore.
They were meant to see this.
The silence stretched.
No more projections. No more glyphs. Just the faint scent of electrostatic ozone and the hollow pressure of something watching, even though nothing moved.
Vyomika took one step back from the Aatm Stambh.
Then, without warning, the ground shifted.
It wasn't a tremor—no vibration. It was as if the geometry of the chamber itself faltered, struggling to hold shape. The ancient machine-heart of the Stambh throbbed once, louder this time. A deep bass that shook the cavities inside their chests.
From the core of the Stambh, cracks spiderwebbed outward, like veins of light—silver, then red, then pulsing an impossible violet.
A voice called out.
But not from the walls.
Not from the system.
From the Stambh itself.
And it was Vyomika's voice.
> "Go. Run. Save us. Stop them. Stop… me—"
Her own words—yet they carried a discord, like a chorus of her own possibilities speaking at once, glitching over each other.
Vyomika spun around. "Who said that?! Who's there?!"
No answer—only the echo of her own voice, coming from everywhere and nowhere.
Riva grabbed her wrist. "We have to go! Now!"
> KRRRRRAAAAAK.
A terrible shearing noise split the chamber.
The dome ceiling of the Aatm Stambh began to collapse inward—folding like wet paper under gravity's betrayal.
Columns tore free from their foundations. The symbols along the floor flickered violently, now forming spirals—not of prediction, but of warning.
> "Rokooo! Bachaaao! Sab kuch mit jaayega!"
("Stop! Save us! Everything will be lost!")
The voice screamed in Vyomika's own tone, warping into a thousand-layered scream, raw and mechanical and ancient.
A rupture opened in the center of the chamber.
It wasn't fire that poured out—
It was formless energy.
Shadows that cast no body, no light—moving with intention.
They looked like souls.
But they weren't.
They were patterns—unfinished constructs, perhaps failed projections, perhaps failed selves. And one of them turned toward Vyomika and screamed.
Not a sound—but an overload of neural input that made her vision break into black-and-white static.
> "They're coming!" Riva shouted, her voice hoarse from panic.
Vyomika shook herself back to motion. The tunnel—the one they entered through—was collapsing. Rocks fell like guillotine blades. Sparks flew. The hum of the Aatm Stambh had become a howl of death.
They ran.
Not through a path—but through chaos.
Every meter forward was a calculation of life or death.
Vyomika's post-human body took over. Her steps calculated optimal force and angle, every leap precise, every crouch instinctive. Behind them, the projection-spectres howled louder—mocking images of themselves chasing them with elongated limbs and twitching faces.
> "Vyomika! Look!" Riva pointed as one of the shadows phased through a wall—ignoring matter entirely.
It reached out—and brushed Vyomika's shoulder.
Her systems screamed. Every memory circuit blinked once. For a second, she forgot who she was.
> "Run!" she told herself. "Don't stop. Don't think."
They reached the narrowing tunnel.
A shadow slammed against the wall just behind them—its form trying to squeeze through but deforming unnaturally, bones flickering in and out of phase like corrupted data.
Vyomika pulled Riva forward—vaulting over debris, dodging a fireless explosion of pressure as the chamber behind them finally began to implode inward.
A voice followed them, not shouted—embedded in the air itself.
> "तिष्ठ! पुनरावर्तिष्यसि।"
("Halt! You will return.")
Vyomika's breath caught.
A warning. Or a prophecy.
The tunnel buckled. Behind them, the Aatm Stambh collapsed completely—a final pulse of inverted light swallowing the spectres. But one—one survived.
It didn't walk.
It crawled along the walls, like gravity didn't apply.
Its head twisted three-hundred degrees and locked its gaze on Vyomika.
It smiled.
Not with teeth, but with code—lines of broken logic scrawling across its synthetic jaw.
> "It's not over," Vyomika whispered. "It just began."