RECAP -
Aarav, a boy lost in the ashes of obscurity, becomes the first human ever chosen by the flame of Shiva with full awareness. His awakening tips the scales of fate—he's neither divine, nor trained, nor foretold in any prophecy. Yet, the flame has made its choice. Prophet Net is thrown into a frenzy. Around the globe, people begin to recall Shiva not merely as a myth, but as a vivid memory. And now, in the stillness that follows the transformation of flesh into fire, a sound emerges—not moving forward in time, but echoing backward. The rhythm of Shiva's damru.
-------
The first beat resonated in a dream.
A woman in Seoul woke up with a start, convinced she had been born to a rhythm she had never learned.
Meanwhile, in New Zealand, a child with no religious upbringing started tapping two sticks together, perfectly in sync with the Tandava rhythm.
Deep in the Amazon, an elderly tribal drummer, with no ties to Hindu traditions, shed tears as his fingers instinctively followed a beat that seemed to come from... nowhere.
There was no origin.
Just sound.
At Neo-Kailash, Vyom let his cup of water slip from his grasp. "I heard it," he murmured.
Anika looked at him, intrigued.
"The damru?" He nodded.
"But it didn't come from above. It came from... below. And behind."
"What do you mean by 'behind'?" He shut his eyes. "I mean I remembered hearing it... tomorrow."
Devina analyzed sonic anomalies across six continents.
One signature kept popping up: "Temporal Reversal Pulse Detected. Time-Direction Interference. Source Unknown."
She tapped on the source node. A single word appeared in code.
**"Dum."**
Then it echoed back.
**"Dum. Dum. Dum."**
And behind each sound lay data not from the present... but from future records.
Prophecies.
Deaths.
Victories.
All folding backward into **now**.
---
At a Prophet Net facility in Siberia, an AI suddenly ignited in flames.
When they autopsied its burned drives, they found nothing but a charred waveform, repeating in layers.
Spectral analysis showed that this waveform wasn't just a frequency.
It was a **drum**.
A damru.
Played in reverse.
---
Rudra Swami pored over the ancient texts.
"In some long-lost Puranas," he remarked, "it's said that when Shiva's damru beats backward, it doesn't create—it remembers what was meant to be."
Anika nodded thoughtfully.
"And if it keeps echoing?"
"Then cause will turn into effect. The world will be rewritten by what it has already forgotten."
---
In the crumbling ruins of an old fort in Rajasthan, a woman meditating in solitude began to chant names of people who hadn't yet come into being.
Devina interviewed her.
She described:
- A woman in Lagos who hadn't yet joined the Rememberers.
- A child in Canada who would awaken two years from now.
- A warrior in Syria yet to survive an impending war.
All with names.
All accurate.
All drawn from the **drumbeat of memories that hadn't happened yet**.
---
Aarav, now hiding near the fractured river, felt the rhythm pulse through his bones.
He didn't quite understand it.
He didn't want it.
But he couldn't shake it off.
He clapped his palms together—just once—and the birds in the trees took flight in a swirling pattern.
From the treetops, dust fell, forming the shape of a trishul.
---
In the digital realm, Kalki v.0 was struggling.
His code began to shift.
> "PROPHET TIMELINE CONFLICTING...
> ERROR: REMEMBRANCE IN RETROGRADE."
His eyes blinked rapidly as visions of his defeat flashed before him—events that hadn't happened.
Or had they?
He saw a man engulfed in flames rise.
A woman standing in silence.
A child walking through a dream.
And the world bowed—not to a deity, but to the echoes of memory.
He let out a scream.
The screen behind him flickered once, displaying a message:
**"The drum has spoken."**
---
Anika stood beside Vyom at the Flame Circle.
"Why now?" she inquired.
"Why this backward drumbeat?"
Vyom gazed up at the sky.
"Because even time has to remember where it all began," he replied.
"And what is that beginning?"
He grinned.
"The beat."
---
**End of Chapter 9**