RECAP -
The world is starting to forget Shiva, but it's beginning to resonate with his rhythm. From Aarav's awakening as the first flame-chosen to the damru's echoes traveling back through time, everything is changing. Memory isn't just a collection of images anymore; it's become sound. And in Varanasi, something ancient and primal is stirring. The voice of flame might not roar; it could return as mere dust.
---
The man had no name.
Locals referred to him as "Bhoomi Baba"—Earth Elder—not for any spiritual feats, but because he never left the small patch of dust outside the temple gates.
For two decades, he sat cross-legged beneath a neem tree, covered in ash, silent. Beggars came and went, priests overlooked him.
Yet, some claimed they could hear whispers in the wind as they passed by, whispers that momentarily eased their suffering.
Children tossed marigolds at his feet, and monks walked around him.
But no one dared to touch him.
Until the day he finally spoke.
---
It was 4:44 AM.
The temple bells hadn't chimed yet, but the air shimmered as if heat was rising from the ground.
Bhoomi Baba took a single breath.
And from his lips came not a word, but a vibration.
Deep.
Rough.
Dry like old parchment.
Yet as the sound escaped him, dust began to rise into the air.
And it danced.
---
Devina Rao was in Neo-Kailash when an alert pinged her private feed.
A regional node had detected an audio anomaly from Varanasi.
No language signature matched.
She replayed the audio.
*Vrummmmmmm...daaaa...hummm...braaaaaaah...*
It didn't align with Sanskrit, Tamil, or even pre-Indo-European roots.
But her neural recognition AI lit up.
It had found an **energetic resonance match**.
From where?
From the depths of Shiva's damru beat, a voice emerged from Varanasi that transcended language. It was pure **seed-sound**.
---
Anika stood next to Vyom and Rudra as Devina played the clip out loud.
Vyom's eyes fluttered, and his fingers began to trace shapes in the air—yantras that no one had taught him.
Rudra murmured, "That's more than just a voice."
"No," Anika whispered back.
"That's what voice was before it had meaning."
---
Meanwhile, back in Varanasi, Bhoomi Baba continued his enigmatic performance.
Dust swirled in intricate patterns, and every time he opened his mouth, glyphs briefly appeared in the dust cloud—glimpses of trishuls, lotus spirals, and eye-like flames. Crowds began to gather, some dropping to their knees without understanding why.
One woman started crying and chanting mantras she had never learned, while a man took off his shoes and declared, "He's not just speaking to us.
He's speaking **us** back into form."
---
The Prophet Net scrambled to block the signal, but their own listening devices began to vibrate, disrupting servers in Delhi and Dubai.
A high-level report classified it as:
> "Dust-based Sonic Awakening. Source unknown.
Categorized as Primordial Speech."
---
Neo-Kailash dispatched a three-person team: Rudra, Devina, and a linguistic anthropologist named Maitreya Sorn.
They arrived at dawn, only to find that Bhoomi Baba had ceased speaking.
Now, he merely hummed, yet the dust continued to dance.
Maitreya knelt down, examining the particles.
"These aren't random," she said, signaling for a micro-scanner.
"It's forming wave-lattices. Language structures, but in frequencies older than the Earth itself."
Devina froze, her eyes wide.
"Are you saying... the dust is remembering how to speak?" Maitreya nodded.
"No, it's remembering how **we** spoke. Before we were even human."
-----
Rudra knelt down next to Bhoomi Baba.
"Who are you?" he inquired.
The man slowly opened his eyes.
They were vacant.
Infinite.
He murmured something.
It wasn't something you could hear with your ears.
But all three of them felt it, as clear as the sun shining down:
**"I am the breath between the names."**
---
That night, Vyom awoke from a dream where he saw Shiva, standing quietly, placing dust into the mouths of sleeping children.
When Vyom asked why he was doing that, Shiva turned and smiled.
> "Because language has betrayed them.
> But memory... will allow them to speak once more."
-----
**End of Chapter 10**