He again heard that strange voice, the same ancient syllables he had spoken before the sage, the ones even he did not understand where it came from, and what it holds. It slipped out of him like breath stolen from a forgotten lifetime. A language he had never learned yet shaped perfectly on his tongue. He asked, almost fearing the answer, "What is Nirbindra?"
She did not look at him. Her bones glimmered faintly in the dim cave-light as if absorbing the darkness instead of reflecting it. She said softly, "Just remember… emptiness."
He frowned. "Emptiness… of what?"
She shook her head sharply, the scarf around her skull fluttering like torn flesh. "I don't have time now. It's starting. Just behold the power granted to you… and discover for yourself what emptiness truly is."
Her skeletal fingers, now unnaturally long, knotted like old tree roots, stretched out toward him. She flicked her wrist, and the air itself bent. Before he could raise his arms, the force hit him like an invisible tidal wave. He stumbled backward, leg's scraping across bone fragments. When he tried to regain balance, something sharp thrust upward, a spike from the bone-tree's root and impaled the side of his foot.
A thin ribbon of blood crept down the pale bark like ink on old parchment.
The entire cavern shuddered.
The bone-tree began to hum, a low vibration that rattled his skull. The idols, those grotesque figures of god and devil, opened their eyes in unison.
Their pupils glowed like smouldering embers, and their gazes shot straight into him. At first, he only felt their heat, then the pain; a sharp, divine, and merciless sensation piercing through his eyes, slicing into his mortal flesh and straight into his soul.
He screamed, clutching his face as though trying to hold his eyes inside. The cavern swirled. One eye of the god idol locked with his right. The devil's left eye locked with his left. One after the other.
Two divine gazes colliding inside the skull of a mortal child. He pressed his two eyes by his hands. A symbol blossomed on his forehead, a swastika-taichi, spiralling, shifting, breathing like living ink.
The pain cooled. Then deepened. Then cooled again. Calmness and dread churned inside him like oil and water. He stumbled forward. Blinked. The cavern vanished. He was standing on a lotus of gold and red, the petals glowing like molten metal, humming with a power that felt too old to belong to any world he knew. His legs trembled; the lotus held him anyway.
Both statues, god and demon, were present, larger now, towering like mountains with faces carved from storm and silence.
Their voices overlapped, thousands layered into one:
"Sit. Sit on the lotus. Choose your path. Which you want to claim?"
Their command echoed again and again, circling him like invisible chains. "Choose your path. Choose. Choose."
He turned, searching desperately for an exit, for a shadow, for a corner, anything to escape that suffocating chorus. But the world was nothing but lotus light and voices crashing into him.
He covered his ears, but the sound pushed through bone.
"Aahhh—stop! AHhh—shut up! All of you—shut up!"
His scream cracked the air.
And then—a voice rose from within him, calm as midnight wind:
"Control your senses."
He froze.
"Lead the body to stillness."
The world dimmed. His heartbeat slowed.
"When the body becomes still, breath will flow."
Air slipped in. Air slipped out.
"Guide the breath… it will reach the mind."
The lotus brightened.
"Quiet the mind… and the soul will remember."
He felt something ancient unfurl in his chest, a memory of a memory of a memory.
"When the soul awakens," the inner voice whispered, "the path dissolves… and you step into the Void."
The lotus beneath him started to expand, petal by petal, like an endless universe blooming in red and gold.
.........
,..........
The red aura thickened around him like a second skin, warm, pulsing, almost breathing. Yellow leaves began circling him, rotating in perfect spirals as if obeying a ritual older than language. But when he looked closer, he realized they weren't leaves at all.
They were mouths shaped like leaves—thin lips carved along the veins, teeth arranged like tiny serrated petals. One by one, they opened.
A deep hum rolled out from every mouth, each tone wobbling in its own direction. The sounds collided mid-air, creating small shockwaves that sent the leaf-mouths spinning away from each other. Each collision made a crack of light, and from those cracks erupted golden and red streams of aura that drifted into him like breaths of fire and sunlight.
His skin tingled. His bones felt hollow. His heartbeat echoed like a drum in an empty hall.
Then, A voice spoke towards him.
His known voice. "Sit in the lotus position."
He snapped his eyes around, searching the world of swirling leaves and rising aura. "Why should I obey your voice? Who are you to tell me anything?"
The voice answered with calm authority, too calm, too familiar.
"I am you, and you are me. I am the part that remembers what you have forgotten. I am helping you find emptiness. Sit."
There was no hesitation in that tone. No doubt. No softness.
It spoke like a master instructing a disciple who had already failed too many times.
Despite wanting to resist, his body folded. His legs crossed. His spine straightened. His palms rested on his knees.
He sat, as if the command were carved inside his bones long before he was born.
"Close your eyes."
The moment he obeyed, total darkness greeted him with different dots of colours making different shape. Blue. Red. Yellow. Silver....
They pulsed like distant stars, then rushed toward him, merging into shapes—shadows of memory, warped images, fragments of faces, scenes from places he had never visited yet somehow recognized.
His mind spun. His breath tangled. The voice returned, now sounding annoyed:
"Why are you not calming your mind? Why so chaotic?"
He realized he had no control here. No way to escape. No way to overpower this inner presence from outside, he had to go inside.
So he inhaled.
He let the breath slide through his body like a river smoothing jagged stone. His shoulders loosened. His heartbeat softened. The chaotic lights dimmed, retreating like frightened animals.
He sat for what felt like hours, or maybe seconds; time dissolved in this place.
Finally, the colours faded completely after endless time cycle.
Darkness swallowed everything. A pure, endless black void stretched in front of his inner eye—silent, shapeless, cold.
When his concentration wavered, his breath stuttered. Fear crept up his spine… and instantly the voice snapped again:
"Control your breath… and you control the body. Take each step slowly."
He obeyed, drawing in air until his lungs trembled, then releasing it until his body felt weightless.
Little by little, the trembling stopped. His pulse steadied. His thoughts grew quiet.
Then, finally, he stood, or floated, or simply existed in the black void.
........
He opened his eyes slowly, as though rising from the depth of a dream he did not remember entering. The darkness around him dissolved into pale ripples of white, expanding beneath him in perfect circles. And there, sitting directly across from him, was himself. A white figure, identical in shape and outline, yet bleached of all warmth, all substance. It sat in perfect stillness, legs folded, hands resting on its knees, and beneath both of them the ripples quivered again like a heartbeat trapped under shallow water.
He blinked, confusion replaced by suspicion. "Who are you?"
A tremor of silence passed across the void as the white imitation tilted its head, its smile curving like a blade hidden in silk. "A void… or your inner soul… or you also," it whispered. Its voice was too soft, too intimate — as though murmured inside his bones rather than through air. "Which will you prefer?"
The words coiled around him like pale smoke.
He inhaled deeply, the breath sinking into his abdomen like a stone sinking into a still lake. Exhalation steadied him. "Nothing," he replied, his voice slow and controlled. "You are just an illusion on my path. Go away."
The white figure laughed softly, a brittle sound like porcelain cracking. "Can't you see me? I'm right here. I am your pathfinder, or you also. I am the guider of your path to come here."
Then the tone snapped like a rope. The white version leaned forward, voice twisted with sudden rage. "You are just a nuisance to me! You are not the real one. I am the only truth. Those powers you carry—they do not belong to you at all. I am the writer of your destiny!"
Black stared back, unshaken. "You are not my destiny. Not my path. Not my finder. I am the pathfinder of myself. You told me the path but I have to walk it to find it." His voice was steady now, like cold steel. "You may have pointed the road, but I walked it bleeding. That makes it mine."
The white imitation flinched. He rose slowly from the lotus position, the ripples beneath him expanding, swelling into larger circles of white energy. Across from him, the white figure's eyes widened in disbelief as he stood. The ripple beneath him grew stronger, purer, brighter, outshining the white figure's own.
He stepped forward.
The white figure's face twisted, its calm mask melting, stretching unnaturally like soft wax. It thrust both hands forward to stop him, fingers elongating, desperate. But when he pressed into it, his body moved through the white form effortlessly, like passing through smoke, while the white figure staggered as though struck.
The white quickly reformed behind him, its shape knitting together again, but its posture had changed. Now its back faced him.
The white self spoke again, voice softer, persuasive, oddly tender. "Why are you going ahead without me?"
He said nothing.
The imitation reformed behind him, back turned now. Its voice softened — honeyed, seductive, almost mournful. "Come back. I can give you everything. Every power you ever imagined. Every beloved thing you ever lost." It extended a hand without looking back. "Why choose hardship? Come… join me. I will give you everything you want."
He narrowed his eyes. "If you are me," he said calmly, "then you should know from birth I had nothing. Grew in nothing. Lived inside nothing. So tell me, if you are truly me, how can you promise me everything? Where is your confidence coming from?" He took another step forward, each one releasing another gentle white ripple beneath his feet. "How did you dare to claim you are me? When you are built only from the emptiness I crawled out of?"
The white form finally turned its face toward him—its features now cracked, hollow, trembling. "I… I am you."
"You are a reflection my mind created because the real world refused to give me comfort," he replied. "You are the lie of my loneliness."
The word illusion struck deeper than any blade. The void recoiled. The white figure's outline twisted violently, as though some forbidden truth had been spoken aloud.
The white figure stepped back involuntarily, trembling.
He lifted his foot again. "Go away."
When it touched the void-soaked ground, a shockwave burst outward—a white tidal ring spreading in all directions, expanding into infinity. The shockwave hummed like a temple bell struck by the heavens, vibrating through the void until even the darkness seemed to peel away.
The white figure screamed, but the sound was silent — a howl without breath. Its body fragmented piece by piece, shards dissolving like snow melting in black water. The illusion was washed away, torn apart, and scattered into the dark vastness.
For a moment, everything fell silent.
The ripples under his feet widened endlessly, and he felt a cold wind—though there was no air—brush against his skin. And as the blackness broke apart, a deeper darkness waited behind it…
To be Continued...