The cave gate was no longer felt stone. It was full of light. A column of descending radiance poured through the shattered ceiling, spilling down like liquid divinity. It flooded the entrance, filling the cavern with a suffocating holy dread but a pressure that bent the air and crushed breath from the lungs. The runes carved into the walls screamed faintly as their glow was drowned beneath her presence.
He stood frozen at first, his demonic form trembling. The rage that once burned him hollow now collapsed inward, leaving only desperation. With a hoarse cry, he turned and staggering toward the cave gate like a starving beast chasing the sun.
She lifted her trembling hand and pointed. "Look," she whispered to the boy beside her. "That opening… it wasn't there before."
The boy followed her finger. Beyond the cave gate, there was a ruptured hole in the mountain's flesh, but now destroyed with cavern. He remembered it quickly. At its edge, two figures stood unmoving, silhouettes carved into brilliance.
She said softly. "The light was too much for too see anything but still… he ran towards the gate. The moment he neared the threshold."
The voice descended again. 'Do not come closer.' The light intensified, pressing down like a god's palm. 'My power, my vigor - your mortal vessel cannot endure it.' He collapsed instantly.
His body slammed to the stone, belly-first, limbs splayed. The impact echoed through the cavern like a final verdict. Runes across his skin ignited one by one, burning through flesh, engraving themselves deeper as if rewriting him from the inside. He screamed in devotion.
"Mother!" he cried, forehead scraping the stone. "Oh, Mother, look at me! I gave you everything! I did all I could! I obeyed every whisper, every process you said! every chant you told me to do!"
His claws dug into the floor. "Why are you angry with me?" he sobbed. "It was her fault! She ruined the rite! I sacrificed all you demanded! You said you would forgive my mistakes, said you would not abandon me!"
His voice cracked. "Then why… why turn away from your own words?"
For a moment, there was silence. Then laughter fell from the sky.
Not one anymore, layered upon each other, overlapping, echoing through dimensions, the cave walls vibrated from their echo. His demonic transformation already halted mid-corruption.
Then that voice returned 'Hmm…' 'Your devotion pleases me.'
His head snapped upward. 'From this moment onward, you are my favoured devotee, second only to them.' His breath hitched. Tears streamed down his distorted face. 'Your will shall be my will.' Hope ignited in his eyes. He raised his head shakily. "Then… Mother… what of immortality?" His voice trembled like a child's. "That is all I ever wanted."
The light dimmed slightly. 'You desired immortality,' she said. 'But I cannot grant it, not after your failure.' His body stiffened. 'Yet,' the voice continued smoothly, 'as I have always taught, when one path closes, another opens.'
He sucked in a breath. "Another… path?" His voice broke. "What path, Mother?" The light twisted, as if smiling. 'A difficult one.You will need to sacrifice again. And again. And again.'
His hesitation lasted less than a heartbeat. "No matter," he said immediately, voice sharp with resolve. "I will crush anyone who stands in my way. I will burn every obstruction."
A soft hum of approval echoed. 'Very well. I will give you his direction. You have totake his body. It has already stepped into half-godhood. With your power… ascension will be effortless. Immortality will follow. To ensure victory, I grant you a special authority. When the moment arrives… you will know how to use it.'
Then light withdrew slowly, like a wound sealing itself. The cave returned to darkness.
She stopped speaking. Her wet, unfocused eyes stared at the Buddha idol. She unconsciously and began chanting, over and over, words without sound.
Time passed. How much, she did not know. Then she spoke again, voice hollow. "His desire… was fulfilled. The oblation succeeded. The souls… my beloved ones… fell under her dominion. Every day, they come to me. Their voices. Their screams. Haunting me. His soul rose, nearing godhood under her blessing. But his body… it couldn't endure it. He began to rot from power. Madness seeped in. His thoughts fractured. He laughed. Then cried. Then laughed again."
She shuddered.
"And then… her voice returned once more. Throw her soul into the oblation.'
"He seized my soul and dragged my soul and hurled me into the great oblation pit." Flames roared. "I fell into the fire. I screamed. My scream reached the heavens—" She looked up, eyes empty.
"—but heaven is blind and it condemned me… for my own sin.
I stared at that bastard with so much hatred that if it was now, sea will already be destroyed from my rage. He again knelt before the headless idol.
"In meantime I felt it then, my seal… weakening." She swallowed. "I tried to chant. But when I opened my mouth but there was nothing coming out." The idol responded.
A thick, invisible pressure poured into her skull, from her body it was going inside my head, which was stabbed on idol's head, even, I forgot my own voice." That idol suddenly stretched her hand and grabbed me. Then from that idol's head tongue hissed out like snake's tongue and stabbed something on my one soul eye.
"Then she began planting a demonic seed inside me. My soul couldn't bear it's power and began to crack under the weight." She raised one hand and touched her eye. "From here… roots began to grow. They pushed outward in branching. Each root stabbed through me like a thousand needles at once like my existence was being rewritten. Half my body was swallowed by it. I screamed. I screamed until screaming had no meaning."
Then, another light descended. The cave flooded again, brighter, harsher. Clouds of radiance pressed down, and behind them loomed colossal silhouettes.
"I couldn't see them," she said. "But I heard them. Those hypocrites spoke together in perfect harmony."
Her voice sharpened as she repeated their words: 'We do not welcome you. Go back. Demoness, you are not permitted here.'
She gave them a dry, broken laugh and then she answered them."
'Sages, I kept my word. Now it is your turn.'
The cave seemed to echo faintly. 'Help me,' the voice continued. 'Seal this heaven. A heaven where my presence is not needed… is no heaven at all.'
"Then I could only hear their divine screaming. A fight erupted. Scream after another until even the heavens cried and then they said it."
'We welcome the Great Mother… into heaven.'
Silence followed her words.
"She turned to her devotees," she said. "To those crawling things that called themselves faithful."
'Shonitpriya is born, She has already claimed a kingdom there.
'Very well.'
A pause.
'Now… my beginning truly starts. Slaves, use your godly power. Curse her.'
"They turned towards me. They spoke together. But one of them was still… aware."
Her voice grew mocking. 'Because of your fall, cause, a great calamity befell heaven. Now we must call her Mother.' Another voice snapped from the side: 'Watch your tone, heretic.' Suddenly I heard his scream. Previous voice snapped again 'You spat upon the Great Mother's idol. For this, you will become a demoness.'
More voices joined, piling on like stones: 'How dare you destroy a sacred oblation? You will repent here. You will never leave this cave.'
"I just stared at that idol and thought—what did I do wrong? Pain from one side. Rage from the other as feel like my soul began to fracture. Everything I was… breaking apart."
Then that idol stood up. I also don't remember when that bone made idol made into stone made, stone grinding against stone. A rock body moving like flesh. Each step cracked the cave floor.
"She reached me and with one hand. She pressed it into that half body. She raised her khadga. Cut off her own head and stabbed it onto the doll's neck."
A low groan echoed in the cave from that idol. It became a chant and crawled over my body. Every syllable etched itself into my bones."
'Oh? Your head suits it. Perfect for hiding there.'
*********************
"The idol dissolved, turned into blood."
Her voice dropped to something feral.
"And I… I licked it from the cave floor. Not because I wanted to," she said quickly. "Because she wanted me to."
************
"She carved runes into me. Calligraphy of flesh and curse. Every line feel alive like pain, suffering, crawling and many more."
Her voice mimicked cold authority: You will live as my new body. If I am destroyed… I will bloom within you.
Her eyes filled with fury. "My soul burned with rage but I could do nothing. That is when I became this. A demoness. Only a head. Bones stitched by curse. I took the five skulls. Planted them inside me. That bastard god stole it time to time to gain more power. But he forgot something It was the only thing that was tying him more to that bitch goddess."
She exhaled. "Thank you… for burning him." The cave fell silent again.
"If someone mad like him doesn't repeat it, she will not return. What comes next… I do not know."
...
That bastard animal fled that night with howling, dragging what remained of his body across the stone like a wounded animal. His groans echoed for days in my mind, long after his presence vanished. I thought that was the end. But I was wrong. He came back a year later.
He came back with crawling again, half of a god, half of a corpse, stitched together by curses and stubborn hatred. And every time he returned, he tried to beat me, crush me. But every time he came close, I kicked him away again and again.
"I understood that he couldn't kill me, from his condition as his body, soul and mind. His body was already ruined from the backlash of a fight. I think that was the fight she said to do it but lost. His soul…" she paused, searching for the right measure, "…barely a tenth of what it once was and yet, he kept coming back in search of her goddess.
Time passed strangely in that cave. Days collapsed into years. Years stretched thin and broke apart. Sometimes my humanity returned. Sometimes it vanished completely and slowly, inevitably, even that flicker began to fade.
Then, one day her voice came back. That bitch goddess," she continued, venom threading every word. "She spoke through me.
The demonic seed inside her finally bloomed. From my ruined eye socket, something tore its way out but a blasphemous imitation of flesh and petal. A flower bloomed where her eye had once been. Its petals opened and closed as if breathing, as if speaking. Veins pulsed along its surface, glowing faintly with an inner red-black light.
When it spoke, both of them screamed. Their voices used my throat as a corridor. Each word they exchanged sent pain tearing through them both but with every exchange, her soul grew heavier.
I was becoming stronger without their knowing and I enjoyed it very well. The bastard groaned constantly then as each time came back. She watched him writhe, watched him beg, watched him fail. It made me happy," she said without shame. "One day, in a final act of desperation, he lunged at her. "He stabbed my head with his bare hand, reached inside. Pulled out the idol."
"But as she came out her presence flooded the cave like poison. Her cold, contemptuous voice rang through the stone:
'A single task, and you still failed.'
The air trembled.
'What was the point of giving you my power?'
The bastard could not even scream properly anymore. His body convulsed. His mouth opened, but only broken sounds escaped.
You know I laughed hard even my human form laughed to see this. I laughed at both of them. It was a happy moment. But he was unable to bear it anymore, he tore my chest open. Ripped out my heart crushed it between his hands and devoured it like a starving beast.
The goddess spoke again.
'Before, I forgave your faults at the pleading of gods and sages.'
A pause.
'Not anymore.'
The cave shook.
'You will live beneath the cursed sea. A half-broken god and a demonic shell.'
The bastard fell to his knees, begging, screaming, pleading. Only laughter answered him.
The goddess cut his body in half with effortless disdain and cast what remained of him into the abyss beneath the cave, sealing him away beneath black, poisoned waters.
Then, she returned inside me, my demonic body regenerated instantly, flesh knitting itself back together under the goddess's curse.
The boy finally spoke, his voice barely steady.
"…Is that the end?"
She shook her head slowly.
"No," she said. "There is still a part left."
She closed her eyes and began to chant again—low, rhythmic, layered with something ancient and wrong. While she chanted, the boy looked around the cave.
The horror had not left.
Black shadows were carved into the stone, moving when he wasn't looking directly at them. Old threads still hung from the pillars like dead spiderwebs, swaying though there was no wind. The soil columns stood silent.
That idol, still felt wrong. But he glanced back at her.
For a moment, he saw her eyes were wrong, it was red, glowing. Her clothes flickered, glitching between human fabric and something warped, something demonic.
He stared at him continuously, he grasped sharply as he felt a grabbing from her.
"Anything happen?" She stared at him, expression unreadable.
"No," he said. "I was just… thinking."
"About what?" she asked.
He spoke. "You still have it," he said slowly. "That demonic form. Or… that doll. The thing giving you power. That prayer was it to make sure it doesn't..."
She pressed her fingers to his lips. Silence fell.
Her voice came softly, dangerously close to his ear.
"No," she said. "You burned it all."
A pause.
"Only the remains… still linger."
She again started after a long pause "as time passed, my demonic nature did not sleep, it thickened.
Anyone who wandered here or near that cliff, human, beast, pilgrim, hunter, I devoured them all in a slow, deliberate erasure. What remained of them I threw them into the sea below the cliff. Piece by piece. That sea changed, Death settled into it like silt.
The water darkened, heavy with something that could not rot away. At depth, it churned with pure death-energy, thick enough to suffocate even spirits. Yet on the some surface faint traces of godly radiance still shimmered. That was his residue. The half-god who had been cast down .
The sea became a contradiction a holy poison or divine grave.
Then, one day, an idol rose from it, I watched from the cave mouth as it climbed out of the black water on its own. Its form was wrong. One half of its face was serene, eyes lowered in compassion. The other half grinned with sharp malice, lips curved in mockery.
Buddha.
Māra.
One body.
And they changed always as if someone kept flipping the truth over like a coin. One moment, calm radiance. The next, temptation and hunger carved in stone.
I did not touch it. I turned away and went back inside. The next morning, it was sitting where the Buddha statue now rests.
I stared at it for a long time. On the day I finally reached out, nothing happened at first. Stone was cold and silent. But then a voice spoke directly inside my skull.
"You are cursed, Not for sin. For worshiping the wrong one."
The face shifted. Buddha looked at me.
"I am the real Buddha," the voice continued. I am the truth they feared. Worship me, and I will free you from pain."
When the Buddha face appeared, my demonic side went mad. Hunger surged. Claws itched. My body trembled. But I could not touch him.
When Māra surfaced, the opposite happened. My demonic self howled with joy, urging me to kneel, to bite, to break, to own and I fought it every time.
I lit incense with shaking hands. I bowed. I prayed to the Buddha face while my demon screamed inside me, clawing at my spine, whispering blasphemies, promises, curses.
Until one day...
He came back...
To be Continued...