✦ 𑁍 Chronicle Note: 1846 CE – The Year the King Touched the Veil of Worlds 𑁍
Year: 1846 CE (mid–late)
Narasimha's Age: ~46 years
By the time the snows around Kamar-Taj thinned, the Chakravartin of the South had already done what some apprentices never managed in a lifetime.
He could separate soul from body and walk in astral form without losing himself. He could open clean, steady portals between courtyards and halls. He could step into the Mirror Dimension and bend its glassy streets into spirals and traps. He could read a spell scroll without getting a headache after the third line.
By Kamar-Taj standards, these were basics.
By the standards of any king who had ever lived in Bharat, they were miracles.
Seven months remained of the year he had promised Kaveri. Seven months to move from the surface of sorcery to something deeper: the underlying structure of worlds, the dimensions themselves.
Somewhere out there, beyond the blue sky and the snow peaks, an entire web of realities shimmered. And one of them, though he did not yet know it clearly, had been waiting for him since the day the gods first tried to make him Manu.
I. Seven Months to Learn the Infinite
By late spring, Kamar-Taj had absorbed Narasimha the way a great river absorbs a new tributary—quietly, with only a few ripples at the surface.
The apprentices no longer stared quite so much when the "old man from the south" walked past. He had become a normal part of their strange world: the tall, broad-shouldered Bharatiya who wore simple robes, muttered in Telugu when frustrated, and sometimes forgot to stop bowing like a king when thanking the tea servers.
His daily routine had settled into a demanding rhythm. Before dawn, while the sky was still bleeding from black into indigo, he would sit on the highest terrace, eyes closed, feeling the quiet thrum of Kamar-Taj's wards. After the first bell, he trained with the others: drawing precise geometric gestures in the air, tracing sigils on stone, opening and closing portals until his fingers ached. Midday brought lectures in the library, where Yao or one of the senior masters dissected spells and histories line by line. Evenings were for Mirror Dimension drills, where he learned to fight in bending streets and impossible staircases.
He learned quickly, but not effortlessly. There were days when his portals sputtered like wet lamps. When his astral form overshot, slamming back into his body hard enough to leave him dizzy. When Yao rapped his knuckles with a staff because he had tried to muscle through a spell instead of letting the energy flow.
"You cannot treat magic like a battlefield, Narasimha," she chided one afternoon, as he glared at an uncooperative glyph. "It is more like… diplomacy. If you try to bully reality, it digs in."
"I am very bad at diplomacy," he grumbled. "Ask the British."
"Exactly," she said, lips twitching. "That is why you are here."
Yet even as he struggled, he could feel something in him adjusting. The same stubborn will that had once driven him to ride into gunfire now drove him to stay on the training circle until his sling-ring obeyed. The same instinct that let him read a battlefield's shifting lines began to register currents of power in the air.
Yao watched, approved, and pushed harder.
"Basics are done," she told him one evening, as they walked along a wind-swept parapet. "You can stand, walk, and not trip over your own metaphysical feet. For the rest of your time here, we go deeper. We stop playing with the threads and look at the loom."
He raised an eyebrow.
"The loom?" he asked.
"The structure," she clarified. "The layers. The dimensions. You have spent your life thinking of 'world' as the land you can march an army across. It is time you realised that your Bharat sits on one floor of a very tall house."
He thought of his Constitution, the layered councils, the Mandala of the Unseen, the hidden Trinetra.
"I finally built a system that doesn't fall apart when I blink," he said. "And now you tell me the universe is more complicated."
She shook her head, amused.
"Welcome," she said, "to my problem."
II. The Ancient One's Map
The library of Kamar-Taj was not merely a room; it was a mind given shelves.
Books bound in leather, scrolls wrapped in silk, clay tablets sealed in glazed boxes—knowledge from civilisations long turned to dust lay in orderly rows. Some texts hummed faintly when Narasimha walked past, as if sensing that he had once been part of a different destiny.
The Ancient One seldom left his private meditation hall these days, but when he did, it was often to sit in a corner of the library and watch Yao teach. On this day, he had come quietly, folding himself onto a cushion with the ease of decades.
Yao drew a circle on the floor with chalk, then another slightly above it in the air, using her finger and a ripple of golden light.
"Most people," she began, glancing at the handful of advanced students gathered around, "live their entire lives believing that this"—she tapped the chalk circle—"is all there is. Physical reality. The world you can touch. Mountains, cities, bodies. When they die, some imagine something beyond; others do not. It changes nothing."
She raised her hand to the glowing circle above.
"We know," she continued, "that this is incomplete. There is also a spirit realm—call it astral, call it subtle, call it what you like—where souls, thoughts, and certain entities dwell more natively. Many of your Bharatiya deities, Narasimha, reside there primarily, while projecting into your physical world through mūrtis, dreams, visions."
Narasimha nodded slowly.
"In my tradition," he said, "we speak of Vaikuntha, Kailāsa, Goloka, various lokas. Places where the gods dwell, reached by yogis in samādhi. We always understood that our physical Bhūloka was only one layer."
"Good," the Ancient One said softly, eyes half-closed. "Your myths prepared you for this better than many."
Yao flicked her wrist. More circles appeared, nested between the chalk and the glowing ring.
"The truth," she said, "is more… layered. Between purely physical planes and purely spiritual ones, there are countless dimensions—discrete spaces, each with its own rules. Some cling close to the physical realm, like hidden valleys next to a main road. K'un-Lun is one such place: a city in a pocket reality that brushes your world at specific points. Kamar-Taj itself is in your physical world but sits on an intersection of ley lines that makes it a 'thin place'."
She drew another series of circles above, smaller, darker.
"Then," she went on, "there are semi-spiritual dimensions. They are not fully cut off like the highest heavens, but they are not simply adjacent lands either. They are like deep whirlpools under the surface of an ocean—self-contained, yet capable of dragging other things in. The Dark Dimension of Dormammu is one of these: an essentially energy-based domain that can, if allowed, devour chunks of your physical universe. Certain so-called 'hells' also fall into this category—planes where torment and power feed each other, yet whose lords hunger to influence or trap physical souls."
She let that hang, and Narasimha thought of the demon they had fought, of Mephisto's agent's hunger.
"And there are purely spiritual dimensions," the Ancient One added, voice weaving into the lecture. "Realms so abstract that only concepts, archetypes, or beings nearly divine in power can exist there without disintegrating. Some mutants with unusual abilities unconsciously tap into these—drawing cold from a plane of perfect frost, for instance, to manifest ice in your world. They think their power is simply 'within' them; in truth, they are very efficient thieves."
A few students chuckled nervously.
Yao glanced at Narasimha.
"For sorcerers," she said, "these dimensions are both tools and dangers. We borrow power from them, shape it, and return it. We step through them to travel, to hide, to fight. Your Mirror Dimension, Narasimha, is an example: a constructed, localised sub-layer designed to keep collateral damage away from the main house."
He frowned.
"And the gods?" he asked. "Trimūrti, Devis, the devas who watch my land. Where do they sit in this… architecture?"
The Ancient One's gaze sharpened.
"Your Trimūrti," he said, "are… complex. They are not simple 'powerful aliens'. They sit at junctions where creation, preservation, and dissolution flow through many dimensions. They are like… engineers who also became part of their own machines. Their primary presence is in the highest spiritual stratum. Their interactions with your Bhūloka occur through layered projections, avatāras, and chosen vessels. When you see them, you are never seeing their full being. You would not survive it."
Narasimha remembered that first council beyond time, when six divine faces had looked at him with something like parental worry.
"I have no desire to see them 'fully'," he said dryly. "I already have enough difficulty when they send dreams."
Yao smiled.
"For your purposes," she said, "you must understand this: every spell you cast, every circle you draw, is a negotiation between at least three levels. Your body is physical. Your mind in the astral. The dimension whose power you are courting. If you forget any of the three, you will either fail or break something you did not mean to."
She wiped the diagrams away with a gesture.
"Over the next months," she said, "we will teach you to sense these dimensions. To tell, with a thought, where power is coming from. To reach, gently, into a chosen well without falling in. To know when a surge of fear in your Federation is merely human, and when something from a semi-spiritual pit is amplifying it for its own hunger."
Narasimha exhaled.
"And here I thought land reforms were complicated," he muttered.
The Ancient One's mouth curved.
"Congratulations, Your Majesty," he said. "You have just been enrolled in the next grade of the universe."
III. Hearing the Worlds
Dimension-sensing began, like most important things in Narasimha's life, with standing very still and being very patient.
On the flat roof of one of Kamar-Taj's lesser-used towers, Yao drew a circle around him and placed four simple markers at the cardinal points: a bowl of water, a stone, a lit candle, a handful of dried leaves.
"Elements are the easiest gateways for you," she said. "Your own tradition already speaks of panchabhūtas. We will start with basic four basics. Fire, water, earth, air. Each has countless associated dimensions—realms where one quality dominates. Some are safe to borrow from. Some are not. You will learn to distinguish the taste."
He resisted the urge to ask if she had a chart. She would only hit him.
"Close your eyes," she instructed. "Do not force your astral form out. Simply… feel. First, the water."
He turned his attention toward the bowl. At first, there was only the memory of rivers he had crossed, sarovars he had inaugurated, rain he had ridden through. Then, as he let his awareness soften, something else emerged: a vast, cool presence, like an ocean pressing against a thin wall. It had no shape, only the sense of depth and reflection.
"That," Yao's voice came, soft, "is a minor water-linked dimension. Close enough to taste, far enough that if you fell in, you would likely only drown, not unravel. Reach—gently. Invite a thread through."
He extended his will, not like a fist, but like a hand into a stream. A chill brushed his inner senses. The water in the bowl rippled, a small wave forming without physical wind.
He opened his eyes. The surface danced.
"Good," Yao said. "Now release it. Thank it. Do not cling."
He loosened his focus. The sense of depth receded. The water stilled.
They repeated the exercise with the candle. This time, the presence he touched was fiercer—flickering, hungry, joyous. Flames that wanted to leap, to consume, to dance on everything.
"Do not open too wide," Yao warned. "Fire is always eager. You are already too fond of charging."
He obliged, coaxing only a thin sliver. The candle flared taller for a moment, then settled when he withdrew.
With the stone, the sensation was different: weight, patience, the slow endurance of mountains. That one felt like family.
"You like that," Yao observed.
"Earth understands me," he replied. "We both sit in one place and bear more than we should."
She snorted.
Air was trickier. The dimension he brushed there was vast, restless, full of currents. It whispered of songs, of screams carried over miles, of minds unmoored. He almost lost his balance in it before pulling back.
He spent days walking that circle, cycling through elements, mapping how each dimensional "flavour" felt. Gradually, he learned to discern nuance: a water realm that was calm versus one that was storm-torn; a fire pocket that was pure heat versus one tinged with malice.
In parallel, Yao had him experiment with weaving.
"Draw a thread of earth-stability," she said one afternoon, "and braid it into a shielding spell. Now add a breath of air, so it can flex. Not too much. You do not want your shield to fly away."
He tried. The first time, the shield was too rigid; it cracked under a kinetic blast. The second time, it wobbled like jelly. By the fifth attempt, he managed a shimmering barrier that absorbed impact and rippled it away.
Kamar-Taj began to whisper.
"The king is learning to speak to stones," one apprentice murmured in the refectory.
"He feeds birds in his free time," another said. "The stray cats follow him. I saw a snow leopard nap near him yesterday. In the courtyard."
"Masters say some people are 'bound' to a particular dimension," an older student added. "He might be… bound to the natural ones. Earth, beasts, growing things. A druid, from the old stories."
They were not wrong.
Whenever Narasimha walked in the small gardens clinging to Kamar-Taj's edges, animals appeared. Thin dogs, half-wild cats, mountain birds, even once a pale fox—all kept their distance from others but drifted toward him. He did not cast spells on them. He simply sat, letting his aura soften, thinking of fields back home, of forests where tigers padded and peacocks screamed.
"They trust you," Yao remarked one day, as a crow boldly hopped onto his knee.
"Animals understand dharma better than men," he said, scratching the crow's head. "They do not pretend to be what they are not."
"Spoken like a future beast-tamer," she replied.
He gave her a look.
"I will not be running around with a staff and a pack of wolves," he said. "I am still a king."
"We will see," she murmured. "The universe has a sense of humour."
IV. The Druid of Kamar-Taj
The incident with the snow leopard cemented his new reputation.
It began as a simple patrol. Kamar-Taj, for all its wards, still existed in the physical world, in mountains where ordinary dangers lurked. Apprentices were periodically sent to clear paths, check watchpoints, and ensure that no curious shepherds wandered too close to places that might fry their minds.
Narasimha went with a small group one morning, partly for the exercise, partly to feel real wind instead of only magical currents. They trudged along narrow ledges, cloaks snapping. The sky was a hard blue, the kind that made the snow glare.
At a bend, one apprentice hissed.
"Snow leopard," he whispered, pointing.
The big cat stood on a rock above, muscles coiled, tail twitching. Its fur blended almost perfectly with the stone and snow. Its eyes were fixed on the group—not fearful, not curious. Assessing.
One of the younger apprentices reached for a spell, fingers twitching.
"Stop," Narasimha said quietly.
He stepped forward, slowly, hands spread to show he held no weapon.
"You plan to… talk to it?" the boy hissed.
"I plan not to die because you spooked it," Narasimha replied.
He let his breath settle, drawing a thin thread of earth-stability and air-calm into his aura. He did not reach out to the leopard's mind the way some mystics might; he simply radiated a clear message with his presence: I am not hunting. I am not food. Go your way; I go mine.
The leopard's ears flicked. It tasted his scent, the strange mix of king and sorcerer, mortal and something else. For a moment, Narasimha fancied he felt its disdain: You are loud even when you are quiet, two-legged one.
Then it snorted, turned, and slipped away over the ridge, silent as a thought.
The apprentices exhaled.
"You didn't cast anything," one murmured.
"I asked," Narasimha said. "In a language older than spells."
When they returned, the story grew, as stories do.
By evening, Kamar-Taj believed that the Lion King had stared down a snow leopard without moving, that the beast had bowed (it had not), and that birds now delivered messages directly to his window (they did not, though they did sit there often).
Yao found him later, sitting on a low wall feeding crumbs to a sparrow.
"So," she said, leaning against a pillar, "our druid has begun his ministry."
He groaned.
"Do not start," he said. "If one more apprentice asks me to bless their pet, I will throw you off the roof."
Her eyes sparkled.
"You can try," she said. "But then I will open a portal under you."
Their banter had become easy, familiar. Somewhere in the months of training, respect had deepened into something warmer. They spent long hours together—not only in formal lessons, but in quiet conversations about the burdens of leadership, about watching civilisations crumble, about the peculiar loneliness of those who lived longer than most.
One evening, after a particularly grueling session in which he had nearly burnt his own sleeve off trying to weave fire and water dimensions together, he sat slumped in the library, glowering at his fingers.
Yao dropped a cup of hot tea in front of him.
"Drink," she said. "You look like a scolded boy."
"I feel like one," he muttered. "How is it that I can manage a million soldiers but not keep one flame from misbehaving?"
"Because troops are easier than elements," she replied. "Men at least pretend to listen when you shout. Fire does not care about your titles."
He took a sip, warmth seeping through him.
"You used to be as stubborn as this," she added, sitting across from him. "When you first came here. You tried to brute-force portals with raw will. You failed. You learned. You adapted. You will do the same with dimensions."
He looked up at her, really looked, seeing past the composed master to the woman who had once been a student here too, who had chosen a path of guardianship over all else.
"You always do this," he said quietly. "You take my frustration and turn it into… something I can carry."
Her gaze flickered.
"It is my job," she said lightly. "Teacher. Shepherd of arrogant kings."
"It feels like more than that," he replied before he could stop himself.
Silence stretched for a beat too long.
Her fingers tightened slightly on her own cup, knuckles white for a moment. Then she exhaled.
"Narasimha," she said, very softly, "you are married."
"I know," he replied, equally soft. "And I love her. That is not in question."
"Then do not ask me to carry anything I cannot put down," Yao said. Her tone was gentle, but there was iron underneath.
He swallowed, nodded.
"Forgive me," he said. "I am… not used to having time to feel anything. In my life, I never had the chance; I buried it under work and war. Now the universe gives me a year where I am not constantly under siege, and my heart takes it as license to… wander."
Her mouth twisted in something that was not quite a smile.
"Welcome to being human," she said. "It is inconvenient."
They said nothing more that night. But in the days that followed, their laughter had an occasional hesitation. A glance held a fraction too long. A silence sat between them in certain moments, not heavy enough to crush, but undeniable.
The apprentices noticed—of course they did.
"Have you seen how the Master and the Chakravartin argue?" one whispered in the dormitories. "They sound like an old married couple."
"Don't be stupid," another scoffed. "He is married. She is practically a saint. They are just… close."
"Close," the first repeated, grinning.
Even the Ancient One's eyes crinkled a little more than usual when he watched them train.
V. Across the Veil
Two months before the year would end, Yao deemed him ready for the next step: deliberate dimensional traversal in astral form.
They prepared meticulously. In a dim hall lined with protective sigils, Narasimha lay on a low slab, body relaxed, breath slow. Yao stood beside him, along with two senior masters; the Ancient One watched from a shadowed corner.
"In astral projection so far," Yao said, "you have stayed close. Floating above your body, walking the corridors, perhaps dipping into the Mirror Dimension's surface. Today, you will travel further. You will reach for a known, safe dimensional pocket and enter it in astral form. We will anchor you. You will not stray."
He smirked faintly.
"You say that as if I ever listen," he said.
"If you go wandering off," she replied, "I will ask your wife to scold you through three planes. That should frighten even you."
He grinned, closed his eyes, and slipped out.
The astral form felt familiar now—a luminous version of himself, freed from gravity, senses widened. He could see the threads of Kamar-Taj's wards, the glow of each mage's aura, the faint shimmer where physical and subtle met.
Yao's astral presence appeared beside him, a golden-white outline.
"We will begin with something simple," she said. "A training pocket we use for students. Minor gravity shifts, nothing hungry."
Together, they reached.
Narasimha extended his new senses, seeking the "taste" of the pocket: it felt like a bubble of altered physics nestled close to the main world, thin-walled, stable. Following Yao's gesture, he pushed. The barrier parted, and they slipped through.
Inside, the space was… odd. The sky was a swirling gradient; the ground was there and not. Gravity pulled sideways at one point, then up, then down again. It was like walking inside someone's dream about being drunk.
He laughed out loud.
"This," he said, doing a slow somersault, "would make excellent training ground for my Tiger Corps."
Yao snorted.
"Teach them to stand in one dimension first," she said. "Then let them fall sideways."
They tested. He learned to adjust his "weight" with thought, to anchor his astral form to a point, to move without being swept by the pocket's currents. When he was comfortable, they returned, following the anchoring threads back to his body.
The next days brought other exercises. Short forays into minor elemental pockets. A carefully supervised graze of a semi-spiritual plane from which certain sorcerers drew light-based spells. Never anything too deep, too hungry.
"You are like a child learning to swim in a river full of crocodiles," Yao told him. "We keep you near the bank for now."
He rolled his astral eyes.
"And yet," he said, "my soul once nearly became a crocodile."
She tilted her head.
"Interesting metaphor," she said. "We will return to that."
And then, one night, alone in his chamber, he pushed further than she had told him to.
Not recklessly. Not entirely. But curiosity had always been his flaw.
VI. The Unclaimed World
It began as a simple extension of practice.
Narasimha lay on his mat, body in deep relaxation, astral form hovering above, threads of connection to Kamar-Taj humming softly. He cycled through the familiar dimensional flavours—earth-stable, water-deep, fire-eager, air-restless—testing his sensitivity.
Then he felt… something else.
Faint at first. A resonance, like an echo of his own breath in a vast cavern. Not any of the standard training pockets. Not one of the known heavier realms. Something between: not fully spiritual, not merely physical. A semi-spiritual domain, but unlike the ones he had been shown.
It felt unfinished and ancient all at once.
He focused.
The sensation sharpened. A kind of kinship pulsed from it, as if the dimension recognised him before he recognised it.
"Yao will scold me," he thought fleetingly.
He reached anyway.
Carefully, he followed the resonance. It was like tracking a scent through a forest—sometimes clear, sometimes lost in crosscurrents, then strong again. Threads of power brushed his astral form; he deflected the ones that smelled wrong—greed, torment, hunger—and followed the one that felt like… potential.
A membrane loomed before him, softer than the Mirror Dimension's glass, more yielding than the Dark Dimension's warped barriers. He touched it with tentative will.
It parted.
He slipped through.
The first impression was light.
Not blinding, not harsh, but pervasive—a soft, pearly radiance with no clear source. The "ground" under his astral feet was not exactly solid, yet he felt supported. Shapes coalesced as he looked: hints of landscapes half-formed. A suggestion of mountains on one side, of a vast plain on another, of a river that was more intention than water.
There were no stars. No sun. No living beings.
Yet the place was not dead. It felt like a room waiting for occupants. A field waiting for seeds.
Narasimha inhaled, out of habit more than necessity. The "air" here carried a scent that made something deep in him shiver.
It smelled like the moment between inspiration and creation. Like wet clay before a potter's hands move.
"It feels…" he murmured to himself, "…like the start of a world."
A ripple ran through the space, as if it had heard him.
Behind him, a familiar presence flared.
"Narasimha!" Yao's astral form snapped into existence, her aura bright with alarm. "What have you done?"
He winced.
"I walked," he said. "Gently."
She looked around, expression shifting from anger to confusion to something akin to awe.
"This is not on our maps," she said slowly. "It is not a known hell, nor an elemental pocket, nor a constructed training field. It is… new."
The Ancient One's presence followed, quieter but deeper, like a bell note.
He appeared before them, hands folded behind his back, gaze sweeping the semi-formed horizon.
"Ah," he said softly. "So you have found it."
"You knew?" Yao demanded, turning to him. "And you let him wander into an uncharted semi-spiritual dimension alone?"
"I trusted his instincts," the Ancient One replied mildly. "And," he added, "I was watching."
Yao muttered something in a language Narasimha didn't know but suspected was uncomplimentary.
"What is this place?" Narasimha asked, unable to tear his eyes from the way the almost-mountains seemed to solidify when he looked at them, then blur when he glanced away.
The Ancient One's eyes rested on him.
"Do you remember," he asked, "what your gods did when they first made you?"
Memories rose unbidden: the council beyond time, the first chapter of this strange existence. Six divine faces leaning over a newborn soul that cracked under its own density. Essence being drawn out, pain, fear of oblivion, a decision to let him live as an ordinary man instead of forcing him into Manu's impossible mould.
"They removed parts of me," Narasimha said slowly. "Pieces that would have torn me apart."
"And what did you think they did with that excess?" the Ancient One asked.
Narasimha frowned.
"I assumed," he said, "they… dissolved it. Returned it to some cosmic ocean."
The Ancient One shook his head.
"Creation does not like waste," he said. "Especially not of that quality. The essence they took from you—raw potential, too volatile for a single soul—was not thrown away. It was… planted."
He gestured around.
"This," he said, "is what grew."
Yao's eyes widened.
"A dimension," she said. "Born from… him. From that essence. A semi-spiritual realm, unclaimed by any existing entity, tied by origin to his soul. No wonder it sings when he approaches."
Narasimha stared, feeling suddenly as if the ground under his real body had shifted.
"A… child?" he asked, voice rough. "No. Not right. A… twin? A limb? What is this to me?"
The Ancient One considered.
"Perhaps," he said, "an echo. A garden grown from seeds your gods could not bear to destroy. It has matured slowly, parallel to your incarnations. When the Trimūrti fashioned your current life, they did not mention it to you. They wished you to live as a man, not as a dimension-lord."
"I can feel it listening," Narasimha whispered. "As if waiting for me to… speak."
Yao touched his shoulder.
"Be careful," she said. "Spaces like this are like children and weapons both. They can become anything. If you impose too much, too fast, you might break it—or let your own flaws grow into continents."
He huffed a shaky laugh.
"Wonderful," he said. "First a Federation, now a… half-born world. Dharma enjoys piling responsibility on my head."
The Ancient One's eyes were kind.
"You do not need to shape it now," he said. "In fact, you should not. You are not ready, and neither is it. For now, acknowledge it. Establish a conscious link. Let it know who you are. Let it know you will return when you understand more."
Narasimha nodded, swallowing.
He knelt—or the astral equivalent of kneeling—pressing a hand to the not-quite-ground.
Inwardly, he spoke, not in words but in intent:
I feel you. I did not know you existed, but now that I do, I will not forget. I cannot live here, but I can guard you. When it is time, we will decide together what you are meant to be.
The "earth" warmed under his palm.
A pulse moved outward, like a heartbeat echoing through empty valleys. The almost-mountains firmed for a moment. The river-intention brightened, as if water existed somewhere in its future.
Yao exhaled.
"It heard," she said.
"Of course," the Ancient One murmured. "It has been waiting since before his first birth."
They withdrew carefully, retracing the path through the barrier back to Kamar-Taj. When Narasimha sank into his body again, chest rising with a sharp breath, his heart hammered as if he had run for miles.
He sat up slowly.
"So," he said hoarsely, looking at Yao. "On top of everything else, I have an… unclaimed dimension tied to my soul."
She nodded, expression serious.
"Congratulations," she said. "You are now a landlord in three metaphysical categories."
He groaned.
"I am going to drown in committees," he muttered. "Physical realm, Federation. Mystic realm, Mandala of the Unseen. Semi-spiritual realm, my… dimension-child. Next, someone will ask me to run Yama's bureaucracy."
Her laugh was soft but real.
"You will manage," she said.
The Ancient One watched them both, eyes knowing.
"Be wary," he murmured to Yao, later, in the privacy of his chamber. "He will be tempted to shape that place into refuge, escape, reward. His own loneliness will whisper to him. Your task is to help him remember that dharma does not permit running away."
"I know," she said quietly. "I… know."
VII. Lines of Dharma
The discovery of the unclaimed dimension changed something between Narasimha and Yao, though neither could have named it.
There was now an extra thread in their already tangled bond: not only teacher and student, not only king and sorcerer, not only two long-lived beings who recognised themselves in each other, but… co-witnesses to a nascent world that belonged, in some sense, to him and in which she now had a stake.
They spoke of it in technical terms at first. They mapped its "edges" in astral form, measuring how far it extended in relation to known planes. They tested its responsiveness, tossing small, harmless ideas into it—an image of a tree, for instance—and seeing whether the environment echoed it.
"It is incredibly plastic," Yao observed during one such exploration. "It leans toward whatever you are thinking. If you imagine conquest, it sharpens. If you imagine refuge, it softens. If you imagine law, it grids itself."
"Then I must think carefully," Narasimha said. "Or we will end up with a dimension full of half-written constitutions and angry nobles."
In the quiet hours, though, when training was done and duties temporarily set aside, their conversations drifted elsewhere.
On a balcony one night, watching a rare meteor shower streak the mountain sky, Narasimha said, almost casually, "Do you ever… wish you had not taken this mantle? That you had lived a single, short life, like my previous one? Study, job, marriage, a few small kindnesses, then gone."
Yao considered.
"There are days," she admitted, "when I envy… ordinary. A life where the worst decision is which crop to plant, not which dimension to seal. Where the dead you cannot save are counted in single digits, not nations."
She glanced at him.
"And you?" she asked. "Would you trade your current path for a simple one?"
He thought of his last life: walking to college with headphones on, reading fanfics late into the night, little acts of charity, awkward almost-romances. He thought of the truck. The regret. The apology to his parents.
"No," he said, honestly. "I would not. Life taught me many things. But it also left me with the feeling that I had not yet… done what I could. This one—heavy as it is—allows me to try. I cannot throw that away now."
Silence settled, comfortable and sharp at once.
"You know," she said after a while, "if circumstances were different—if you were not married, if I were not who I am—we would probably be… very foolish together."
He swallowed.
"I know," he said softly. "That is precisely why we must not be."
She smiled then, not with humour, but with something more fragile.
"Dharma can be very inconvenient," she murmured.
"Always," he agreed.
Below, in the courtyards, apprentices passed, glancing up briefly at the two figures on the balcony.
"They're at it again," one muttered. "Staring at the sky together. I swear, if they don't at least admit they like each other before he leaves, the tension will tear a hole in reality."
"Maybe that's the plan," another replied. "Use unspoken feelings as a weapon against demons."
Wong, carrying a stack of scrolls, walked by and cleared his throat loudly.
"Some of us," he said dryly, "would prefer our sorcerer-soldiers to focus on their studies rather than on other people's emotional lives."
The apprentices scattered, grinning.
The Ancient One, from his vantage point, shook his head with a fond exasperation that only centuries could produce.
"Why are you smiling?" one of the senior masters asked him quietly.
"Because," he said, "even in a house that guards the multiverse, some things remain gloriously ordinary. Young hearts, old souls, silly gossip. It means we are still human."
In the following weeks, Narasimha threw himself even more fiercely into training. He learned to layer elemental threads with dimensional awareness, crafting spells that were both efficient and less likely to anger any particular realm. He practised slipping a fraction of his awareness into his nascent dimension to check on it—never shaping, only witnessing. Each time, it felt a little more stable, as if his attention was sunlight on a sapling.
He also wrote, in careful script, letters that would be sent through mundane means to Kesarinagara: to Kaveri, to Rudrama and Rajendra, to Rama Sastry. They did not speak of Kamar-Taj directly—only of "insights gained in solitude", of "learning how small I am and how big our problems can be."
In one such letter, to Kaveri, he added a line, then scratched it out, then wrote again:
There are things here my heart finds… complicated. But do not worry. I remember who I am, and to whom I belong.
In Kamar-Taj, when he lay down at night, exhausted from balancing between worlds, he sometimes thought of the path ahead.
Seven months had dwindled to two. Soon, he would have to leave this place of bells and sigils, of wayward snow leopards and sharp-tongued masters, of a woman who understood too much and a dimension that had barely begun to breathe.
He would go back to Kesarinagara, to councils and commissions, to children growing into their own power, to nobles who needed constant herding, to British who would never stop plotting, to a Federation still forming its bones.
But he would not go back the same.
He would carry with him the memory of standing in an unclaimed world born from his own excess essence. The feel of dimensions humming at the edge of his senses. The knowledge that when the next crack opened, he would not be swinging blindly.
And he would carry, quietly, the unspoken thread between himself and Yao—acknowledged, respected, bound by dharma.
A lion who had learned to hear worlds
A sorcerer who still preferred jokes to incantations
A king who now, finally, understood that his responsibilities extended not just across a subcontinent…
…but vertically, across planes.
✦ End of Chapter 58 – "The Lion and the Thousand Worlds" ✦