Midweek on campus was supposed to be routine—lectures, late-night chai, scribbled notes, and sleep-deprived students.
But something was... off.
It wasn't the heat. Or the pressure of upcoming exams.
It was the air.
Too still. Like the world was holding its breath.
---
Anatomy Lab—
In the anatomy lab, students gathered around stainless steel tables, whispering half-jokes to mask the unease that always accompanied cadavers(dead body).
Aarav had seen bodies before. Been unfazed.
But today, the room seemed... closer. The fluorescent lights sharper. His skin itched under the lab coat.
Dr. Roy's voice blurred in his ears as he explained organ preservation techniques.
And then, it hit.
A sudden spike of heat at the back of his neck. His vision wobbled.
Then—pain.
He swayed forward.
> "Aarav!"
Blood dripped from his nose.
Before anyone caught him, he stumbled into Neel's side and collapsed. For a moment, everything slowed.
His lips moved.
Just one word, in a language no one spoke anymore.
> "Yugant."
---
When he woke in the infirmary, he didn't remember falling.
> "Did I faint?"
Parth sat beside him, brows furrowed. "You bled. And said something."
> "What?"
> "Yugant."
Aarav blinked. "Sounds... metal."
Parth didn't laugh.
Because he knew the word. He had heard it on a field where gods had wept and chariots had burned.
> "It means 'the end of an age,'" he said quietly.
Neel stood by the door. His silence felt heavier than usual.
---
Later that evening, in a quieter lab, Neel messed with a portable EMF scanner(Ghost hunters use it too) borrowed from the physiology department.
It was meant to measure basic electromagnetic fields in humans—cell activity, muscle currents, nothing extraordinary.
> "I'm just curious," he said, adjusting the dial. "Aarav glitched today. Might as well check the team."
He waved it over Aarav. Normal. Then himself. Normal.
Then Parth.
The device stuttered.
Beeped once.
Then spiked.
Red lines across the screen. Energy levels impossible for a human body.
> "What the..."
And then—gone.
The device returned to baseline. Like it had hallucinated.
> "Do it again," Parth said.
Neel did.
Nothing.
He didn't say it, but he didn't think it was a glitch. The machine didn't lie. And Parth...
Parth wasn't normal.
---
That night, Parth didn't sleep.
He fell.
Through blackness.
Through time.
Through memory.
When his eyes opened, he stood on cracked earth. Red dust curled in the wind. The field stretched endlessly—empty, but echoing with what was to come.
Kurukshetra.
But not in battle.
This was before.
He could hear birds overhead. A hawk circled.
And then—chimes.
Chariot bells.
Someone stood beside him, cloaked in light. A presence. Familiar. Powerful.
The figure turned, and Parth's breath caught.
Krishna.
But blurred.
Like a painting beneath water.
Still, he heard the words.
> "You have returned, Parth."
> "But the war has followed."
---
He jolted awake, chest tight.
His hands trembled.
And the echo remained in his bones. As if the battlefield still breathed inside him.
---
The next morning, the campus WhatsApp group exploded.
> "Anyone heard about Priya from Nursing?"
> "She collapsed in the wards."
> "No symptoms. No vitals. They declared her dead an hour ago."
> "She was 19."
No one knew the cause.
Just whispers.
That she had frozen.
Then trembled.
Then gone still.
Same pattern as the student from Room 3B—the file Parth had seen. The one with EMF anomalies and no logical medical explanation.
The boys met in the mess courtyard. None of them touched their food.
> "It's happening again," Aarav said.
> "We're missing something," Neel murmured. "Or we're remembering it too late."
Parth didn't speak.
He only looked past the crowd—into the still sky.
And felt the weight in his blood shift.
---
That evening, in his own room, Neel opened a new notebook.
He wrote without stopping.
> A cracked bow. A pale moon. A shadow with silver eyes.
He didn't know where it came from.
But he couldn't stop.
---
Aarav, meanwhile, opened his class notes to revise histology.
Then noticed the margins.
He'd drawn something during the lecture.
Circles. Arrows. Horses. Spears. Flaming wheels.
War formations.
Old as myth.
---
And Parth?
He walked past the temple in Sector 8 on his way back from the store.
The bells rang.
And he flinched.
Like they were calling him back to something he'd barely survived.
---
The second symptom had appeared.
The ripple had begun.
---