They always scream when they hit my memory.
Not the physical pain — that's easy. They can handle blades. Bruises. Bleeding.
But my pain? The moment I burned? That's different.
That sticks in their minds. It tears through their lungs. It climbs into their throats and eats the scream from inside.
I see the two of them now.
The man — greedy eyes, sharp smile. Thinks money is armor.
The woman — quiet, coiled. Her pain is buried deeper than mine.
They don't know me.
They don't know what it's like to be held down, face in ash, lungs full of your own teeth.
They don't know what it's like to scream for help and hear laughter.
They will.
The sand turned black the second this bastard showed up.
Sky shifted. Wind stopped.
And then it smiled.
Its face was wrong — stretched like wet paper, eyes in the wrong place, jaw loose like it could fall off and still keep grinning.
I've fought demons. Dozens. Contract freaks. Empty vessels.
But this one?
This one felt old.
Old like chains. Old like pain that never healed.
"Watch his hands," I snapped to Kovida.
She nodded, blade ready.
We flanked him — clean formation. Standard split.
Didn't work.
The moment I stepped in, everything changed.
One blink — and I was back in the fire.
Back in the temple where my brother died.
Back in the room with the smell of incense and blood.
The floor cracked. My hands trembled.
Illusion. Not real. I knew that.
But my body didn't.
She felt it.
The temple. The grief. The silence after the scream.
I don't make things up. I don't create illusions. I just replay them.
You remember your worst day?
I make you live it again.
I saw Kovida stagger.
Bad sign.
I fired three rounds — center mass.
Vetala didn't move. The bullets stopped a foot in front of him and melted.
Air shimmered around him like heat from a furnace.
I didn't blink. I just charged.
Khanda blade drawn, punch loaded behind it.
He's fast. Brutal.
But I've died before.
Nothing he does can match that.
Still...
He might be fun to break
I slashed high. He ducked like he expected it before I even swung.
He grabbed my wrist — his grip was cold. Not like ice.
Cold like a memory you buried and never dug up.
My body stopped shaking. I shoved the vision out. Pushed the pain down.
Clarity returned.
Koushik was pinned.
I moved. Fast.
Oh, she's good.
But pain will make her slow again.
It always does.
I headbutted him.
He laughed.
Kovida's blade sliced his arm from the side. It hit — but the wound didn't bleed. Just hissed.
His skin repaired in seconds.
I backed off. Wiped blood from my mouth.
"Not normal," I muttered. "Not even close."
They think they're hunters.
They haven't realized yet…
They're my prey.
The lights in the training hall flickered once, then steadied.
Thirty recruits. Fresh uniforms. Some still breathing hard from the final sparring trial.
No one smiled.
A silver-haired instructor stood before them, coat covered in old blood. Not his. The projector behind him buzzed to life, casting a swirling sigil on the wall. The shape shifted — half skull, half flame.
He looked at them one by one.
"You're not ready," he said flatly. "But we're sending you anyway."
The room stayed silent.
He stepped forward.
"Today's final topic: Vetala-class Demons. Empty Vessel Type. Class Omega."
The screen changed. Image: a child tied to a wooden pole, eyes wide, mouth gagged.
"Vetalas are not born in Hell.
Vetalas are suffering incarnate."
He tapped the screen. Next image: a prisoner locked in a stone pit, bones exposed from skin rot.
"When a human dies with enough unresolved agony, their soul cannot move on.
The ancient undead spirits — the Vetala — find them. And they take the body."
"What you get... isn't human. Isn't spirit. It's pain that learned how to stand upright."
He turned off the projection. Spoke slower now.
"The more suffering the person endured before death... the more powerful the demon becomes."
"A man who died quick? Weak Vetala."
"A woman who burned alive for three days in a pit of salt and screams? You're looking at something that can fold a Reaper in seconds."
One recruit raised a hand.
"Can they be reasoned with, sir?"
The instructor stared.
"Can you negotiate with a scream? A drowning? A betrayal?
No. You don't reason with them. You survive them."
Another voice from the back.
"But aren't they victims too?"
He stepped forward until he was inches from that recruit.
"They were victims. Now they're predators. You think your empathy matters when it wraps its hands around your throat and makes you live its death?"
Silence again.
The instructor turned. Pointed to the screen once more.
"Fifteen of you will leave tonight. First mission. Small demon breach reported in Sector M. Rural. Standard containment."
He looked at his clipboard.
"Selected: 1 through 15. Step forward."
The chosen moved without a word.
"Dismissed. You have one hour to prep. Then you're being dropped into Hell's warm-up round."
They filed out.
He turned to the remaining fifteen.
The projector flicked back on. The child on the pole reappeared.
"This isn't horror. This isn't drama.
This is math.
The more pain they felt, the more of you will die."
The shuttle dropped them off just past midnight.
Fifteen in total. Reaper-level. Young. Trained. Geared.
They stood at the edge of an abandoned town, weapons drawn, eyes scanning crumbled rooftops and dead streetlamps. Street signs hung loose. Air was still. No animals. No bugs. Nothing.
Just silence.
And under that silence — a feeling. Like something in the dirt had teeth.
I told myself it was fine.
Standard mission.
One demon. Contained zone. Low civilian risk. No aura spike on arrival.
That's what the brief said.
We moved in formation. Tight. No talking.
Then someone whispered, "Do you smell smoke?"
That's when I knew the brief lied.
The sky changed.
It didn't grow darker — it peeled. Like old wallpaper. Behind it, there wasn't sky. There was a memory.
A memory none of them had lived — but all of them were about to feel.
Children sobbing. Metal against bone. Fire. Salt. Screaming.
Then: a figure walked out from the middle of the road.
Barefoot. Skin charred black. No eyelids. No fingernails. Just standing there, twitching.
It didn't run.
It didn't need to.
I raised my gun. My hands shook. I don't even remember aiming.
The Vetala lifted one arm.
My knees buckled. My brain flashed.
Suddenly, I was on fire.
I could feel it. I could smell myself burning.
I screamed. So loud I tasted blood.
The front line broke instantly. Two fell just from the psychic pulse. Their eyes ruptured. Noses bled. One vomited and didn't stop.
The Vetala tilted its head.
It had no voice, but it hummed — not with sound, but with suffering.
I tried to stab it.
I swear I did.
But I saw her. My mother. The night she died. But she was looking at me. Crying. Saying my name.
I knew it wasn't real.
But I dropped the blade anyway.
By the fifth minute, eight were down.
Some tried to run. One shot himself. Another just stood still until his chest was crushed inward by something they couldn't see.
Vetala's form glitched — body shifting like static between two moments. Human. Demon. Human again. Its skin rippled with faces from other people's memories.
Blood soaked into the dirt.
Then one boy stood still.
He didn't run.
Didn't scream.
He just blinked. Once. Twice.
Then something in his head clicked.
Time split.
Literally.
The moment the demon moved, I saw it — not just once, but five, six times. It was like watching a video stutter forward, frame by frame, but I could see all the frames at once.
My fingers moved before my brain did.
I stepped right.
Dodged a blow no one could've seen.
My eyes burned. I didn't care.
Then the voice inside my head whispered: "Welcome back, Yatra."
He leaned forward, hand trembling slightly.
"...Yatra bloodline... confirmed."
The boy on the screen didn't look heroic.
He looked clear.
Unshaken. Cold. Focused.
The Vetala smiled.
So did the boy.
Everything was quiet now.
Not peaceful.
Just empty.
Thirteen bodies behind me. One still breathing — barely. I could feel blood drying on my skin. My hands wouldn't stop shaking, but not from fear.
It was too much information.
Too many timelines.
Each time I blinked, I saw something else: the demon killing me, the demon dying, the demon laughing, me running, me standing, the dirt eating us both alive.
Time had stopped obeying the rules.
And I was caught in between.
The Vetala didn't move.
It stood maybe twenty feet away, steam rising off its body like it had just come out of a memory too hot for skin.
No weapon. No growl. Just watching.
Almost… curious.
Its head tilted. Slowly.
It knows.
It knows I can see it. Not just what it's doing — but what it might do.
And I think it wants to see what I'll choose.
I could move.
I could try.
I could draw my blade and—
Dead in three timelines.
I could run.
Caught in six.
I could scream.
None of them survive that.
So I didn't move.
I just stood there.
I met its eyes — what was left of them — and I let it see me.
Let it see that I understood.
(Brief, alien thoughts — fragmented)
"He does not move.
He sees.
He waits.
He hears the echo.
He does not break."
I was just trying to stay in one piece.
One breath. One moment at a time.
The Vetala stepped forward.
Just once.
Then stopped.
Then… smiled.
It turned. Slowly. And walked back into the woods — vanishing into fog that hadn't been there a second ago.
No rush. No fear.
Like it had learned enough for now.
Shaan exhaled.
Then collapsed.
"Pull him out," the instructor said, voice flat. "Now."
A medical drone launched from HQ.
Inside the control room, Purush watched silently.
The Apex of VEIL finally spoke.
"Don't lose track of that one."
It wouldn't die.
Three bullets to the spine. A Khanda slash across its throat. Kovida's blade through its side. And still — it smiled.
It didn't fight like it wanted to win.
It fought like it wanted us to remember.
Its arms flickered like afterimages. Every time I moved, I saw three versions of it. One attacking, one screaming, one burning. That's what it wanted us to see — how it died.
I hate demons that make you feel sorry for them.
I circled left.
My left arm was numb. Clipped by the last illusion-swipe. Still bleeding, but not deep enough to drop me.
Koushik was moving faster than usual — reckless. He was pissed.
I wasn't.
I was calculating.
Looking for the opening it hadn't shown us yet.
And then — the wind changed.
It paused.
Just for half a second.
Tilted its head. Looked east.
Then it twitched. Like something had pulled on its spine.
I raised my gun — ready to capitalize.
But before I could move—
I felt something crack in the air.
Like glass under pressure.
Like time had blinked.
Shaan stood in a field of corpses.
His hands trembled. Blood dripped from his temple.
He could barely keep his vision focused — too many timelines, too much noise.
But he found one.
One timeline. One moment. One thread where they lived.
And he pulled it backward.
The air rippled like water.
Sound reversed. Blood flew upward. Screams rewound into gasps.
And then—
Eight trainees who had been dead were suddenly alive again, wide-eyed, coughing, confused.
Shaan stood in the center.
Eyes glowing faint gold. Veins pulsing with strange patterns. His aura twisted the dirt beneath him into spiral cracks.
The future's not fixed.
It's just a hallway with locked doors.
Yatra blood opens them.
"…What…?"
The pain inside it shifted. For the first time — not projected, not weaponized — it was confused.
It hadn't seen this thread.
I stepped forward.
Didn't raise my weapon.
Didn't need to yet.
I just looked it dead in the eye.
And said—
"Now it's your death, demon."
Far away — back in the desert battlefield — the Vetala fighting Koushik shuddered.
Something in the collective psychic field had changed.
The pain it fed on had twisted. Curled in on itself.
Koushik caught it.
Eyes narrowed.
He didn't know what happened.
But he knew one thing:
Something had just shifted the rules.