The yaksa appeared at the entrance of the hall, limned in shadow. It smelled powerfully of petrichor and blood. It had a human shape and an uncannily human face, but its eyes were clusters of shells, its body all roots packed with wormy soil.
Rao could not have moved if he had tried. A cold horror settled over his limbs, holding him for one second that stretched like lifetimes.
The yaksa only had eyes for Bhumika, who kneeled calm and unmoving in her crescent of priests. Their prayers had faltered, ebbing like water.
“I feel you,” the yaksa said. Its voice clinked like bones, rattling in his ears. “Temple child. Broken husk. I felt you from beneath the soil. Where is the other?” A turn of that head; a snapping, creaking noise of stone. “I felt the stronger one but they are—gone. There is only you. Will you take me home?” the yaksa asked, stumbling forward. It sounded as hopeful as a child. “Why are you here, kin? Above dead waters?”
Bhumika met the yaksa’s eyes.
“Surely you know,” she said. Her voice hardened. “Hold the yaksa in place.Now.”
Her order broke their awe and terror as well as a blade. Rao’s warriors surged forward.
The yaksascreamed, and the ground trembled so violently that Rao almost lost his footing. He heard the clang of at least one spear falling. Roots burst through the walls, lashing out at anything and anyone they could touch. There was a bang as one of his men was flung bodily against the opposite wall, then dropped to the floor. The priests were still kneeling, praying frantically.
Rao went cold, then focused. He had trained as a warrior in Harsinghar alongside Aditya and Prem, trained in sabers first and foremost. But he had still been a prince of Alor, bred to Aloran warfare, and he had kept his heart’s shell in dagger form for a reason beyond fear. He knew how to throw a dagger.
He aimed for a difficult target—the throat. The dagger left his hand. For a moment he was not sure it would meet its mark. Time stretched into vastness.
Then he heard the thud of the blade. The yaksa stumbled, blade jutting from its throat.
His men leapt.
Four spears pierced the yaksa, and four soldiers held those spears in place, their knuckles white with tension and their faces blanched with terror. Jeevan was one of those men, armstrembling with the strain. The heart’s shell made the yaksa howl. Around those spears it bled green-black blood, thick gouts that spilled and flowered into vines on the stone floor.
“We cannot hold it for long,” Jeevan bit out.
“We don’t need long,” Bhumika replied.
“You,” the yaksa gasped. Its hand stretched out toward Bhumika. “Why would you betray your own? Your kin?”
“Think of the nameless,” Bhumika called, not meeting its eyes. “Call upon the nameless in your heart.”
“I felt Mani Ara,” the yaksa said, its voice a wet creak of splintered wood—of insects in wood marrow, eating it whole. “I felt my mother. Where is she? You are not her. A single flicker of her, and now she is gone.”
“Open yourself to the nameless,” Bhumika said, her hands tight upon her knees. “Think of nothing else. Beempty.”
“Temple child,” the yaksa gasped. “You’re broken from the waters—torn from your roots. You are empty, and dead in all the ways that matter.” It tried to worm closer; it was weeping, its tears sap and rot and blood. “But I came here for you,” it said, its voice yearning—frighteningly human. “I came here for kin. Are we not bound, little one? Are we not family to one another, born from the same waters?”
The pressure in the temple was growing stronger and stronger. It reminded him of the snowstorm he and Sima had been caught in when they had traveled beyond the Lal Qila: a sudden dimming of light, a hush in the air, a growing silence, heavy, like a breath waiting to be exhaled. There was no darkening sky here, but the glow of the lanterns looked oddly blue. In its lights, the priests and the worshippers were colored in the indigo of deep waters. Most of them had their eyes closed, hands clasped, and faces lowered.
In the center of it all, the yaksa writhed like a landed fish, all its limbs contorting at awful angles.
He kept his eyes on it. He knew it was foolish. And yet…
No heart’s shell was touching him anymore. Fire, as if it hadbeen waiting, began to bank behind his eyes. It was the fire that urged him to tilt his head toward Bhumika instead.
Bhumika was sitting straight and tall, knees tucked beneath her, her shoulders back. Her expression was not calm—it was tense, her brow furrowed, her jaw set.
The shadows were moving strangely around her. He watched them move, flickering with the lantern light. Twisting, reshaping. Figures, they looked like figures, veiled and strange.
Those are not real shadows, his mind whispered.You are not seeing them with your eyes.
The vision is within you.
“When you have faith, you become a vessel,” said Bhumika, her voice stretching across the hall. “You empty yourself. You became a living void where a god may land—as easily as a leaf on waters. Pray as Divyanshi prayed over the waters of your monastery. You have in you what she possessed—not holy blood, butfaith. It is all she had, and all you need. Pray for this yaksa’s death. Pray for cleansing fire.” Her voice trembled, and Rao realized she was weeping. “And—and know that the price is all that you are. If you are willing to pay it, thenpray.”
He blinked sharply, his pupils burning. Then he squeezed his own eyes shut.
