The node spat images of collapsing empires. The wisp that was Anantara panicked, its edges fraying.
Vishvanatham pushed to his feet. “He found me.”
Anantara’s light shivered and rooted to his legs like a child holding on. “Don’t let me go,” she breathed.
The Forger’s corridor flared. A warning—urgent and mechanical—sounded in Vishvanatham’s head. The node’s balance had been violated. Kaalnarayan had pierced containment and thrust a spear of collapse into the node’s edge.
Kaalnarayan’s agents—wraiths of unspooled time—fell from the sky like black rain. They hit the sand and exploded into shards of forgotten memories. Figures he recognized—soldiers from eras erased, faces of people who had died in a breath—sprang up under Kaalnarayan’s command, eyes like pits.
Vishvanatham’s power answe
