For days, Aarav moved through Metronova like a ghost inside his own body.
He drifted through lectures without hearing a word, through hallways that seemed to stretch and twist behind his back. The city pulsed around him — neon veins through steel flesh — but he felt nothing.
Only the burn.
The serpent.
The symbol blazed behind his eyelids now, with every blink, every heartbeat. He would wake gasping, the taste of iron on his tongue, unsure if the blood was real or just memory.
Because the memories… they were no longer his.
Or maybe they always had been.
Rituals beneath candlelight.
Voices chanting around a circle of bone.
A blade dipped in ink and blood.
The boy from Varsha hadn't learned these things.
But the one now wearing his face had remembered them.
Maya never asked questions.
She watched him instead — quiet, patient, like someone tending to a wounded wolf, waiting to see if it would bite or bow.
"You're fighting yourself," she whispered one night, brushing a lock of hair from his forehead as he lay on the floor, half-conscious.
"You always have."
He wanted to deny it.
But part of him — the part that was no longer boy, no longer dreamer — knew she was right.
Some nights he screamed in his sleep.
Other nights, he woke standing at the window, staring out at nothing.
Once, he found symbols scrawled across his wall — in his own handwriting, though he had no memory of writing them.
He stopped fearing the changes.
And slowly, inevitably, something began to shift.
Fear became hunger.
Doubt became purpose.
Pain became power.
He no longer looked in mirrors.
Because when he did, he saw eyes that didn't blink.
And they were his.
The Call
The next note came folded in black silk.
Tucked inside his desk drawer — though he had locked it. Though he had searched it the night before.
The note read only one word:
"Come."
No time. No place. No signature.
But he knew.
And somehow, so did his body.
That night, Aarav followed the call through Metronova's underbelly — through streets that weren't on any map, doors that didn't exist by daylight.
He descended stone steps slick with moss, past iron gates marked in runes, until he reached the place where the city ended and something older began.
A chamber carved from obsidian, lit by a dozen floating candles.
At its center, a pool — still, black as void — and beside it, a figure in crimson robes.
Maya.
Or something wearing her voice.
"You're ready," she said, her face hidden behind the mask again.
"No more tests?"
Her head tilted slightly. "That depends on what you see when you look inside."
She pointed to the pool.
Aarav stepped forward.
The surface shimmered.
And as he stared, the reflection warped. Not into monsters.
Into truth.
The boy from Varsha.
The son of a broken dream.
The memory of a child led down into the dark — not kidnapped. Not forced.
Chosen.
The reflection smiled.
And Aarav smiled back.
He reached into the water without hesitation.
His hand came out holding the black key.
Not silver. Not ceremonial.
This one was heavier. Warmer.
Alive.
It pulsed in his palm like a second heart.
Maya stepped beside him.
"The black key opens only one thing," she said softly.
"And what's that?"
She met his eyes.
"The door to what comes next."
That night, Aarav didn't dream.
He didn't scream.
He didn't forget.
When he woke, the black key was still on his chest.
And the serpent no longer haunted him.
It followed him.