Some cities never sleep, and then some cities dream. Varanasi was not awake, and it was not asleep either. It was... remembering.
As the sun dipped beyond the Ganga's curve, painting the water in molten orange and sacred gold, the city breathed in incense and let out centuries. Bells rang from temple towers as if struck not by hands, but by devotion itself. Smoke coiled lazily from the mouths of clay lamps, drifting across narrow alleys where saffron-clad sadhus walked barefoot, muttering ancient mantras into the dusk.
Veyne walked among them like a whisper out of place. No one saw him—not the pilgrims seeking moksha, not the priests preparing for evening aarti, not even the dogs who usually sensed what man could not. The Ashen Crown pulsed faintly on his brow, its flame subdued. It recognised the city, even if Veyne didn't. This was no battlefield. This was a threshold.
He wore a shawl draped carelessly across his shoulders, his clothes dusty from travel. His boots bore the mud of half the subcontinent, and his eyes carried the burden of both fire and silence.
"She called this the first city," he murmured aloud, remembering Nalini's cryptic words.
"Before Atlantis rose, Kashi stood. Where Knowledge first walked in human skin."
He descended toward the riverfront. The ghats were crowded with ritual, bodies moving in rhythm with chants older than language. The Ganga lapped at the stone steps like a patient mother, waiting for her children to remember.
But Veyne wasn't going to the river.
Instead, he turned toward an abandoned ghat—one forgotten even by the mendicants. It lay cracked and choked with moss, its steps uneven, its pillars eaten by time. Birds didn't nest there. Wind didn't speak there. It was as if the air itself avoided it.
He placed his palm on a worn pillar etched with strange markings—marks that glowed faintly under the influence of the Crown.
There it was again. That hum beneath the surface. Not sound, not movement. Just... recognition.
The pillar shifted.
Stone slid with an ancient reluctance, revealing a narrow passageway beneath the ghat. Stale air, thick with the scent of old dust and sandalwood, rolled out like a forgotten breath.
Veyne entered.
The staircase spiralled downwards, tighter than any he had descended before. Moss clung to the walls like secrets too shy to speak. His fingers brushed past them, and he heard whispers—not voices, but echoes of footsteps long vanished.
Halfway down, the Ashen Crown flared. A glyph glowed beneath his feet—a circle flanked by two arrows, pointing both forward and back.
Time, mirrored.
He knew this symbol. It was not Atlantean. It was older.
At the bottom of the stairwell, he found the gate. Not a door. Not an arch. A gate. Square, deliberate, immense. It was carved entirely of black stone, untouched by decay. On its face were inscribed hundreds of symbols—scripts from dozens of languages, some that no longer had names.
But one line stood out, cut clean into the centre, in flowing Devanagari:
"सत्यं ज्ञानं अनन्तं ब्रह्म।"
Truth. Knowledge. Infinity. That is the Divine.
Veyne inhaled deeply. The air here was heavier. Not foul—but weighty. Like a thought unfinished.
He stepped forward. The Crown dimmed.
"This gate was not meant for kings," a voice spoke, not from outside but from within him.
"Then it shall open for a flame," he whispered, pressing his palm against the script.
The symbols lit up. Not with light, but with remembrance.
And then the gate breathed.
Stone parted without a sound. No grinding. No trembling. Just... acceptance. As if the gate had merely been asleep, and Veyne was the dream that woke it.
Beyond it lay silence.
Not the silence of emptiness. The silence of presence is too immense to speak.
He stepped into a corridor lined with statues. They were not idols, nor warriors. They were scribes—men, women, and beings of strange shape and size, all holding tablets, scrolls, and quills. Their eyes followed him, yet never moved.
The air grew cooler, thick with the scent of dried ink and forgotten parchment. And beneath it, a strange undercurrent—the copper tang of blood. Not fresh. Ancient. As if words here had once been written in sacrifice.
The corridor bent in unnatural ways. One turn led him past a window that showed the river above, though he had gone too deep for any light to reach. Another opened to a mirror that did not show his face, but a flickering vision of a ruined library consumed by fire.
And then, the chanting began.
Soft. Childlike.
But layered. As though a thousand children were reciting at once, all in different tongues.
Veyne followed it.
At last, the corridor ended in a platform that overlooked a void. And in the centre of that void floated a structure—a library that defied architecture. Its floors turned like gears. Its spines flapped like wings. Shelves curved into infinity. Lanterns floated mid-air, held by threads of silence. Scrolls whispered to each other, opening and closing as though in conversation.
This was no collection of knowledge. This was knowledge, dreaming itself awake.
Veyne stood at the edge and removed his shawl. The Ashen Crown shimmered with reverence.
Below, a spiral bridge extended, its stones assembling one by one with every step he imagined. It was not made for walking. It was made for choosing.
He placed his foot forward.
The first stone held.
Then the second.
And with each step, he felt the air change—not cold, not warm. Just... honest. Every lie he had ever told began to sting at the back of his throat.
As he reached the midpoint of the bridge, a small figure stood waiting.
A child. Or something wearing the shape of one.
Barefoot. Bald. Clad in a robe stitched from torn pages. Eyes too vast for his face. A voice like a bell rung in reverse.
"You've come," it said, not smiling. "We wondered if flame would dare walk into dust."
Veyne tilted his head.
"And if the dust remembers fire?"
The child gave a small nod. Then pointed behind him.
There, etched on the gate into the floating library, was a single glyph.
A circle, with a flame at its centre. And a scroll coiled around it like a serpent.
Knowledge. Bound to desire. Tempting the flame.
Veyne stepped forward.
And behind him, the bridge vanished.
Ahead, the Library of Dust awaited.
The first breath Veyne took inside the Library felt like swallowing silence.
Not emptiness—but a silence so profound, it had density. It filled his lungs not with air, but with remembrance. The walls, if they could be called that, rose and twisted like skeletal trees made from language itself—each vine and branch formed of words long forgotten, coiled around pillars etched with moving script.
Scrolls hung like cocooned spirits, suspended in mid-air by golden threads that shimmered but did not sway. Books lined shelves that curved infinitely, their spines changing titles as he glanced at them. Every step he took, the floor shifted subtly beneath him, as if responding not to his feet, but to his thoughts.
He had stepped into a sanctum where time had chosen to pause and memory had chosen to breathe.
And the library... it was watching.
No faces, no figures. Yet a quiet pressure lingered on his skin, like a gaze that didn't blink.
In the centre of the first chamber stood a pedestal. Upon it, a single book. Bound in translucent skin, its pages flickering like candlelight. Veyne approached it slowly, and as he reached out, it opened—not with sound, but with permission.
On the page was his name.
Not just Veyne Alaric.
But all of them.
Every name he had worn in life, every mask he'd held against his skin, every title spoken in faith or mockery. From "Alaric the Flameborne" to "Veyne the Betrayed," to the unnamed boy who once ran barefoot through Valgard's alleys, hungry for both bread and wonder.
And below his name, the book whispered.
A single line, in shifting script.
"You do not remember all you are. But we do."
The air thickened.
From the far end of the chamber, a sound began. Not music. Not chant. But a rhythm. Like breath passing through pages. Like the heartbeat of thought.
Books turned. Scrolls unrolled. Shelves bent and arched. The entire library stirred—not awake, but dreaming louder.
Then came the first Keeper.
A figure robed in parchment, her face hidden behind a mask made from a single folded page. Her hands were ink-stained, and her voice emerged like dried leaves on the wind.
"The Flame returns," she said.
Veyne bowed slightly.
"To burn truth into the ash."
She nodded, stepping aside to reveal a circular chamber behind her—its walls lined with mirrors, each etched not with reflection, but with moments. Moments from Veyne's lives. Lives he did not remember.
He entered.
The first mirror showed him atop a mountain, holding a blade shaped from song. His hair was braided with gold, and he was leading a people who sang with every strike of their tools, building not cities, but harmonies.
The second showed him sitting beneath a Bodhi tree, not in meditation, but in rage. Flames circled him, but he wept—because knowledge had come too late.
The third… was Atlantis.
But not as he remembered it. In this vision, Atlantis was not the empire of fire and grandeur. It was humble. Made of marble and quiet rivers. And Veyne stood at its gates not as a king, but as a student. Carrying books. Smiling.
The final mirror had no image. Only shadow. But as he stepped closer, a voice rose from it.
"Before you were king, you were a seeker. Before you were flame, you were dust."
The words struck him harder than blade or betrayal.
Dust.
Forgotten. Unmade. Scattered. Yet it was where all memory returned. Where the Ashen Crown had been forged—not from conquest, but from curiosity and loss.
He turned to the Keeper.
"You said you remember who I am. Then tell me—what was the first truth I gave up to become who I am now?"
The Keeper did not blink.
She raised her hand. From her sleeve fell a shard of obsidian. She handed it to him, and as he touched it, it flared.
Suddenly, the chamber fell away.
He was in a courtyard. An old one, roofed in banyan branches and prayers. He was younger. Not a boy, not yet a king. Kneeling. And beside him, an old woman sat—her hands callused, her eyes soft.
Not Nalini. Not the Three Eyes. Someone deeper.
"Veyne," she said, pressing her fingers to his brow. "When knowledge tempts, will you remember to bow?"
He had smiled, arrogant.
"If knowledge tempts, I'll take it. Bend it to will. What use is truth, if it cannot be shaped?"
She had sighed.
"And thus, the first truth you gave up… was humility."
The vision shattered.
Back in the Library, Veyne fell to one knee.
Not from pain. From gravity.
A weight had returned to his spine. Not physical. Philosophical. As if every step forward demanded a truth be left behind—and now, the truths wanted to return.
He stood, breathing hard.
The Keeper did not gloat. She only turned, leading him to the next chamber.
Here, floating in the air, was a table of names.
Seven.
Desire. War. Knowledge. Faith. Trade. Shadow. Law.
But beneath them, scratched out crudely, was one more.
Order.
A splinter. A scar.
Veyne reached out to it.
And it pulsed.
The table shifted. The name "Order" bled into the name "Law," then flickered back.
The Keeper whispered again.
"They stole what could not be owned. They twisted Law into Command. Justice into Control. That which was meant to guide... became a leash."
He knew this already. Felt it in every moment since his return. But seeing it... Knowing it had been written... it made something in him recoil.
He turned to her.
"Why show me this now?"
Her reply was simple.
"Because the Dominion of Knowledge no longer watches. It waits."
Then she raised a hand. A wall of shelves parted.
Behind it—at last—stood a door. Wooden. Plain. Human-sized.
On it, carved with childlike fingers, were the same words he had seen above the stone gate:
"सत्यं ज्ञानं अनन्तं ब्रह्म।"
But below it, another line had been scratched in haste, with no grace:
"But even Truth must kneel to Flame."
He stepped forward.
The Keeper did not follow.
"Beyond this door lies what was hidden from even Atlantis. Knowledge that shaped kings. And broke them."
"Then let it break me," Veyne said. "So I may rebuild myself with truth, not ambition."
And he opened the door.
Inside was not a library.
It was a well.
A vast, circular chasm. With no bottom.
And lining its inner walls were tablets. Floating, glowing, rotating. Each one a memory not of his life, but of the world itself. Its beginnings. It's lies.
The Ashen Crown caught flame.
Not burning. Enlightening.
And a voice—his own, yet not—spoke.
"You were never king. You were always the question. Now, become the answer."
There was a stillness inside the chamber that felt older than air.
Veyne stood at the lip of the great well. His breath slowed, not out of fear, but reverence. Below him, the tablets rotated in silence, shimmering with glyphs not meant to be read, but felt. Each one a wound, a scripture, a memory stitched into stone. Some wept dust. Others hummed, vibrating faintly like the string of a veena caught mid-note. And somewhere among them, he knew, the truth of Law waited—not as a doctrine, but as a scar.
He descended slowly.
There were no stairs. No ropes. The path was made of thought. Every step was an intent, a surrender. With each breath, he recalled an oath he had once made. Not as king, but as student, disciple, seeker.
"Lead me from untruth to truth... from darkness to light... from death to the eternal."
"असतो मा सद्गमय ।
तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय ।
मृत्योर् मा अमृतं गमय ॥"
The shloka rose in his chest like incense smoke—familiar, grounding, yet edged with grief. It had been taught to him once, long ago, by a voice he now barely remembered. A teacher whose face had blurred with the passage of fire and betrayal.
A few steps lower, and the air grew heavy—not hostile, but expectant. The way a courtroom waits for truth, or a battlefield waits for the first cry of war.
And then he saw it.
Floating alone, chained to nothing, suspended in the centre of the void, was the Broken Tablet.
It was shaped like a flame, cleaved down the middle. One side whole, radiant with golden runes that shimmered like truth unveiled. The other side... cracked, eroded, nearly turned to ash. A void where the word should have been.
Veyne reached out.
The tablet flared at his presence. Symbols split across its surface—some in the script of Atlantis, others in tongues older than sound. But his eyes fixed upon one sentence, pulsing like a heartbeat:
"Law was never meant to rule. Only to remind."
His breath caught.
All these centuries, the Law had been mistaken for a whip. Enforced by Order, twisted into commands, bent to shape power. But here, here it was revealed not as dominance, but as memory. A reminder of balance. Of dharma. Not a master's rule, but a mirror held to kings.
He pressed his palm against the cracked side.
The world around him split.
He stood upon an island made of stars. Not a metaphor. Actual stars—crushed into dust, fused into terrain. The sky above was not dark, but mirrored, reflecting everything below. Trees grew from language. Rivers flowed in syllables. Wind carried the weight of parables.
And there, standing beneath a tree whose bark whispered mantras, was a woman.
The same old woman from his visions. The same who had trained him once, before the Ashen Crown, before Atlantis. She wore no crown, no robes. Only simple clothes, faded with time and patience.
"You've come further than I expected," she said, not turning.
Veyne bowed his head. Not in worship. In memory.
"I didn't remember this place. Not until now."
"Because you weren't ready," she replied. "Law doesn't come to those who seek power. It comes to those who carry consequences."
He stepped beside her. The tree's branches moved as if listening.
"Was this the original Dominion of Law?"
She nodded, plucking a single leaf and handing it to him. It melted into his palm, becoming a glyph of balance. Two scales. One dipped slightly lower—not because it was broken, but because it bore the weight of compassion.
"This place," she said, "was once the heart of the Dominion. We were not judges. We were the reminders. When a faction veered too far, when the fire of War burned too wild, or the seduction of Desire clouded clarity, we stepped in. Not with swords. With truth."
"And Order?" he asked, his jaw tight.
The woman exhaled, pain in her breath.
"They were our children. Not of blood, but of belief. They wanted to protect the Law from being ignored. But fear crept in. And fear... always wants control."
She turned then, her eyes heavy with centuries.
"They broke the Tablet. Took what could be weaponised. Left behind what could not."
"So what remains?" Veyne asked, voice quiet.
"The part they couldn't twist. The part you now hold."
Suddenly, the sky darkened. Thunder rolled—not from clouds, but from forgotten voices. Around them, the stars began to shift. Memories returned. The Dominion of Law's fall. The screams not of war, but of silence—of truths ignored, of justice strangled by urgency.
"What do you want of me?" Veyne asked. "To revive it?"
"No," she said. "To remember it."
She stepped back, becoming fainter.
"The Dominion of Law was never meant to rise again as power. But its spirit must live in the one who wears the Ashen Crown. Else, you'll burn like the rest."
"So I carry it alone?"
"Not alone." She smiled gently. "But without an army. Without temple. You will be its voice. Not by ruling. By reminding."
The glyph in his palm flared once more. The broken half of the Tablet lifted into the sky, and for the first time in aeons, both sides rejoined—not physically, but in thought.
"Justice without love is tyranny," she said, fading into the bark of the tree. "And law without memory is a cage."
Veyne awoke—if it could be called waking—back in the well of the Library.
The Tablet no longer floated. It had embedded itself into the wall behind him. Whole, yet cracked. Rejoined, yet not healed.
A warning. A mirror.
He turned and ascended. This time, the path formed beneath him more swiftly. Not because it welcomed him. But because it recognised him.
The Keeper waited at the top.
"You have seen the roots," she said. "Now you may walk the branch."
He nodded, his voice steadier.
"I will not build the Dominion of Law. But I will carry it."
She stepped aside, and another door opened. This one is smaller. Less grand. Barely noticeable.
But Veyne knew what waited on the other side.
Not battle.
Not blood.
But the harder path—justice without cruelty, truth without pride.
And with every step he now took, the Library remembered him.
Not as king.
But as the boy who had once bowed before truth—and would do so again.
The door was small—no grand arch, no carvings, not even a handle. Just a simple slab of stone, embedded in the curve of the Library's lowest hall. Barely noticeable. But now that the Tablet had accepted him, it had opened.
Veyne crossed its threshold alone.
The moment he stepped in, the door sealed behind him—not with finality, but with a quiet sense of solitude. The kind one finds in a prayer whispered at the edge of sleep.
The chamber inside was round, its walls etched with sigils too faint to decipher. The air was heavy, not with dust, but with memory. It felt like standing inside a vow.
At the centre of the room stood a basin—ancient, cracked, filled with ash. Not fire, not water. Ash.
Veyne approached.
Around the basin, seven small lamps floated mid-air, flickering in silence. Each flame curved toward him, as if drawn by breath unspoken. They bore colours that weren't colours—desire's gold, war's red, shadow's purple, knowledge's blue, trade's copper, faith's white, and law's silver. And somewhere behind all of them, black. The ash itself. The eighth element. The forgotten truth.
A voice spoke—not out loud, but inside him. It came from the basin, and also from his chest.
"Oathbearer. This is not your coronation. This is your surrender."
Veyne closed his eyes.
"I am ready."
One by one, the flames drifted down. They dipped themselves into the ash, one after another, and vanished. Only the ash remained, dark and still—like a truth that refuses to rise until called by name.
He dipped his hands into the basin.
It was cold.
And then, his vision shattered.
He stood atop a ruined mountain. Around him, kingdoms burned—not in rage, but in silence. No screams. No soldiers. Only remnants of empires that had collapsed under their laws.
The sky was white, cloudless. The sun hung like an eye without blinking. Below him, statues of kings crumbled to dust. Scrolls fluttered with no wind. Thrones lay toppled, their legs cracked like bones.
And before him stood himself.
But older.
Not in body, but in weight. His face stared back, eyes deeper, bearing grief that had not yet arrived. A king, perhaps. Or a warning.
The older Veyne raised his hand.
"Do you see what awaits when power forgets balance?"
The ground beneath them cracked. A canyon opened—filled not with lava, but with echoes. Words screamed from the past. Laws twisted, justice denied, people erased in the name of order.
"You are not the first to hold the Ashen Crown," the older self said. "But you may be the last to carry it with memory."
Veyne bowed his head.
"Then let memory be the weight I carry."
The mountain shook.
And suddenly, they were inside a temple. Not built by stone, but shaped by words. The walls were stanzas. The roof—a hymn. The floor—sutras etched in breath.
The voice returned.
"Speak the Ash Oath."
Veyne knelt.
He did not speak in pride. He spoke in grief. In memory. In resolve.
"I vow not to rule, but to remember.
Not to burn, but to bear.
Not to rise above, but to stand between.
Let the Ashen Crown rest upon me,
not as a throne—but as a weight."
"Let me forget no betrayal, and forgive no tyranny,
Butt let my blade be tempered by justice, not revenge.
Let my voice echo the silenced,
And my step shakes only those who forget their oaths."
"I wear the Ash not to conquer,
But to remind the fire what it once was—
a light,
a warmth,
a promise."
The temple pulsed. The hymns on the walls began to glow. The sutras beneath him lifted, wrapping around his arms, chest, and brow like wind-borne threads.
And on his forehead, something marked him.
A single glyph.
Not of royalty.
Not of godhood.
But of remembrance.
The vision faded.
He stood once more in the circular chamber.
The ash in the basin was gone. Not spilled. Not burned. Taken into him.
The seven flames returned, each one hovering before him. They bowed, one by one, then rose and vanished—like spirits freed.
Only one flame remained.
The black one.
Ashen.
It floated into his chest.
And for the first time since Atlantis, Veyne felt whole.
Not perfect.
Not pure.
But whole.
When he stepped out of the chamber, the Keeper was waiting.
She did not ask what he had seen.
She did not question what oath he had taken.
She only offered him a simple sentence.
"You are now the Remembrance of Law."
He nodded.
No words remained. None were needed.
The journey back through the Library was different now.
The dust no longer stirred at his step—it parted.
The stone no longer whispered doubt—it held silence.
Even the Watchers above, once distant and observing, now turned ever so slightly as he passed.
He left not with scrolls.
Not with weapons.
Not with power.
He left with memory.
And when he stepped into the light of the Mumbai dusk, the clouds above had begun to clear.
Nalini stood by the alley's mouth, eyes narrowing with something between worry and reverence.
Veyne met her gaze.
"We move at dawn," he said.
"To where?"
He smiled faintly, the glyph on his brow glowing and fading.
"To remind the world what justice once looked like."
The wind shifted.
Somewhere in the distance, a temple bell rang.