Chapter 2: Training Gate Open

Day 32 after the Incident

Aarya (silent, on the mountain top):

City S keeps changing. Light by light, ledger by ledger… they feast while my family bleeds. They think this is the end of me. They don’t know what waits in the dark.

He sat cross-legged on the jagged stone ledge, wind biting his face, moonlight making the city’s glass spires look like a field of cold teeth. Below, City S had become an entirely different beast — fortunes inflated into impossible numbers overnight, new flags flown, new armies hired, new shadows hired for protection. The world smelled of metal and minted greed.

Fury Sprite (soft, amused): You watch them like a man watching a stage. Enough. Time for the real work. Time for hard training, boy.

Aarya (standing, voice small but steady): What are we going to do now? What kind of training?

The Sprite looked at him, and in that gaze Aarya felt tiny sparks of approval — a white thread of hope in his hollow chest: focus, commitment, the kind that had been tempered by pain.

Fury Sprite: We leave this mountain. We go where men are made. Where time is sharpened into steel. Where a real man grew stronger in the darkest side of the Shadows, silently, hidden form the whole world and do train alone.

Aarya (quick, instinctive): Where? This place is perfect — the government’s safety net-line, no one dares cross. I can watch City S from here. Keep my eyes on the enemies. Use their movement as fuel for training.

Fury Sprite (cold): You think hiding in plain sight is the same as training in shadow? You’ve been here for thirty days and you still think corners are safe. You came. You explored. Someone else could come. You would be surprised how quickly curiosity — and greed — crosses lines.

Aarya faltered for a heartbeat, the truth of the sprite’s tone like a knife. He swallowed and asked the question he had been both hoping and fearing to hear.

Aarya: Where are we going then? What kind of training? What are we going to do?

The Sprite’s ancient gaze lingered. It saw in him something fragile yet sharp—a faint white light of hope, a dead-serious focus, and a will that refused to break, no matter how pathetic his body was.

Fury Sprite (final): The Void.

Aarya (half-laughing, half-skeptical): The Void? What is that — some fairytale cave? Sounds… irregular. Shady. Like all your tricks.

Fury Sprite (snapping): Watch your tongue. Do you want training or words?

Aarya (soft, nodding): I want it. I do. Take me.

City S — The Other Side

While Aarya prepared to leave, the city convulsed and reshaped itself.

Iravya’s house: A cataclysmic rise. Overnight wealth: 10,999 quintillion → 50,000 octillion. Mines, islands, private fleets, jets, and a private army — the Chandraketu Vansh(Main Female lead family and Dynasty) became a kingdom of money and iron. Over a thousand elite shadow-assassin bodyguards were hired for Iravya’s protection. The city whispered about invincible security and unseen blades.

Rudratantra: (Main male lead family and Dynasty) Ruptured. The family reserves collapsed from 500,000 septillions → 100,000 septillions. Companies survived only by political salvage. The dynasty’s name still carried fear — but it was ragged fear now, stretched thin.

Enemies: Mafias, corrupt officers, greedy heirs — all trained harder. They ranked themselves in fierce sects: A, S, SS, SSS, Z — preparing for the new era. Fortune had made them reckless; training made them dangerous.

Parallel — Iravya (in private, day 25):

She had sworn in silence. She had not believed the headlines that Aarya was dead. The locket — the identical locket he’d once given her — still warmed against the skin beneath her dress. She hid it from her parents and the world. She enrolled in the Ranked 7S sect. She learned to break an enemy’s will the way a surgeon pulls a rotten tooth. The pain had been a teacher; revenge now tasted like iron on her tongue. She would take this fight personally. She would be the blade.

(Unseen by her — Aarya’s locket had been lost in the river months earlier. The connection she clung to was already severed; she clung to belief anyway.)

Approach to the Void

At dusk, Aarya climbed down from the mountain. The Sprite opened a black slit between stones — a gate that swallowed light. The air around it smelled of ozone and old rain; a pressure thrummed through his bones.

Aarya (quiet, looking back): One last look at City S. I’ll be back.

He let the city sink into the valley of lights and stepped forward as the Fury Sprite drew back into the gate. They slipped through together, and the world folded into a pocket of unnatural, absolute dark.

Inside the Void — First Breath

The gate slammed. Silence hit like a physical thing.

Fury Sprite (serious): Listen. The Void is not your world. Time, energy, temperature, gravity — they obey different laws here. Pay attention.

Aarya staggered — as if the sky had doubled its weight. For a moment his knees gave. The dark aura in him flared, holding him upright.

Aarya (gasping): This gravity… it’s crushing. How am I—

Fury Sprite (curious, impressed): You stood within a minute. Adaptability. Potential. Good. Listen closely:

Time dilation: Sprite (lying): “One day here equals one day on Earth. Don’t worry—you won’t age faster than your world. The risk is only the pain you can endure.”

Exponential gravity & temperature: The longer you remain, the stronger gravity and heat become — increasing as xⁿ where x = days. Each day multiplies pressure and force. Pain will be amplified; endurance will be forged.

Energy feedback loop: The Void does not waste energy — energy you expend doubles back as fuel. Burn, and you will find power returned doubled. It is dangerous: misuse will annihilate you. Learn to channel.

Temporal risk: A day here ages not just the body but the spirit. You may return to Earth a day older but decades stronger — or you may be lost to time if you cannot anchor yourself.

Aarya (steadying his breath): I understand. I will be careful. I will not waste a single beat.

Fury Sprite (tone hard, like flint): You will train until pain becomes familiar. Until memory of pain is a tool, not a wound. Section One begins — endurance and adaptation. Do not cry out. Do not seek pity. Only those who survive the Void’s truth will become the kind of man who can carry vengeance like a blade.

Aarya’s chest tightened with a mixture of fear and hunger. He felt, for the first time since the river, a raw excitement — not for violence itself, but for the discipline to wield it.

Aarya (thought): I will not be the weak boy again. For my blood, for my sisters, for the family dragged out of their house — I will rise.

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