The library smelled of dust, aged paper, and secrets long buried. Golden sunlight sifted through narrow stained-glass windows, painting fractured rainbows on worn wooden shelves. This forgotten corner was Amaya's refuge—a sanctuary where the noise of the world softened to a whisper.
Her fingertips skimmed over cracked leather spines, pausing on a tome whose title flickered in fading gold: Legends of Lanka and the Vanished City. Her breath caught. Every story she'd read about Asurya and the Pushpak Vimana pulsed anew in her veins, but this book felt different—older, urgent, as if it had been waiting for her.
The brittle pages sighed as she opened them. Illustrations of the Vimana sprawled across the parchment, its wings cutting through clouds shaped like serpents and celestial steeds. Descriptions of Asurya burned in her mind: A king who mapped the paths of stars, whose ambition outran the sky itself.
A chill crawled up her spine. The words vibrated against her fingertips, humming like a plucked string. You're imagining things, she told herself. But the air grew thick, the shadows between shelves stretching unnaturally long.
A soft cough sounded behind her.
Amaya turned to see the librarian—a wisp of a woman with eyes like tarnished silver. Without a word, she pressed a folded note into Amaya's palm and vanished into the gloom.
The paper trembled in Amaya's grip, though no draft stirred the air. Scrawled in hurried script:
"Beware the watchers. Not all who seek Lanka wish it well."
Her pulse spiked. A shadow fell across the doorway.
A man stood there, tall and still. Too still. He didn't blink. Didn't breathe. Just watched, as if time itself paused around him. His eyes held something ancient—recognition, regret, warning.
Then the whisper came again, slithering not into her ears but under her skin:
"You failed me… You must find it…"
Amaya's gaze snapped back to the book. Beneath a sketch of Asurya, an inscription pulsed:
"The secret of flight lies where the past is buried, where the curse of incompletion binds the soul."
The letters shimmered, not with reflected light, but as if lit from within—a heartbeat of gold in the dying sun.
She slammed the book shut. The watcher was gone. But the whisper lingered, coiled around her ribs like a chain.
Outside, twilight bled across the city. But in Amaya's bones, a storm gathered.