Rudra prepares the posture shown in Mudra One and positions himself accordingly just before 3:12. At the precise moment, his breath catches—and doesn't resume. Time around him halts. The air thickens. The sound of the city fades. And his consciousness slips sideways.
The moment the minute hand clicked past 3:12, something inside Rudra seized—not in pain, but in certainty.
His lungs froze mid-inhale.
No panic. No gasp. Just stillness.
Like his body had forgotten the motion entirely.
He had assumed, at first, that breathlessness would feel like drowning.
But it didn't.
It felt like recognition.
He slid into the position as instructed by the diagram—knees folded inward, back bent until it trembled, arms wound behind him, fingers interlocked in the knot of Mudra One.
His muscles screamed in silence. The posture should not have held. But it did.
His eyes stared into the candle flame before him.
And the world began to pause.
Not blur.
Not fade.
Pause.
The ticking of the wall clock behind him slowed.
Once.
Twice.
Then stopped.
He felt the room sag around him. Like the walls were held up by breath—and now that breath was gone.
Even the light stilled.
The candle flame froze mid-flicker, warped to one side, unmoving.
And the shadows... they no longer obeyed their sources. They clung to corners as though waiting for orders.
A low hum entered his ears. Not sound. Pressure. Like something large and old pressing against the outside of a thin wall.
He should have panicked. But his heart beat calmly. His chest didn't rise.
Because the breath that would start the panic had never returned.
Rudra's pupils widened. His vision tunneled.
And then something slipped.
Not in his body—but in perspective.
He was still kneeling—but the room was gone.
The candle was gone.
The floor beneath him now felt of cold stone, the surface slightly concave.
The air carried a new scent—binding glue, rotting paper, and old ink.
He opened his eyes.
And he was inside the Asiatic Society Library.
But not as it had been.
Not exactly.
---
The main hall stretched impossibly long, the gas lamps now replaced by chandeliers of twisted bone, each hanging by cords braided from prayer beads and hair.
Books filled every shelf—but they weren't resting. They hung.
Suspended from chains by their spines. Pages fluttering not from wind, but of their own volition.
Each one whispered aloud.
Hundreds—no, thousands—of voices filled the air.
A cacophony of murmured secrets, forgotten histories, forbidden rites spoken in monotone tongues.
And beneath it all: a rhythmic ticking that did not belong to any clock.
Something else counted this hour.
Rudra rose slowly, limbs rigid from the posture.
He looked down. The floor was slick—not wet, but varnished. As if sealed with a thousand layers of resin made from breath and blood.
And reflected in the gloss—movement.
He looked up.
Behind a long wall of thick, red glass—like coagulated jelly—stood a man.
Or what passed for one.
Dressed in a black British officer's coat, his chest covered in tarnished medals, he stood perfectly still.
A brass mask covered his face—expressionless, sculpted, with rivets where the mouth should be.
One gloved hand rested on a cane carved from human vertebrae.
The other hand slowly raised.
Not in greeting.
In command.
He was watching Rudra.
Had been.
Was still.
And Rudra—frozen mid-step—felt the diagram in his blood begin to turn.