# Chapter 4
That fading evening in Omega City, with dust and data flying through the air together, the scene of devastation looked like the final shot of a horror movie. The “silent wave” released by the Infinity Device had torn reality's fabric apart like a piece of old cloth. Aanvi Singh, who only moments ago had considered herself the messiah of science, now lay sprawled across the lab's cold, lifeless floor. Her body had turned blue, and her pulse was so faint that the line between life and death had blurred. But this was no ordinary unconsciousness. Bhagya Verma watched closely as a hazy golden-violet shadow separated from Aanvi's body and floated in the air—her consciousness, which had broken through its physical limits and merged into the Great Void she had foolishly opened herself.
“Aanvi! Wake up! Don't let your consciousness scatter!” Bhagya shouted. He clutched his ancient Scripture Codex with all his strength. Sitting beside Aanvi's cold body, he examined her pupils, which were completely still and glassy.
The holographic screens mounted on the lab walls were no longer displaying human faces or scientific data. Instead, they showed the bizarre forms of the Orbs. These Orbs were not merely lifeless spheres of light, but terrifying magical entities imprisoned in the layers of time for centuries. The Orb Leader's voice, harsh as rusted metal scraping against itself, echoed throughout the lab. “You have sacrificed balance, human girl. Now this city will belong to our magical empire, and your technology will be our slave.”
Bhagya shot to his feet. Sweat covered his face, but his eyes burned with terrifying spiritual resolve. “You're wrong,” he said, drawing a complex warding circle in the air with his hand. “This city belongs neither to you nor solely to the humans who write code. It belongs to the sacred convergence that parasites like you will never understand. There is tantra here, and there is logic.”
Just then, Neelima, Aanvi's loyal assistant, emerged trembling from behind a shattered control panel. Her face had been scraped by tiny shards of glass, and drops of blood fell onto her lab coat. “Sir… what happened to Ma'am? Why… why can't she breathe? Is everything over?” A deep surge of fear and sobbing anguish trembled in Neelima's voice.
Without turning around, Bhagya answered her calmly. “She's here, Neelima—and she's nowhere, too. She activated the World Balance Spell after treating it as nothing more than binary code. Her consciousness has now become part of that digital system. We have to pull her back out of that web, or these Orbs will use her divine energy to turn all of Jamshedpur into a digital cremation ground, where souls will be imprisoned inside servers.”
Neelima clutched her head in despair and sobbed, “I warned her! I told her not to ignore Grandpa's warnings! Ma'am always said that people who are afraid never make history, but Sir… should history be written on the corpses of the innocent?”
Bhagya hesitated, then tried to calm her. “Pull yourself together, Neelima! The time for regret is over. Prepare the technical backup now. The code Aanvi opened is half spell and half algorithm. I have to find her on the Astral Plane, while you have to keep this physical server from exploding. Can you do it?”
Neelima wiped away her tears and moved toward the keyboard. “I'll try until my last breath, Sir.”
Suddenly, a thunderous explosion erupted outside the window. Energy creatures resembling ancient dragons began emerging between Omega City's skyscrapers. The city's magnetic aircars collided in midair, transforming into massive balls of fire. People fled wildly through the streets, but the shadows pursuing them were now swallowing their bodies like digital glitches. The scene heralded the arrival of an apocalypse.
Bhagya pulled an ancient conch from his waist and blew into it with all his breath. The sacred sound held back the wave of Orbs for a single moment. “Neelima! Take control of your console and stabilize the system!” Bhagya roared.
Neelima's trembling fingers raced across the keyboard. “Ma'am built a fail-safe, but it's asking for a password! And Sir, this password isn't a string of letters—it's a frequency that could make a soul tremble!”
Bhagya closed his eyes. He began sinking into that deep state of meditation where the formulas of science and the mantras of magic became one. Within that black Void, he felt Aanvi's consciousness struggling. Then he heard a very faint, frightened, yet stubborn voice.