‘Sharv, provoking this woman won’t be a good idea, we need to get out of here right now!’

  Vijay warned. Sharv knew this well.

  That woman was extremely dangerous, and escaping from her was the most beneficial choice he had right now.

  Yet, something else was also running through his mind.

  “Huh?... Why are you so shocked? I’m not asking for your life, am I? Just a little bit of Death Prana.”

  Sharv said, watching the astonishment on her face.

  “...Y-you have no idea what you’re asking for! My Prana is the same as my life itself! How could I possibly give that to you?”

  “But it isn’t your entire life, is it?”

  “...”

  “And besides, it’s not like I’m asking for all of your Prana. Just a little bit. Because, think about it. If I let you out of here with me, what’s the guarantee you won’t kill me the moment we’re outside?”

  That was Sharv’s real fear.

  Even though he now had the means to break the seal; right there in his hands, but what if, once the beads shattered, the woman would be freed along with him?

  ‘Because that seal was created specifically to imprison her… we're uninvited guests.’

  Sharv wanted to be sure that if the two of them did escape together, he would at least have enough internal energy to either flee faster or face her if necessary.

  The woman, too, was struggling.

  Her Prana was as precious as her life, yet if she never escaped this place, what use would her Prana be anyway?

  Meanwhile, Sharv’s grip on the beads tightened further.

  “Decide quickly you don’t have much time left…”

  Clench!

  She clenched her jaw tightly, then spoke.

  “Fine! I agree, but on one condition!”

  “What condition?”

  “You will absorb only one-tenth of my Death Prana, no more than that.”

  Sharv replied in a flat, disappointed tone,

  “Only one-tenth? What good would that even do me?”

  “I cannot give more! I’ve spent my entire life cultivating even this much Prana!”

  “So what? Don’t you want to escape from here? Forget it then…”

  Clench!

  Sharv began pressing harder on the beads.

  “Wait! W-wait! Two-tenths! Absorb two-tenths!”

  “...Still too little.”

  “Ahh! Brat, I’m giving you my own Prana and you’re still not satisfied?! Be grateful I haven’t already torn your head from your body!!!”

  Sharv could feel the fury in her tone, but he said nothing just clicked his tounge.

  “Tch! Tch!...”

  Snap!

  He pressed harder again, and this time, one of the threads binding the beads snapped, the sound echoing through the void.

  The woman’s face went pale.

  “Three-tenths!!!”

  “Sigh… People these days don’t even know the value of their own life…”

  Snap!

  Her rage surged like a storm, but then another bead-thread snapped.

  Her instincts screamed to cut the boy down right then and there—but she held herself back, and finally growled:

  “Four-tenths! That’s it! I won’t give any more!”

  Hearing this, Sharv’s stopped,

  “Ah, very good. You should’ve just said that in the first place.”

  ‘Fucking Shameless Brat!…’

  The woman cursed inwardly.

  She never imagined she’d end up donating her own Prana to save her life, and that to a mere boy.

  Sharv stopped pressing on the beads and held them in his left hand, his eyes fixed on her.

  “If you try any tricks at all… I’ll crush these without hesitation. Don’t take that as an idle threat. Understood?”

  “…Understood.”

  Satisfied, Sharv smiled faintly as he slowly walked toward her.

  The closer he came, the more clearly he could feel her internal energy.

  Even though she wasn’t radiating it outward, Sharv still felt as if he were standing before a towering wall, impossible to cross.

  “All right then, extend your hand…”

  The woman extended her hand; but it was her left hand. Sharv’s brow furrowed at this. Seeing his reaction, she said,

  “What? I’m left-handed. Is there a problem with that?”

  But Sharv wasn’t convinced. From the way she had fought earlier, she used both hands with equal skill depending on the situation.

  It was hard to say if she was truly left- or right-handed.

  “…Sigh! Fine. Here, take my other hand instead. Happy now?”

  Before Sharv could object further, she offered him her right hand.

  Still suspicious, Sharv hesitated. The woman let out a long sigh and placed her left hand alongside her right in front of him.

  Seeing both hands extended, Sharv finally felt a bit reassured but he still remained wary.

  At last, he raised his own right hand, and as he touched hers, he silently invoked Samavesh.

  Whoosh!

  The moment the chant ended, the woman’s left hand beneath Sharv’s right palm seemed to cling to him, as if bound.

  And immediately her Death Prana began flowing into him. The energy seeped in steadily, increasing in volume bit by bit.

  Everything seemed fine… yet Sharv’s instincts told him; something felt off.

  Yes, the Death Prana was flowing into him, but strangely, the woman’s reserves weren’t diminishing at all.

  Gulp!

  ‘This… isn’t this a bit too much? Did I make a mistake asking for four-tenths? Can my current chakra even hold this much Death Prana all at once?’

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  Doubt flickered in his mind.

  However...

  ‘?!’

  The flow of Death Prana into him suddenly stopped. And their clasped hands began sticking together even more tightly.

  What had been a light bond now fused so strongly it felt as though their hands had become one.

  Sharv was caught off guard, until Vijay shouted,

  ‘That woman is using Samavesh as well!’

  ‘..!’

  Sharv’s brow shot up, but oddly, a sense of relief also washed over him.

  ‘Yes… this was the missing piece.’

  Of course she wouldn’t just let him take her Prana so easily. She must have some scheme in mind.

  But if she’d already offered both hands so freely… wasn’t that too convenient? He had suspected something was wrong.

  “…Aren’t you afraid? I could break these beads at any moment.”

  Sharv said, pointing to them. The woman’s lips curled into a smile.

  “Your threats don’t matter anymore. Let’s see now, who escapes first.”

  ‘?!’

  Swish!

  Sharv blinked but suddenly, the woman’s other hand shot toward the beads in his grip with lightning speed.

  He tried to pull them back

  ‘..!’

  But his elbow slammed into a solid wall behind, that hadn’t been there before.

  The woman’s fingers closed around the beads, snatching them. She clenched them tight.

  Sharv felt a surge of unease at this.

  ‘Whatever happens next...let it be!’

  The woman thought. She unleashed the full power of her Samavesh!

  Whooong!

  Sharv’s eyes widened.

  And then...

  BAAANG!

  A violent explosion erupted from their clasped hands, blasting both of them backward.

  The beads, caught between their clash and their violent separation, shattered apart.

  ‘I see now…’

  The woman had deliberately let Sharv absorb her Death Prana at first; just to set him up for this.

  She had timed her Samavesh perfectly, keeping its intensity weaker than his, at the start.

  Because if their powers had been equal, they would have repelled each other immediately, like two magnets forced together at the same poles.

  But she waited for the perfect moment, when Sharv was distracted just for a second, by sensing the huge amount of Death Prana inside of her.

  As Sharv flew backward, he caught a glimpse of her spinning away in the opposite direction.

  Her face bore a calm, satisfied smile, as if to say: Whatever happens next… let it be.

  ***

  Booooom!

  Sharv’s house was completely obliterated, the blast was so powerful that everything was blown apart.

  That rotting hand was burned away as well. But one thing still remained.

  The beads!

  They were flung into the air by the explosion, tumbling away before finally landing some distance from the ruins of Sharv’s shattered home.

  And then... From within the beads, a large dark figure emerged. Once outside, the figure split into two human forms.

  And those two were none other than, Sharv and the woman.

  They had escaped that place. Both of them. Together.

  ‘I-I’m out?!’

  Her voice trembled with so much joy that it was hard to describe. A single tear slipped from her eye.

  She lifted her face to the blazing sun overhead, squinting and shielding her eyes.

  After all those years in darkness, her eyes hadn’t seen light for ages.

  She was overwhelmed, joyful beyond words, yet at the same time strangely sorrowful.

  Because… though she had finally escaped, she had no idea where she was.

  She couldn’t possibly know. She had been trapped inside those beads for so many centuries that even if she did see familiar lands again, they would look utterly changed.

  Time changes all things, just as humans themselves change as they grow.

  Meanwhile, Sharv felt a nervous fear creeping inside him at seeing the woman outside.

  Yet, alongside that fear, a strange curiosity stirred within him.

  Perhaps it was her final move against him, the one she had pulled at the very end, that made him strangely intrigued? Who knew?

  But right now, his priority was safety. Just as he had suspected, the woman had escaped along with him.

  ‘So it’s true… If anyone breaks those beads , no matter who they are, that woman is guaranteed to be released.’

  Sharv’s prediction had been correct.

  His plan hadn’t gone entirely the way he wanted, but at least in the end, he had managed to take some of her Death Prana.

  Now, it was time to flee. But then...

  ‘Wait… why does she suddenly not feel as strong as before?’

  She was still stronger than Sharv, stronger than Vijay's spirit, but for some reason she didn’t radiate the overwhelming power she once had inside that place.

  Sharv couldn’t understand why, but just then suddenly, thay woman cried out:

  ‘Whaaat?!!! I’ve… I’ve become a spirit?!’

  ‘!?’

  Both Sharv's and Vijay's brows shout up listening her.

  ‘Did I hear it right with my own ears?’

  Vijay asked, to which Sharv replied,

  “Yes, I heard the same. That woman has now become a spirit!”

  Now Sharv began to understand why that woman felt less powerful. Because now she was dead, now she was only in her spirit form.

  ‘But that means, that woman could never come out of that seal alive?’

  Sharv’s eyes widened at the thought. That meant she had died inside the seal, and only her spirit had come out.

  However, even her spirit was powerful, at least more powerful than Vijay’s spirit.

  She looked to be at the peak form of a Disastrous Spirit according to her current strength.

  A smile appeared on Sharv’s face.

  His aim was to obtain a new spirit servant. But he had to abandon that when he learned that woman was not a spirit.

  But now, since she had become a spirit, how could he let this chance go?

  Sharv got up from his place and went near that woman’s spirit, in whose hand the beads were lying.

  Sharv was about to say something to her, when...

  ‘Wait? My body is still there?’

  The woman said. Sharv didn’t understand what she was saying, but then he looked toward the beads in her hand.

  Inside one of those beads, her dead corpse was still lying. It looked very small, but it was visible.

  ‘Sharv… this went a little wrong.’

  “What do you mean?”

  Sharv asked Vijay, to which Vijay replied,

  ‘According to Dharma(1), a body should be burned after death, otherwise either its own spirit or some other spirit can enter it. That is against nature, that is why people burn corpses after death. But that woman’s body is inside those beads… and only her spirit came out from it, that means…’

  “That means she can still return into her body?”

  Sharv said. As soon as he said this, the spirit also looked at him. She sharpened her gaze and asked,

  ‘What are you saying?’

  “That you can, still return into your body…”

  Before Sharv could finish, the woman said,

  ‘Humph! I don’t need that body anymore! I am already outside, that is more than enough for me.’

  Thud!

  She threw those beads onto the ground.

  Sharv was staring at her, into those eyes that once were like stars. Now they erupted with rage like a volcano.

  ‘That feeling…’

  Sharv recognized that feeling from her. It was familiar. A feeling that was inside him too.

  ‘Revenge?...’

  Now as Sharv thought back, he remembered when he acted unconscious, the woman had screamed something:

  “Arghhhhh! How long do you plan to keep me imprisoned!!!”

  She had spoken those words with extreme fury. Sharv too was moving forward in his path for revenge.

  And so was this woman.

  And apart from that, Sharv already had some strange interest in this woman, and now she had become a spirit as well.

  ‘I must make her my spirit servant.’

  Sharv thought and then with a faint smile said to the woman,

  “Do you want revenge on someone?”

  The woman turned her mood toward Sharv and said,

  ‘Brat! don’t interfere in my matt… wait a minute, how are you even able to see me? I am a spirit now!’

  Sharv gave a chuckle, and then said,

  “Since childhood I can see, hear, and talk to spirits.”

  ‘What?! Wait, I don’t understand, you know about death prana, you know about those 3 techniques, and on top of that you even have the ability to see, hear and talk to spirits? How is all of this possible?! That too in a single human?... Just who the fuck are you?!’

  “Haa!… Since childhood I always felt strange that only I could see and hear spirits. But then I read a book in my childhood, where it was written…”

  ‘…’

  “That spiritual masters and martial artists can only see and talk to spirits when their Third Eye opens.”

  ‘Yes, that much I also know…’

  “Listen to the full thing first... Then, when I came to know about this, I thought maybe my Third Eye was open since my birth only.”

  ‘..!’

  The Third Eye, that is something extremely valuable for a martial artist and spiritual master.

  To obtain it is not in everyone’s reach. And here this boy was saying he had it since childhood?

  If a monk, who spent their whole life in penance, were to hear this, they would go mad.

  But what Sharv spoke next left the woman’s eyes wide open.

  “…But, like every good thing has a bad result as well. In the same way, I think this, Third Eye had a bad result in my life. And that is why I think, I had no prana at all in my life, since birth.”

  ‘What? No prana? How can you say that? You have death prana right now in your body.’

  Sharv took a long breath, then brought Vijay out from his sacred thread, and said,

  ‘Vijay, explain to her about me.’

  Vijay looked toward the woman’s spirit. When she had her human body, she was much stronger.

  But now she was not as powerful, so Vijay calmly told her everything about Sharv that he had seen with his own eyes in the past days.

  Hearing all of that, the woman’s lips opened up in shock.

  ‘That means, since childhood he had no prana? And this death prana he has now, he only obtained it today, just some hours ago, during a battle?!’

  ‘Yes, you said it right.’

  Vijay told her. The woman still couldn’t believe her ears. She sat down near a large stone, holding her head, deep in thought.

  This boy had no prana since childhood, that meant he could have died at any moment.

  But he didn’t. He lived until now. And now he had prana too?

  ‘What a fate…’

  Truly, the world is strange. The woman never thought she would meet such a boy.

  But then,

  ‘By the way, tell me one thing. In your body there was death prana too, wasn’t there? Where did that come from inside you?’

  ‘?!’

  The woman looked at Vijay as if he had asked some absurd question.

  ‘What do you mean where from? That was already present in my birth, I just cultivated it, where else would it come from?’

  ‘What? But… death prana cannot be cultivated inside a ‘normal’ human body, right?’

  ‘Huh?! What nonsense are you speaking? Death prana can be cultivated by any normal human body, as long as they know the right method of cultivation.’

  Sharv, hearing this, spoke between them,

  “So that means… you know the methods to cultivate death prana?”

  ‘Of course! Not just one, I know different methods to cultivate it in different ways.’

  The woman spoke proudly of this knowledge, but then...

  ‘But how… according to our books that is impossible?’

  Vijay said, at which the woman flared up and shouted.

  ‘Ahh! Who the hell writes such false books? Death prana is…’

  she was about to say further when she suddenly stopped. Her face turned pale, and hurriedly she asked them,

  ‘Wait… what time period is this?!’

  ’?!’

  ‘Quickly tell me…’

  “Ahh…”

  ‘Give me two minutes to recall, when I died back then…’

  Vijay and Sharv were racing their thoughts, when the woman clicked her tongue and changed her question.

  ‘Alright, at least tell me this; how many years has it been since Kaliyuga started?’

  Sharv went into thought, but Vijay quickly answered,

  ‘I don’t know exactly, but I think around 4,600 years… I think…’

  ‘!!!’

  1. Dharma - I'll be using the word Dharma for Hinduism in here, cuz Hinduism doesn't have a proper name. It's not like your simple western religion type thing, it's way complex, and have thousands of beliefs, traditions, philosophies and other things. The word ‘Hindu’ is more like a geographical term of the people who used to live near the Sindu (Indus) river.

  Chapter synopsis -

  (that women) vs coughing baby (Sharv)