Ashes of Dharma

The gate pulsed like a heartbeat.

Not in sound—but in timing.

Aarav stood before it alone. Even the Sentinel stayed behind, her role fulfilled. The mountain closed behind him with a soft hiss, like the end of a mantra.

The fourth gate wasn't solid. It was made of moments—a shimmer in the air, vibrating between past, present, and what could have been.

When he stepped through, it didn't feel like stepping forward.

It felt like stepping out of now.

Suddenly, he was back—in Delhi.

Before reincarnation.

Before the accident.

The day the sky felt too heavy, and the world too fake.

He stood in his old room—cracked ceiling, unpaid bills on the table, the flickering bulb swinging like a metronome of regret.

And he was there.

The version of himself who never crossed over. Who never breathed through pain. Who never found the ruins or the yogi or the gates.

That Aarav stared at him with tired eyes.

"You came back?"

"No," Aarav said softly. "I never left."

He walked forward, and the two selves merged—not like water, but like breath meeting body.

He inhaled.

And the walls peeled away.

Now he stood not in a room, but in the stream of time itself.

Past lives.

Future echoes.

Infinite versions of him—some gods, some monsters, some broken, some wise.

But in all of them, one thing pulsed steady:

The breath.

It was the only constant.

A voice whispered from everywhere:

"When you own your time, no god can rule your fate."

The gate cracked like ice.

And opened.