The first thing Aarav noticed wasn't the light, but the air.
In 2026, the air of Junagadh was a soup of carbon monoxide and dust. But this air—it was sharp. It smelled of crushed marigolds, dry hay, and something heavy and metallic that Aarav couldn't yet identify.
Aarav opened his eyes. He expected to see the flickering "Low Battery" LED of his monitor. Instead, he saw a sky so blue it looked painted. There were no jet contrails. No crisscrossing electrical wires.
"Okay," Aarav whispered, his voice cracking. "Severe hallucination. Neurological feedback from the surge. Just... stay calm."
He stood up, his legs shaking. He was standing exactly where his apartment building should have been. But the apartment was gone. In its place was a vast, open field leading toward the Fort. The crumbling, moss-covered walls he knew were gone. The stone was golden, sharp, and formidable.
The tarmac road was now a rutted dirt track. The silence was absolute, broken only by the rhythmic clop-clop of hooves.
From behind a thicket of Babool trees, four riders emerged. They wore quilted tunics of dusty crimson, curved sabers—talwars—hanging from their waists, and turbans wrapped tight against the sun.
These were scouts of the Gujarat Sultanate.
"Who goes there?" one shouted in a dialect of Gujarati-Persian. "Identify yourself, traveler! Your clothes... are you a jester from the North? A spy?"
The lead scout drew his blade. The steel sang—a high, terrifying note that echoed in the stillness.
- 01 CURRENT ERA: 1572 AD
- 02 STATUS: HOSTILE (Target views subject as 'Demon/Wizard')
- 03 PROBABILITY OF SURVIVAL: 0% WITHOUT INTERVENTION
"I... I am nobody!" Aarav stammered. "I’m just... lost!"
"He speaks in riddles! Seize him!" the scout commanded.
As the horses lunged, Aarav’s fingers brushed against his pocket. A high-capacity 20,000mAh Power Bank (damaged) and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol sanitizer.
I can’t fight them. But I can scare them.
He ripped the casing off the power bank, exposing the volatile lithium cells. He doused a rag in the alcohol. As the lead horse reached the ravine, Aarav sparked his vape pen against the leaking lithium.
He hurled the improvised "battery-bomb." The reaction was instantaneous.
The lithium hit the humid air and erupted in a blinding, violet-white magnesium flare that hissed like a thousand snakes. A thick, acrid cloud of white smoke billowed upward.
The horses screamed. They had never seen a chemical fire that burned with the intensity of a falling star. The lead horse reared back, throwing its rider into the dirt.
"SHAITAAN! HE COMMANDS THE VIOLET FIRE!"
Aarav didn't wait. He ran North-East until his lungs felt filled with broken glass. He ran until the golden walls of 1572 Junagadh disappeared behind the hills.
He was a coward, a techie, and a boy out of time. But as he looked up at the stars—the same stars he had mapped on his computer just hours ago—he saw the Saptarishi pointing the way.
"Mewar," he gasped. "I have to get to the Rana. He’s the only one who won't kill what he doesn't understand."