Ashes of Dharma

He felt it during stillness.

Not pain. Not energy.

A whisper—quiet, steady, rising up his spine like a breeze climbing a staircase.

It spoke no words, but it pulled. Not outward—to action or conquest—but inward. Toward depth. Toward a door he hadn't known was closed.

Aarav sat in Padmasana, the lotus pose, under the cracked roof of the old temple. Around him, the city stirred with breath—not chaos, not noise, but quiet practice. Every home was becoming a school. Every student, a seeker.

But inside his body, something was shifting.

The Sushumna—the central channel between base and crown—had opened, just enough to listen.

The scrolls had mentioned this.

"When breath no longer follows you, but leads—When the spine hums with soundless tone—The Gate of Inner Flame is near."

Aarav didn't fully understand it yet.

But he wasn't afraid.

That night, he dreamed of seven gates, each one embedded in stars, guarded by beasts and questions. He walked toward the first—and it asked no riddle, made no threat.

It simply opened.

And the whisper in his spine became a song.