Ashes of Dharma

The air grew dense.

Heavy, like wet cloth on skin. The darkness around Aarav pulsed—not threatening, but... ancestral. Like walking through memory soaked in blood.

A second gate rose before him.

This one was not carved from light or mantra.

It was made of bone.

Human. Animal. Divine. A towering arch of ribs and femurs, skulls stacked in spirals, every inch etched with the names of those forgotten by time.

At its base: a pool of red—not blood, but legacy. Thick with karma. Stories. Pain. Choice.

And in its center, a voice called out.

"What do you owe those who bled before you?"

The voice didn't come from a figure.

It came from the gate itself.

Aarav stared into the pool. Images swirled—his father's silence, his mother's absence, the villagers who raised him with scraps and suspicion, the millions who had died in wars they didn't start, who had prayed to gods that never answered.

He knelt.

Not to submit.

To feel.

His fingers touched the surface.

And everything rushed in.

Suffering. Sacrifice. Names erased. Bodies burned. Truths twisted into myth. The weight of what it meant to inherit breath, land, lineage.

And still… still he breathed.

Not out of pride.

But out of continuation.

"I owe them presence," he said.

"Not revenge. Not worship. Just the chance to not repeat their chains."

The pool shimmered.

The gate of bone cracked open.

Behind him, one of the skulls smiled.

Because blood remembered.