Chapter Five : The Forgotten Years

The wind on the mountain was unlike anything in Mumbai. Sharp, untamed, and heavy with the scent of pine and old secrets.
They had been here for five days now.
The first day was chaos.
No signal. No people. No roads leading back.
They had followed some strange compass-like pull after a shimmering light surrounded them during their search for Arjun… and woke up near a forest clearing.
Suraj was the first to recognize it.
“This… This is where he slept,” he whispered, looking at the roots of an old tree, smoothed by habit.
And just a few meters away, hidden beneath vines and rock…
A shed.
Small, half-buried, almost forgotten — except it wasn’t.
It was lived in. Fresh firewood. Stone knives. A sharpened stick resting by the door.
And inside it…
Arjun’s handwriting.
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? The Diary
Suraj found the two books under a stone slab at the back of the shed on the second night.
One was old, bound in metal and symbols none of them could read — pages glimmering faintly. "LEGACY" was etched on the cover.
The other… worn, patched with duct tape and stitched pages… had Arjun’s terrible handwriting scrawled across the cover.
“If anyone finds this, then I guess... either I died, or you’re all here too. Sorry.”
He held it for a long time.
Didn’t speak. Just passed it to Anya.
She read fast. Lips tightening. Breath getting shorter.
Then stopped.
“What?” Kartik asked.
She looked up — and her voice cracked as she whispered:
“He’s been here… for three years.”
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? Three Years of Silence
The diary detailed everything.
Year One: Survival. Panic. Denial. Trying to find a way down but being pulled back, as if the mountain itself wouldn't let him go.
He built tools. Learned to hunt. Created the shed they now stood in.
Year Two: Loneliness. Attempts at escaping. Each path down the mountain looped back to the beginning. Dreams of voices — their voices — that kept him sane.
Year Three: Acceptance.
He began studying the Legacy Book, though he couldn’t read it. He wrote how he thought someone smarter like Anya might be able to figure it out. He tried magic anyway. Failed, again and again.
"I can fight a wild beast but I can’t light a candle without matches. Figures."
Every few pages ended the same.
“I miss them. I hope they never come here.”
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? A Spark of Magic
They sat around the fire. No one knew what to say.
Anya hadn’t stopped flipping through the Legacy Book since she deciphered a single phrase:
"Power flows through understanding. Not faith, not force. Thought is the seed."
While the others argued if it meant anything, Anya sat back with a deep breath and closed her eyes.
She focused. Thought about Arjun’s bruises, her own scraped knee.
Visualized the wound. The tissue. The repair.
Her fingers warmed — and a faint green glow pulsed between them.
The cut on her leg closed.
Anya gasped. The book’s edge glowed faintly in response.
The fire popped.
“That was—”
“Magic,” Anya said quietly, eyes wide. “It’s real.”
“But why didn’t Arjun figure it out?” Riya asked.
“He’s a doer. Not a thinker,” Suraj muttered. “He acted. Didn't stop to understand.”
“That's what broke him,” Anya whispered. “Three years… and he was always alone. Always failing. Can you imagine that?”
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? The Roar
That night, long after the fire dimmed and the moon began its climb…
A sound tore through the forest.
A deep, guttural roar — not of any animal they knew.
It shook the trees. Sent flocks of birds screaming into the sky.
Then another sound. Metal on bone. A crash.
Something massive was fighting… and winning.
They ran to the shed’s entrance.
Far through the trees, silhouetted against the moonlight…
A beast with a lion’s head and wings like thunder screamed in pain as something slammed into it from above.
And a figure leapt back — bloody and limping.
Arjun

Chapter end