The rain didn't stop.
But beneath it, a sound emerged.
Not thunder.
Not chanting.
A pulse.
Mechanical. Faint. Buried.
Aarav stood still in the drizzle, tuning his breath like a receiver. Filtering through honks, shouts, wheels, static.
Until he heard it again.
A signal.
Four short pulses.
Then three long.
Then a pause.
Repeating.
A language, but not human.
And not divine.
Tech.
Ancient tech.
The kind built before the gods rewrote memory.
Before temples replaced circuits.
Before the first yogis were turned into myths.
He followed it.
Into the underground.
Past shut metro tunnels. Past locked gates. Past the graffiti of forgotten youth movements.
He entered a chamber deep below the city.
And there it was:
A machine.
Rust-covered. Covered in vines and dust and symbols—not Sanskrit, but Sankhya. The lost language of knowledge before belief.
It powered nothing.
But it remembered everything.
The signal pulsed again.
A single word, rendered not in sound, but feeling:
"Welcome, Aarav."
He blinked.
Not surprised.
Because breath doesn't only unlock soul.
It awakens memory.
Even metal ones.