One week later, and I'd finally stopped getting lost in the Ninth Citadel.
Not that I'd admit that out loud, because Arjun would never let me live it down, but the truth was, I'd started recognizing the patterns. The eastern staircases always smelled like old paper and cardamom because they passed the archives. The western corridors had these weird, warm drafts that came from the geothermal vents beneath the training grounds. And if you took the shortcut through the meditation gardens at exactly 7:43 AM, you'd catch the sunrise hitting the prayer wheels just right, turning them into spinning wheels of gold.
I'd also figured out that the café near the residential quad made better hot chocolate than the one by the library, mostly because the barista there didn't water it down. Small victories.
Morning classes were a blur of new subjects I'd never even known existed. Comparative Mythological Linguistics, where we spent two hours trying to translate ancient Devanagari sigils into modern code syntax. Celestial Mechanics, which was basically astrophysics but with gods. Ethical Philosophy of Power, which was exactly as intense as it sounded and involved a lot of heated debates about whether it was ever okay to use divine abilities on mortals.
I was terrible at most of it.
But in Ancient Biological Systems, I was in my element.
The professor, a woman named Dr. Iyer who looked like she hadn't slept since 1987 but had the energy of someone who'd consumed six cups of coffee, had a habit of pacing while she talked, her hands moving like she was conducting an invisible orchestra. Today she was explaining how certain creatures in the old texts had developed biological defenses that predated modern evolution by thousands of years.
"The Naga bloodline," she said, pulling up a holographic display of a serpent-like creature, "developed venom sacs that could adapt to specific threats in real-time. Not through mutation. Through conscious biological response."
I raised my hand before I could stop myself. "But that would require a level of cellular awareness that— I mean, the metabolic cost alone would be—"
She cut me off with a smile. "Exactly, Ayaan. Which is why we believe they weren't operating on biology alone. They were operating on resonance."
The class erupted into discussion, and I found myself in the middle of it, talking faster than I'd talked in weeks, my brain firing on all cylinders. Taara caught my eye from across the room and mouthed "nerd" at me, but she was grinning.
After class, Dr. Iyer asked me to stay behind, and we ended up talking for another forty minutes about the intersection of ancient texts and modern genetic theory. By the time I left, I was ten minutes late for my next class and completely wired with excitement.
Arcane Physics was where things got weird in the best possible way.
Professor Menon was demonstrating resonance coupling using an ancient mechanism, a beautiful thing of carved stone and glowing conduits that hummed with a low, vibrating energy. The problem was, the demonstration kept failing, the energy dissipating before it could complete the circuit.
"The issue," he explained, looking slightly frustrated, "is that the resonance frequency isn't stable enough to maintain the connection. We've been trying to adjust the harmonic alignment, but nothing seems to work."
He paused, looking at the class with a slight smile. "This is actually a problem I've been working on for the past decade. Consider it a thought experiment for you all—purely for fun, since it's well beyond your current level."
I was watching the mechanism, my brain automatically running through every piece of tech I'd ever tinkered with. It reminded me of when I was trying to get my drone's gimbal to stop vibrating, and how the problem wasn't the motor speed but the mounting brackets creating micro-resonances.
Then it hit me. The conduits weren't just channels—they were creating standing waves that interfered with each other.
"Ayaan," Professor Menon said, noticing my expression, "you look like you're about to say something."
I hesitated. "This might be completely off-base, but... what if the problem isn't the frequency itself? What if it's the geometric arrangement of the conduits?"
The professor raised an eyebrow. "Go on."
I pulled out my tablet, already sketching. "In modern electronics, when you have multiple signal paths, you have to account for phase interference. If these conduits are creating standing waves at specific nodes, they could be canceling each other out." I looked up at the mechanism. "What if we don't need to change the frequency—we need to change the physical geometry to prevent destructive interference?"
The room went quiet. Professor Menon walked over, looking at my sketch with genuine interest.
"Show me what you mean," he said.
I spent the next ten minutes modifying the mechanism, adjusting the angles of the conduits, changing the spacing between the resonance points based on wavelength calculations. When I activated it again, the energy flowed smoothly, the entire thing glowing with a steady, perfect light.
The class stared at me like I'd just performed a miracle.
Professor Menon just stood there, looking at the mechanism, then at me, then back at the mechanism.
"Ayaan," he said quietly, "that level of correlation... is what we have to teach."
I blinked. "Wait, what?"
He turned to the class, his expression serious. "This question... I gave it for fun. It's a problem that's stumped researchers for years. That level of fast correlation—connecting modern electronics theory to ancient resonance mechanics in under two minutes—is quite impressive."
He looked back at me. "You didn't just solve the problem. You saw the underlying principle that connects two completely different systems. That's... rare."
I sat there, processing what he'd just said. I hadn't felt like I was doing anything special. I'd just... seen the pattern.
After class, Taara elbowed me as we walked out. "Okay, genius, care to explain what just happened?"
I shrugged. "I just... saw how it was like my drone. The same physics applied."
"Yeah, but you saw it in like thirty seconds. Most people would've spent hours on that." She paused. "That's your thing, isn't it? Seeing connections nobody else sees?"
I thought about it. "I guess. I just... think in systems. Everything's connected if you look at it right."
She smiled. "That's going to be useful, Ayaan. Very useful."
Lunch was chaos, as usual.
We sat at our usual spot under the massive banyan tree near the residential quad, passing around containers of food that someone had "borrowed" from the dining hall. Arjun was complaining about his Celestial Navigation homework, Taara was quizzing him on constellations, and I was trying to explain why the drone footage I'd taken yesterday was going to be the greatest thing anyone had ever seen.
"You're going to edit it for like six hours," Arjun predicted, stealing a samosa from my container.
"Seven," I corrected. "Minimum."
Taara laughed, shaking her head. "You're both idiots."
But she was smiling, and we all knew it.
The afternoon was when the campus really came alive.
With no scheduled classes, the three of us decided to explore the outer edges of the Ninth Citadel, the parts that weren't on the official maps. Arjun had heard rumors about a frozen waterfall that only appeared during certain lunar phases, and Taara wanted to find an old shrine she'd read about in the archives.
I just wanted to fly my drone.
We hiked for hours, winding through cedar forests and climbing over moss-covered rocks, the air getting colder and thinner the higher we went. We found the shrine first, tucked into a grove of ancient trees, its stone walls covered in carvings that looked like they'd been there since the beginning of time. Prayer wheels spun slowly in the wind, making a soft, rhythmic clicking sound that was almost hypnotic.
Then we found the waterfall.
It was massive, a curtain of ice that caught the afternoon light and turned it into a thousand fractured rainbows. I launched the drone immediately, sending it soaring up along the frozen cascade, capturing every angle, every detail. Arjun kept jumping into the frame, making ridiculous faces and yelling "SURPRISE!" at the camera. Taara pretended to be annoyed, but I could see her laughing out of the corner of my eye.
We climbed higher, finding an abandoned watchtower perched on the edge of a cliff, its stone walls weathered but still standing strong. From up there, we could see the entire valley spread out below us, the Ninth Citadel glowing like a jewel in the mountains, the peaks stretching out into infinity.
We sat there for a long time, not saying anything, just watching the clouds drift through the valleys below.
Arjun broke the silence quietly, pointing toward the distant plains. "Sometimes I forget the world's down there."
Nobody answered. We just kept watching, the three of us sitting shoulder to shoulder, feeling impossibly small and impossibly safe at the same time.
That night, students naturally gathered around a campfire in the common green. It wasn't a festival, just Friday evening, but it felt like one. Someone brought a guitar, someone else started singing, and a third person began telling myths from the old epics. A professor joined halfway through, and everyone made space for him without hesitation. Nobody treated teachers like strangers here.
I stayed behind after most people left, watching the embers glow and fade. The warmth reminded me of Naomi, not with sadness, but with love. I remembered birthday hugs, one-armed squeezes before school, cheek kisses, editing videos together until 2 AM, hoodie thefts, movie marathons where we'd ruthlessly critique every plot hole.
I laughed quietly to myself, the sound soft in the cooling air.
Then I realized I couldn't tell her about today. Or yesterday. Or this mountain. Or these friends. That thought quietly hurt, a small, sharp ache in my chest that I'd probably carry for a long time.
Taara walked over and sat down beside me, not asking any questions, just offering company. We watched the fire for a while, the flames dancing and dying, dancing and dying.
"You miss her," she said finally, her voice quiet.
I nodded, not looking at her.
Silence stretched between us, comfortable and heavy.
Then she said, "You know... some people leave. But they never really stop becoming part of the places we carry with us."
I smiled, small and real, feeling the words settle somewhere deep inside me.
Back in my room, I placed my tablet on the desk. The drone footage from Hyderabad was still open, a reminder of the life I'd left behind. I started a new project, creating a folder titled: MERUZHEN.
I imported the first clips I'd filmed here—the frozen waterfall, the prayer wheels, the watchtower, Arjun's ridiculous photobombs. I watched them, the mountains glowing gold in the late afternoon light, and I smiled.
I closed the laptop.
Outside my window, the Ninth Citadel glowed beneath the stars, a thousand lights scattered across the valley like fallen constellations. For the first time, it didn't feel like somewhere I'd been sent.
It felt like somewhere I'd chosen to be.
ns216.73.216.47da2
and then Add to home screen.