The river groaned.Not with the soft rush of water, but with a wet, dragging rumble, as if something massive was rising beneath its skin. The surface quivered. Then, with a sudden convulsion, five fountains tore upward, spraying arcs of shimmering water into the night air.

From each fountain, something writhed, five long, worm-like heads, slick and pale, each crowned with a dripping mane of frayed tendrils. Their mouths opened with a deep, mucus-thick slurp, spraying spit in long, hissing jets. The sound was sickening, a mixture of bubbling drains and tearing meat.

Between them, the river split again. A column of water surged upward like a spine snapping through flesh. It twisted violently, droplets hissing as they hit the cold night. Within that column, the spit began to harden, shaping into something… humanoid.

The form stepped forward, dripping and gleaming in black and blue. He wore a crown, crooked and glistening like it had been dredged from the deep. Half his form was human flesh—pale, but scarred by strange, round marks like the suck of some unseen creature. The other half shimmered with scaled plates that caught the light in oil-slick sheens. His eyes were wrong—fish eyes—unblinking, glassy, yet burning with an ancient intelligence. Two long canines protruded from his mouth, catching the moonlight as he smiled.

He sat upon a half-sphere of water, perfectly smooth, reflecting the night sky in trembling ripples. It was shaped like a moon, and eight massive fish swam beneath, their scaled backs straining as they lifted the throne upward.

The worms grew restless. They rose higher than the fish and began spitting again, their mouths twitching open with wet snaps. This time, the spit was thicker, darker, and steaming in the night air. They began to rotate, spiralling around the throne, moving higher and higher. With each slow turn, the air shimmered, and a strange thing and designs began to form.

Symbols. Tattoos. Shapes that shifted too quickly to fully see, but each one stung the eyes, as if they were meant to be remembered in the body rather than the mind. The worms spat harder, their wet retches echoing in the hollow night.

And then they stopped.

For a heartbeat, there was only the dripping of water. Then, together, they bent and twisted until their bodies formed the shape of a head, three of them craning upward to form a crown, two bending downward to shape a jaw. It was the head of something not meant to be named.

The river churned again. From below, fish erupted, not swimming, but writhing toward the surface like worms escaping the soil. They clung to the head-shape, forming scales, locking into place one after another with a sharp, snapping sound, like claws gripping bone.

The thing they formed was worse than the worms alone. It was a trident, black as the void between stars.

Then the trident's entire body flared. Black and gold lines tore across it like veins burning from within. The worms, now the trident points of this head, opened their mouths again. Black pus gushed forth, boiling as it rose. The pus streamed upward, and from it emerged a dark moon—its edges jagged, wrong. The moon hung inverted, an eclipse with a trident spearing its centre. From the centre of the moon, spike unfolded, metallic, yet dripping as though grown from flesh.

As those black pus coming out more, the pattern spread faster and faster until the whole monstrous head became a pillar of lightless gold and shimmering shadow, stabbing into the sky.

The moon behind the trident shifted to match its colours, black with veins of molten gold. Slowly, it drifted downward, shrinking, until it settled directly behind the crowned man on the throne.

He stood.

The sound was like wet ropes snapping and bones grinding as he lifted one arm. His fingers were too long, bending in strange, twitching angles. The trident tilted, lowering itself until the trident and moon slid into his grasp.

When his hand closed around it, the water moaned again. The throne trembled. His scales began to change—shifting from deep blue to that same black-and-gold, as if the colours were seeping into him like an infection. They crept over his arms, his chest, his face. His jaw cracked as it widened unnaturally, the canines lengthening until they pierced his lower lip.

Only his eyes remained unchanged.

They gleamed with the light of the moon, no, the moon behind him, cold and dead, irises ringed with the pale silver glow of something eternal.

........................

From behind the woman perched on the swaying bamboo pole, a sound began to rise.Not a chuckle.Not a laugh.But a long, crooked cackle, the kind that starts in the throat and spirals outward like a dying carnival tune, each note splintering into jagged pieces. It was the laughter of a demonic joker, the sound of a smile sharpened into a knife.

She twisted her head slightly, her balance unbroken, and saw them.

Two masks.Sliding forward in an unnatural, zigzag path.Never colliding.Never overlapping.Yet their movements felt choreographed, like two predators circling prey from opposite shadows.

Black smoke leaked from their edges, curling in tendrils before spilling across the air like a suffocating mist. In that smoke, shapes formed, human silhouettes stumbling forward, gasping soundlessly. People were trapped in there, running in panic through an endless dark, their outlines melting into nothing. Now and then, a patch of smoke would bulge outward and burst, releasing a chorus of screams, ghostly wails and raw, torn voices that clawed at the ears.

And then, without warning, one of the joker masks was hurled.It came spinning from the far corner of her vision, slicing through the air like a blade. She bent backward in a whip-like motion, her body pivoting at the waist in a gymnast's arc. The mask passed close enough that she felt the air it displaced, like a cold hand brushing her cheek. It shattered against the bamboo behind her with a hollow clang, dissolving into smoke.

The masks drifted toward the man clutching the demonic book. They slowed, hovered at his side — and then began to grow.

Their painted surfaces widened until each mask was taller than a man, faces stretched grotesquely without losing their detail. One aligned behind the other, both rotating from the waist down, forming an unnatural, skewed angle. The movement was smooth… too smooth.

And then came the voices.Not just laughter now, but a carousel of sounds.One mask laughed, the other sobbed.One whispered, the other screamed.One let out a moan of hunger, the other a high-pitched, almost childlike giggle.Sometimes they switched, sorrow turning to mockery, humour rotting into grief.

From the painted mouths, black tongues slid out, wet and twitching, like they were tasting the air. One licked at nothing, as if savouring an invisible sweetness. The other let the tongue hang loosely, drooling smoke.

Suddenly, two identical men leaned out from behind the masks. Pale hands appeared first, each flashing a "V" sign as if in victory. Their fingers moved with jerky precision, making quick, nonsensical symbols, circles, crosses, spirals. Their heads tilted with manic curiosity before snapping back into place.

Then, in a blink, they retreated inside the masks. A heartbeat later, they peeked over the top edges, grinning wide, their eyes shimmering like glass marbles. They winked in unison. Another blink and they were gone, now peering from between the angled masks, their tongues darting toward her in quick, serpentine motions.

They began to move faster, switching places in less than a heartbeat. One moment they were below, then suddenly above, then beside, their motions so quick they were almost strobing. The air smelled of burnt paper and old iron.

Then with a sickening slowness, they raised their hands and formed a heart shape. The gesture lingered, their smiles stretching impossibly wide.

In one fluid leap, they vaulted over the giant masks, landing silently before her. They bowed low in mock respect, their black clothing swallowing their shapes, even their heads wrapped in black cloth that swallowed the light.

And then, without warning, a piercing SHNK.The massive masks behind them moved, stabbing forward like blades.

Both men bent backward at an impossible angle, their spines arching like drawn bows. Their hands crossed in front of their chests, two fingers extended on each hand like a warding sign.

With inhuman grace, they leapt into the air, twisting mid-flight. When they landed, their backs were turned toward her, and the giant masks had fused to them like parasitic heads.

Now, the masks' emotions mirrored each other, both laughing, both sobbing, both staring with black, fly-filled eye sockets.

Then, the heads spun, totally 180 turn...The sound was like wet rope being wrung out and underneath it, the faint sound of carnival music… played far, far away, yet somehow inside her skull.

They began moving differently now each head mirroring yet defying the other's expressions. One grinned in obscene delight while the other wept with silent despair. Then their bodies shifted in impossible ways, hands twisting backward, elbows grinding in the wrong direction, forearms rotating until the flesh groaned. Fingers bent like broken spider legs.

From the river, a slick, silver fish leapt into the air, landing upon one's arm as if the limb were a living bridge. They cradled it, passing it between their rotating wrists like a ball, forming a perfect circle by clasping each other's hands. The fish bounded inside the ring, tail flashing, water dripping down their black-clothed sleeves.

Then—mid-leap—the fish was caught between them. Their skulls split vertically from crown to jaw, two gaping maws snapping shut. Each claimed half the fish, chewing as they pressed their torn faces together, tongues twisting in a sick parody of a kiss.

Their foreheads met. One eye from each face locked on her. They held hands tightly, fingers weaving. From their palms, a pale flower pushed itself into existence. Two shadowed figures emerged from behind them, plucking its petals one by one, hurling them into the air until they formed a perfect, hovering moon. From each petal, a rose bloomed mid-flight, until the sky held a vast sphere of crimson blossoms.

Then fire touched it. The roses burned from one edge inward, like an eclipse swallowing the moon in flame.

They bowed deeply, but this time the air felt final, as if the performance had ended. The two great masks reappeared, swelling larger than before, drifting behind them like spectral guardians. Their grotesque expressions returned laughter, sorrow, hunger and the shadows around them thickened.

................................

From the open book in the man's hands, a brain tore itself free, slick with blood, trailing torn nerves like dripping roots. It flung itself into the darkness but before it could vanish, a spear struck through it mid-air.

The spear's shaft was made by steel. it's arm was something unnatural, built from vertebrae strung apart, each bone floating in a perfect, impossible line. The gaps between them pulsed with air, yet the whole thing moved as one, extending far beyond human reach.

A high, ringing child's laughter echoed from somewhere distant, and she saw it, an approaching figure.

Its body was wrong. Three heads, six arms, each limb twisting, bending, rotating with a spider's grace. The legs were the same, skeletal, jointed by vertebrae segments, moving without touch. Each joint seemed hinged on invisible strings. The torso was painted with strange seals, glowing faintly, as though binding something worse inside.

The three stark-white faces bore black opera-mask patterns, eyes ringed in shadow so deep they looked hollow. No blink, no life, only the stillness of a doll.

From all six hands, spears slid forth, each a different shape, each aimed in a different direction, as if eager to pierce the world itself.

.............................

Then it came, first as a cry from the heavens.A sharp, splitting shriek that made the air itself feel brittle. I looked up, and at first I thought it was a bird.It wasn't.

It had the body of a lion, but its four legs were stolen from different worlds an eagle's talons tearing the air, a tiger's paw flexing mid-stride, the heavy cloven hoof of a bison pounding, and a crocodile's scaled limb dragging behind like a predator from the depths. Its tail was no single thing, but three, one a snake, one a pale worm, one a thrashing something I could not name.

Its face… was a vulture's, skinless around the beak, eyes a glowing red that seemed to boil in their sockets.

And riding atop it, a figure with a human body, but twelve heads sprouting from its shoulders like a hydra born in a nightmare. They were not flesh and bone, but black tar, and the tar writhed, alive, crawling like insects under skin.

Each head was different, human (half woman, half man), snake, lion, elephant's trunk, spider, eagle, boar, dragon, tortoise, one-eyed worm, fish, and one ghostly face with a whole body trailing behind it. Some heads bloomed with flowers, some bristled with spikes or gleamed with scales; on its back lay a great tortoise shell.

Its two hands, human, perfect, gripped a mace that pulsed as if breathing. Beneath the waist, there was no human, only a serpent's massive coil, black as oil, shifting restlessly.

....................

From the black water, it rose.

Not a bird, not a beast—A loon, midnight black, its feathers shifting like oil over white, scale-like plates that gleamed even in the dark. Behind it floated five moons, each a different hue, each radiating the raw essence of an element, fire's ember glow, water's silver shimmer, earth's ochre weight, air's pale breath, and a deep, shifting void for the fifth.

The loon's form writhed, folding and unfolding, enveloping itself in the way the Dragon coils around nothing and everything at once.

.......................

Around it, the circle was already set. Eleven demons, still as statues, their shapes blotting out the light. And then, one more, the twelfth, so vast it wrapped itself around the rest like a serpent around prey.

The air shifted. Flowers began to open where no roots lay. Wind stirred leaves that had long since fallen, carrying them away into the black sky.

And then, a melody. Not sung, not played, but breathed into the world.

From the dark, a demon mask emerged.In every blink, it drew nearer.One blink, two… twelve…At the thirteenth blink, it was there —Between them- 

and opened...

.......................

So what was inside? Who was coming? Why were they hunting her?And why did they wish her harm?

In the still air, she thought she heard a tongue drag across the floor.

The answers lie ahead… in Nirbindra.

To be continued…