The door rattled like someone was trying to tear it off its hinges. Both men looked up from the chessboard, the last echo of warmth fading from the air. Rudra rose first.
The husband—Serenkhand's husband—opened the door, and a gust of cold wind swept in with five or six villagers, their faces pale under the flickering lamplight. They spoke rapidly in Mongolian, voices tumbling over each other, fear tightening every syllable.
Rudra's brows knit. He reached to his collar, pressing a small node against his ear. The soft click of the earpiece came alive—words dissolving and reforming into English midair.
"…boy—village boy, possessed—his eyes rolled white, his mouth, speaking in old tongues—"
"…we saw him near the cairns—no shadow followed him—"
"…the elders say only the shamans can help—please, please—"
Rudra straightened, gaze narrowing. "Possessed?" he asked evenly.
One of the older men nodded so hard it looked painful. "Spirit took him. Evil spirit. We… we thought maybe you can help. The way you walk—the aura—you're not ordinary man."
The husband glanced uneasily at Rudra, unsure how to respond, but Rudra's face had already gone blank—his usual sign that his mind was racing. "Do you have the body of any animal that died naturally?" he asked.
The men blinked, confusion breaking through their panic. "Naturally?"
"Not killed," Rudra clarified, tone sharpening. "No wound, no blood. Death by age, sickness, anything that wasn't violence."
The group exchanged uncertain looks before one of them nodded slowly. "Yes. Old goat. Died last night near river. We buried it this morning."
Rudra's eyes darkened with thought. "Dig it up."
His voice was calm but carried something that made them all shiver. The villagers hesitated only a moment before hurrying off into the night, muttering prayers under their breath.
The husband turned to Rudra. "You believe them?"
"I believe something's off," Rudra said, already reaching for his jacket. "And I don't like coincidences."
The oil lamp flickered, casting their shadows long across the walls—two figures caught between old superstition and something that might be much worse.
They brought the carcass before him, still wrapped in a rough wool shroud that smelled faintly of decay and the earth it had been buried in. The villagers gathered in a wary circle, whispering prayers as Rudra crouched beside it. The wind was sharp, dry, humming with a strange expectancy—as if the night itself held its breath.
Rudra lifted his hand. A faint tremor ran through his fingers, then fire bloomed. Not orange, not yellow—but crimson. It was a deep, living red that devoured the air around it, swirling like blood caught in sunlight. The flames licked the goat's body without smoke or sputter, rising in spirals that seemed almost ceremonial.
Within seconds, the corpse was gone—flesh, hair, bone, all reduced to fine, glowing ash. No smell of burning, no blackened remains. Just a seething mound of hot crimson powder that pulsed faintly like it still had a heartbeat.
The villagers gasped, stepping back. Rudra didn't look at them. He exhaled, shoulders rigid, and slowly lowered his hand into the ash. The hiss was immediate. His skin burned, smoke curling off his palm, but he didn't flinch—just gritted his teeth and let the heat crawl up his arm.
When he pulled his hand back, ash clung to his fingers, glowing faintly like dying embers. His breath was heavy, controlled.
"Bring a wooden stand," he said quietly. "And tie the boy to it."
The villagers hesitated, uneasy under his tone, but the authority in his eyes left no room for argument. They scattered to obey, fetching what looked like an old altar frame from a storage hut.
The boy's mother pushed through the circle, eyes wild and raw. Her hands trembled on the rope that bound her son; she smelled of boiled milk and fear. "What are you going to do?" she demanded, voice thin as spun wire.
Rudra met her without flinching. The ash in his palm still glowed faintly, like a handful of dying stars. He set his jaw and spoke plainly, the way a surgeon names a scalpel. "I'm going to cover his face with this ash."
She recoiled as if struck. "No—no, please—" The word tore out of her half-sob, half-prayer. "You can't—he's a child!"
"I know." Rudra's voice was small, and then it hardened. "I don't like it either. But listen." He crouched so his face was level with hers, letting the heat from his palm wash over her in a harmless wave. "The ritual is meant to threat and burn whatever's taking root. Traditionally it's done with human ash, dead body ash is the only hot that can hurt a spirit"
She blinked, panic and comprehension fighting across her face. "Why- then why use animal ash?"
Rudra's hand tightened around the warm powder. "Animal ash will work, but it's weaker. It's like using a blunt blade instead of a scalpel—you can do the job, but it takes longer and it hurts more. The spirit clings. It resists."
The woman's fingers found her son's wrist, squeezing so hard her knuckles whitened. "He's been—he's been speaking things we do not know. He walked near the cairns and then he was not the same." Her voice broke. "Please, do not let him suffer."
Rudra did not soften. He had no room for sentiment when something undeserved took up residence in a child. "I fear it's not a common wandering ghost," he said, and the name he spoke felt like a stone dropped into the water. "Bhramharakshas—spirits of dead priests who hoarded power while they lived. They don't flit and fade. They devour devotion, they grow fat on ritual energy and memory. They remember every hymn sung to them and they use it like armor."
She shuddered visibly at the word. Around them, the villagers muttered, heads bowed.
"They're stronger than the usual things," Rudra continued. "Spirits of Priest, Pastors, Rabbis, Imams, it'sa broad term for dead Godmen."
Tears spilled down the mother's cheeks, hot and uncontrolled. "Do it," she whispered. "Do it. I will do anything."
Rudra wiped the ash across his palm as if collecting a scalpel's handle. He looked up at the wooden stand where the boy had been bound, at the child's slack face, at the small, empty chest rising and falling like a frightened bird. "Keep the villagers back," he ordered softly. "And when I say—no sudden movements. This will hurt him; it may hurt us. But if it's a Bhramharakshas, hesitation is what lets it win."
She nodded, a raw nod that broke something inside her and made it easier, somehow, to hope. Rudra tipped the warm powder into a shallow bowl he'd fashioned from broken pottery, fingers steady despite the heat licking his skin. The ash hissed, singing a thin, high note as it settled. He breathed once, long and even, and stepped toward the boy.
Around them, the village fell into a hush —a hush that waited to see whether ritual, heat, and a stranger's ideas would be enough to pull a soul back from the child
The boy convulsed against the ropes, his limbs jerking like a marionette pulled by an angry god. His eyes had no irises anymore—just the pale, blinding white of a storm that had lost its horizon. Foam gathered at the edges of his mouth as guttural sounds poured from his throat, layered and overlapping like a dozen voices crammed into one body.
The villagers backed away in terror, whispering prayers, charms, the names of their ancestors. The air smelled of hot ash and fear.
Then, through the boy's cracked lips, something spoke.
"You dare, mortal thing?"
"You burn what you don't understand."
"Do you know who I was?"
The voice was a mixture of sneer and scream, old enough to remember temples and altars now swallowed by time.
The boy thrashed against his bonds, a puppet torn by a furious hand. His eyes were milky white, pupils gone — a bright, blind storm locked behind lids. From his lips spilled a layered voice: old and oily, chanting and sneering at once. The villagers pressed back until only the circle of dirt remained between them and the thing that had stolen a child.
Rudra did not hesitate. He walked forward, each step measured, the crimson ash a slow, breathing ember cupped in his palm. The powder glowed like coagulated sunset, throwing fractured light across his face. The air tightened as if listening.
"Yeah," he said, calm as frost. "Bhramharakshas. I know exactly what you are."
The presence answered with a wet, electric hiss. The ropes groaned. "You cannot command me, child of flesh—"
Rudra's smile was small and sharp. "Oh, I sure can command you." He lifted the ash so the dull blaze licked the boy's cheek. "You'll leave the boy now—or I'll smear this across his face and burn you out grain by grain until you remember what pain felt like when you still had skin."
A bark of laughter rolled from the bound mouth, brittle and thin. "You would not dare. You cannot even face what sleeps in your own soul—"
Rudra stepped closer, close enough that the heat steamed the boy's breath. The demon recoiled, then rammed its voice into the clearing with a bitter clarity. "You play with fire, Human."
Rudra's lips twitched. "Don't tell the sun what fire is… wait, that was so corny." The ash flared at his pulse, hue deepening. Its light crawled up the boy's neck like slow blood.
The Bhramharakshas staggered back, smoke seeping from the child's pores as if the spirit itself were scabbed and bleeding. The villagers fell to their knees, whispering old names.
Rudra did not blink. He held his stare like a blade. "Leave the boy," he said. "Take my body instead."
A single, stunned sound rose from the circle. "What?" they breathed, voices threaded.
The demon in the boy laughed, high and incredulous. "What?" it echoed, the voice bending and snapping. Then, slowly, it began to probe, intrigued and hungry. Rudra did not step away; instead he tilted his head, as if listening to an intimate secret.
He lowered his voice, softening into something dangerously persuasive. "You've been fattening on rites and prayers for centuries. You like being worshipped. You like a vessel that remembers hymns and can take the field and bend men with a whisper. But what you have is brittle—this child is thin meat." He let the words hang, then leaned in an inch closer, the ember-light painting fever on his skin. "Take me. Take a body that remembers war, that can shrug off flame and keep walking. Take a chest that doesn't flinch when the world screams. Take a body that actually scares gods."
The Bhramharakshas that had devoured priests' reverence for generations paused, the curiosity of a predator caught on something unexpected. The boy's head lolled, the white of his eyes tracking Rudra like a caught animal. Around them, every breath in the village seemed to hold.
"What you offer is far worse than idle worship," the voice rasped, working through a dozen tones—temptation, caution, greed. "A bargain with a living flame is a furnace. You would be a host of heat."
Rudra shrugged, the motion effortless and fearless. "Better a furnace than a cellar full of bones," he said. "Besides—what's cowardice to you? You crave power. I give you a higher hunger."
The spirit hesitated, the pause like a crack running through old mortar. The villagers watched as if watching a summer storm choose whether to break. Rudra's palm bled faintly where ash bit his skin; he did not flinch. He kept offering: voice soft, merciless, sold on the knife's edge between hunger and sacrifice.
For a beat that stretched into years, the Bhramharakshas considered. Then its laughter turned thin as wire.
"You would trade flesh for flesh," it whispered, hungry and incredulous. "You would be my pyre."
Rudra's grin was a blade. "Call it a mercy," he said. "Or a war. Your pick."
The boy convulsed once more, a guttural scream tearing out of him that held a thousand hymns—and some other thing, older and furious. The demon's shadow at the boy's throat shuddered, as if weighing the warmth of Rudra's offer against the ease of clinging to a child's mind.
The villagers gasped together. Somewhere behind the knot of fear and ash, the husband's hand clenched white on the chair.
(Dissection for readers: "Bhramharakshas" = Bhram [Brahmin/Priest] + Rakshas [Demon]. The concept refers to a fallen priest who, after death, becomes a demonic entity—powerful, vengeful, and deeply rooted in spiritual corruption.)