The Mumbai heat wrapped around Rajendra like a wet blanket the moment he stepped out of the airport. It was a shock after Berlin's crisp autumn. The air here didn't just have humidity; it had opinions. It smelled of exhaust, frying spices, and the salty breath of the Arabian Sea—a chaotic, living smell. Moscow had smelled of decay. Berlin of concrete and caution. Mumbai smelled of too many people trying too hard to live. He found it comforting.
Shanti picked him up. She was leaning against her father's black Contessa, wearing a simple cotton salwar kameez and sunglasses. She didn't hug him. She looked him up and down as if checking for damage.
"You're still in one piece," she observed, opening the passenger door for him. "I half-expected a call from a East German prison."
"They were very hospitable," Rajendra said, sliding in. The car's interior was blessedly cool.
She got in, started the engine, and pulled into the chaotic traffic without another word. She drove with the aggressive grace of a native. After five minutes of weaving through lorries, scooters, and wandering cows, she finally spoke.
"So. A castle."
"A Schloss, technically."
"A Schloss. Of course. Because every pressure cooker magnate needs a Schloss." She shook her head. "My father asked what you were doing in Germany. I told him you were looking at textile machinery. He asked if you'd found any. I said I didn't know. He said, 'That boy is either a genius or he's building a house of cards on a volcano.' I didn't disagree."
"The machinery brochures are in my bag. We can say I liked the rapier looms best. It sounds serious."
She glanced at him, a faint smile touching her lips. "You're learning. But you're also hiding something. Your eyes have that look—like you're mentally juggling chainsaws."
He looked out the window at the passing chawls and new glass-fronted buildings. "The deal with the General… it's big, Shanti. Bigger than we talked about. We're not moving boxes of jeans anymore. We're moving factories. Machine tools. Entire production lines out of the Soviet Union."
The car swerved slightly as she processed that. "You're joking."
"I wish I were. He wants a pipeline. We're building it."
"And in return?"
"We get a cut. Or we take equipment as payment. And we get the castle."
"Which is a pile of stones in East Germany."
"Which is a sovereign, off-the-books base in the heart of Europe. With no extradition treaties we care about."
She was silent for a long time, navigating a particularly vicious roundabout. "This is what you meant by making it bigger."
"Yes."
"And the castle… it's just for storage? Meetings?"
He hesitated. "For now."
She heard the hesitation. "Rajendra."
"It has a… pest problem. I'm dealing with it."
"Rats? Bats?"
"Something like that."
She didn't push. She was a strategist. She knew when a door was closed. "Just don't let your pests bite the General. We need him."
They arrived at the mill office. The familiar chaos was a balm. Workers loaded trucks with pressure cookers. The sound of the looms from the still-functioning textile wing was a steady, rhythmic thunder. This was real. This was his.
His desk was buried in papers. On top was a note from Ganesh: 'Bhai, the German shipment is packed. The 'cultural archive' boxes have the special marks as you said. The sailor on the Baltic Star leaves tomorrow. All quiet here.'
Special marks. The code for the blood bags and iron supplements for Kael.
He sat down, the fatigue of travel finally hitting him. He accessed the System. A new message was waiting, not from Vex or the Mad Scientist, but from Pixel-Lord's contact.
Host: Crystalline Historian (Librarium of Echoes)
Message: "Pixel-Lord of the Radiant Spire speaks of your repository of primitive sonic emotions. I am a curator of endings. I seek the final echoes of dying vibrational cultures—the last speaker of a language, the final practitioner of a forgotten song. I offer Memory Crystals (Tier-1, 5-terabyte capacity, indestructible) in exchange for authenticated recordings. Are you interested?"
Rajendra leaned back. Dying languages. Forgotten songs. He thought of India's hundreds of dialects, its tribal traditions fading under the march of Hindi and television. He wasn't a anthropologist. He was a merchant. But this… this was a commodity that didn't require smuggling. It required listening.
He replied: "I have access to fading oral traditions. What is your rate per authenticated hour of unique, unrepeatable cultural audio?"
The reply was swift: "One Memory Crystal per ten hours. Or, for a truly unique 'last voice,' one crystal per hour. Quality must be pure. No electronic mediation where possible."
He called Ganesh in. "New project. We're going into the nostalgia business."
Ganesh listened as Rajendra explained. "Folk songs? Dying languages? Bhai, we sell cookers and sarees. Where will we find such things?"
"In the places progress hasn't reached yet. The remote villages. The tribal belts. Hire someone. A music scholar. An linguist. Someone with a good tape recorder and a lot of patience. Pay them well. Tell them it's for a… national heritage archive. Which isn't a lie."
Ganesh looked doubtful but nodded. "I will ask around. There is a professor at St. Xavier's who is mad about tribal music. He is always complaining no one funds him."
"Perfect. Fund him."
After Ganesh left, Rajendra opened the second message. This one was from Vex. It was not a bill or a request. It was a data packet. He downloaded it.
It was a detailed file on Vesperae biology, psychology, and needs. It read like a cross between a medical journal and a zookeeper's manual.
SUBJECT: Vesperae (Stranded Specimen - Designate: Kael)
Immediate Requirements:
Hematinic Supplement: Ionic iron compound (Fe²⁺) in colloidal suspension. 500ml daily. Do NOT substitute with mammalian blood for first 30 cycles unless you wish to trigger addictive predation protocols.
Environmental: UV levels below 0.5 lux. Humidity above 70%. Ambient temperature 12-16°C.
Psychic Dampener: Vex's provided pheromone suppressant must be renewed every 240 hours. Symptoms of lapse include increased aggression, psychic 'beckoning,' and attempts at nocturnal flight.
Note: Subject is likely disoriented and melancholic. Vesperae are social hive-minders. Isolation causes psychic atrophy. Recommend audio stimulation—low-frequency harmonics, non-lyrical music. They are particularly soothed by the sound of falling water.
Rajendra almost laughed. He was now shopping for iron supplements, a humidifier, and a recording of a babbling brook for a homesick space vampire.
He drafted a purchase order via his Singapore company, Ascendant Pte Ltd, to be forwarded to a medical supply company in Frankfurt:
10 liters of Colloidal Iron Supplement (IV grade).
2 industrial humidifiers.
1 high-quality cassette player.
5 cassette tapes: 'Sounds of Nature – Forests & Streams.'
1 heavy-duty meat locker (large).
20 bags of porcine blood (for culinary research purposes).
He listed the delivery address: Schloss Falkenberg, care of Groundskeeper. The paperwork would label it all as "Environmental and Culinary Research Materials for Historical Site Preservation."
As he finished, Shanti walked in, holding a different piece of paper. Her expression was tense.
"We have a visitor tomorrow. From the Ministry of External Affairs. A Mr. Deshpande. Middle management, but he's the one who handles 'informal liaisons' with emerging businesses involved in 'foreign exchange initiatives.' He wants a tour. And a chat."
"Manmohan Singh's people," Rajendra said.
"Exactly. They're not threatening. They're… interested. It's more dangerous. If we impress him, we get a powerful patron. If we worry him, we get a permanent auditor sitting in our lobby."
"We'll show him the pressure cooker line. The textile weavers. The film office. The success stories."
"And the Singapore shipments? The German castle?"
"We're exploring export markets and considering European heritage tourism. Diversification."
She sighed. "You're getting good at this."
"I have a good teacher."
That evening, alone in his new apartment—a small, modern flat in a decent building—Rajendra stood on the balcony. The city glittered, a million lives burning bright and fast. He held his hand up, the silver nano-ring catching the light from a nearby neon sign.
He focused. The ring flowed, forming the blade, then a delicate lockpick, then a perfect replica of his apartment key, then back to a ring. It was mesmerizing. A tiny piece of infinity in his hand.
His System chimed. A new alert, but not red. Yellow. Observational.
>> Passive Scan Report: Earth-Prime <<
Anomalous low-level psychic resonance detected: Brandenburg Region, Germany.
Signature: Vesperae (damped). Status: Stable. Containment: Adequate.
Secondary Scan: Faint dimensional echo detected in same sector. Origin: Unknown. Classification: Silken (probing). No further action required at this time.
Silken. Vex had mentioned The Silken Maw.
Rajendra's grip tightened on the balcony railing. They were already probing. Kael was safe for now, but he was a flickering candle in a dark window, and something out there had seen the light.
He was no longer just a merchant bridging worlds.
He was a warden, guarding a lonely, hungry, humming secret in a stone tower, while the wolves of the void began to circle.