Neither of them moved.
For a long moment, Rudra and Arjun simply stood in the flickering corridor and looked at what Aagni had become. The heat coming off the creature was constant and pressing, like standing too close to an open furnace. The flame across its back moved in slow, steady waves. The scaled green skin caught the remaining light and threw it back wrong — too dark, too dense, the surface of something that had not been built for this world's physics.
Arjun was the first to find his voice.
"What the hell is that?" He took half a step back without meaning to. "Is this some kind of P.R.I.S.M. technology?"
The creature looked down at him. When Aagni spoke, the voice was still recognisably his — same flat register, same unhurried delivery — but it resonated differently now, carrying a low vibration that Rudra felt in his chest rather than just his ears.
"This is not technology," Aagni said. "It is biology. This is called the Ashura Transformation. It is something only an Ashura can perform."
"What is an Ashura?" Rudra asked.
Aagni regarded him for a moment. When he answered, it was with the tone of someone explaining something that should already be common knowledge.
"There are three races in this world. Humans, which you are. Angels, which you have forgotten exist. And Ashura." A pause. "We are the third. The oldest. We have been here since long before your hunters, your organisations, your categories for things you do not understand."
Rudra's mind tried to absorb this. Three races. Not monsters — a race. Something that existed alongside humanity with its own name, its own history, its own understanding of what the world was. The implications of that alone were enormous, and he had barely begun to reach for them when Aagni tilted his head slightly, as if catching himself in something unnecessary.
"Though I'm not sure why I'm explaining this to you." The pale eyes settled on both of them. "You are going to die here. The details are irrelevant."
He moved.
There was almost no warning. One moment he was standing at the end of the corridor and the next he was in front of Rudra, closing the distance with a speed that was completely inconsistent with his size. He drove a punch forward — not a fast punch, not an elegant one, just a direct and enormous transfer of force aimed at Rudra's centre.
Rudra tried to catch it. Both hands up, gripping for the wrist, the way he had stopped larger opponents in training. It was the right instinct. Against a human being, it would have worked.
His hands made contact and the force passed through them like they weren't there.
The impact lifted him off the ground. He flew backward through the air and hit the wall at the end of the corridor with enough force to crack the plaster in a spider-web pattern around his shoulders. He fell, caught himself on one knee, and stayed there for a moment while his vision reassembled itself and his lungs remembered how to take in air.
Several ribs on his left side sent signals that he filed away and did not look at directly.
Arjun was already moving. With Aagni's back partially turned from throwing Rudra, the angle was there — close range, the blade already drawn. He drove it toward Aagni's side, a precise thrust aimed between the ribs.
The blade stopped.
It didn't deflect. It didn't miss. It simply met the scaled skin and went no further, the metal refusing to penetrate, like pressing a knife against stone. Arjun pushed harder, repositioned his grip, tried again. Nothing. Not a scratch. Not even a mark on the surface.
Aagni turned his head and looked at Arjun the way you might look at a child who has done something mildly interesting.
Then his eyes dropped to the side pocket of Arjun's trousers. The slight rectangular shape there. The phone.
Before Arjun could process what he was looking at, Aagni's hand moved — reaching not for the blade but for Arjun's leg. He grabbed it at the ankle, and in one continuous motion he lifted, swung, and released. Arjun left the ground in a wide arc and hit the opposite wall, the impact knocking the air from him completely.
As Arjun was still in motion, Aagni's other hand had already found the phone. He held it up between two scaled fingers and looked at the screen — at the photographs Arjun had taken in the filing room. The shipping records, the destination codes, the pages that spelled out what P.R.I.S.M. was doing in the dark.
"The Great Desert documentation," Aagni said, scrolling with the same careful attention he gave everything. "That could have been problematic." He looked almost satisfied. "Good thing I noticed."
He opened his mouth and placed the phone inside it. There was a brief mechanical crunching sound. When his jaw closed, it was gone.
The corridor fell silent except for the sound of the two of them trying to breathe.
Rudra pulled himself upright against the wall, one arm braced against the cracked plaster. His ribs sent a sharp protest with every inhale that he acknowledged and moved past. Arjun was already back on his feet across the corridor — he had taken the impact badly, one hand pressed to his side, his face set in the particular expression of a person calculating how much damage they can keep functioning through.
They looked at each other.
No evidence. No blade that could pierce the skin. A creature between them and the exit that had just thrown both of them across a corridor without apparent effort.
"You're too strong," Arjun said. It was not defeat — it was data. He was talking to Rudra, not to Aagni.
"I know," Rudra said.
"You know what we have to do."
Rudra looked at him. "You mean that plan?"
"Yes." Arjun took a slow breath. "On three. One —"
Aagni watched them with mild interest, making no move to close the distance.
"Two —"
Arjun filled his lungs completely.
"Three —"
"RUNNNNN!!!"
They ran.
Both of them simultaneously, in the same direction, back down the corridor toward the far stairwell. Not fighting, not strategising — just running as fast as damaged bodies could carry them, footsteps loud and graceless against the hard floor. Behind them, Aagni did not pursue immediately. Instead, a sound began to build in the corridor at their backs — low at first, then growing, until it became a full, unrestrained laugh. Not mocking, not villainous. Genuinely amused. The laugh of someone who has not been entertained in a very long time.
"Haha —" A pause as if he could not quite believe it. "So that is what you want." The voice echoed off the walls after them. "This game will be fun!"
They hit the stairwell door and took the stairs three at a time, Arjun just ahead, both of them moving on pure adrenaline. They reached the ground floor, burst through the internal door, and ran for the exit.
Rudra hit it first. The door did not open.
He hit it again, shoulder this time. Nothing. He checked the panel beside it — the light that had glowed green on their way in was now a flat, steady red.
Locked. From somewhere inside the building's systems. Remotely.
"Damn it." Arjun came up beside him and checked the panel himself, already knowing what he would find. "Rudra, can you break it?"
Rudra looked at the door. It was heavy — reinforced steel with a security frame — but not impossible. He could break it. It would not be a small effort in his current condition, but he could do it.
He did not move.
"Rudra." Arjun's voice carried a note of urgency. "Can you break it or not?"
"Yes," Rudra said. "But that's not our best option."
Arjun stared at him. From somewhere in the floors above, the sound of slow, heavy footsteps had begun — Aagni descending the stairwell without haste, not rushing, because there was no reason to rush. He controlled the building. He controlled the exits. He was enjoying the situation entirely.
"What do you mean, not our best option?" Arjun said. "We are trapped in a building with something that just ate my phone. The door is locked. What exactly is the better option?"
Rudra turned away from the door and faced him fully.
"We run now — then what?" His voice was steady, even with the effort of breathing around the damaged ribs. "We have no evidence anymore. The photos are gone. And Aagni is still here, in this building, doing whatever he was doing before we arrived. We get out tonight and we have nothing." He paused. "But we still have to fight him someday. That part isn't going away."
Arjun was quiet. The footsteps above had slowed — Aagni in no hurry, descending at whatever pace suited him.
"So what are you saying?" Arjun asked.
"I'm saying running right now is the wrong move." Rudra looked back up the stairwell, at the dark space where the footsteps were coming from. "I have a plan. But for it to work, we need to buy time. As much as we can."