THE_ALGORITHM_OF_FATE

System_Log: Truth_Verification

"I didn't kill you!" Aryan shouted, his voice cracking. He grabbed Kavya by the shoulders, shaking her hard. "Kavya, look at me! I am Aryan. I debug code. I don't burn people!"

Kavya didn't blink. Her eyes were glazed, reflecting the orange flames of the funeral pyres. She wasn't seeing him; she was seeing a ghost.
"You held the torch," she whispered, her voice cold and detached. "You locked the door. You watched me burn."

Aryan’s smart-watch was screaming now. STRESS LEVEL CRITICAL.
But it wasn't just his stress. His laptop, lying in the ash on the ground, was vibrating. The screen was no longer red. It had switched to the camera view—showing the live feed of the burning ghat.

But the image on the screen was... wrong.

Aryan looked down.
On the laptop screen, the Manikarnika Ghat wasn't crowded with tourists and electric lights.
It was dark. There were no electric poles. The temples looked newer, sharper. And standing in the frame, where Kavya stood, was not a woman in jeans and a kurti.

It was the woman in the crimson saree. The woman from the glitch.

"Augmented Reality," Aryan gasped. "The AI is overlaying the historical data onto the live feed."

He picked up the laptop and pointed the camera at Kavya.
"Kavya, look at the screen! Look at the truth!"

Kavya’s eyes flickered down. She saw herself on the monitor.
In the digital rendering, the woman—Leela—was crying. She was banging her fists against a heavy wooden door.

And standing on the other side of the door, holding a torch, was a man in Maratha armor.
It was Aryan. Or rather, Rudra.

The Truth of the Fire

On the screen, the scene played out like a movie, rendered in 4K resolution by the Neural Network.

Rudra (Past Aryan) wasn't smiling. He was weeping. Blood was dripping from a wound in his side.
Outside the frame, voices were shouting.
"Find the encryption key! Find the Royal Seal! Kill them both!"

Rudra looked at the wooden door. He looked at the torch.
He shouted through the wood.
"Leela! They are coming for the Seal. If they find you, they will torture you for it. I cannot let them take you."

"Open the door, Rudra!" Digital-Leela screamed. "Let me fight with you!"

"No," Rudra whispered. "The secret dies with me. But you... you must survive. The river path is open. Go!"

Rudra didn't throw the torch at the door.
He threw the torch at the floor in front of him.
He created a wall of fire between himself and the approaching soldiers. He wasn't trapping her inside. He was cutting himself off. He was turning himself into a human shield to buy her time to escape through the back tunnel.

The fire on the screen roared. Rudra drew his sword, turning to face the shadows coming for him, engulfed in flames.

The simulation ended. The battery died. The screen went black.

The Reconciliation

Kavya gasped, a massive intake of air, as if she had been holding her breath for three centuries.
Her knees buckled. Aryan caught her before she hit the ash-covered ground.

She clutched his shirt, burying her face in his chest. She was sobbing now, but it wasn't the cold tears of betrayal. It was the hot, messy grief of realization.

"You didn't kill me," she choked out. "You saved me. You burned yourself so I could run."

Aryan held her, feeling the heat of the ghats on his back. His scientific brain was trying to process the data, but his heart was beating a rhythm that felt ancient.
"I saved you," Aryan whispered, and for the first time, he felt the memory too. The heat of the armor. The smell of his own burning flesh. The desperate hope that she had made it to the boat. "But did you escape?"

Kavya pulled back, wiping her eyes. She looked at the dead laptop, then at the dark river flowing below them.

"Yes," she said softly. "I took the boat. I took the Royal Seal—the encryption key you were protecting. And I hid it."

"Hid it where?" Aryan asked.

Kavya turned to face the river. She pointed to a submerged structure near the ghat, barely visible under the black water.
"The Ratneshwar Mahadev Temple," she said. "The leaning temple. It’s mostly underwater now. But in 1725... the sanctum was dry."

Aryan looked at the dark, polluted water of the Ganges.
"The AI brought us here to finish the mission, Kavya. We have to find that Seal."

"But why?" Kavya asked. "What is so important about an old piece of brass?"

Aryan remembered the binary code in the shrine. S.A.V.E.
"I don't think it's just brass, Kavya. I think whatever we hid in 1725... is the code that created my AI. We didn't just hide a seal. We hid a technology."

He stood up, brushing the ash off his jeans.
"Can you swim?"