That was three months ago. Now, Ishaan was standing in his kitchen in a sweat-stained kurta, staring at a phone that demanded he become someone else. He picked it up.

Ishaan touched the box. It sprang open. Inside was not a key, not a jewel, but a single black feather. Peacock feather. The shadow of the Peacock Throne.

Ishaan grabbed his bag. Inside: a brass compass that pointed to magnetic north only when he didn't need it, a worn copy of the Surya Siddhanta , and a small silver box that had belonged to his grandmother. She had given it to him on her deathbed, whispering, "When the maps fail you, beta, listen to the stones." He had thought she was delirious. Now he wasn't so sure.

He stepped down into the well. The air grew cold, not with the chill of stone but with the cold of somewhere else. Somewhen else. The silver box in his pocket grew hotter. At the bottom of the well, there was no water. There was only a door. Not a wooden door, not a stone door, but a door made of folded light, shimmering like a heat haze over a desert road.