"Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself ."

"If u have finally found this, then it's the time."

"Protect it from reaching the hands of evil".

"This sounds very weird. The words are written in such a way that, they are addressing a particular person", Adi expressed his concern.

"Even I feel the same too. Sis, please continue the next pages".

"Hold on your excitement, I'm trying to decode the language here", Stuti grumbled.

"In this page they are trying to tell about the history of the temple". She continued.

------- ⋆⋆ ✿ ⋆⋆--------

𝗗𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 1100 𝗔𝗗, (𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑥𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 1000 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑛𝑜𝑤)

𝙳𝚞𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐 11𝚝𝚑 𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚢, 𝙺𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝙸𝚗𝚍𝚛𝚊𝚜𝚎𝚗𝚊 𝚘𝚏 𝙷𝚊𝚛𝚢𝚊𝚗𝚔𝚊 𝚍𝚢𝚗𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚢 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚛𝚞𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚖𝚊𝚓𝚘𝚛 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝙸𝚗𝚍𝚒𝚊𝚗 𝚜𝚞𝚋-𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚎𝚗𝚝.

During his rule the kingdom was at its peak and people were free of illness and poverty. He treated everyone equally & the people were very happy with the rule of their king.

His kingdom was prosperous with stocks of gold & invaluable precious stones. His rule was like a heaven on earth.

But once, a famine hit the kingdom suddenly. The land started to dry without rains and people were suffering without proper food to eat.

Day by day deaths increased in the kingdom.

And at the same time, bad luck also surrounded the king, as he experienced rows of failures one after the other.

The king was very much depressed by the these events & devastated by seeing his kingdom's condition.

And one day during these drought period, Goddess Bhairavi, with whose blessings the king was born, appeared in his dreams & advised him to carve her
idol, with his own hands.

The next morning, the king without thinking twice, ordered his ministers to find a suitable stone to carve the idol of goddess & without delaying started carving with his own hands.

He worked day and night and finally finished carving a small statue of goddess on the stone & installed it in a small place with all the rituals.

As soon as he installed the Statue of the Goddess the rain poured down in the kingdom and the drought vanished.

Even the king emerged victorious in all his battles. The Kingdom again prospered like before.

Owing all this success to the Goddess Bhairavi, he ordered his ministers to build a very grand temple and he specially designed the beautiful golden statue of the goddess Bhairavi and installed it in the huge temple.

People believed that the goddess herself was present inside the majestic temple and was granting the wishes of devotees.

And many enemy kingdom started to eye on the idol of goddess which was constructed in precious stones.

The kingdom flourished to fame day by day with the blessings of goddess & the internal conspiracies against the king too increased.

Some ministers who couldn't tolerate the success of king, sold their internal secrets to enemy kingdom, thereby making an easy route for the enemies to attack on the kingdom.

The cruel and selfish eyes of the enemy king fell on the golden idol.

The king who came to know about the invasion at the last moment decided to hide all his wealth and the divine statue of the goddess in the temple itself.

Thinking that, he could not protect the idol if it is outside he decided to use the way of tantra.

So he called well known tantriks and priests & with their help hid the majestic statue of the goddess along with his wealth under the ground in some part of the temple itself.

As expected the enemy army invaded on the kingdom and the king sacrificed his life.

But he didn't tell them about the location of the divine statue.

The enemy king was enraged, not finding the idol & decided to destroy the temple.

And his army succeeded in destroying the Eastern and northern part of the temple but couldn't continue , as the king died of uncurable sickness suddenly.

------- ⋆⋆ ✿ ⋆⋆--------

"Oh this is some thrilling book to read", Stuti said. " By the way where did you guys get this?", she enquired.

"If this book gets into hands of any researchers or government authorities, this will create a sensation across the country", she further exclaimed.

My nerves became tensed at that.

No, we can't take risk in this matter.

"No. We are not letting that happen", I said. "This is going to be between only three of us". I told firmly.

"Yeah, I agree. It's better to keep it as secretive as we can. This is not a simple matter now which can be handed over to researchers", Adi pointed out.

Stuti huffed, agreeing. "Yeah, as it concerns to wealth and treasure many greedy eyes will fall on it. The government is filled with selfish people nowadays".

She turned pages trying to decode what's written in there.

"Here is an interesting thing", she exclaimed.

"Some people believe that, the selfish king died by the wrath of goddess, as he tried to touch her divine idol and he started destroying the temple", she read the lines.

"That's why temple is severely destroyed in western & Northern side", Adi concluded.

"Hm that's right, it's the greedy king who destroyed the parts of temple", Stuti said.

"This is the idol of goddess Bhairavi that king Indrasena built with his own hands", Stuti showed us the image in the worn out pages of the book.

My mind raced back to the small stone carving, behind the large idol of goddess in the garbagriha where this chest was hidden.

"Adi, Your guess was right earlier. This is the main idol of the temple", I voiced out pointing the image.

"Hmm. But what does they mean by the first sentence? That , it's time..", Stuti asked.

Time! time for what?

"If u have finally found this, then it's the time."

"Protect it from reaching the hands of evil".

I tried to carefully analyze the sentence, trying to connect the dots.

It's time.....

Protect it from evil....

Does it mean that, some greedy people are eyeing on the golden idol, that the king hid in the temple before his death.

Approximately 1000 years have passed, is the idol still present there?

As all these thoughts came into my mind, I remembered my dream, where I saw lots of valuable objects like thrones, crowns, jewels protected by snake.

It clearly means that, the king has hidden all his wealth in that crumbled place & now some greedy people are trying to get hold of those invaluable things, for their selfish desires just like the cruel king did.

But some thoughts constantly pricked my mind.

How am I connected to all these things?

There is still something beyond all these stories of king and wealth.

This matter is something beyond the hidden wealth which selfish people are trying to get hold of.

There is something connected to divinity of goddesss in that temple, which cannot be understood by mere humans like us.

Because I have witnessed it infront of my own eyes. The lady.....

How can I forget her cosmic form, when she lead me to that destroyed place where, all those invaluable things were hidden & the time she lead me towards the dazed Stuti.

And now I come to think of it, who is she?

Is she goddess Bhairavi herself ?

Or

Is she a shape-shifting serpent ?

Well, only this book contains all the answers for my unanswered questions.

"Here they have mentioned about some tantric ways the king used to seal the door of the cave where he hid, his wealth", Stuti said examining the book.

"What have they mentioned?", I asked curiously.

"This is entirely in different dialect, which I'm not aware. I think the writer of this book intentionally, wrote this in some difficult dialect because it might contain some important information regarding the hidden place", Stuti continued further.

"Something about snake-knots is mentioned here. They say that the priests and tantriks used some ancient knowledge of tantras about the snake-knots to form the blockade of that place, so that no normal man can reach", she said.

"These are the same snake-knots that we saw in old man's book" , Adi said pointing towards the big snake-knot that I saw in my dream as well.

"It mentions something like, finding this sign in western side of the temple", Stuti said.

Western side !!

Yes. We couldn't enter that side of the temple as it was heavily damaged.

If this sign is present in the western side, then I'm sure the place which I saw in my dream and the place where the king had hidden his wealth is somewhere present in western boundary itself.

May be that was the reason, that evil king tried to destroy the western side heavily, in hopes of reaching to that place.

"And the rest is filled with the ways, to open the doors of the cave", she exhaled.

"It takes time to decode this information, but I can do this with some time", she said.

Instead of wondering all the possibilities I could just go and search there. With that enthusiasm I requested Stuti to stop reading the book for now.

After Stuti left, I and Adi sat in complete silence trying to grasp all the information.

"So, what are we going to do now?", Adi asked.

I held my locket thinking of my next step. Maybe this locket can lead us towards the place, as this was the only clue we are left with now.

"Let's confirm if the place with snake-knot on its door is still present or not", I asked for his opinion.

"Alright, let's first verify it", Adi agreed.

"I think it's better if we go back", I said breathing heavily, rubbing the sweat off my face.

"Hmm", Adi replied.

It's been 2 hours, since we are trying to walk through this crumbled rocks & structures in the mid afternoon. But we are just circling the same place again and again, as most of the ways were blocked with large fallen temple walls.

"I don't know what would have happened, if we decided to come here at night", I grumbled with exhaustion, but the man beside me was walking like a rock without listening to me.

"Adi !!!!!!", I screeched.

He suddenly halted, stunned by my explosion.

"Are you even listening to me?, I'm tired, I can't walk", I huffed.

"Do you want us to return back?", he asked.

"No", I refused.

"Then do you want to rest for some time", he further questioned.

"Noo", I huffed.

"Then, what do you want now?", he exhaled.

"Can't you understand a simple thing. Lift me in your arms now", I stated crossing my arms huffing angrily.

He let out a loud chuckle at that as an amused look crossed his face.

"Are you ordering me Ms. Kulkarni", he asked with a smirk on his pretty lips.

Oh! Now he wants to play. Ok I'm up for it.

"Yes. What if I'm ordering you?", I said lifting my chin up in a challenging manner.

"No", he replied as he turned back and started walking away.

What the holy f*ck? NO??

Did he seriously left me here.

Red-hot anger coursed through my veins at his ignorance, as I clenched my fists at my sides.

"You moron, what do you mean by No?", I shouted still standing in my place.

"It means No, I will not lift you in my arms", he said still moving without a backward glance.

"But I'm tired, Adi", I huffed keeping aside my pride.

He stopped at that and turned back, moving towards me.

"Then try asking me respectfully", he said with a smug smile.

"No, I'm not doing that", I snorted.

"Then feel free to enjoy your night with wild animals", he said trying to move away.

"Hey, Stop !!", I held him back by his arms.

"Yes?", he asked with a mocking smirk.

"Ok, as you wish", I huffed.

"I'm tired. Lift me up", I said staring at him.

"You call this as requesting? Sorry I can't wait anymore, I have to go", he said jerking away my hand on his arm.

"Hey, I'm requesting you", I said dumbfounded.

"Wait!!, do u expect me to kneel at your feets and beg u, to lift me up?, I gasped dramatically.

"No, I'm just expecting a simple word from you", he said.

"Haven't you heard of a magic words darling?", he questioned with a smirk.

Wait, you idiot... wait for my turn....

I will make sure you regret the very day you were born.

But now, I'm very tired , I don't care if I have to beg him.

"Ok", I huffed

"I will be very much honored, if I get a chance to be in your arms, Mr. Adidev Varma. Will you please grant the wish of this poor women?", I asked sarcastically.

"Now, how can I say No, Ms.Kulkarni, if you are pleading me so desperately" he taunted with a smug look trying to control his laughter.

"Now, shut up & lift me up, u idiot", I glared at him.

"Now, why so harsh? my love, see I'm lifting you up", saying that he suddenly lifted me up in his arms.

"Ouch, Can't you warn me beforehand?", I gasped holding onto his shoulders.

We walked for another ten minutes, searching for the place in the quiet surroundings with twigs and bushes.

Adi halted suddenly as we heard some distant yelling voices.

"Who could be present in this abandoned place?", I asked with confusion.

We followed the distant noises, until we noticed some gathering of around 10 men, all covering their faces and bodies with robes and masks, yelling at each other.

But one sentence, turned my blood cold.

"I clearly underestimated that bitch, I should have finished her at the same time I killed her father".

🟠🔴🟡🟢⚪

The longest chapter with 2315, words!!!!!!