Arjun Das

A junior structural engineer assigned to document surface fractures in the Jagannath Temple's outer wall. Inexpensive. Unproven. The firm sent him because his contract was the cheapest available. He was good at his work. Good enough to notice that the stress vectors were inverted, that the force was coming from below and inward, that no standard cause accounted for this. He went further than the contract permitted. What he found in the chamber changed him the way a material loaded beyond its prior range does not return to its resting state. Shanti's word for what he became: a correction point. Not chosen. Not possessed. The right material for that work, capable of perceiving where the sequence of things has broken and restoring it. The force recognised him because he was capable of it. Nothing more mystical than that.