Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A man barely past his teens walked alone upon the road to a dusty village, shoulders squared with discipline but his face carved by disappointment. His frame was tall, hardened not only by drill but by hunger; every muscle spoke of years stolen to practice and privation alike. The sun had burned his skin into a darkness the pale men of Mathura would never name as one of nobility. His hair, thick and unruly, fell across his shoulders like a half-tamed mane.

But his eyes — those betrayed him utterly. Deep-set, unyielding, aflame not with common weariness or appetite but with something older, harsher. They were the eyes of one wronged by destiny itself. They smoldered with wrath yet refused to fade. The lips beneath them did not soften into smiles; they curled most often in contempt, as if the very world were a thing to be despised.

None here knew the name that went with those eyes. But it was Vasusena. Born in a charioteer’s house in Hastinapura, son to a man who mastered reins but never power, condemned — so the world decreed — to serve while princes inked their glory in the blood of others.

And yet once he had been more than a nameless wanderer. Once he had stood above nearly all who trained in Guru Drona’s ashram — above them in height, in strength, in sheer will. Above all but one.

It was no secret. Not whispered but accepted as truth: Vasusena was the second-best pupil of Guru Drona’s ashram. Second to none save Arjuna. In every contest his arrows flew straight, his strength held steady, his will did not break. Always he stood just a breath behind the Devaputra — his rival, his mirror, his shadow. His equal in gift, though the world refused to say so aloud.

And yet the songs… the songs sang only Arjuna’s name.

For Arjuna had been shaped for it — trained from childhood, molded by his father Pandu before ever stepping into the ashram. Born to greatness, as if by birthright. What was Vasusena beside that? A charioteer’s son. A boy whose father wished for him reins of horses, not reins of destiny. He had clawed, scraped, bled for each fragment of recognition. Arjuna inhaled greatness as easily as breath.

But still — was he not the one who stood above four Devaputras and all the other princes? Did that not mean something? Did that not prove that, even shackled by birth, he possessed the strength to be a warrior?

According to Guru Drona… apparently not. For though the acharya favored his own son above all others, Vasusena and Arjuna stood above the guruputra in sheer skill. And that is no small measure, for Ashwatthama himself was a warrior of no small skill.

But slowly, inexorably, the tide of Guru Drona’s favor began to place Arjuna at his own son’s side. And it all turned upon a single incident.

After the sandhyavandhana… When shadows lengthened by the river, Guru Drona was seized — dragged beneath by a crocodile vast as a cart. Arjuna, always with bow at hand, loosened his arrows swiftly and struck the beast dead.

Bharadwaja’s son then spoke to him:

“O mighty-armed one — take this weapon, the Brahmashira. Receive with it the knowledge of release and recall. Use it not upon men. Should you strike an enemy whose strength is less, it will consume the world entirely. There is no weapon greater in the three realms. Guard it well, and hear me: if a foe beyond human comes against you, use this to end him.”

Even when Arjuna’s brothers sneered — calling him jealous of a boy eleven years his junior — Vasusena accepted it without flinching. He was competing with someone younger. In the ashram’s ledgers of learning, he was Arjuna’s junior. The Third Pandava had been shaped for the bow from the moment he could stand, while Vasusena had to wait until twenty-four to be trained at all. The prince held over six years’ head start with a bow.

Yet he felt no shame in the contest. In war age does not matter; only skill does. Slowly, steadily, he honed himself until he could match Arjuna despite the prince’s previous experience and his circle of tutors — as Arjuna not only have Kripacharya and Dronacharya as teacher just like Vasusena had but also Mahāmahīm Bhīṣma, Mahāmantrī Vidura, and the late King Pandu himself.

But the Brahmastra… the moment that weapon entered Arjuna’s hands, the gap widened into a chasm Vasusena could not cross.

Guru Drona had taught it to Ashwatthama as well.

So, unwilling to be left behind, Vasusena went to his teacher to ask for the same knowledge.

He remembered that day word for word, because on that day he learned the cold truth: that no matter how hard he fought, no matter how fiercely he bled for every stroke of the bow, some doors would always remain barred.

“Acharya…” His voice cracked then — not from fear but from the violence of his own longing. He had come to the acharya’s quarters at dusk, when the lamps were being lit and the smell of ghee tangled with sandalwood. His palms were folded; his eyes burned. “Please teach me the Brahmastra.”

The old Brahmin looked up slowly, as though the audacity of the request had curdled the air.

“Do you know what you ask, boy?”

“I know,” Vasusena said, breathing quickly, words tumbling. “I know it is not given lightly. I know it demands discipline. I know it devours the unworthy. But I will not break. I will not falter. I swear it upon my blood, upon my life.”

“And why,” Guru Drona’s voice turned colder than the Yamuna in winter, “do you wish to wield it?”

The truth slipped from his tongue before pride could cage it.

“Because I wish to fight Arjuna as his equal.”

The silence that followed was longer than an executioner’s pause. Then, softly — cruelly — the acharya laughed.

“You? Equal to Arjuna?” His lips twisted. “Do you even hear yourself? A charioteer’s son presuming to stand beside the son of Pandu? You are a Suta, Vasusena. You may hold the bow, yes. You may learn the drills, yes. But the Brahmastra? That belongs to Brahmanas and Kshatriyas. It will not answer your call. Not now. Not ever.”

“Yes, Gurudeva,” Vasusena said, low but unshaken. “I am no weaker. I have matched him arrow for arrow. If he holds such a weapon, then so must I. Only then will our contest be just.”

The fire spat, the shadows leaned in as if to hear. Drona’s gaze hardened into iron.
“Fool. Do you think destiny bends because you wish it so? Do you think birth can be undone by ambition? The Brahmastra is not for the likes of you. Only a Brahmana or a Kshatriya may wield it. A Suta cannot even dream of such fire.”

The words struck like hammer-blows on iron already cracked.

Still Vasusena tried. Desperation forced its way into his throat, scraping against pride.
“Then test me, Gurudeva! Any task, any trial. Let me prove myself — and if I fail, I will not ask again.”

Drona’s reply was swift, merciless.
“You were born with failure in your veins. No trial can cleanse it. No astra shall ever rest in your hands. You may wield a bow, yes. But never destiny.”

From the shadows, a snicker. Then another. The older students had crept close, drawn by the scent of humiliation. Their whispers coiled like snakes.

“The Sutaputra begs for Brahma’s weapon!”
“As if a mule could turn into a stallion!”
“Go, Vasusena. Take your father’s reins. That is the only weapon you were born with.”

The laughter was low, cruel. And it stayed with him long after the fire died.

“None but a Brahmana who has observed every vow should be taught the Brahma-weapon — or a Kshatriya who has endured fierce austerities. None else.” Drona’s voice was flat, final. “Chase not dreams that were never yours. Remember your place. A charioteer’s son you were born, a charioteer’s son you shall remain.”

And yet… what vows had Ashwatthama ever observed? Which austerities had he endured? Still, Guru gave him the Brahmastra. Gave it freely — though the guru’s own son had not even learned how to recall it.

The hypocrisy stung sharper than the rejection. A rule carved in stone for the sutaputra, and mud-soft for the guru’s blood. Was this dharma, then? Or only the old man’s convenience, dressed in the words of law?

That night he set quill to palm-leaf and left behind a letter for his parents — a poor thing of apology and defiance both — telling them only that he would seek a guru who might grant him higher weapons. Then he walked away from Hastinapur.

And now — a year and six months later — here he was. Rejected by three Brahmins in turn, each dismissal etched with the same word: caste. His feet carried him down the road to Asandi in the Mathura kingdom, still clinging to the hope that somewhere, someone would teach him the astras. All under the shadow of this accursed realm ruled by Kamsa, and with the bitter laughter of his old fellow-students still gnawing at his ears.

The village lay before him, a carcass still breathing.

Mud houses leaned against each other like drunks too weary to stand. Thatched roofs sagged with holes wide enough for rain to mock the people beneath. The well at the center, once the heart of life, was now a place of silence; women drew water with eyes lowered, careful not to draw the gaze of soldiers who prowled like jackals.

Children sat in the dust, their ribs showing beneath skin stretched too thin, playing not with toys but with sticks, scratching lines into the earth as though marking their own graves. Shops displayed nothing but rotten vegetables, grains measured with the stinginess of despair. Men did not speak loudly; even whispers were dangerous.

It was life, but not life. Endurance, not living.

Soldiers of Mathura stalked the streets, spears in hand, laughter sharp and cruel. One struck a man across the face simply for failing to bow low enough. Another dragged a woman by her hair, while her husband stood frozen, too broken to resist.

Now there’s one thing one needs to know… he had not come to Mathura by choice. Mathura did not grow sages beneath deodars; it grew trophies for tyrants. A palace of cruelty cast its shadow over every hamlet. Where a king loved cruelty, holy men did not linger. Yet rumor is hunger — and rumor has teeth.

Six months before, raw and hollow from a third door slammed in his face because of caste — the third master who spat sutaputra as if it were a brand and rejected him— he had wandered into Tilaprastha village in Mathura by mistake. When he learnt that he’s in Mathura he had decided only to pass through: a night’s roof, a crust of bread, then backward into a quieter country. 

Instead, he stayed. Bodies weakened by travel and training crave ease; he wanted nothing more than a roof and bread. Three days became a week. The village smelled of smoke, sweat, and the thin sunlight of markets. He slept in a stable’s corner and pretended not to notice the owner of the horse stable he slept in… staring at him. He kept his head down.

Then he saw a family.

Nothing special to look at — earth and bone: a father whose hands were hollows from the plough and whose courage was the wrong sort; a mother with sleepless moons carved beneath her eyes; two children who had not yet learned the currency of fear. Mathura’s soldiers hauled them into the square like animals. 

Charges were read — treason, desecration, theft — words chosen like knives to feed cruelty’s appetite. The leader among them laughed with a mouth that would not close. He did not look like other soldiers. He looked larger, wider across the shoulders; his grin was animalistic and terrible. He was a rakshasa.

The village tongues spat his name softly: Kirimvara.

Vasusena should have walked on. The world had taught him silence; silence had kept him alive. But certain sounds tunnel through habit. A child’s unsoftened cry split something in him open.

He did not rush in like a hero of a poem. He was no fool. Foot-soldiers are men at heart — greedy, drunk, vicious — but Kirimvara was not merely a man; he was a rakshasa in a cuirass: an Atirathi who ate men for appetite, who used rank to sate hunger.

So he watched. He waited. Strategy sat easy in his bones; survival had taught the patient cruelty of hunters.

That afternoon he slipped among servants: a scarred wrist, a bowed head, the gait of a man who carries other men’s burdens. Servants are everywhere where soldiers sit; their backs bend in the sight of blades. No one looked twice at the new shadow hauling a bucket or sweeping a threshold. He moved with a purpose so small it was invisible — every sweep, a mask, every step concealment. He listened with the hunger of a man who knows ears are sharper than blades.

They spoke like dogs at a bone.

“Kirimvara grows gluttonous by the day,” one soldier muttered as he sharpened his spear — low, private, meant not to stir the crowd but to ease a conscience. “He uses his station to accuse the innocent. Then…” he spat, “then he killed the men just to taste them.”

“Have you lost your wits?” the other hissed, eyes flicking toward the captain’s tent. “If the captain hears you, he’ll spit you on the spit. You’ll be next on his table.”

A third, lean and dark-eyed, snorted. “I’ll run if he ever looks at me. I’ll take the forest of Asandi and be rid of it.” His voice carried bitter humor.

“Forest of Asandi?” the second snapped, half-laughing, half-afraid. “Are you mad? You’d trade one tyrant for a place where arrows die? Where beasts are larger than bhutas and teeth like ploughshares? No Astra work there. The trees laugh at men’s weapons. And there’s a rishi in the centre — they say his tapas shields the ground. Even the very earth obeys him.”

A pause. The first soldier leaned in, his voice low enough to scrape. “You fools think the place is dangerous because of the rishi. It’s only dangerous because you rely on astras and sorcery. 

I was a Nisada once — no need for astras, my hands were my weapons. In that forest, if Kirimvara’s blade came at me and I chose to fight, I could easily gut him without thinking. His astras, his illusions, even his senses would break in that holy land.”

There was an ugly little smile in the man’s tone. “And as long as I stay out of the sage’s sight, I’m safe. The sage does not care unless you try to harm him. A fool is he who tries to harm a man who can touch the land — so powerful that boons fail there and even spiritual energy is suffocated.”

Words do their work: they root.

Vasusena’s ears stayed hungry. In that conversation he found two things: confirmation of danger, and a map. The name Asandi loosened something in him — not because it was exotic, but because it promised what caste had denied: a rupture in order. A place where astras failed might be a place where birth did not bind a man’s fate. If the rishi could make weapons fail, perhaps he was a master who judged breath over birth.

In two days, the man would be killed. So in less than two nights, he has to rescue the family.

The night before had been silent, thick with waiting dread. Vasusena moved like a shadow through Tilaprastha, knife in hand, eyes hard with resolve. The Mathura soldiers who had tormented the farmer’s family never even knew when death came for them. One by one, their throats opened in the dark. Gasps were swallowed by night, corpses folded into the dirt like discarded rags. No mercy. No hesitation. Only the dull rhythm of survival and vengeance.

But Dawn carried the true trial.

Kirimvara.

The rakshasa’s appetite was legend even among Mathura’s men. To face him openly was folly, and Vasusena knew it. So in the dark he brewed poison — grinding herbs, mixing sap — whispering to himself that the dose would be enough. He slipped it into the food meant for the rakshasa, praying craft might succeed where strength could not.

Morning betrayed him.

Kirimvara ate, his monstrous body slackening, his movements dulled — but not broken. When Vasusena struck, his blade flashing like lightning toward his neck, the sword shattered against the hide. The recoil sent him sprawling, blood spraying from his lips. The ground itself shook with the rakshasa’s laughter.

“Little insect,” Kirimvara rumbled, voice like an earthquake, eyes gleaming red. “You thought of poisoning me? You thought you could cut me like a lamb?”

Fear wormed into Vasusena’s bones. His body trembled, though his will forbade it.

The rakshasa rose, towering, nightmare made flesh. Then the horrors began.

With a roar that split the sky, Kirimvara conjured phantoms — beasts impossible. Serpents wide enough to swallow huts. Tigers with eyes of fire. Vultures by the hundred, wings blotting out the sun. They rushed him, claws raking, wings screaming. Though his mind hissed illusion, his body recoiled, chest heaving. The rakshasa’s laughter drowned courage, shaking his marrow.

“Foolish boy,” he cursed himself, frantic. “You should have fled. You should never have touched this fight. Reckless. Reckless fool.”

Kirimvara’s hand came down, massive, swatting him into a wall. Bones screamed. The rakshasa seized his weapon — a gadha as large as a chariot, spiked, dripping menace.

He swung.

Vasusena’s legs refused him. Rooted, helpless, a child before the storm, he stared as death bore down.

The mace struck his body—

—and shattered.

Metal broke like clay. Shards flew.

And in that instant the world shifted.

Dark-gold armor, radiant as a midday sun, blossomed across his chest. Its surface gleamed with the marks of Surya — the blazing disk, the leaping flames, the eternal light. His normally bright earrings burned with a glow so fierce that Kirimvara stumbled back, shielding his eyes.

The rakshasa roared, enraged. Spears, axes, swords — each broke against the boy. Astras followed: fire, wind, lightning tearing through the village, shaking the heavens. Yet the golden armor devoured all.

Something inside Vasusena snapped.

The fog of fear burned away. His hand seized a fallen bow. Trembling, but firm. He tore a quiver from a corpse, drew, loosed. Astra-mantras spilled from his lips — fragments remembered from Drona’s lessons — arrows of flame, of storm, of piercing wind. Weak compared to a rakshasa’s might, yet guided by something heavier than strength.

The battle raged short, brutal. Arrows cut flesh, split hide, drove the beast back. Still Kirimvara charged, fury unspent, until Vasusena’s last arrow struck deep into his throat. Black blood burst forth. With a final roar that sent shivers down Vasusena’s spine, the rakshasa fell.

Silence.

The golden armor dimmed, retreating into nothing. Only the boy remained — bloodied, gasping, alive.

What in the hell happened just now?

Armor he had never known. Astras that shattered like brittle toys against his skin. Weapons that had scarred kings themselves breaking uselessly upon him.

How? How could this be?

He was sutaputra. Son of a charioteer. Born with reins in his palm, not divine fire. He had begged for a weapon and been told he was unworthy. He had bled for scraps of learning, been spat on by gurus who swore dharma with one mouth and swallowed hypocrisy with the other. He had been denied, mocked, driven into the dust.

So how was it that, in the moment between life and death, the heavens themselves rose to shield him?

What tapasya had he ever performed to earn this? What austerity, what vow? None. None but hunger, none but shame. And yet the armor came to him — not to princes born from kings, not to guru’s sons, but to him, the boy the world named sutaputra and stated that his destiny is to hold reins of a horse.

Was this some forgotten curse? Or the gods’ amusement — a cruel gift tossed into his hands so they might laugh at his bewilderment?

Or… was this blood? Was this the truth he had never dared to ask? That something in him was not merely human? That the sun itself had laid claim to his flesh?

And if so — why hide it? Why let him crawl through mud, why let him drink mockery, why let him carry the brand of servant when fire lay caged in his bones?

What game was this? What law? What god’s hand had shaped this cruelty?

Vasusena staggered forward, chest heaving, hands shaking. From the corpse he wrenched a bone from the thigh — white, jagged — a trophy and a reminder. 

The chains clattered to the ground.

Vasusena’s breath came ragged, but his hands did not falter. He pressed the shattered bone against lock after lock, forcing them open with brute strength where keyholes resisted. Iron yielded, cages gave way, until the farmer’s family stumbled free — eyes wide, faces streaked with soot and fear. The children clung to their mother’s skirts, too afraid even to cry.

He turned then, copper-dark skin smeared with dust and blood, hair tangled like a lion’s mane, gaze grim but unbroken. Stepping into the center of Tilaprastha, he raised his voice, and it carried like a storm across the gathered crowd.

“Your tormentors are dead,” he said. “Their blood stains this dirt. Their master lies broken. But do not mistake this for deliverance. Reinforcements will come. Flee while you still can.”

Murmurs rippled — fear, disbelief, then the fragile tremor of relief. An old man stepped forward, back bent, eyes milky with age but not yet blind. The headman bowed low.

“Young warrior,” he rasped, “you have cut chains heavier than iron. Fear not, in Mathura, the word will not travel for months, unless some traitor runs to Kamsa. You have bought us not days but seasons of peace. For that… we must give you something in return.”

Their gratitude pressed against him, but his mind was elsewhere — replaying the shatter of his blade against Kirimvara’s hide. The taste of helplessness. The terror that had rooted him, until the Sun itself had intervened.

If he was to wander this cursed land, chasing yet another guru through soil thick with demons, then he needed something more than iron weapons. Something that would not betray him in the moment between breath and death.

Iron breaks.
Wood splinters.

But Rakshasa bone endures

“If you would honor me,” he said, voice heavy with resolve, “then do this. Forge me weapons from the bones of that beast. A sword. A bow. No tree nor metal will last. But his body—” he gestured at the hulking carcass, still leaking black blood into the soil — “is stronger than any mortal thing. Let his strength become mine.”

The villagers shivered. Some averted their eyes from the corpse, but none dared refuse. The blacksmith, arms thick as hammered iron, stepped forward with a slow nod. “It will take time, boy. Bones are not the kind of ore we worked with. But if you have patience, I will try.”

Patience. What else did he have?

A month bled away into fire and sweat. In secret, he and the blacksmith broke, ground, shaped. Failure after failure. Bones that cracked, bows that splintered, blades that dulled. Until at last fire yielded to will. From the thigh bones came a sword pale as moonlight yet harder than steel. From the ribcage, a bow curved like the horns of a bull, its grooves etched by nature herself, shimmering faintly when strung. They drank the light. They whispered power. Not holy — but his.

When the last hammer-stroke cooled, Vasusena held both in his hands. The villagers gathered, silent, watching him test the edge, hearing the bowstring hum like thunder.

The old headman approached again. “Where will you go now, boy?”

Vasusena’s eyes narrowed. His voice was low, certain.

 “Asandi. I heard the soldiers say that a sage dwells in its forest, whose power bends even nature. If I am to be more than this… I must find him. Show me the way.”

The old chief bowed his head, voice rasping directions through toothless gums. Paths through fields, rivers to ford, the shadow of the great forest that men called cursed.

Vasusena listened, then turned without hesitation. He left Tilaprastha behind, weapons of bone strapped to his back, dust curling at his heels.

In his chest burned a single hope — that this sage, unlike Drona or the rest, might see past his birth. That this man of tapas might measure not lineage, but will.

And if not? Then he would bleed again. And again. Until someone did.

The village of Asandi crouched beneath the sun, its huts low as if ashamed of their own shadows. Vasusena walked its paths like one who neither sought welcome nor feared hostility, his face unreadable, his eyes always measuring — distances, exits, ambush points. He had seen too much of the world’s cruelty to mistake silence for peace.

Trouble, as always, found him first.

A soldier, chest broad and drunk on his own authority, barred his way at the well. His gaze raked Vasusena’s lean frame — the dust-stained youth’s back carrying an odd bow and a sword at his belt — and a slow smirk crawled across the man’s face.

“Well, what’s this?” he drawled. “A straggler. You do know weapons are forbidden to anyone but the army, yes? You're trying to commit treason? Come with me before I am forced to teach you the law.”

Vasusena exhaled — slow, long. Gods above, is fate always this perverse? In the last three villages, the soldiers had at least had the pretence of conscience; they did not hunt innocents blindly. (He had killed them anyway for their willing part in the atrocities.) This lot felt worse.

Laughter rippled from the men clustered behind the soldier — ugly, eager — their eyes already picturing him trussed and roasting.

Again? Tilaprastha. Then the next cursed hamlet. And now here. Must every fool decide I exist to sate his appetite?

He almost laughed at the absurdity, but the sound curdled in his throat and turned to something harder. His patience had run out.

“Fine,” he said, voice steady, almost amused. “Take me to him. To your captain.”

The soldier blinked, wrong-footed by calmness. Then grinned, shoving Vasusena toward the largest tent pitched at the square’s edge. The others followed, jeering, already giddy at the thought of their captain’s feast.

Inside the tent, the air was thick with stale wine and sweat. At its centre sat the captain — a brute swollen with cruelty, eyes glowing like coals, hands fat with indulgence.

The soldier pushed him forward. “Found this stray, Captain. Thought he’d make a fine dish for you.”

The captain’s gaze swept him, suspicion narrowing. “Not a villager. Who are you, boy?”

Vasusena’s jaw tightened. The silence stretched taut. Then his words fell like a war-drum.

“My name,” he said, “is Vasusena. I am the one who slaughtered your brothers-in-arms at Tilaprastha. The one who broke your kin in the next village. And today—today your blood will soak this soil.”

For an hour, the air was chaos. The tent shuddered under horror — muffled screams, steel striking steel, the guttural roars of a beast being slain. The sounds bled into the village, carried by dry wind, until even children buried their faces in their mothers’ arms.

Then — silence.

The flap burst open. Vasusena stepped out. Blood slicked his skin and armour, dried into a grim crust. His hair clung black to his brow. In his hands, he carried the broken haft of a spear, jagged with gore. His eyes scanned the crowd, no longer a boy’s — but the eyes of one who had stood inside monsters and clawed his way free.

Gasps. Hushed prayers. Feet shifting back.

He stood at the square’s centre, voice like iron.

“The village is free. As were the last three before you. The soldiers are dead. Their captain lies with them.”

No one moved. Until the eldest — a bent chief, hands trembling — stepped forward. His voice shook as he asked, “Why… why do you do this, young one? For whom do you fight?”

Vasusena’s face was stone. His voice carried bitterness like ash.

“For no one. Only because I could not stomach watching vermin feed on innocents. Three times now I have walked into villages under chains. Three times I have been offered to die so that others might live. And each time, I answered with blood. Do not remember me as a savior. Remember me as a consequence.”

The old man bowed, shamed into silence.

Vasusena sheathed his bone-forged sword. His gaze lifted to the dark forest rising in the distance.

“There is a sage in the forest of Asandi. Take me to him.”

The chief recoiled as though struck. “Do not speak such madness! The forest is cursed. Astras die in its shadow. Beasts hunt men like cattle. And at its heart — a rishi whose power bends the very earth. Many have sought him. None return.”

For a heartbeat Vasusena was silent. Then, slowly, a grin broke across his blood-streaked face — cold, arrogant, terrible. His earrings glinted like suns in twilight.

“I killed a battalion with my hands. I slew a rakshasa that devoured men like cattle. What in that forest do I have to fear?” The villagers shrank back from his words, from the venom in his tone. “Just show me how to go to that place and I’ll go there myself."

Chapter Text

The forest of Asandi did not welcome intruders.

Even before his first step, Vasusena felt it—an invisible hand pressing against his chest, squeezing each breath into labor. The air grew thick, heavy, humid with rot, and it crawled into his lungs like smoke. The trees rose ancient and merciless, their trunks swelling into grotesque columns, their branches vaulting so high that they seemed to devour the sun itself. Light did not fall here. It was swallowed.

Leaves whispered though there was no wind. Roots pulsed beneath his soles as if the earth itself bled.

The villagers had stopped at the shrine of cracked stone that marked the border, crossing their brows and spitting prayers to gods who would not answer. They had refused to follow, muttering of vanished hunters and battalions swallowed whole. Vasusena had not looked back. His sword of bone hung heavy at his hip, his bow slung across his shoulder, his fingers still crusted with Kirimvara's blood. Let the forest know me as I am.

Deeper. Always deeper.

The air thickened until the sound itself seemed dulled. His own breath rasped hollow in his ears. And when he dared summon an astra—meager embers of mantra gifted grudgingly in Drona's ashram—they guttered out before even forming. A flame dissolved to nothing on his palm. A wind stuttered and died on his tongue.

A grin cracked across his mouth, feral, bitter. So it is true. Here the Brahmin and the Kshatriya alike are stripped. Here only the man remains. Let's see then, what the man endures.

But the forest was no hollow corridor. It was alive, and it had been waiting for him.

The earth shifted, sucking at his feet with every step, as though it meant to root him, to swallow him whole. Vines uncoiled from branches above, thick as snakes, striking for his arms, his throat, hissing when they met the edge of his bone sword. The very trees leaned, groaning like watchtowers of some forgotten army.

Then came the first wave.

Boars. Not the kind that mortals hunted, but mountains of bristled flesh, their tusks as long as ploughs. They crashed through the brush, earth splitting at their charge. Vasusena's bow sang. Arrows punched into eyes, mouths, throats. He split one skull with a downward stroke, black blood spurting hot against his face. The beasts shrieked, retreated, and fell.

But behind them slithered the second wave.

Serpents, black-scaled and glistening, as thick as pillars. They dropped from branches, coiling, jaws distending into endless caverns. One lunged, swallowing half his arm before he rammed his sword upward through its jaw, twisting until its skull burst. Its ichor drenched him, stinging his eyes, clinging like tar.

And then came the third.

Wolves. Not in packs of six or seven, but in legions. Each one taller than his shoulder, eyes gleaming with malice. They circled, darting in, testing his guard. He loosed arrows until his quiver bled empty, until each shot was answered by a howl and a corpse. One lunged, clamped down on his calf. His scream ripped the air, but his blade cut the beast from snout to spine.

The forest roared with hunger.

Birds now—ravens vast as clouds. Wings that turned daylight to night, talons that raked gouges across his shoulders, his scalp, tearing flesh. Their cries split his skull, echoes of battle-horns. He swung upward, wild, sword flashing arcs of white bone through black feathers, splitting bellies, spilling entrails down upon him like rain.

And still they came.

The hours melted into one another. The forest threw beasts at him as if it meant to bury him beneath its endless brood. He became storm and steel—breath a rasp, arms trembling, but eyes burning with the fury of survival. He cut, cut, cut, until blood slicked his grip and his sword seemed an extension of his own rage.

But rage does not blunt exhaustion.

The first true wound struck when his body staggered one beat too late. A boar's tusk ripped through his side, flinging him to the dirt. He rose, half-dizzy, and killed it with a final thrust—but a wolf was already upon him, its teeth sinking into his arm. Flesh tore. Bone ground. His roar shook the leaves. He smashed its head against a tree until bone and bark shattered alike.

But the swarm had scented blood.

They fell upon him in a tide—fangs, claws, tusks, wings. He fought blind in a storm of shrieks, his body ripped apart piece by piece. His skin split. His ribs cracked. Blood bubbled from his lungs. A claw tore across his face. A beak gouged at his throat.

He screamed. He begged. He cursed. But he did not die.

The armor kept him breathing.

The armor forced him to keep breathing.

No release. No black veil. No mercy of darkness. He felt everything—the cracking of his bones, the peeling of his flesh, the tearing of his sinews. He felt his own marrow slurp between fangs. He felt his body consumed, shredded, chewed—yet never allowed to fall silent.

He tasted his own marrow. He counted the teeth. He felt his thighs go hollow, his wrists slacken under the weight of loss, and still breath dragged itself in. Still his heart was hammered. Still pain sharpened the edges of his mind until thought itself was a blade he could use.

And then, when his body had become a ruin embroidered by the forest's appetite, the clearing changed.

Sound cut off. Not silence, but an absence like a held breath. The birds stilled in mid-cry. The wolf that had his throat in its jaws drew back with a whine and slunk into shadow. Vines loosened their grip and twined back into bark like hands withdrawing. The soil stopped trying to swallow him. Even the air seemed to arrange itself into a posture of waiting.

A figure moved into the space where he lay, and the motion was not a thing with weight but an event. Robes white as clean bone, wrapped tight and flowing at once, did not so much clothe the man as populate the air with their presence. No filth marred the cloth. No smear of blood stained the folds. Only two eyes showed — red as banked embers, narrow and bright and old as time.

When the man stepped, the forest obeyed.

He lifted one hand. It was a small motion, delicate, almost bored. Vines shriveled. The wind that had spat poison and rot subsided into a hush. The beasts drew back, their hunger folding into something like fear, like respect, like worship — or perhaps like the recognition of a greater predator.

Vasusena, shredded, gashed, a ruin of meat and anger and unquenched breath, lifted his head.

The sage's gaze cut through him like a blade. For the first time since his birthright had shackled him, someone looked past the shining curse of armor, past the brand of sutaputra, past the torn flesh and blood. He was seen not as an outcast, nor as a victim, nor as a monster, but as something more dangerous: a vessel, a possibility, a question the world had not yet answered.

The figure lifted his staff, carved from some wood that shimmered like it had been stolen from the moon. Ancient syllables fell from his lips — low, resonant, curling through the air like smoke that knew where it wished to go. The earth quivered. Light bled into the clearing, soft at first, then sharper, weaving around Vasusena's broken body. Flesh knitted. Bone set. Skin sealed. In less than ten breaths, the ruin was made whole, as though the forest's feast had been nothing but illusion.

"Thank you," Vasusena rasped, the words torn from him like splinters. His body gave out, and darkness seized him.

He did not see the sage's eyes grow wet. He did not feel the gentleness with which those terrible, world-breaking hands gathered him. He did not know how carefully the figure bore him into the deeper hush of the forest, step by deliberate step, as if carrying not a bloodied youth but a flame too fragile to let the wind disturb.

The sage bent his head, his voice scarcely more than breath against the boy's tangled hair.

"Sleep, my child," he whispered, words falling like balm into the ruin of silence. "I will keep watch. I will guard you against your nightmares—until the day you are strong enough to face them yourself."

The forest bent to listen. The shadows recoiled. And in that moment the boy slept, wrapped not in armor of gold, but in a protection older and rarer: a vow spoken into the marrow of the world.

====================

When Vasusena opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was silence.

Not the silence of corpses cooling, not the ringing emptiness that follows battle—but a silence alive, threaded with breath. He heard the rustle of wings in the branches above, the whisper of leaves stirred by a breeze too gentle to break twigs, the ripple of water folding over itself in steady rhythm. It was not absence but presence, a silence so whole it felt as though the world itself was holding him in its palm. For a moment, he thought he had awakened elsewhere, in some land untouched by the curses of men.

His body did not scream. The pain was gone, the wounds erased, bones set where they had shattered, flesh closed where claws had ripped. Weakness lingered, yes, but not the ruin of before. He moved, gingerly at first, then with more certainty, until he was upright and staring at what surrounded him. His breath caught.

The air itself was different. Thick, saturated. Not with smoke or rot or blood, but with something subtler, sharper, more ancient. Prana. Life-force. The same energy warriors bled years to wrest from penance, the essence Brahmins hoarded through austerity, the marrow of astras—here it was free, abundant as the breeze, soaking his lungs, flooding his veins. It did not have to be dragged from him like a reluctant beast. It was simply there, as natural and effortless as light.

Before him stretched a lake, vast, unbroken. Its surface mirrored the sky with such clarity it seemed made of glass. Pebbles glimmered at the bottom like small stars, undimmed by muck or mud. He knelt, cupped water into his palms, drank—and stilled. For years he had known water that stank of iron, of salt, of stagnation. This was none of those. It was clear, untainted, sweet like nectar, the taste of a world he had thought never existed.

He rose. His limbs trembled, but they obeyed. He tested his balance, walked the shore, felt the earth vibrate faintly beneath his soles as though every grain carried some buried hymn. He followed it without thinking, letting instinct and silence guide him. Minutes stretched, dissolved. Time itself lost its tyranny.

And then he saw him.

At the edge of a grove, robed in white, he sat as if he had always been there. Still. Serene. His hands moved with unhurried precision, grinding herbs into paste, circles upon circles as though the act itself was prayer. His head remained wrapped, only the ember-red eyes visible, steady and unblinking, glowing faintly like coals too patient to extinguish. He did not raise them. He did not need to.

Vasusena stopped. Breath snagged in his chest. He knew that presence—the one that had broken the forest's fury with a gesture, the one before whom beasts had scattered like chaff in a storm.

For the first time in many days, perhaps in many years, something stirred in him that was not rage, or bitterness, or hunger.

Awe.

The sage did not look up when Vasusena staggered into the glade. His white-clad form sat unmoving, carved from the silence of the forest itself, hands grinding herbs to powder in a slow, unbroken circle. Only his eyes betrayed life—two burning coals, red and unblinking, steady as a god's verdict.

Without turning, his voice spilled into the clearing, deep, steady, a current too strong to wade against. "You should not be alive."

The words froze Vasusena mid-step.

The sage's gaze lifted then, crimson irises pinning him in place. There was no anger in them, no surprise—only the cold, glacial weight of judgment.

"The forest does not strike the harmless," the sage continued. "It does not wound the wandering or torment the pure. But you—" His voice sharpened, hiss of steel on whetstone. "The earth snared your feet. The trees bound your limbs. The beasts tore at your throat, your flesh, your marrow. Do you know why?"

Vasusena's breath caught. Memory clawed at him: tusks as long as spears, wolves as high as chariots, the soil dragging him down like a grave half-dug. He had bled, screamed, cursed—and still fought forward, step by staggering step.

He swallowed, his voice hoarse. "Because I entered."

The sage shook his head slowly, like one correcting a stubborn child. "No. Because you came with violence in your heart. The forest listens to what dwells within. And what it heard from you was not a plea, not a question, not reverence. It heard the beat of war. It heard hunger."

The crimson eyes did not waver. "So the forest rose to meet you, boy. It thought you were my enemy. And by all rights, it should have devoured you until there was not even ash left to scatter.

"I have never known one who hated me so deeply that even while being torn apart, piece by piece, eaten alive, he still chants war in his heart. Tell me, child... how did I wrong you?"

The accusation struck harder than any fang or claw. Vasusena's fists trembled at his sides, shame and fury tangled like twin snakes.

"I—I was not—" The words caught. The lie died in his throat. For even now, beneath the ache of his half-healed body, his heart still throbbed with the same obsession: astras, weapons, power.

Silence pressed down, heavy as stone.

He remembered the horror—the tearing, the gnashing, the way his immortal body refused to die no matter how much it begged for release. He remembered cursing his own armor as a chain, not a gift. And now, to hear it named aloud—that his torment had been his own doing, born of his hunger—seared deeper than any wound.

Yet in the pit of shame, one ember refused to die.

He lifted his hands, palms pressed together, head bowed so low his golden earrings swung forward like drops of molten sun. His voice came low, raw, but steady, each word dragged from the depths of his battered chest.

"I do not wish to kill you, O revered Sage. I came because I wished to kneel, not to strike. I wanted to be your disciple, if you would take me. The chant of astras you heard in my heart are not meant for you—they are what I long to learn from you."

For the first time, the sage's grinding hands stilled. Slowly, deliberately, he turned those crimson eyes fully upon Vasusena. There was no gentleness in them. No spark of admiration for humility. Only that withering, merciless glare that could strip marrow from bone.

When he spoke, his voice was like a lash. "Then you are a fool."

Vasusena's head jerked up, disbelief burning in his eyes.

The sage rose, his white robes whispering as though the forest itself bent to make way. "Tell me, boy—if you sought a teacher, why does your heart rage like a battlefield? Why do you kneel with your tongue while your soul still screams: conquer, seize, destroy?"

"I—" The word tore out of Vasusena's throat, but nothing followed.

"Why does the fire within you chant astras as weapons, not as knowledge?" The sage advanced a step, each syllable carving through the air like a blade. "Why does it dream of rivals and equals, of humiliation unanswered, instead of discipline and understanding?"

Vasusena's fists curled against his thighs, nails biting skin, teeth gritted until his jaw screamed.

The crimson gaze did not soften. "You think I would shape such fire into greater flame? When your very breath would set the world ablaze? Do you mistake me for a blacksmith who sharpens blades for vengeance?"

The silence weighed down, chains forged from truth. Vasusena's chest rose and fell with the effort of breathing. He had begged before—before Drona, before every master who spat sutaputra as a curse—but never like this. Never under a gaze that pierced deeper than birth, deeper than name, into the raw marrow of what he was.

At last, with a voice that trembled but did not break, he rasped, "Because fire is all I have left."

The sage tilted his head, not with pity, not with anger, but with the cold curiosity of one who observes a snake devouring its own tail. The forest seemed to hush around that look, as if waiting for judgment.

For a long while, Vasusena said nothing. The clearing throbbed with silence, broken only by the ragged saw of his breath. His gaze clung to the ground, jaw locked so tight it ached, fists quivering with words he could not shape.

The sage's sigh rippled across the stillness, heavy as a tide. His crimson eyes softened—barely, like embers banked but not extinguished. "Then answer me this, boy. What compels you to fight? What moves you? Why is your heart this way?"

Vasusena's lips parted. For once, there was no answer waiting on his tongue, only a hollow void. His voice when it came was stripped raw. "I... I don't know. I only know I want glory. Respect. From the world. And the path of the warrior is the only one I know that can give me both."

The sage shook his head, a flicker of disappointment tracing his hidden features. "If you do not understand what you fight for, your fire is without direction. And fire without direction does not forge—it consumes. It burns you, and all you touch."

The words hung in the air like a curse.

"As for glory and respect," the sage continued, his voice sharp as iron, "they are not prizes wrested by strength. They are shadows. They follow deeds, or they do not follow at all. Grasp them too tightly, and your hands close on nothing." His gaze hardened, searing. "So again I ask: why does your soul burn this way?"

Still, Vasusena had no answer. The silence pressed until it felt like chains coiling around his ribs. At last, he spat out the words, bitter and unashamed.

"Because... because I watch Arjuna praised. Arjuna handed weapons, honour, a father's care, and a teacher's blessing. All lay before him as if the gods themselves set the table. And I—though no less capable, no less skilled—am spat on. Mocked. Condemned for no sin but my birth. He is celebrated for being Pandu's son. I am scourged for being a sutaputra."

The sage pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture of weary exasperation. Even veiled, it carried the weight of one who had watched kingdoms crack for lesser truths. "So. Jealousy." His sigh was heavy, ancient. "Do you think war has not already drenched the world in blood for jealousy? Brothers carving brothers, kings devouring kings, all because they could not abide another's shadow?"

He leaned forward, eyes glinting with cruel fire. "Tell me then, boy—why chain your life to Arjuna's ankle? Why circle him as if he were your sun? Why make him your measure, your horizon, your world?"

Vasusena's nails bit into his palms until blood welled, but his mouth stayed closed.

The sage's voice changed—softer, kind even, but no less cutting. "Why chase another's shadow when you might chase your own light? Compete not with princes but with yourself. Be greater tomorrow than you are today. Sharpen your fire until even gods must look away."

He straightened, robes falling still as marble. "If Arjuna is your mark, then Arjuna will be your ceiling. The day you equal him is the day you stop. And stopping is rot. Rot is mediocrity."

The sage's eyes burned into him, merciless and searing. "And I do not waste my time on mediocrity."

Vasusena's breath hitched sharp in his throat. Mediocre. The syllables lodged like shrapnel in his chest. Not cursed, not mocked, not casteless—worse. Forgettable. A ghost without weight, a name erased before it was even written. To live and die as one of the faceless, trampled beneath another man's glory—that was the terror that stalked him deeper than death.

And he would not accept it.

His voice tore through the silence, raw, ragged, yet driven by a desperation that bordered on prayer.

"Then tell me, revered one. How do I escape mediocrity? How do I become more than a shadow in another man's story?"

The sage's ember-gaze narrowed. For a long moment, he did not speak—only studied the boy before him, as though weighing not muscle nor scars but marrow, soul, and the burden he dragged with every breath. Then, slowly, his hand lifted. His finger did not point to the heavens, nor to the earth, nor to some unseen horizon of Dharma. It pointed at the gleaming carapace fused to Vasusena's flesh: the kavacha, the earrings, the Sun's own mark, the mother's first and final gift.

"Remove it."

The words struck harder than any curse. Vasusena staggered, his body jolting as though he had been lashed. His lips parted, soundless, his throat desert-dry. The armour? His armour? Not mere ornament, not trinket. It was his shield against a world that spat in his face. It was invincibility made flesh. It was certain when every other ground crumbled. To strip it away was to strip away himself.

"You... you ask me to give up my strength?" His voice cracked, caught between outrage and disbelief, pride and dread.

The sage laughed—not cruel, not mocking, but heavy, ancient, laced with truths that burned hotter than scorn.

"Your strength?" His eyes glowed, merciless. "No, boy. That armor is your prison. You clutch it as a drowning man clutches driftwood, calling it salvation—when all it does is chain you to the sea. So long as you hide within it, you will fight with half a heart. You will never bleed wholly, never gamble wholly, never live wholly. And so—you will never be whole."

Vasusena's fists clenched tight, nails carving blood from his palms. The thought alone—of standing bare before the world, skin and bone and nothing more—was unbearable. His pride rose like fire, shrieking refusal. And yet... beneath it, coiled cold, gnawing, relentless, was fear.

The sage's voice fell lower, weary now, but still relentless, as though he spoke not just to Vasusena but to a thousand lost men before him.

"You tremble not before princes, not before armies, not before demons. But before death—yes. You fear it so greatly that you chained yourself to armor lest its shadow touch you. Listen well, child of the Sun. Death is not your enemy. Death is the final guru. The last lesson. The one truth no blade can cut away. Deny it, and you deny yourself. Deny it, and your fire will eat nothing but your own bones."

The words pressed down like mountains.

"Go," the sage finished, his gaze unyielding. "Return when you no longer need to be carried by that shell of gold. Return when you have learned to stand unclad before the world, fire bared, flesh bared, heart bared. Return when you are ready to be more than your armor."

The sage's red eyes did not waver, did not soften. His voice cracked the air like flint striking steel, every word a spark meant to burn.

"You come here crying of glory, of respect, of Arjuna, of the rights the world has denied you. And yet when I ask you to strip away your armor, you clutch it like an infant clinging to its mother's breast. Tell me, Vasusena—do you think greatness is hammered in gold and iron? Do you think a man swaddled from death will ever rise beyond its shadow? A man who fears dying is already dead. You want me to teach you? Then listen well—I do not waste my breath on cowards."

The word sank into him like a poisoned blade. Coward. Worse than outcast, worse than mediocre. His chest tightened, his fists shook, and from between clenched teeth burst the ache of his heart.

"You insult me because I am a suta's son."

The sage's gaze snapped to him, merciless, searing.

"Do not put your weakness on my tongue, boy. I do not recognize 'suta.' I know four varnas, and four alone: Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra. Nothing more."

Vasusena's throat was a desert. His voice came cracked, almost to himself. "Then I am Shudra. That is what the law says. A man without samskara before sixteen... is Shudra. That is what they taught me."

The sage's laugh rattled through the glade, hollow and terrible, like iron striking iron in an empty cavern.

"Law? Manusmriti? Boy, you clutch scraps of parchment as though they were chains of heaven itself. You bind yourself with words forged by men who never once looked into the furnace of another soul. Do you think birth rules fate? Do you think blood writes destiny? Then listen—listen well."

His voice dropped, cold and sharp, as if he were cutting the silence open.

"There was once a man named Lohajanga. A robber. A butcher of men. He lived in the forest not as a hunter but as a beast—his meals were stolen coin, his drink the tears of widows, his song the wails of the dying. Men spat his name in fear. Women cursed it in grief. He was lower than a Shudra, lower than a dog—he was carrion in human form.

One day, he crossed paths with the Seven Sages. Saptarishi themselves, embodiments of Dharma. They stopped him. They asked him, 'Lohajanga, all these crimes you commit—whose burden do you think it is? Do you think your wife will carry it for you? Do you think your children will divide the weight? Do you think your kin will take your sins upon their shoulders when Yama calls you?'

And he laughed. Laughed in their faces. He said, 'Yes, of course. I rob for them. I kill for them. It is their mouths I feed, their bodies I clothe. They will share my burden as they share my spoils.'

But the sages said nothing. They only told him, 'Go. Ask.'

So he went. He returned to his hut, to the hearth he thought was his anchor. He asked his wife. She looked at him as though he were a stranger and said, 'Your sins are your own. I did not force you to kill.' He asked his children. They shrank back and said, 'We did not command you to steal. Your sins are your own.' He asked his kin, his blood, those who had eaten from his hands. They turned away, spitting: 'You chose your path. Bear its weight alone.'

And Lohajanga returned broken. The laughter had died in him. For the first time, he understood—he was utterly alone. All his justifications were ash."

The sage's eyes burned brighter, as though he himself had stood witness to that moment.

"And so the rishis gave him a mantra. Simple, yet terrible. He sat in the forest and began to chant. His voice tore itself raw, but he did not stop. Days bled into nights, nights into years. He did not eat. He did not drink. He did not rise. His body withered, his skin cracked, his hair fell, and still he chanted. Ants swarmed over him, raised hills that swallowed his flesh, but his spirit burned on. He became nothing but voice, nothing but fire clothed in ruin. And when he emerged, he was no robber, no butcher, no beast. He was reborn in that fire. That man became the first poet. That man became the singer of Rama's tale. That man—was Valmiki."

The name fell like thunder, shaking the air itself.

Vasusena staggered as if struck across the chest. His breath came ragged, disbelieving. His mind reeled. A robber? A murderer? A man lower than the lowest? And yet... not only redeemed, but exalted—immortal, eternal, the Adikavi whose words still echoed across the worlds?

He whispered, half to himself, half in awe, "Valmiki... began as a robber?"

The sage's gaze was merciless. "Yes. A man fouler than anyone, a man steeped in more blood than your worst nightmares—rose higher than any prince. And you sit here, calling yourself a victim, chained by law, crippled by birth. Tell me, Vasusena—what excuse remains to you now?"

The sage leaned forward, voice low, burning with scorn.

"And you, Vasusena—you dare say you are a Shudra because of parchment and verse? Fool. A robber became a rishi. A beast became a seer. He shed his chains because he chose to burn them. And you... You choose to wear yours. You clutch law and caste the way a drunk clutches his cup, and then you whine that the world denies you glory."

His tone sharpened, each word striking like a lash:

"Deeds make caste," the sage said, his voice iron and fire. "Not birth. Not law. Deeds. And you, Vasusena—you are half Kshatriya in my eyes. Your heart beats for battle. But your mind? It cringes behind gold. It trembles before death. A warrior who cannot look mortality in the eye will never be more than half a man. Until you strip away that fear, you will remain broken—half-formed, half-great, half-Kshatriya."

The words flayed him raw. Vasusena's jaw set hard, but he did not turn away. The beasts of Asandi had not undone him. But this judgment—this truth—cut deeper than any tusk or claw.

"You don't care about caste, Maharshi?" Vasusena asked. His voice cracked like dry wood under strain. His eyes were rimmed with tears that refused to fall, his jaw locked as if the act of speaking had cost him blood.

The sage's silence did not merely answer—it crushed. Vast and immovable, it hung over the clearing like a mountain unmoved by storm. Even the wind seemed to avoid him.

"If... if I take off this armor..." Vasusena's fingers brushed the plates at his chest. Once, they had felt like a blessing; now they felt like shackles. His thumb traced a dent left by a tusk in Asandi. The sound of his own heartbeat was louder than his words. "Will you teach me?"

The sage's gaze did not soften. But his next words came low, like embers glowing in a dead fire, carrying heat though the flames were unseen.

"I promise you—by the memory of my son, whom I loved more fiercely than my own breath—I will teach you the moment you cast aside your cowardice. The day you shed your fear of death is the day you will belong to me. And I promise you this: till your last breath, you will not remain the same. You will rise—tomorrow better than today—in strength, in will, in spirit. Not as a shadow of another man, but as yourself."

Hope bloomed in Vasusena's chest, but it was a fragile, desperate thing, like a single flower clawing through ash. He had been turned away so many times, mocked so often, denied so thoroughly that even the flicker of possibility felt like a wound. His lips trembled; his hands, still pressed to his armor, shook.

"Are you..." he whispered, the question tasting like a prayer, "...are you Rishi Valmiki himself?"

The sage's red eyes gleamed in the shade, twin coals in a banked fire. His answer came like stone grinding against stone, unhurried, undeniable.

"No. I am not the Ādi Kavi," the sage said, his voice like a river that had flowed since the dawn of man, carrying both silt and fire in its depths. "Outside the Trimūrti, I am one of the oldest beings of this manavatara. I walked this earth before Devas of this manavatras sang their hymns, before Asuras sharpened their spears. My name—" his eyes flickered, old as creation itself, "—no. You are not ready for it. When the time comes, you will hear it. Until then, you may call me Father. For is it not said, a guru is a second father?

"I have already shown you what it means to bleed as a Kshatriya. But to be my disciple... you know the condition."

The words struck like thunder in Vasusena's chest. His gaze fell to the golden shell fused into his flesh, gleaming faintly even in shadow. His treasure. His shield. His curse. The one inheritance that marked him not as man, but as something other. The one thing no one could take from him—except himself.

His breath rasped out, ragged, broken. And then—he moved. Using the bone sword to find gaps in his armor... he created gaps and his fingers clawed into the armor.

The world dissolved in pain.

It was not iron he tore—it was himself. Flesh split. Blood spurted in thick crimson arcs. Nerves screamed like a thousand trumpets, ribs groaned, marrow shuddered. The divine shell clung to him like skin, like bone, like memory, and peeling it was no different than flaying life itself. His body convulsed, his throat tore with voiceless cries, his vision swam red and black.

Still he pulled.

Still he ripped.

Still he bled.

And through it all—he smiled.

It was a broken smile, trembling, twisted, but unmistakable. The smile of defiance, of triumph over his own terror. The smile of a man who, for the first time, was asked for more than excuses, more than pity, more than fate. The smile of one who had been given a chance worth bleeding for.

The sage did not stir. His crimson eyes followed every spurt of blood, every shudder, every strangled breath. And in their depths, Vasusena saw something he had never expected—not disdain, not cold judgment, but sorrow. Vast, fathomless sorrow, as though the sage himself were being torn apart with him.

At last, when the final fragment of the golden shell fell from his chest with a dull clang, Vasusena swayed, half-conscious, half-dead. His body was a ruin, his breath a whisper, but his smile—frail, flickering—remained.

"I... am ready, Father," he rasped.

The sage's hand rose. Light poured forth, ancient and soft, seeping into the boy's wounds like water into parched earth. Flesh mended. Skin sealed. Blood vanished. In an instant the agony was gone, though its echo remained carved into his soul.

Vasusena lifted his head—and froze.

The sage's palm still rested upon him, steady, almost trembling. His eyes—those terrible crimson eyes—were misted, shining with something that struck deeper than any wound. Not the cold pity of nobles. Not the condescending affection of strangers. But warmth. Fierce, unyielding, tender.

It was the look of a mother.

Radhamma.

The memory struck him like lightning: calloused hands braiding his hair, a voice humming in the dusk, arms shielding him when the world jeered. That same warmth now shone from the gaze of this ageless being, this firstborn of creation.

His breath hitched. Confusion roared louder than pain, louder than joy. Why? Why did this eternal sage look at him with eyes that said you are mine? Why did he feel, for a heartbeat, as though he had been a child again—sheltered, cherished, seen?

No answer came. Only silence. Only that gaze, soft as rain, heavy as the sky.

And Vasusena, trembling and reeling, stood beneath it—unable to decide if he had gained a teacher, or something far greater.

The sage's hands clamped onto Vasusena's shoulders—softer than feather, yet steady as a father's grip. Without a word, he lifted the boy, carried him through the forest's silence, and into a hidden tent that throbbed like a heart.

Vasusena froze at the threshold. The air was alive. Not alive in the way of birdsong or breeze, but alive like an ocean that hung suspended above his head, ready to crash down at a thought. It was thick, suffocating, electric. The tools scattered about—the anvils, the hammers, the crucibles—each seemed to pulse with a rhythm of their own, radiating unseen currents that clawed against his skin, made his teeth ache, and churned the marrow in his bones.

The sage laid the golden armor—the same shell that had fused with Vasusena's flesh, now bloody and torn—onto the forge. For the first time, Vasusena truly saw it. Not as a gift. Not as salvation. But as a carcass of himself. His stomach turned.

Then the sage cut his own palm.

The blood fell in slow, deliberate drops onto the celestial metal. Each drop hissed and burned as though the steel itself resisted mortality. A smell like molten iron mixed with lightning filled the air, and Vasusena gagged.

The sage did not flinch. He reached for a book—older than kingdoms, its papyrus skin yellow and brittle, its script unreadable. Without ceremony, he dropped it into the furnace.

The fire did not consume it. It bloomed.

Colors erupted that no human eye was made to see—violet that seared, green that bled, silver that cut. The flames writhed upward, not like fire but like serpents, symbols coiling in their wake. They twisted in the air, living, breathing, writhing as if carved from the laws of reality itself.

Time broke.

It may have been minutes. It may have been centuries. Vasusena lost the measure. He only knew that when the flames sank, something impossible remained.

A book.

Not papyrus. Not parchment. Its pages were steel, etched with symbols that shifted like restless water, always moving, always unreadable. It pulsed faintly in his hands, warm as flesh, thrumming with a rhythm like a heartbeat.

The sage extended it. "Take it."

Vasusena hesitated, his hands trembling, his stomach knotted with dread. But some hunger deeper than fear forced him forward. His fingertips brushed the book—

—And the world split.

Light detonated, blinding, flooding him inside out. His bones turned to liquid. His breath shattered. His consciousness fractured like glass. He staggered, choking, and then froze—because the sage was no longer standing before him.

The sage was inside him.

The presence was unbearable—immense, infinite, ancient beyond reckoning. It pressed into every nerve, every sinew, every hollow of his skull. Vasusena gasped, clawed at his temples. Too much. Too much. This will tear me apart.

And then, clarity.

A screen unfolded before his eyes. Not parchment, not dream, but something translucent, otherworldly, hovering as though the air itself had turned into glass. Symbols rippled across it, strange sigils he half-recognized, numbers that twisted and rearranged, icons shifting like living stars.

Vasusena stumbled back, sweat and blood dripping down his face, his voice raw and frantic.

"What—what is this?!" he shouted, throat breaking. "What is happening to me?!"

The answer came in the form of the sage's voice.

It came from everywhere. From his bones, from the air, from the very rhythm of the universe. A voice—deep, calm, older than death—resonated within him, echoing through marrow and memory alike:

"Welcome, Adhirathi Vasusena (Player 001).

You have been chosen to play Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint."