Date: 11.01.2072
The walls of home were warm. Familiar. But Parth felt like a stranger inside them.
He sat by the window, watching a crow tug at a crumpled plastic wrapper in the garden. A stray dog limped by. Cars honked in the distance, smoke rising in lazy spirals toward a greying sky.
Everything moved. Nothing breathed.
His mother walked in with a glass of warm milk. "You haven't eaten, Parth," she said gently.
He didn't respond.
His eyes were fixed on the world beyond.
As if looking through it.
As if listening for something it no longer remembered how to say.
She turned away, quietly wiping her eyes.
Later that evening, his grandmother sat beside him on the floor. She didn't ask him what was wrong.
She already knew.
> "You carry peace in your chest… and yet you cannot sleep," she whispered.
"You walked in a world of dharma, child. But this one — this one is breaking."
Parth didn't look at her. He didn't need to.
> "Then what should I do?" he asked, finally. "Be Arjun again? Pick up a bow in this age of glass and smoke?"
> She smiled, sad and knowing. "No. This time, you must learn to listen. For what is coming cannot be fought like before."
She rose and called for his mother.
They spoke in hushed voices. Names passed between them. Sacred ones.
And by morning, a journey was decided.
---
Burhanpur, Madhya Pradesh
Asirgarh Fort — The Shiva Temple
The road was long, winding through forests that thinned into dust-choked plains. The wind was dry. Birds flew lower. Parth remained quiet through it all, staring out at a world that somehow looked… older.
As the car ascended the hill toward the fort, ruins greeted them — weather-worn stone archways and shattered watchtowers, quiet sentinels of time.
When they reached the Shiva temple nestled within the heart of Asirgarh, the sky had turned the colour of rust. Faint bells echoed from somewhere deep inside.
There were no pilgrims. Only silence.
> The temple was ancient — older than memory, older than myth. Its walls were cracked, but not broken. Its doors heavy, but open. Time had knelt here once, and never dared rise again.
Parth stepped inside with his parents.
The scent of bel leaves and dried dhuna smoke clung to the air. A single diya flickered beneath the calm gaze of the Shiva Linga.
But something else drew his attention.
A man stood at the far end of the sanctum — the head priest. Robed in simple white. Skin dark, eyes deeper still.
He stared at Parth.
Not with recognition.
But with a strange, knowing weight.
Parth's heart skipped. But the man said nothing. He simply bowed once… and turned away.
His mother whispered her prayers beside the altar, eyes closed in devotion.
Then, gently, Parth spoke. "Can I… stay here? Just a little while?"
His mother hesitated.
His grandmother gave a soft nod from the door.
"Let him. The silence is what he needs now."
His parents left. The priest followed.
But before vanishing past the threshold, the priest gave Parth one last look — long and unreadable.
And then, Parth was alone.
---
Inside the Temple
The wind had stilled. Even the birds had fallen silent.
Parth approached the Shiva Linga slowly. The shadows wrapped around him like an old memory.
> "I have seen gods laugh," he whispered.
"I have seen them break.
But your silence… it weighs heavier than all of them."
He placed his palm against the stone — cool, ancient, unmoved.
And that's when he felt it.
Not a touch. Not a sound.
A presence.
Something… or someone… watching him from behind the shadows of the sanctum.
Parth didn't turn.
He didn't flinch.
But a chill swept across his skin — not of fear, but of recognition.
> This wasn't the past calling him back.
This was the future… reaching out.
---