The road back from Asirgarh was long. But Parth didn't speak.
His parents exchanged glances through the rearview mirror, but even his mother — usually full of anxious questions — said nothing. It wasn't the silence of sulking, nor the exhaustion of a child recovering from illness.
It was… something else.
His fingers traced slow circles on the windowpane, eyes lost in the blur of trees and towns. But he wasn't seeing them. He wasn't even trying to.
His mind was still kneeling at that cracked Shiva linga.
Still hearing that voice — low, old, sorrowful.
Still smelling the smoke.
Still seeing red-rimmed eyes.
Still wondering:
Why did the gods give me peace in one world, if the others were left to rot?
---
Back home, his grandmother was waiting.
She looked up the moment he stepped into the threshold. Her gaze was not surprised.
Just knowing.
He bent to touch her feet.
She placed her hands on his head, gently — like someone blessing a child who had just come back from war.
> "You saw him," she whispered.
Parth didn't ask how she knew.
He simply nodded.
That night, he could not eat. The food felt too soft. Too warm. Too much of a luxury.
He went to the roof instead, lying on his back, watching the night sky — though it was hard to see the stars through the veil of dust and lights.
> "Kali walks in machines," Ashwatthama had said.
"He drinks your rivers. He blinds you with lights."
Parth looked up at the hazy moon.
> How many people would believe the curse still walked among them? That the Mahabharata wasn't just a story… but a scar on time?
---
Morning
The next day, he woke up early — before the sun, before the birds, before the dreams had a chance to catch up.
He found his grandmother already sitting near the tulsi plant, chanting softly, her rosary beads clicking like a heartbeat.
> "Dadi," he said, voice rough.
"What happens if Kali wins?"
She opened her eyes.
There was no smile. Just honesty.
> "Then the world forgets the scent of dharma.
And remembers only the stench of power."
Parth sat beside her.
> "And what happens… if no one stops it?"
She turned her head, looking at the faint purple line of dawn on the horizon.
> "Then the world ends with a whisper.
Not because of a war.
But because no one had the courage to say — enough."
---
Later That Day
Back in his room, Parth opened an old trunk.
He hadn't touched it in months — not since before Varnavat, not since everything changed.
Inside were remnants of his younger self — comics, medals, a tattered kurta from a school play where he had once played Ram, too small now for his arms.
And at the very bottom — a photo of Shree Krishna—his Madhav.
He placed it on his bedside table.
Next, he stood before the mirror.
He was thinner now. Paler. But his eyes had changed.
There was a storm behind them.
And a memory of red-streaked ash.
---
That evening, as the wind rustled the trees and the crows screamed somewhere far away, Parth wrote his first line in a new journal:
> "The past was a war.
The present is a warning.
The future… is watching."
He closed the book.
And for the first time since returning from the temple, he smiled.
Not because things were okay.
But because he finally understood that they weren't supposed to be.
Not yet.