The forest was no longer silent.
The moment Bahubali was brought into the hidden bush camp by the hunting party, time seemed to stop. His face was bruised, his body cold, but there was breath,fragile, steady. Hope returned like fire in the veins of the desperate. The King of Kundali wept for the first time in years. The Queen fell to her knees. Even the youngest among them, those who had never seen the mighty Bahubali in battle, bowed their heads.
Devasena's mother worked in silence. Her wrinkled hands, once adorned with gold and royal silk, were now cracked from labor and secrecy. Yet with every crushed herb, every prayer under her breath, she stitched Bahubali's soul back into his body.
But far from the forest, in the blackened walls of Mahishmati's royal palace, Bhallaladeva's tyranny deepened.
His spies had brought him whispers. Bahubali's body was never found. The suspicion gnawed at him.
In paranoia and rage, he turned on his own mother;the Queen Sivagami. She had once ruled with wisdom, now she was a prisoner of her son's madness. He accused her of treason, claiming she had plotted Bahubali's killing.
One moonless night, she tried to escape.
Clutching her infant grandson,Mahendra Bahubali..wrapped in royal linens, she crept through a tunnel and approached the riverbank. Her plan was desperate but pure: float the child in a hidden basket downstream to safety.
But Bhallaladeva had anticipated her.
Hidden among the trees, his guards waited. As the basket touched the water, a single arrow pierced her shoulder. She gasped, stumbled back, shielding the child. Another arrow split the silence and struck the basket. The child wailed, tumbling into the current. Bhallaladeva appeared from the shadows.
He retrieved the child from the water himself. His mother, bleeding and heartbroken, begged.
"Let him go. Let him be raised far from your shadow."
But Bhallaladeva's face was stone.
"This boy is mine to raise. He will wear the crown I built, not the ashes of Bahubali."
He didn't want the boy to live out of love;he wanted him to suffer. To grow under the weight of Bahubali's shadow, to bend beneath Bhallaladeva's cruelty. A living reminder of the man he killed. A trophy of triumph, not a son of the kingdom.
In private, he hissed to his advisor, "The boy will never know glory. He will grow in chains of gold. He will never be king..only my weapon."
The child was handed to a wet nurse. Raised in the palace, but without warmth. Surrounded by marble but fed with bitterness.
And when Devasena, chained in the tower, refused Bhallaladeva's advances again and again, his fury deepened. She spat at his feet, her eyes burning with hatred.
"You will never have my heart," she said. "Nor my respect."
Sivagami, recovered and hiding her wounds, confronted him one last time.
"This is not the rule of a king. It is the rampage of a beast," she warned. "Let the past go. Let Devasena be."
He struck the wall beside her, his eyes red with wrath.
"You always loved him more!" he roared.
"And I still do," she replied.
He had her thrown into prison.
The gates slammed shut behind her, but even in the dark, her voice rang out like prophecy:
"A tyrant who raises a lion's cub thinking it a dog… will one day feel its fangs."
Enraged by his mother's behavior ,Bhallaladeva brought her to the great hall, chained and humiliated.
She pleaded not for her own life, but for his soul.
"You are becoming the monster we once fought against. Devasena will never be yours;not through force, not through fear."
"Silence!" he thundered. "You speak of honor while protecting my enemy's seed!"
She looked him in the eyes, her voice low but sharp.
"You killed your brother. Now you're killing your own heart."
With a flick of his hand, he sealed her fate.
"Take her to the dungeon. Let her rot."
The guards dragged her away. Her cries were soft, but her eyes never left her son—burning with both sorrow and defiance.
Back in the forest, Bahubali stirred.
His fingers twitched.
His lips parted.
And for the first time since the spear struck him down, he opened his eyes.
This opens to a new chapter about to unravel.