"What power fears most is not death — but memory."
The kingdom of Vatayana stirred with unease.
Since the night the mask was shattered, King Yuvan had not been seen in public. The royal court sat in tense silence, while across the bazaars, whispers curled through the air like smoke. Old men sipped bitter tea in the shadows of crumbling pillars and murmured, "He tried to see his soul before time did." Women drew protective signs on their doorsteps. Children mimicked the broken mask's twisted grin in alley games.
But in the palace, the storm brewed quieter, deadlier.
Yuvan stared at the broken shards.
Each day, they lay untouched on the obsidian table in his private chamber — the king's mirror, more faithful than silver or glass. Three clean fragments. One showed his narrowed eyes. One, the crooked sneer. And the third — most damning — the brow etched with arrogance.
He could not bear to sweep them away.
He also could not stop looking.
---
The Vizier, cautious as ever, watched the king closely.
"Burn them," he advised. "Let the ashes float down the river. End this madness."
But Yuvan's voice was distant, like it came from a tunnel. "Why did the sculptor see this? What did he know that I do not?"
The Vizier swallowed. "The sculptor sees only what is already within, Majesty."
Yuvan turned. His eyes, once lively and proud, now burned with something deeper — obsession.
"No," he said. "He sees what will be. And I will not become what he carved."
---
But the seeds were already sown.
Each decision the young king made was now shadowed by doubt — not from others, but from himself. He began to fear his own thoughts.
He delayed court sessions.
He ordered spy networks to report on dissent — real or imagined.
He doubled the guards on temple grounds.
He demanded new murals of himself in every public square — smiling, benevolent, divine.
But each time he saw his reflection, all he could see was the mask.
The grotesque, grinning future.
And he began to hate the people — not because they accused him, but because they saw him.
---
The high priests, once allies of the throne, grew restless.
They gathered in secret chambers beneath the old temple and whispered sacred laws.
"He has broken the order," one said. "Summoning the sculptor before death… he has ripped the veil."
"The old kings accepted judgment in death. This one wants to deceive the future," said another.
"Worse — he now seeks to rewrite the mask."
The thought chilled them. For legend said that to tamper with the face carved by Ananthu was to invite madness.
---
But Yuvan had already begun.
He summoned court artists, masons, and sculptors — not one, but twenty. He locked them in the Royal Atelier and gave one command:
> "Make me. Again. Better. Truer. Glorious."
One by one, the artists created their visions.
One sculpted him as a divine protector, arms wide, eyes shining with mercy.
Another as a warrior, sword raised, cloak rippling like prophecy.
Another, bejeweled, serene, half-human, half-sun.
But none satisfied the king.
Each statue he examined with trembling fury. They were all false, all soft, all wrong.
"Where is the fear?" he once screamed. "Where is the awe I command? I want immortality, not flattery!"
The artists quivered.
Then, quietly, they disappeared.
Some fled. Some were imprisoned. A few… were never seen again.
---
In the Court of Eight Pillars, the nobles sat in forced stillness. Their silence was not allegiance, but survival.
Count Harthan, oldest among them, broke tradition.
He stood one morning and said, "Your Majesty, forgive me — but a ruler cannot chisel his legacy. Only his acts may carve it."
Yuvan smiled. But his eyes did not.
"And what if acts are misunderstood?"
Harthan bowed. "Then the people must remember truth. Even when rulers forget."
That night, the Count's estate burned.
A mere accident, the Royal Herald claimed. But none believed it.
---
Meanwhile, the sculptor was nowhere.
The guards scoured the hills, offering coin and punishment to those who might reveal his hiding place. They searched monasteries, mountains, even cemeteries. But Ananthu had vanished like smoke through stone.
Only one place remained untouched — the Cave of Faces.
Few dared enter.
One did.
A young monk named Ravi, curious and bold, made the pilgrimage. He knelt before the veiled mouth of the cave and whispered, "Master, the king has lost himself."
From within came no voice, only echo.
Then, hours later, a shadow passed behind the masks. A whisper echoed faintly.
> "He was lost before he wore a crown."
---
Inside the palace, Yuvan descended deeper.
He no longer slept in his bed, but beneath the throne, draped in silk, mumbling to himself.
He spoke to the broken mask pieces as if they were courtiers.
"You were meant to show glory," he told the sneering shard. "Not decay."
He held the eye-piece and demanded it blink when he ruled well.
It never did.
He began writing proclamations in his blood. He painted his face to resemble the mask — grotesque and royal — and demanded the same of his guards.
"What face do I wear today?" he'd ask his reflection.
None dared answer.
---
But the people had begun to answer in their own way.
Walls were scrawled with symbols — a cracked mask, a single eye, a closed mouth. Silent rebellion.
Songs spread in hidden verses:
> He carved a future not yet born,
The king grew thorns instead of crown,
He wore the truth, then tore it down —
Now shadows walk his court in mourn.
Temples refused the king's name in prayers.
Merchants hid his statues under cloth.
And the youth began to mimic Ananthu — wearing blank masks of clay in the streets, silent and still.
Truth had escaped the cave.
---
One night, Yuvan stood before the altar of his father's ancestors.
He laid the three shards before them and cried, "Why do you haunt me? Why did he show me this?"
From the darkness, his father's voice — or something wearing it — seemed to whisper:
> "Because you asked."
---
The next morning, Yuvan made a final decree:
"Let all masks be burned. Let sculptors be silenced. Let memory be rewritten."
And with that, he ordered the destruction of every death mask in the royal vaults.
Flames rose behind the palace. The air choked with the dust of legacy. Faces centuries old turned to ash in moments.
But as the fires died, something strange happened.
In the city square, a boy drew a face in chalk — crude but familiar: the broken mask.
An old woman added lines to mimic sorrow.
A potter shaped a new one — from memory.
By dusk, fifty faces had been remade.
By dawn, five hundred.
The people had become sculptors.
---
Yuvan saw them from his balcony and screamed, "Stop them! Arrest their hands! Silence their art!"
But how does one silence an idea?
---
In his final madness, the king ordered his own face carved into the mountain behind the palace — vast, permanent, godlike.
But the wind was against him. The stone crumbled. The eyes cracked. And before the carving could be completed, lightning split the cliff in two.
The unfinished face looked down, mouth agape — not in command, but in horror.
---
The court finally moved.
The nobles, priests, and commoners gathered.
No swords were raised. No coup declared.
Only one thing was said:
> "The king no longer knows his face."
And Yuvan was taken — not by chains, but by reflection.
He was shown a mirror, plain and polished.
He screamed.
---
Some say he fled into the hills.
Some say he still wanders the palace halls, wearing clay masks that melt in the rain.
Others believe Ananthu found him once more — and carved a final mask, hidden where only truth can find it.
But the throne of Vatayana sat empty.
And for the first time, no king followed.
Only silence.
Only memory.
---
> To crave the face of power is to forget the face of self.
But stone remembers. Even when men do not.