The tale twisted, as tales do, and left me staring into another story—this one sour on the tongue —like overripe fruit laced with the faint, electric hum of Pranna (Prāṇna) gone wrong.
Not the heroic entry, not Sindhu's half-wit bravado, but something heavier: the shadow of the acharya.
I can't swear it was truth. Maybe it was only rumor passed from fire to fire, carried on tired tongues. But the story lingered—that his gaze could draw lines. Some said a flicker of gold shone for the noble-born. Others told of a chill, a pressure behind the eyes that made commoners stumble—'the acharya's seal of silence.' Some swore they'd seen it. Others swore it was all exaggeration. I never knew.
Sindhu, though? He didn't hesitate. His grin flickered, then hardened into something sharper.
"Hum!" he cleared his throat.
"You heard wrong," he snapped, voice sharp as a blade. "Gurudev spares no flesh. He'll tear you apart in training, drown you in Pranna until your screams are just another song in his hall, until the air shimmers with swallowed heat and your tongue tastes of ash. But discrimination?" His laugh rang hollow, dismissive. "That's just what the broken say when they can't shoulder the weight. Rumors. Excuses."
He leaned in, eyes bright, voice steady as if he was pronouncing law.
"I've seen people try. Commoners. Outsiders. Strays. They were given a chance, same as anyone. And you know what happened? Not one excelled. Not one. They shattered. Vanished. Not because of him—because they were never born for it."
He tapped his chest twice, slow and deliberate. "Royal blood runs here. Kshatriyas fire. That's why Pranna doesn't consume me. That's why I endure."
The words carried more than pride—they carried finality, as if he'd just declared the end of the debate.
And for a heartbeat, I almost accepted it. Almost believed that failure was etched into blood, that survival was inheritance.
But a spark flared in me, defiant, whispering: what if he's wrong?
I remembered the blank spaces—the people who'd reached too far and left nothing behind but silence.
And I couldn't decide whether Sindhu's certainty was truth… or just the kind of lie that keeps a crown steady on the head.
The shadow stretched longer than rumor, longer than pride—and I still couldn't tell if it was the acharya's, or Sindhu's.
It was after that, after his words about blood and fate still hung in the air like smoke, that he pressed a mango into my palm, its bruised skin splitting under his grip.
"Here," Sindhu said, the grin back on his face, though thinner now, like it had been sharpened. "Eat. Sweetness makes the lies of the world easier to swallow."
I blinked, looking at the fruit, sticky with his fingerprints. "Where are you going?"
He tilted his head toward the forest edge, where the ancient banyan's shadow bled into the deeper, hungrier dark of the old woods. A place where the light fell wrong and the air was too still. "Away. Can't risk Acharya's hawk-eyes catching me skipping the drills again." His voice carried—almost pride.
The air grew heavy, the birds falling silent, as if the forest itself held its breath, watching him go
I hesitated, and maybe he saw it, because he turned back and jabbed the air with the mango seed he'd already finished chewing clean. "No need to follow, friend. I'm carved from a different stone. Born hero. Born Kshatriya. You? You'd just slow me down. Weight on my shoulder when the real tests come."
He said it not with malice, but with the casual cruelty of someone stating a simple, forgotten truth.
The words sliced deep, cleaner than any blade, leaving me raw. Was I truly just a shadow, unfit for the fire of his world?
"Stay here. Eat the mango. Watch the leaves fall, dream of battles you'll never fight. That's safer."
And with that, he slipped between the trees, as if the forest itself had parted for him.
I stood there, the mango overripe and sickly-sweet in my hand, my throat dry. His certainty had been absolute, his dismissal final. But doubt gnawed me raw—was I truly nothing more than baggage, a shadow trailing behind his fire?
I thought of the whispers about the acharya's lines, of scars drawn across eyes, of who was deemed worthy and who was not. Sindhu's back vanished into the green, leaving me caught between his arrogance and my own silence.
And then, somewhere in the forest, something roared. Low, guttural, it sounded more of stone tearing. The very leaves shuddered, Sindhu had walked straight toward it.
The mango sagged in my grip—Sour. Heavy. Defiance and doubt in one bite. Stay, as he ordered? Or step into the shadow he'd left behind? I did't know—yet.