The morning sun never broke through the clouds. Smoke hung heavy, turning the sky the color of dying embers, and every breath burned as though the air itself had become ash.
Where once the forests of Wayanad had hummed with cicadas and laughter, there was only silence now—broken only by the crackle of fires that refused to die and the faint sobs of the few who remained.
Aadi stood among the ruins of his village, his chest raw from smoke and his arms trembling from exhaustion. All around him, huts lay in splinters, their thatched roofs reduced to smoldering heaps. Paddies that had once gleamed with green life were now torn open by fissures, their waters drained into the earth's cracks. Livestock lay strewn like broken toys, their carcasses stiff and blackened.
He had fought to save them, dragged children through mud, pulled the wounded from burning homes, but it was not enough. Too many were gone. Too many had been crushed by weapons that were never meant for mortals.
Arul limped toward him, leaning heavily on a stick, his face pale. Behind him came a group of women and children, their eyes hollow with shock. They gathered by what remained of the central square, the sacred banyan tree now reduced to a charred stump.
Aadi met their gazes—and looked away.
He could feel it pressing in on him: their unspoken question. Why hadn't he been able to stop it? Why had he led them into the path of gods and demons?
His stomach churned. Every scream he hadn't silenced, every life he hadn't pulled from the rubble, weighed on him like stones around his neck.
When Angoor, the elder, approached, his face streaked with soot, Aadi braced himself for accusation. But the old man only placed a trembling hand on his shoulder.
"This is not your doing, Aadi," Angoor rasped. "The wars of heaven care nothing for us. We are only caught beneath their wheels."
Aadi's fists tightened. "Then what are we supposed to do? Run forever? Hide in caves while gods and demons decide who rules the sky?"
Angoor's eyes, dim yet sharp, met his. "No. But neither can we fight them as we are. There is a path beyond what they offer, but it is one only the brave—or the doomed—can walk."
Aadi felt the words like sparks in his chest. He did not understand them fully, but they ignited something deeper than despair: a question, a challenge.
He looked again at the ruins of Wayanad. At the faces of his people, waiting for someone to tell them they were not doomed. At Arul, leaning on his stick, his lips pressed in pain but his eyes still watching his brother with trust.
The weight of his failure was suffocating. But beneath it, something else stirred.
If the devas and asuras saw them only as pawns, then he would find another way. A path that did not belong to gods or demons. A path forged by his own hand.
Among the ashes of Wayanad, the first seed of rebellion was planted.