The moon was high when the Naag sadhus departed, leaving Aadi with the weight of the Kala Chakra still pressing against his mind. Sleep would not come—only restless visions of coils, cycles, and unending destruction. He sat by the river until dawn, staring into the mist that rose like pale smoke from the waters.
And then, through that mist, a figure appeared.
At first Aadi thought it was a boy no older than himself—lean, sharp-eyed, with hair dark as night and a smile that seemed too calm for the devastation around them. But as the figure drew closer, the air changed. The river stilled. Birds that had begun their morning calls fell silent. Even the smoke from the smoldering ruins seemed to pause midair.
The boy's eyes were not mortal. They gleamed with a weight far older than any elder Aadi had ever known.
"Who are you?" Aadi asked, his voice a whisper.
The boy crouched by the riverbank, dipping his fingers into the water as though reacquainting himself with an old friend. "I am Markandeya," he said softly. "The youth who does not age. The one who has seen the world end more times than the stars have shone."
Aadi's breath caught. He had heard the name in chants, in fleeting mentions during temple festivals: the boy-sage who had outlived death, the witness of creation and destruction.
Markandeya looked up, and for a moment, his smile faltered. "You wish to save your brother. Your people. But do you know what it means to carry the memory of salvation—or of failure?"
Before Aadi could answer, Markandeya reached out and touched his forehead with two fingers.
The world tore open.
Aadi staggered as visions swallowed him whole. He saw oceans boiling, mountains collapsing into fire, forests turning to deserts, and stars falling from the sky like burning fruit. He saw men and women screaming, their cries drowned by floods, their bones buried under ash. He saw gods rise, fall, and rise again. Asuras chained, then unchained. And always, humanity caught beneath the wheel.
When the visions subsided, Aadi fell to his knees, gasping. His heart thundered as if it would tear itself free from his chest.
Markandeya's voice was calm, but it carried an undercurrent of sorrow."I have watched each yuga die, boy. I have stood in the flood when Vishnu took the form of the great fish, clung to the last tree when fire devoured the earth, sat in the silence when even the wind ceased to move. I remember every cry, every last breath."
He leaned closer, his youthful face shadowed by a grief too old to name."And I ask you—what is mercy? To remember all that suffering, or to forget it? To let it scar us so we never repeat it, or to wipe it away so the world may live unburdened?"
Aadi's throat tightened. He thought of Arul, pale and injured, of the hollow-eyed children who had clung to him in the ruins. He thought of Ashwatthama's wound that never healed, and of the Kala Chakra's endless coils.
"If we forget," Aadi whispered, "do we not invite the same mistakes again?"
Markandeya's eyes softened. "Perhaps. But if we remember too much, we cannot go on at all. Memory is a weight heavier than mountains. It can crush even the strongest heart."
He placed a hand on Aadi's shoulder, his touch strangely gentle. "This is the curse of the eternal witness: to carry what others may never know. If you choose to walk this path, you must decide whether memory is truth—or prison."
The river stirred again, the wind moving as though time itself resumed. Markandeya rose, his gaze lingering on Aadi as if measuring him.
"When the wheel breaks," he said, "you will know what to do."
And then he stepped back into the mist, his form dissolving into the white haze until only the river remained.
Aadi stayed on his knees long after, the words echoing in his mind:To remember is to suffer. To forget is to betray.