The mist had lifted with the rising sun, but Aadi felt as though he still carried the fog within his chest. His vision blurred with fragments of what Markandeya had shown him—mountains crumbling, oceans rising, cities swallowed whole. The cries of men and women he had never met echoed in his ears as though they were his own kin.
He sat beneath the charred remains of the banyan tree in the ruined village square, his people scattered around him in silence. No one wept anymore; grief had passed into a numbness that weighed heavier than mourning. Children sat listlessly in the dirt, their eyes vacant. Mothers clutched them not with hope, but with the reflex of those who have nothing else to hold.
Aadi closed his eyes, but behind them, the visions only burned brighter. Each scream, each flood, each broken face etched itself into his mind. His chest tightened until he thought he would choke.
He remembered Markandeya's words: To remember is to suffer. To forget is to betray.
But what was he to do?
If he remembered, he bore the pain of countless yugas—a burden too heavy even for immortals. He had seen it in Markandeya's eyes: the eternal youth smiled, but his smile was carved from grief. To carry all of time's horrors was not wisdom—it was torment.
If he forgot, however, he risked repeating the same cycle. Was that not what the devas wanted? For men to remain ignorant, blind, pawns upon the wheel?
Aadi's fists dug into the dirt, his nails scraping against roots. He thought of Arul, his brother's face twisted in pain as he struggled to stand. He thought of their father's death, the gust of wind that had stolen him. He thought of Ashwatthama, his unhealed wound glowing with a curse that bound him to wander.
How many others had chosen wrong before him? How many had tried to save their loved ones, only to doom themselves and their people?
His throat burned as he whispered to the silent tree, "What good is truth if it crushes us before we can act? What good is forgetting if it damns us to repeat?"
The air stirred, and he felt the serpents of the Naag sadhus before he saw them. Their hissing presence was low, steady, almost soothing. One of the sadhus stepped from the shadows of the ruins, his ash-marked face unreadable.
"You have seen what no mortal should," the sadhu said quietly. "You have tasted the burden of the witness. It is heavier than the strongest arms can hold."
Aadi raised his head, his voice hoarse. "Then why show me? Why let me carry this if it can only break me?"
The sadhu's gaze softened, though his voice remained hard. "Because you must choose. To remember, or to forget. To bind yourself to truth, or to release it for the sake of mercy. No path is free of suffering. But only by choosing will you shape what comes next."
Aadi felt the weight press deeper into his chest, his ribs aching with the strain of it. He wanted to scream, to cast off the visions, to let them fall into the river like stones. But at the same time, he knew—if he did, the river would only return with floods of the same destruction.
There was no release.
His hands trembled as he bowed his head, whispering not to the sadhu, not to the gods, but to the ashes around him:
"I will carry it. Even if it breaks me. Even if it drowns me. Better my soul shatter than the world burn again."
The words tasted like iron on his tongue, heavy and final. Yet as he spoke them, a strange stillness filled him. The burden did not lessen, but it no longer drifted without anchor. It had found its place—in him.
The sadhu nodded once, as though this had been the only answer he expected. "Then the path is yours, Aadi. Remember this: a burden carried in silence destroys. A burden carried in purpose transforms."
The serpents slithered away with their master, leaving Aadi alone beneath the scarred tree.
His body trembled, his chest ached, his heart was raw. But in the hollow of that ruin, he felt the first spark of something that was not despair.
It was not hope—not yet. But it was a beginning.