That night, Aadi could not sleep. Hanuman's words echoed in his skull like temple drums: strength is for the ones you love. Yet the memory of Markandeya's visions still seared his thoughts, flooding him with yugas of fire and flood.
Exhaustion finally dragged him into dreams, but these dreams were not his own.
He found himself standing in a cavern lit by veins of iron that pulsed as though alive. The air shimmered with heat, though no fire burned. At the center of the cavern, a girl stood. Her skin glistened with sweat, her hair matted, her eyes hollow with grief yet fierce with determination. In her hands burned a flame that was not fire, but memory—shifting, flickering, screaming with voices of countless generations.
She was both young and ageless. Fragile and infinite. Mortal and eternal.
"Kairava…" The name slipped from Aadi's lips, though he did not know how he knew it.
The girl's gaze snapped to him, and the flame in her hands roared higher, spiraling upward into a helix of fire and shadow. Within it, Aadi glimpsed visions: tribes wailing in famine, chiefs raising weapons against their own, rivers turning red with sacrifice. He saw her body convulse as she absorbed their agony into herself, her voice tearing into the cavern walls.
"I am the Ekaaru," she whispered, her voice both hers and not hers. "The one who carries all. Every hunger. Every death. Every forgotten sorrow. They burn in me so the world may breathe free."
Aadi staggered, shielding his face from the spiral of flames that threatened to consume him. "Why show me this? Why me?"
Her eyes softened, though the fire still devoured her. "Because your choice will decide if I must carry even more. If the suffering of your yuga must also be etched into me. You can save your brother, Aadi. You can save your tribe. But if you do, their cries will not vanish. They will burn in me, forever."
The flames licked at his skin, searing but not burning, etching their truth deeper into him. Aadi felt her burden as if it were his own: a hollowing, a drowning, the unbearable weight of every soul who had ever suffered. It pressed into his chest until he gasped for breath.
"I cannot ask you to bear this," he choked.
"You do not ask," she replied, her voice breaking. "The wheel demands. Someone must carry what others cannot. If not me, then you. If not you, then another. But the flames must live somewhere, or they will consume everything."
For a heartbeat, their gazes locked—his, raw with guilt; hers, blazing with sacrifice. And in that instant, something tethered them across time.
He reached for her, but the spiral of flames surged, blinding him. The cavern dissolved into light and ash, the girl's figure swallowed by fire.
Aadi woke with a scream, sweat pouring down his face. His chest ached as though he had carried a mountain in his sleep.
The embers of the dying village fires still glowed faintly around him, mirroring the spiral he had seen. He pressed a trembling hand to his heart, where the heat still lingered.
Kairava. Ekaaru. The vessel of all suffering.
And now, her fate was bound to his.