Morning broke over Wayanad, golden and gentle, as though the storms had never been. The air was clean, the rivers full, the trees alive with birdsong. Villagers stirred in their homes, laughing, working, living—blissfully unaware that they had once walked through the jaws of Kalyuga.
The memory of the apocalypse was gone.
Children chased one another through the fields. The old sang songs by the fire. The temples rang with prayers to gods whose hands no longer weighed visibly upon the world. To them, it was simply another dawn, one of many.
And yet… a shadow lingered.
Far from the bustle, in the heart of the Cave of Iron Veins, Kairava knelt. His body burned with invisible fire, veins of sorrow etched across his skin like glowing scars. Every scream, every death, every moment of terror humanity had forgotten lived now within him.
The Codex of Ekaaru—an ancient scroll that was not written with ink but with memory itself—unfurled in his hands. Each page writhed with visions: Rahu's laughter, Arul's broken form, Aadi's sacrifice, the storm of gods and demons tearing the sky apart. Every detail, every agony, every betrayal… recorded.
Kairava's voice was hoarse as he whispered into the cave:"They will not remember. But I will. I will carry what they cannot bear."
His eyes, molten with grief, flickered as he turned another page. On it, Aadi's face stared back—not as a hero sung in tales, but as a shadow erased from the world. Only Kairava, bound as Ekaaru, remembered him. Only Kairava wept for him.
The cave shuddered as the burden deepened. Each memory etched itself into Kairava's body, branding him with centuries of suffering. He coughed blood, but his hands did not falter.
"Truth is a fire," he murmured, recalling Aadi's words. "And fire consumes."
Above the cave, life thrived. Festivals bloomed. Gods were praised. Demons were dismissed as myths. Humanity continued, blind and content.
But beneath it all, Kairava turned page after page of the Ekaaru Codex, binding the forgotten Kalyuga into himself. Alone. Eternal.
And somewhere, in the unseen cracks of reality where serpents coil and shadows breathe, a whisper stirred. A name—Aadi—carried on the wind, faint, but alive.
The wheel had turned again.
But perhaps, this time, it was not unbroken.