PART 3.1 — ASHES OF THE FORGOTTEN
Ashes are not the end. They are proof something once burned."
The air hung heavy, silent and stale — as if the world itself held its breath.
Darian knelt beside the half-burnt shrine outside the forest edge, its scorched stones cold to the touch. This place had no name, no priests, no gods. Just ash. Ash, and the faint scent of sandalwood smoke lingering like a ghost that refused to move on.
He didn't know why his legs had brought him here after Ravi's lesson. His siblings were asleep back at the hut. The village was still. But in his mind, the battlefield still burned.
Flames had mouths in that memory — devouring bodies, flags, dreams. Crimson banners falling into dust. The battlefield had been a graveyard of karma.
And at the center of it stood him — his father — surrounded by corpses not yet cooled, sword in one hand, a wound carved deep across his chest. Not retreating. Not submitting. Just… still.
Darian's ten-year-old self had stared at that figure through the gaps in the chaos. Screams blurred into silence. Blood blurred into black. He couldn't hear anything but the dull thump of his own heart.
Then it happened.The sky blinked.
A great eye had opened — far above, not of flesh, but of light and pressure and something ancient. It stared not at his father. Not at the warriors. But at him. A boy hiding behind the wreckage of a shattered war drum.
He didn't know what it meant.
Only that the world should not watch like that.
Back in the present, his fingers tightened around the pendant beneath his kurta. Its weight had changed. He could feel it — as if it absorbed memory itself, grew heavier with guilt.
Was it cursed?
Was it alive?
He didn't know. But the way it pulsed when he dreamt — the way it shimmered when his thoughts spiraled — it frightened him.
He turned to the stone idol, now broken in half. A deity forgotten by time, eyes cracked, arms missing. Probably a minor forest god, abandoned after the last drought. It was strange — how even the divine could be discarded in Elarin.
He whispered.
"I should have died there too."
The wind didn't answer. But the pendant twitched beneath his fingers.
He didn't cry. Not anymore. Not when Rian and Mira could hear. Not when Ravi watched.
But the tears were there, even if they never fell. Hidden beneath his skin, carved behind his eyes.
"Why did you leave me alive?" he asked the night sky.
The pendant pulsed again. Once.
Then he heard it.
A voice. Or a memory of one.
"Karma forgets nothing. But it never speaks clearly."
His eyes widened. That was not his voice. Not his father's. Not Ravi's.
It was old. Feminine. Like the wind whispering through dead reeds.
Was it a memory? A hallucination?
He stood, suddenly alert.
Behind him, the trees shifted.
That was when he saw her.
A girl, maybe his age — or a little older — sitting atop one of the moss-covered stones as if she'd been there the whole time. Barefoot, with her knees drawn to her chest, hair like midnight silk and eyes like black mirrors. She said nothing.
Darian didn't flinch. But his hand stayed near the hidden blade at his side.
She tilted her head.
"You talk to broken gods often?" she asked.
Her voice was light. But something about it was… wrong. Not threatening. Not mocking. Just too aware.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The girl shrugged. "A ghost. A shadow. A mistake." Then she grinned. "Or maybe just Leela."
That was all she gave. No last name. No caste marker. No sigil or sign of clan.
Just… Leela.
"You're not from here," Darian said flatly.
"Neither are you," she said without pause.
They stared at each other.
One with a pendant that refused to sleep.One with eyes that reflected too much.
Something had shifted in the night. The ash didn't smell like mourning anymore. It smelled like change.