God of War - Karmic Cycle [AU]

juniorsundar · Jan 24, 2026

Me. Joka-r said:
Your author rant is invisible in dark theme.

It seems to have not kept the font and color from my text editor for some reason...

juniorsundar · Feb 16, 2026

The Vanara curled himself into a ball as the attacker overwhelmed him. The man was essentially everywhere and nowhere at once as he flitted across the field at impossible speeds. Every fraction of a second, a delayed explosion rattled the Vanara as the man fired off his explosive arrows.

The monkey, in turn, tried to crawl away. He hoped to create distance, but the man would appear out of nowhere and expend suppressive fire to reroute him. The damage the arrows inflicted was merely concussive. Essentially, they were insufficient to seriously hurt the Vanara. It was clear to him that the man's objective was just to destroy the herb, not to actually kill him. It was all a cruel and calculated game.

After a rapid yet short-lived volley of attacks, the Vanara noticed a pattern. The attacks were being honed in on the exact same location each time. The man had not been firing haphazardly. He was trying to scope out the weakest points in the Vanara's defences.

After noticing the Vanara flinch when an arrow struck near his right shoulder, the man started to direct his attacks solely at that target.

The Vanara tried to dodge or shield himself with other parts of his body, but it did little to help. The man was faster than sound itself. He would appear in the perfect position to attack the Vanara's weakness with another explosive arrow.

Gritting his teeth, the Vanara made a run for it. Right as he took off with an impulse that cracked the earth beneath him, two arrows whizzed past. They exploded in unison right in front of his face. His momentum was immediately curbed, causing him to tumble and fall. And as he fell, more and more arrows started to pelt him. The impacts were jarring and, as a result, the precious pouch was knocked from his grasp.

Two more controlled explosions pushed the pouch away from the Vanara. It tumbled across the barren ground and rolled to a stop, hitting the attacker's right foot.

The man smirked. With a decisive move, he lifted his foot and brought it down on the pouch.

But right as his foot was about to make contact, he immediately disappeared from the spot. A split-second later, an axe hurtled through the space where he was originally standing and embedded itself deep into the barren ground a few metres away.

A tremor echoed all around as the Vanara collapsed into the ground like a hurtling meteorite. He let out half a relieved sigh and hacked out a cough to clear the dirt from his airways before scrambling towards the pouch. After taking a quick look inside and verifying that the herb wasn't damaged. He let go of the other half of the sigh.

His eyes skimmed to the side and locked onto the axe in the ground. A moment of contemplation followed before a spark of recognition flashed across his face.

"This isn't your fight," the Vanara's opponent said as he appeared by his chariot. "I'm giving you a chance to leave… again."

Kratos walked over with measured and casual steps while raising his palm to call back the axe.

"What're you doin'?" The Vanara exclaimed. "Go!"

"Listen to the monkey," the man suggested with a smirk. "Or I promise you that you won't be leaving this battle alive."

Kratos snorted with faint amusement, "I accept that offer."

"Okay…" the man said with a chuckle. "Then it will be your honour to die by the hands of Meghanad, Crown Prince of-"

The man halted mid-boast and disappeared as an axe hurtled through where he stood.

"It is customary to exchange introductions in a duel," the voice came from behind Kratos. Kratos swivelled and brought his elbow in a downward arc to strike at the sound's source, but the swing only met air.

"If you don't give me a name, I will be forced to assign you one," the voice mocked once again from Kratos' blind spot. Kratos swung back, but halted midway and immediately punched where his blindspot would have shifted to.

His fist barely clipped the man's right shoulder as he appeared there instantaneously.

"Aren't you a smart one," Meghanad mocked. "Smarter than the monkey, at least."

"What are you waiting for?" Brahma yelled at the gawking Vanara. "Fly, you fool!"

The monkey snapped out of his shock and turned to leap away, but a barrage of concussive shots intercepted him again.

"I didn't say you could leave," Meghanad drawled with a derisive sing-song voice as he appeared before them atop his chariot.

He clicked his tongue and complained, "One against two and two-fifteenth, doesn't seem fair."

"Two-fifteenth?" The Vanara repeated while scratching his head in confusion.

"He is referring to me," Brahma explained in a low voice. It did not convince the monkey, as he still returned a blank look. "Proportionally, a human body is around seven-and-a-half heads tall. Since I am just a head, I am two-fifteenth of a human."

The monkey let out an audible hum of understanding. "Is he just trying to act smart by bringing in mathematics in the middle of a fight..." he murmured.

"I think it's only fair to even the playing field," Meghanad expressed before bringing the pinky finger of his palms to his lips and letting out a shrill whistle.

The whistle echoed across the battlefield for a beat. Then, a sound akin to an approaching locust swarm started to buzz, growing louder and louder with each passing second.

As Kratos looked into the distance, he saw a sparse cloud approaching them rapidly. As it grew closer, he realised that the swarm was not made of locusts. It was a horde of small, goblin-like winged Rakshasas. They were varied in appearance, but they all looked like tiny, unarmed imps with leathery wings and malicious grins.

The swarm descended on Kratos and the monkey with extreme prejudice. Tiny claws and sharp teeth met Kratos's skin. He quickly found himself peppered with countless small slashes and bites. It was not substantial damage. Each individual attack was no more than a pinprick. But it was quickly starting to accumulate. Blood started to spurt out from every part of his exposed skin.

Then, for a split second, the horde parted like a curtain. Kratos caught a glimpse of Meghanad smirking from his chariot. An arrow flew through the narrow gap and exploded right in front of him, causing a staggering, concussive blast. This pattern repeated five more times. The imps would part, the arrow would fly, and the explosion would rock him. On the sixth, Kratos anticipated the parting. He hurled the axe through the clearing. But Meghanad was not there. The concussive shot came from above, this time, slamming him into the dirt.

"Too predictable!" Meghanad's mocking voice carried through the cacophony of shrieks. The imps swarmed him again, their laughter mixing with their master's, and amped up the attack. Some latched onto Kratos and started to gnaw at him with rabid madness.

With an annoyed growl, Kratos ripped the imp, tossed it to the ground and stomped its head in one decisive move. Its skull exploded like a ripe watermelon, painting his feet in a deep and viscous crimson liquid. The action unnerved his attackers as they subconsciously gave him a wider berth. The space was enough for Kratos to approach and shake the monkey. The Vanara was once again curled up in a tight ball, trying only to protect the herb. Kratos grabbed the monkey's long, white tail and tied it firmly around his own waist. "Take me to him!" Kratos yelled over the noise.

The monkey grunted in affirmation. His tail expanded instantaneously, and its length shot out like a rope. It pulled Kratos with incredible force, yanking him free from the swarm. He was carried through the storm of bodies and launched directly towards the flying chariot.

Meghanad did not expect this gambit. Unlike on land, where his speed was unmatched, the golden chariot had a hard time turning midair. Kratos collided against the side of the chariot with a heavy thud. He quickly stabilised himself and stood to face the incredulous stare of Meghanad. The man dodged Kratos' first jab and immediately responded with a headbutt that barely affected the Spartan.

A wry smile twisted Meghanad's lips. He unsheathed a katar from his waist. It was a wicked, serrated blade about his forearm in length and extended out from his knuckles. He curled his fist tight around the weapon's handle and punched Kratos with the blade.

Kratos did not flinch. He let the blade latch deep in between his ribs. Meghanad's hand was now inadvertently captured as his weapon was stuck fast in Kratos' body. Kratos seized the opportunity and started to pummel the man with a barrage of wild and brutal haymakers.

Kratos did not hold back on his punches. It was evident by the sounds of bone cracking as his fist dipped deep into Meghanad's skull. But to his surprise, the man was completely unscathed after every attack. His face remained unbroken, and his smile remained unfaltering.

"You fought well," Meghanad commended. Right as Kratos' next fist was about to connect, he jerked his head aside. In the same motion, he pulled himself deeper into Kratos' sphere of attack, ignoring the fist that grazed his temple.

"Unfortunately, your enemy was I," he added. He yanked the katar free from Kratos's ribs and swiftly pushed the blade into Kratos' jugular. In one continuous, brutal motion, he twisted the weapon and severed Kratos' spine.

Meghanad pushed the corpse off the side of the chariot. He did not deign to watch it fall, as he proceeded to rearm himself with his bow. Right as he nocked an arrow, a piercing pain spiked through his spine. He reached behind him, and his hand grasped cold steel. An axe was embedded deep in his back.

As he turned, his eyes wide with disbelief. He saw Kratos climbing back up the side of the chariot, completely undamaged.

Meghanad snarled. He gripped the handle of the axe, ripped it from his back, and tossed it aside contemptuously. He seized the chariot's controls and swerved hard to the left. The chariot banked at a ninety-degree angle, but Kratos' grip was like iron. He was not dislodged. Meghanad sent the chariot into a barrel roll, then a sharp dive, and tried to use the wind itself to tear the man free. No matter how crazy the manoeuvre, Kratos was not deterred. He just kept drawing closer, hand over hand, with unhurried movements.

Kratos hauled himself up with one smooth, powerful pull and stood face to face with Meghanad once more. The two did not waste time on words. The fight resumed instantly.

The discrepancy in their techniques was stark. Meghanad was a blur of motion. His style was all speed, precision, and elaborate technique. He flowed like water, striking with palm heels, knife-hand chops, and rapid-fire punches aimed at Kratos' joints, throat, and eyes. He never stayed in one place; his feet danced continuously and took full advantage of even the limited space on the chariot's floor. His every move was designed to disable, to find a weakness, and exploit it with flawless, economical grace.

Kratos was the opposite. He was like a stone wall. His movements were measured, economical, and unforgivably powerful. He did not dance; he planted himself. He took the flurry of strikes because he knew his body could bear it. His defence was simple: he blocked what he could and endured what he could not. He knew immediately that dodging or parrying would be a waste of energy.

Where Meghanad was fast, Kratos was patient. He waited. His eyes tracked his opponent's impossible speed and anticipated the rhythm.

Then he countered. His fist moved like a piston. He threw a single, devastating right hook. Meghanad was forced to abandon his attack. And with that, his momentum was cut short, and he was forced to alter his speed towards defence as he ducked under the blow. The wind from the punch alone made his hair whip across his face. The force of it shook the entire chariot. Kratos followed with a heavy left, then a brutal uppercut. Meghanad weaved and dodged flawlessly. The attacks were straightforward, and their trajectory was predictable.

The problem was that they didn't provide a single opening. In order to create one, Meghanad would have to block or even body an attack. But a single clean hit, he knew, would be catastrophic.

The two were evenly matched. Meghanad's blinding speed was frustrated by Kratos' immovable resilience. Kratos' raw power was, in turn, nullified by Meghanad's impossible agility.

When a fight reached a stalemate, the victor was not decided by skill. It was decided by endurance. The man who could last the longest would eventually win.

Meghanad quickly surmised that he had made a mistake. He had underestimated his opponent. He had figured that by overwhelming the ashen man with speed, he could secure a quick victory. Unfortunately, the man had seen right through the gambit. He had rationed his energy well.

It was also odd, Meghanad noted, that the man hadn't tired one bit. At this point, Meghanad had an excellent measure of his opponent. The man's attacks had not diminished in speed or intensity since their fight began.

And another thing Meghanad found out was that the man could not die. At least, the conditions had not been met to kill him. But that was of no consequence, though. As long as Meghanad stood in his chariot, he could not die either. However, this also meant that continuing this farce was meaningless.

One thing his father taught him was that in any confrontation, there must always be a victor and a loser. Fighting towards a stalemate was a waste of time and energy. In fact, fighting this man wasn't part of the plan. It was a coincidental detour, which was turning out to be a separate journey in and of itself. A journey Meghanad had no intention of taking to term. Thus, it was time to fast-track his original objective and disengage from this irksome man.

Meghanad leapt up. He used Kratos's shoulder as a springboard, pushed himself high into the air and away from the chariot. While midair, he nocked his bow and took aim. But his target was not Kratos. Meghanad jerked the bow and aimed it square at the monkey, who was still curled up in a bloodied mess on the ground.

By some unseen command, the swarm of Rakshasas parted and dispersed, and cleared the line of fire.

Meghanad opened his mouth and started to chant. Instead of his voice, the world just went silent. At the peak of his parabolic trajectory, his entire body halted. He was suspended in midair, as if held by some invisible rope hanging from the clouds.

The clouds, in turn, started to swirl and turn darker. Thunder and lightning started to rumble, drowning out the silence with a tense, electrical hum.

"Oh no…" Brahma evoked from Kratos' waist. His voice was tight with sudden realisation. "K-K-Kratos-"

The arrow nocked in Meghanad's bow started to crackle with light. It grew brighter and brighter, and shone with a terrible, contained power.

Kratos' gaze narrowed with recognition.

This build-up… he had seen it before. It was not the exact same, but the feeling gnawing at the back of his neck felt far too familiar.

He delved into his memories. It did not take long for him to find what sparked this recognition.

He remembered the vision he had experienced from Rama's past. That time on the battlefield where the man had summoned an attack of catastrophic proportions. He recollected the primal feeling that attack had evoked. It was the same emotion he was experiencing right now. His fight or flight mechanism was blaring haphazardly. This spoke volumes. Even though his mind knew that he could not die, his body still felt apprehension when facing this power.

"The Vanara's life is forfeit," Brahma lamented. "I did not know that man knew how to wield my Astra."

"What?" Kratos probed, his voice a low growl.

"The weapon he is calling forth," Brahma explained, "is one I developed in the primordial eras."

Kratos hefted his axe. He hurled it with all his strength towards the hovering man. But the axe simply bounced off, as though it had hit an invisible force field.

"You cannot interrupt its invocation," Brahma explained. "I… I had originally created it to protect the learned ascetics who worshipped me. It was for self-defence. But the warrior caste recognised its destructive potential and co-opted it."

"How do you stop it?" Kratos asked, while his eyes remained affixed on the growing light.

"You can't," Brahma responded with a morose tone. "Once invoked, it cannot be stopped. It will not cease until it has annihilated the target it was meant to strike. Anything that stands in its way is destroyed along with it."

Kratos averted his gaze from the man and looked down at the monkey. It seemed the Vanara, too, had recognised the attack. But to Kratos's shock, he did not see the same primal fear he felt internally.

Instead, the monkey straightened up. He knelt on the ground with a tranquil expression, as though he were inviting the attack.

"We did all that we could," Brahma expressed with a sigh. "I guess it is time to go."

"You give up, just like that?" Kratos probed, his voice laced with incredulity.

"There is no way around this," Brahma explained. "Unless you can pull out an Astra of equal or greater power, which I am sure you will be hard-pressed to find, there is no way to counter the Brahmastra."

"You made this weapon. Teach me how to summon it," Kratos demanded.

"It does not work that way," Brahma answered. "It is not a spell that I can just bestow upon you. Learning the invocation comes in multiple stages. It takes time and dedication."

Kratos observed as the nocked arrow gained a luminescence bordering that of the sun. The weapon was just moments away from being released.

In a moment of quick thinking, Kratos leapt off the chariot. He landed hard on the cracked earth and used the tail tied around his waist to yank himself towards the monkey.

"Traveller! Knowledgeable Head! What are you doing? Go, quickly now!" The Vanara urged hastily. His expression was warped with concern for them.

Kratos ignored the monkey. He planted himself firmly in front of the kneeling Vanara and raised his palm, calling his axe back to him.

At that exact moment, with a deafening crack that sounded like a hundred lightning storms converging at once, the world flashed white.

Kratos felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up straight. He felt the wave of pure danger draw close.

The moment the wood of the axe's handle slapped into his palm, he rotated swiftly. He brought the flat of the axe head up just in time to meet the blinding flash of energy.

There was only pain after that. Kratos felt his skin melting from his frame and his bones turning into ash. He went in and out of consciousness multiple times. He was likely dying and being brought back to life by the axe, over and over. But he did not relent. He gritted his teeth and held on strong against the impossible, annihilating power of the attack.

In the minuscule instances between his fading consciousness, Kratos managed to feel out the intriguing nature of the attack. While it had arrived like a charging bull, it lacked the kind of momentum one would expect from a projectile. It had the piercing behaviour of a jabbing spear, as it was attempting to burrow through him and hit its target. To that end, Kratos didn't feel himself being pushed back while the axe blocked the weapon's charge. The axe, in turn, vibrated like an excited child as it absorbed the attack's power in the process.

Kratos could feel that as time progressed, the rate of his rejuvenation was amplifying. It got to the point that he was no longer losing consciousness - the axe was able to regenerate the damage as it was being inflicted.

But that was not all.

As time progressed, Kratos felt it bubbling up again.

The rage. The bloodlust.

He had no reason to feel it. He wasn't emotionally involved in this conflict in any way. He shouldn't be feeling… anything. Why was he getting angry?

That was the last strand of his thoughts while he still remained in control. Because the moment the attack dissipated, all Kratos saw was red.

"WHAT?!" Meganad bellowed in shock with a hint of fear. "What did you do?!"

"Y-You saved me!" The Vanara muttered when he saw the ash-skinned man regain his ashen skin as the man's scalded and molten dermal layer regenerated before his very eyes. He scanned his eyes all around him and absorbed the utter devastation the Brahmastra had wrought to his surroundings.

Even before the battlefield was subject to the aftereffects of the Astra, it was by no means a paradise to stay in. But it was at least palatable if not drab. But now…

The ground where the man stood was the epicenter of a new, massive crater with an expanding cone behind him that was unaffected. The earth wasn't just scorched, it was gone. In its place was a gleaming, glassy sheet of black obsidian where the sheer heat of the Astra had melted the rock and sand instantly. Wisps of acrid smoke rose from the vitrified ground, carrying a sharp, ozone smell that burned the nostrils.

Further out, the barren plains were riddled with deep gouges, as if someone had taken a giant rake to the land. What little vegetation had clung to life was now nothing but white ash that danced in the superheated wind. The air itself felt thin and sterile, and a suffocating heat radiated from the impact zone, making every breath a chore.

This wasn't the first time Meghanad had summoned the Brahmastra. The Vanara had witnessed it being summoned in the previous confrontations. But at least at that time, his Lord was present to counteract the Brahmastra with his own invocation of the weapon. So luckily, he didn't have to experience the after-effects of the attack.

But what confused the monkey was that, according to his knowledge, nothing should have stopped the weapon from striking its target. Unless-

His eyes darted to the axe in the Traveller's hand, and a realisation struck him.

That weapon had to be in the same league, if not more powerful, than the Brahmastra itself!

"Monkey!" The Knowledgeable Head yelled. "Go! NOW!"

The Vanara stuttered and stumbled, but the Head's admonishing glare sent him stumbling. After a running start, he leapt with force in the direction of his Lord's retinue and encampment.

Meghanad found himself entertaining the unfamiliar notion of regret. It turned out that kicking a metaphorical hornet's nest had all the delightful consequences of kicking a real one.

As he saw the monkey flying away, he realised that not only had he failed to achieve his original objective, he had tangled himself with a very, very dangerous man. A man more dangerous than Indra himself - because the King of Devas, too, was forced to kneel before the might of Meghanad's arsenal of Divine Astras. Only one other had come close to matching Meghanad in his prowess, and it was that dastardly exiled prince.

But this man evoked a sense of danger that trumped the exiled prince.

The man stood like an eerie statue amidst the carnage as his body regenerated at an observable pace. His exposed skull started to regrow its clothing to finally reveal an impossibly enraged mien.

The bloodlust oozing out of the man's red eyes was enough to send a shiver down Meghanad's spine.

Without a second thought, Meghanad let out a shrill whistle and called the chariot towards himself. After launching the Astra, he had descended to the ground preemptively to celebrate the demise of his opponents. But his haste had left him vulnerable.

His chariot was just a few metres away from him before a piercing strike to his spine incapacitated him completely. He fell to the ground and rolled to his side, just in time to see the ashen man charging towards him like an enraged bull. He scuttled hurriedly towards the rapidly approaching chariot, but the man caught his leg and, with a swift twist, shattered his ankle.

But at this point, the chariot was right next to Meghanad. He suppressed a painful moan and let out another variation of a shrill whistle. The horse closest to him responded in kind. It rotated its body and sent a swift kick targeting the ashen man.

Meghanad did not wait to see the aftermath of the attack. He quickly ascended the chariot, and as its magic amended the damage, he urged his horses to fly away.

Once he was stable, he risked a glance back at the ground to search for the ashen man. He wasn't there. The question had barely formed in Meghanad's mind when the horse to his far right suddenly whinnied in agony and thrashed wildly in its harness.

The chariot jerked violently, almost throwing him from his feet. It was then that Meghanad saw him. The ashen man was hanging underneath the horse, gripping its exposed entrails like a rope, with his face coated in fresh, crimson blood, amplifying the emanating aura of pure, murderous rage.

Meghanad scrambled for his bow and nocked an arrow, but the man immediately swung under the horse's belly and disappeared from his line of sight. A second later, Meghanad's second horse let out the same pained, gurgling shriek.

The chariot was now hurtling towards the ground dangerously.

In a moment of quick thinking, Meghanad took one of his arrows and exploded it at an angle behind his chariot, causing it to veer off-course.

It was time to take emergency measures. If he couldn't defeat the man in a neutral battleground, he had to leverage home-court advantage.

And his home-court was his father's kingdom - Lanka.

Hyperionthetitan · Feb 16, 2026

juniorsundar said:
As he saw the monkey flying away, he realised that not only had he failed to achieve his original objective, he had tangled himself with a very, very dangerous man. A man more dangerous than Indra himself - because the King of Devas, too, was forced to kneel before the might of Meghanad's arsenal of Divine Astras. Only one other had come close to matching Meghanad in his prowess, and it was that dastardly exiled prince

My boy , with how many time indra had to kneel or fled during his reign . You aint that special lol.

Me. Joka-r · Feb 17, 2026

Hyperionthetitan said:
My boy , with how many time indra had to kneel or fled during his reign . You aint that special lol.

Not that many times but it is a milestone, like Mahoraga.

Hyperionthetitan · Feb 17, 2026

Me. Joka-r said:
That that many times but it is a milestone, like Mahoraga.

Eh mahoraga is solvable via smart people with good enough firepower , while indra is just scuffed everytime notable asura rise to power.

juniorsundar · Mar 12, 2026

The world was a screaming blur of wind and terror. White-knuckled, Meghanad wrestled with the reins as his heart frantically drummed against his ribs. The chariot lurched perilously as his second horse succumbed to its injuries and collapsed like the first. With two down, the strain fell entirely on his third. In an attempt to alleviate the burden, Meghanad drew out his sword and swiftly dispatched the rope and chains tethering the disembowelled beasts to his chariot.

As they fell, Meghanad noticed something peculiar. A red rope was streaming out of the bowels of his second steed. Before he could determine what it was, something obscene and wet coiled around the neck of his last remaining steed. Just one look, and Meghanad knew - intestines. The brute below was using the guts of a dead horse like some makeshift lasso.

The horse shrieked a high-pitched sound of pure terror. And immediately, it yanked its head violently to the side. The chariot veered sharply and went off-course, forcing Meghanad to fight to regain his balance. From the corner of his eye, he saw the ashen man use the momentum from the chaotic turn to propel himself upwards in an arc akin to a pendulum, where the man was the mass suspended at the end of a length of intestine-turned-rope. He crashed onto the chariot's ornate floor, further destabilising the platform.

It did not take long for Meghanad to recover his balance; he'd traversed the chariot through worse conditions, after all. And once he'd stabilised himself, he quickly closed the space between himself and the ashen intruder in less than a heartbeat.

Meghanad noticed that the man was distracted. Unlike their earlier contest of close-quarters combat, Meghanad could see an endless number of openings. His first strike was a palm-heel thrust aimed directly under the man's chin. Under normal conditions, this blow would certainly snap the victim's neck. And connect, it did. The result was also within expectation as a crack was heard over the howling winds. But the consequence was not as Meghanad had calculated.

The man healed almost instantaneously! In essence, the attack barely distressed him. Undeterred, Meghanad flowed into his next attack, which was a rigid knife-hand slicing at the thick cords of muscle in the warrior's neck. Again, the attack connected, the result was felt, but the after-effect was subpar. He pivoted with a low sweeping kick aimed at the back of the man's knee while simultaneously jabbing two stiffened fingers toward the eyes. It was a flawless, coordinated assault meant to cripple and blind in a single motion.

For a second, Meghanad felt like he was punching cotton. The attacks succeeded, but the man reverted almost instantly. The irony wasn't lost on Meghanad either; this was probably how all his opponents felt when they confronted him.

But what irked Meghanad the most was that the man didn't even seem to register his attacks. He was completely unfazed. He just stood there and weathered the barrage, with his crimson eyes fixed on Meghanad with a glint that was unlike that of a predator. Because a predator's purpose was just to fill its hunger. This man was purely on a mission to demolish.

Meghanad committed to a final, devastating punch aimed at the warrior's throat. But this time, the man moved. He took half a step back, and right as Meghanad's fist was an inch away from grazing his face, he cocked his head back and brought it forward. Meghanad's fist cracked, sending a jolt of pain through his nervous system. As his shattered appendage was repairing itself under the chariot's power, the man caught Meghanad by his armour and jerked him forward.

The man's skull collided against Meghanad's, and his world exploded into a silent, searing flash of white light. He was thrown sideways as a sound like a thousand temple gongs rang in his ears. His mind was a discombobulated mess. And although the physical damage healed at a steady pace, the disorientation took a bit longer to fade.

What surprised Meghanad was that there was no follow-up. Why had the man just left him? As his focus returned, Meghanad realised why, as he was greeted with a chilling sight.

The man had turned his back on him. He stood at the edge of the chariot while gripping the large, golden-spoked wheel. His back and shoulder muscles knotted into granite-like bulges under the strain. Wood groaned and metal screamed in protest. With a final, inhuman roar, he ripped the entire wheel assembly from the axle.

Meghanad stared awestruck. His shock momentarily overrode the lingering, dizzying pain in his head. He watched the beast of a man heft the heavy wheel and use it as a battering ram. He slammed it again and again into the axle of the second wheel. Splinters flew. Metal bent, then shattered. With a final, percussive crash, the second wheel was torn from the chassis and sent spinning into the clouds below.

The chariot, now crippled, began to buck and fishtail wildly, threatening to tear itself apart in mid-air.

It was in that moment of dawning horror that Meghanad finally understood. The ashen man wasn't trying to kill him. He was trying to kill his immortality. He'd figured it out!

A new, frantic energy surged through Meghanad. He scrambled for his bow and immediately nocked an explosive arrow. He amplified the magic that generated the explosion and fired at point-blank range. The resulting blast engulfed them both, searing flesh and metal alike. The ashen man was thrown back as his body was riddled with shrapnel. For a moment, Meghanad could see the light leave his eyes. But it was only momentary, as he had already begun healing.

Meghanad, caught in his own blast, felt his armour singe and his skin blister. The wounds began to close, but he noticed, with a spike of cold dread, that the process was a fraction slower than before. Worse yet, his opponent was recuperating faster than he was.

He knew that he could not let himself get separated from the chariot while facing this invulnerable opponent. His eyes darted around and landed on a heavy length of chain that was initially used to tether the horses to the chariot. With anxious hands, he wrapped the loose end tightly around his right leg and checked that the other end was secured to a metal ring bolted to the chariot's floor.

At that moment, Meghanad looked up and met his opponent's gaze. And then it all happened within a fraction of a second.

Meghanad saw a dark hue falling on them - a shadow. Before he could turn to gauge the source, he saw the ashen man leap forward from his spot. He barely had enough time to move to his defence when his world collapsed in a thunderous crunch of splintering wood and shattered stone.

The chariot slammed into the sheer face of a mountain.

The impact shouldn't have affected Meghanad, and the man knew that. Which was why the ashen attacker acted to maximise the pain inflicted. He gripped Meghanad by the throat and chest and pinned him against the rapidly approaching wall of rock. Meghanad became the buffer between the man and the mountain.

Darkness swallowed them as they bored into the stone. The noise was deafening. It was like a constant, grinding roar that vibrated in Meghanad's marrow. He felt his bones snap, pulverise, and turn to dust, only for the chariot's magic to force them back together in the next instant. He was unmade and remade a dozen times in the span of a few seconds. It was at this moment that Meghanad regretted his conditional invulnerability, because the endless pain made him wish that he were dead. Jagged rocks flayed his skin, tearing away muscle and sinew, dragging him through a claustrophobic hell of friction and pressure. He tried to scream, but his mouth was filled with grit and blood.

He was a plough, driven by the unstoppable force of the ashen man and the momentum of his celestial chariot as he churned through the mountain's heart.

Then, as abruptly as the torment had begun, the pressure vanished. He burst out the other side of the peak in a shower of debris. With his momentum hampered, gravity reclaimed him. The chariot, which was now little more than a twisted wreck of frame and axle, plummeted toward the churning waters far below. The sudden jerk of the fall snapped the chain taut, leaving Meghanad dangling upside down by his right leg.

He swung wildly in the gale, blinking the dust and blood from his eyes. To his left, he saw what remained of his last steed. The impact had turned the majestic beast into nothing more than red mulch smeared against the twisted wreckage of the chassis.

As clarity poured in, the pain ceased, and his body was remade once more. Meghanad quickly tried to hoist himself up to undo himself from the chains. At that moment, a boom echoed from above.

Meghanad twisted his neck to look up.

The patch of rock he had just exited exploded outward. Through the cloud of dust, the ashen man stepped out into the open air. He grabbed onto the jutting rock faces of the steep side of the mountain and methodically made his way down.

Once he was beside Meghanad, the man stopped. Even upside down, Meghanad met his eyes. They were calmed now, but the rage bubbling within was still blaring like an unending siren through them.

The man extended his hand to the side.

From the wreckage of the mountain, a silver blur whistled through the air. The man's axe spun end over end and returned to its master with unerring accuracy. It slapped into the man's palm with a heavy thud.

In one smooth, fluid motion, the man used the momentum of the catch to swing the weapon downward.

Meghanad screamed as the axe bit through armour, flesh, and bone. There was no resistance. The blade separated his leg cleanly just above the ankle.

The connection to the chariot was severed.

Meghanad plummeted.

His scream was swallowed by the wind as he fell away from the healing magic, away from the mountain, and into the waiting abyss below. He hit the water with the force of a cannonball.

The cold was a shock to his system, momentarily stunning him. The torrential currents grabbed him, tossing him like a rag doll against the tide. He thrashed. His lungs burned. He fought the urge to inhale the ocean. With a desperate kick, he broke the surface, gasping for air that tasted of salt and copper.

He wiped the water from his eyes and looked up, searching for the sky.

Instead, he saw a shadow growing larger. The ashen man was diving straight for him headfirst.

A small, ironic smirk touched Meghanad's lips. It was the only defiance he had left.

Then, the world went dark.

The wind howling over the ocean was replaced by the low, restless murmur of a massive encampment. Miles of fabric rippled in the coastal breeze, forming a sea of tents that stretched as far as the eye could see. To a distant observer, it might have looked like any other army awaiting the horn of war. But a closer look revealed a strange peculiarity.

These were not men. Not… entirely men.

Tails twitched nervously. Fur bristled in the damp air. The soldiers crouched on their haunches or paced with agile, restless energy. The army consisted entirely of Vanaras.

In the centre of this sprawling formation stood a large tent. Its heavy flaps were secured against the wind. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of herbs and the weight of silence. A man sat patiently by the bedside of another. His posture was rigid with a quiet, terrifying focus. Both were dressed in the same humble attire - plain rags that contrasted sharply with the regal bearing that they couldn't quite hide. Their hair was pulled back into tight top-knots, revealing faces that bore the same noble structure.

But the resemblance ended there. The man who sat in vigil possessed skin the colour of dark and rich rain-laden clouds. The figure on the bed was naturally lighter, fair like the moon, but now he was rapidly turning the colour of ash. His chest barely rose. The pallor of death was creeping up his neck, stealing the life from him, breath by shallow breath.

A dull, thundering boom echoed from somewhere far across the water. The ground beneath the tent trembled ever so slightly.

The dark-skinned man's eyes snapped open. He had been deep in meditation, but the sound pulled him back to the waking world. The faint lines of worry that had etched themselves into his forehead smoothed out, replaced by a wash of profound relief.

The tent flaps swung open, admitting a gust of fresh air and a massive figure. A large bear walked in on two legs with uncharacteristic agility and poise.

"Lord Ram!" The bear spoke with a deep, vibrating growl. "Hanuman has returned! He's found the herb."

"I didn't doubt him for a moment," Ram said as he stood, with a small, weary smile touching his lips.

Before the bear could reply, the flap opened again. A Vanara rushed in, breathless and frantic, carrying the scent of ozone. He collapsed to his knees, slid slightly on the rug, and raised his hand high above his head in offering.

In his open palm rested a pouch. Its contents spilt out slightly to reveal the lush leaves of the herb.

Ram stepped forward. He collected the pouch from the trembling hand and turned to the bear, extending the medicine towards him.

"Jambawan, I must trouble you to brew the poultice."

The bear reached out nimbly. His large claws collected the herb with surprising delicateness. He bowed low and retreated to the corner of the tent where a mortar and pestle lay waiting.

Ram turned back to thank the kneeling Vanara and to express his heartfelt gratitude. But the spot on the rug was empty.

Ram blinked. He stepped out of the tent and scanned the bustling camp. A short distance away, he spotted the monkey overturning a stack of weapon crates, lifting heavy stones, and peering frantically under wagons.

"Has ANYONE seen my Gada?" Hanuman shouted with his voice cracking in panic.

"Didn't you carry it with you when you went?" Ram said as he approached.

The Vanara slapped his forehead in annoyance as the realisation dawned on him. He then turned to the crowd and yelled, "Can ANYONE get me A Gada?!"

"What's with the anxiousness?" Ram asked as he placed a gentle palm on the panicking monkey's shoulder.

"I do 'pologise, my Lord, but I must return," Hanuman explained, with his characteristic drawl. The monkey massaged his jaw as he spoke, drawing Ram's attention to the conspicuous scar by his chin.

Ram was one of the very few who called Hanuman by his given name. Most just referred to him as Hanuman - the one with the disfigured jaw. Although the Vanara didn't appear affected by this designation, Ram could feel that the name drudged up some unpleasant memories.

Besides, Maruti was too beautiful a name to be buried in obscurity.

"What's the hurry?" Ram queried.

"A gallant Traveller and Knowledgeable Head helped me find the herb," Maruti quickly expounded. "I also wouldn't 'ave been able to protect it without their intervention."

"Protect it?" Ram asked with a frown.

"Meghanad intercepted me as I flew back," Maruti continued. "He even used the Brahmastra on me."

That revelation sent a shockwave of silence across the campsite.

"He invoked the Brahmastra for such a paltry reason?" Ram scorned. "How dishonourable!"

But then something clicked, "Wait a minute! He used the Brahmastra on you, and yet here you stand?"

"I was saved again, thanks to the Traveller's assistance. He blocked the Brahmastra!" Maruti evoked with excitement.

"He blocked it, AND survived?" Ram probed further. To which the Vanara nodded. At this point, four Vanaras walked in carrying a heavy Gada. Maruti picked it up with ease and turned to face Ram again.

"I must take my leave, my Lord," he said. "I 'ave left my saviour to fight my battle for me. I must go and save them."

"Wait!" Ram yelled right as Maruti was about to leap away. "Take me with you."

"My Lord?" Maruti expressed disbelief.

"Meghanad is a tricky opponent," Ram explained. "He fights dishonourably. It won't hurt to have some support."

Ram collected his bow and arrow and ran forward as Maruti slowly hovered above the ground. As the Vanara started to pick up speed, he grabbed Maruti's dangling tail, and the duo ascended into the clouds.

The transition from the lush, if chaotic, encampment to the battlefield was jarring. It was like stepping from a forest directly into a kiln.

Ram stood silently at the edge of the devastation. Beside him, Maruti shifted his weight from foot to foot. His tail twitched with nervous energy. The landscape before them had been fundamentally rewritten. The natural undulations of the plains were gone, replaced by a smooth, terrifyingly flat sheet of black glass. The heat was still rising from it in shimmering waves and distorting the air.

Ram crouched down. His fingers hovered inches above the vitrified earth. He didn't need to touch it to feel the lingering resonance. It hummed with a frequency he knew intimately.

"The Brahmastra," Ram stated softly.

"Yes, my Lord," Maruti replied with a subdued voice. "The Crown Prince fired it. I… I fled, as the Knowledgeable Head instructed. But the Traveller… he stayed."

"You keep repeating the designations of these… characters," Ram commented. "The Traveller and the Head, who are they?"

Maruti scratched his head sheepishly, "I forgot to ask their name," he admitted. "The Traveller was large. Maybe a foot or so taller than you, my Lord. The Knowledgeable Head was… jus' a head that could talk."

"I am no closer to knowing who these people are," Ram muttered as he rose and walked towards the epicentre.

"The Traveller was as white as snow," Maruti continued as he tried to recollect the details from his memory. He rubbed his skin and said, "I think 'twas ash. You could see the peach of his skin peeking 'round his eyes and on his lips. He wore only a tiger-skin tunic."

"A follower of Lord Shiva, then," Ram murmured as he walked around. The glass cracked and crunched beneath his sandals, which was the only sound in the dead air. He stopped at the very centre of the blast radius. Here, the destruction halted abruptly. Behind this point, the ground fanned out in a cone of untouched earth, protected by some immovable object that had stood right where Ram was standing now.

"Impossible," Ram whispered with his brow furrowing.

He looked at the ground. There were footprints burned into the rock - deep indentations where someone had dug in their heels against a significant opposing force.

"I know you aren't one to lie, Maruti. But I must admit I was sceptical when you described how he blocked the attack. However, seeing this… The Astra wasn't dodged - which is obviously impossible to do given that it's the Brahmastra - nor was it countered with another Astra," Ram observed with surprise in his eyes as they traced the clean lines where the annihilation stopped. "It was absorbed!"

Maruti looked around frantically, scanning the horizon and the sky. "But where is he? There is no body here. If he survived… where'd he go?"

Ram turned his gaze from the ground to the sky. He narrowed his eyes, tracking nigh imperceptible hints that were laid bare all around him. "Meghanad is arrogant, but he is not foolish. If his ultimate weapon failed, he would not stay to trade blows on the ground. He would retreat to the air."

Ram walked a few paces to the right, pointing to a patch of ground that hadn't been glassed but was riddled with deep, charred gouges.

"See here? Explosive arrows are fired at a sharp downward angle. Meghanad is an exceptional marksman. He would not miss. So, one can deduce that these were not fired with the intention to attack, but for utility. He was correcting a drift." Ram traced the trajectory with his hand. His finger moved like a compass needle until it settled on the distant, jagged silhouette of the mountains to the south. "The chariot was unstable. He was fleeing, but there was an unwelcome passenger aboard."

Ram turned to Maruti. "To the mountains, Maruti. We must cover the distance quickly."

Maruti knelt, offering his back. Ram climbed on, securing his grip, and in a heartbeat, the scorched earth fell away. Maruti launched himself into the air, the wind rushing past them as he bounded across the landscape with earth-shattering leaps.

They moved fast, but the journey was not short. The mountains were merely a hazy purple line on the horizon when they started. As they crossed the miles of barren terrain, Ram kept his eyes fixed on the ground below, reading the story of the chase in the debris left behind.

"There," Ram called out over the rushing wind, pointing to a crater that marred the valley floor miles from the blast site.

Inside the impact zone lay two massive, golden wheels. They were embedded deep in the earth, with their spokes twisted like dry twigs.

"He lost his wheels here," Ram analysed with a sharp and calculating voice. "The chariot would have listed heavily to…," he squinted while calculating mentally, "…the right. He would have had to fight the reins just to keep it airborne."

Maruti pushed harder. His powerful legs ate up the miles in a heartbeat. As the foothills began to rise beneath them, the debris trail grew denser. Splinters of painted wood and torn metal littered the rocky slopes like confetti, marking a desperate, erratic flight path.

"He was losing altitude," Ram noted.

They crested the final ridge, and they reached the high peaks. Maruti slowed and landed softly on a jagged outcropping.

"There," Ram said, pointing toward the sheer face of the cliff ahead. The devastation here was evident. The chariot had gone straight through. The sole horse that remained was turned into a skidmark of gore. On the other side were the remains of Meghanad's celestial chariot - the pride of Lanka's armoury. It hung precariously, with a leg alongside it.

"It seems the Traveller won," Ram commented.

"But I don't see him anywhere!" Maruti shrieked anxiously. His eyes scanned the treacherous waters below, hoping not to see a body floating down there.

"What do you think, Maruti?" Ram asked.

"Why do you ask me, my Lord? What would I know?" Maruti responded with a sheepish grin.

Ram raised his brows inquisitively, "I can only speculate based on what I see. But you were actually there. Besides, Maruti, you underestimate your own deductive capacity."

Maruti furrowed his brows in thought.

"Given all the evidence," he expressed. "'tis clear that the Traveller is a formidable warrior. If he can go toe-t'-toe with Meghanad while the latter is moun'ed on his chariot, and is also able to block the Brahmastra, then that must mean the Traveller is either extremely durable or invulnerable, and wields a weapon of great power. Furthermore, his invulnerability may have a less stringen' condition compared to that of Meghanad. Which must mean that he is still alive."

Ram nodded in agreement, "Let us search the vicinity of this site. If his body isn't here, then we must make haste to Lanka."

"Lanka?" Maruti parrotted.

"Ravana just lost his son," Ram pointed out. "He won't let the killer pass peacefully. And if the killer is invulnerable, death will be the least of the Traveller's worries."

Maruti shuddered at the thought, before his eyes narrowed with resolve. He nodded to Ram before leaping into the waters below.

As Ram observed his companion's body disappear into the murky and torrential waters, his forehead scrunched up with a frown.

Who was this Traveller? Was his presence truly a coincidence, or was there some higher power in play?

Kratos woke with a start. His state, as always, was dreamless and silent. One moment, there was darkness, and the next, his eyes snapped open, alert and scanning for threats.

He pushed himself up. His body felt heavy. It wasn't fatigue. It was the strange, lingering lethargy that usually followed his episodes of uncontrolled fury.

"What happened?" Kratos rasped. His throat felt like he had swallowed a handful of desert sand. He looked down at his waist.

"Rage," Brahma answered. The head sounded tired. His voice lacked its usual haughty cadence. "Unadulterated rage. I tried to speak to you. I tried to grab your attention, but I could not get through to you at all. It was like shouting at a hurricane."

Kratos massaged his forehead. A dull throb pulsed behind his eyes. He tried to reach back into his memory to find the moment the fight ended, but there was nothing. Just a red haze and the sensation of impact.

"What happened to the man?" Kratos asked.

"You don't remember?" The head asked, a note of genuine surprise in his tone. "You killed him. Pretty brutally, if I do say so myself."

Kratos froze. He looked down at his hands. They were clean, scrubbed of blood. It was all just too hard to believe. Usually, a bout of rage-addled destruction didn't leave him so spotless.

"What did I do?" Kratos asked. He didn't want to know, but he needed to.

"You drowned him," a gravelly voice spoke from the shadows.

The ground rumbled with the depth of the sound. Kratos swivelled his head, and his muscles tensed.

For the first time, he took in his surroundings. He wasn't in a cell or a cave. He was in a palace. The room was cavernous, illuminated by the soft, golden glow of oil lamps set in alcoves. The floor was polished marble, veined with gold. Heavy curtains of red silk hung from the high ceiling, swaying gently in a draft he couldn't feel.

He was sitting on a bed large enough to sleep a family of bears, covered in sheets that felt like woven water.

Kratos turned fully, and his eyes caught a movement above the bed. A massive portrait hung there. It was framed in heavy, gilded wood. It depicted a warrior standing proudly in a golden chariot, a bow in his hand and a confident, arrogant smirk on his lips.

It was the man he had fought. The man he had killed.

"You stripped his jaw," the voice continued. It grew louder, closer, vibrating through the stone floor. "You tore the bone from the muscle, making it impossible for him to close his mouth. You made it impossible for him to stop the water from filling his lungs."

Kratos shifted his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He reached for his axe, but it was nowhere to be seen. He raised his palm and called it.

"And in his final moments," the voice grated, "you crushed his head in."

The heavy double doors at the far end of the room burst open. Wood splintered and flew inward as a massive foot stepped across the threshold.

A giant entered. He had to duck to clear the archway, even though it was built for tall men. He stood at least eight feet tall, like a mountain of muscle and malice. His skin was the colour of dried blood - a deep, reddish-black that seemed to absorb the light around him. His fingers ended in nails that were more like talons, sharp and black, an inch long and curved for tearing.

But Kratos barely registered the body. His eyes were drawn upward, to the horror that sat upon the giant's broad shoulders.

Ten heads.

They didn't sit in a row but seemed to cluster, undulate, shift and move with a life of their own. Ten pairs of eyes blinked in unison. Ten mouths grimaced.

"You killed my son," the heads spoke simultaneously. The sound was a cacophonous chorus of grief and rage that hit Kratos like a physical blow.

The axe arrived in his grasp with a satisfying thunk, and Kratos prepared himself.

Hyperionthetitan · Mar 12, 2026

Oh boy ,ravanna gonna be in for a surprise

juniorsundar said:
As they fell, Meghanad noticed something peculiar. A red rope was streaming out of the bowels of his second steed. Before he could determine what it was, something obscene and wet coiled around the neck of his last remaining steed. Just one look, and Meghanad knew - intestines. The brute below was using the guts of a dead horse like some makeshift lasso

Kratos in his natural habit lol

juniorsundar · Mar 12, 2026

Hyperionthetitan said:
Oh boy ,ravanna gonna be in for a surprise

Kratos in his natural habit lol

I think one thing that put Kratos apart from other fighters (at least in the GoW universe) is his resourcefulness. He knows how to take advantage of his environment. Using intestines as a lasso just made sense to me, I could see him doing that.

Hyperionthetitan · Mar 12, 2026

juniorsundar said:
I think one thing that put Kratos apart from other fighters (at least in the GoW universe) is his resourcefulness. He knows how to take advantage of his environment. Using intestines as a lasso just made sense to me, I could see him doing that.

Yup, it was either that or he abused the immortality aspect and straight up jam his hand into the wheel

juniorsundar · Apr 6, 2026

A/N:

Volume 1 will be 41 Chapters long. I am currently finishing up the 41st chapter.

I am contemplating whether I should create a Discord server for this Fanfic. I don't usually get a lot of engagements in the thread, so I don't know how useful a Discord might be. If you guys are interested please take the time to leave a "+1".

Murugan had left his Guru in haste and without a proper plan. He'd promised that he would return with an appropriate Dakshina, or fees. But had no idea where to begin.

Why did he set out on this aimless venture in the first place?

It was a knee-jerk reaction. Murugan could see from a mile away that the Guru-Shishya relationship was coming to an end. And just by looking at his Guru's resolute expression, he knew that there was no way to convince the man to extend the tenure.

In fact, Murugan was already certain that he had learned almost everything that could be taught by his Guru. All that remained was experience - something that couldn't be taught and had to be accrued.

Murugan lay on his back atop his Peacock as they floated casually amidst the clouds. His mind ran through the many options that would be suitable as a Dakshina for his Guru.

Standard protocol dictated that the Guru would place their demand for what they would like to receive as their fees from their Shishya. It would then be the honour-bound responsibility of the Shishya to fulfil that demand.

Of course, not all Gurus would propose a demand. Many, like his own Guru, would often dismiss this. In which case, it would fall on the Shishya to follow through regardless.

To that end, Murugan wasn't content to just close this chapter with a simple fee of wealth. His Guru would accept it, but it would be meaningless.

After all, a Guru may have many Shishyas, but a Shishya can only ever have one true Guru - their spiritual parent. Murugan was sure that he wouldn't be his Guru's final disciple. Therefore, he didn't want to fade away into an ever-growing list.

He wanted to be remembered. And as his brother once taught him, remembrance is triggered by nostalgia. People always associate events that occur in the present with those that have already taken place in the past. They search for patterns and familiarity. And in cases where there is a significant overlap, a strong emotional reaction is triggered - nostalgia.

To be remembered, one needs to trigger this emotional reaction and latch onto it… Which was easier said than done.

Murugan knew very little about his Guru's past!

Well… That wasn't entirely true. He had seen immersive glimpses into the man's past experiences. Maybe there was something worth pursuing in there?

Murugan jolted up into a seated position. The movement startled his mount, causing the great bird to squawk and adjust its wings to maintain their altitude.

Murugan patted the iridescent neck of his Peacock. "Change of course. We are going to the Edge."

The bird let out a confused trill. It was used to traverse the physical distances between mountains and oceans, or even the spiritual distances between the various Lokas. But the Edge was different. It was the conceptual boundary where the order of their reality dissolved into chaos.

It was treacherous and dangerous. Even for Gods.

"Trust me," Murugan whispered as his hands tightened on the reins.

They flew fast, leaving the grand Himalayan ranges as mere dots in the background. The sun dipped below the horizon, but they kept going, chasing the darkness that lay beyond the twilight. Soon, the stars began to flicker and die out. The wind stopped howling and simply ceased to exist.

There were very few ways to travel between realms. Most of them relied on chance or coincidence. Murugan did not have the time or patience to wait for these opportunities. So he opted for the more surefire strategy. Alas, the guarantee brought with it significant risks. But he deemed it well within his perceived margins of safety.

The strategy was simple, on paper. What he had to do was chase the conceptual boundary between reality - Order - and the immaterial - Chaos. The problem was that this boundary behaved much like the horizon. It was a limit that existed in perception, yet retreated the closer one approached.

The horizon marked the physical limit of what the eyes could see. To actually reach it, one had to move faster than sight itself. One needed to travel faster than light.

Faster-than-light travel… An impossible feat for most. An average day for Murugan and his Peacock.

Murugan smirked and whispered a Mantra. In an instant, he and his mount were surrounded by a burgeoning, golden corona. Within a split second, they turned into a ball of blinding light before blinking out of existence to any casual observer.

For Murugan, though, the transition wasn't so short-lived. The moment the corona gained a translucent shade, his vision started to elongate unnaturally.

Imagine the vibrant night-sky dotted with a tapestry of bright constellations and star clusters. Now imagine grabbing them all and dragging them in a straight line towards yourself. Finally, imagine these heavenly bodies leaving an after-image of themselves as they move across the dark night sky. After a while, the entire sky turns into a bright tunnel of endless light.

Murugan glided through this tunnel of endless light for what felt like an eternity, though only a millionth of a fraction of a second passed in the material world. Slowly, the blinding streaks of starlight began to unravel and swirl. The tunnel widened and lost its structural integrity as whatever laws that held it together dissolved.

Murugan pulled on the reins, and his Peacock flared its wings to brake against the nothingness. They drifted into a space that defied geometry. It was a sea of darkness where a soup of grey mist birthed concepts that died in nanoseconds.

Floating in this chaotic void were globules.

They looked like massive, iridescent soap bubbles. Each one contained a universe - a self-contained reality governed by its own Truth.

To his left, Murugan drifted past a sphere that radiated a cold, biting chill. Through the shimmering surface, he saw the silhouette of a tree so large it defied comprehension. Its roots seemed to hold the world together, wrapping around smaller realms of ice, fire and other stuff.

Further down, another globule pulsed with the heat of a thousand suns. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a mighty river slicing through an endless desert, where giants with the heads of animals and bodies of men flickered and disappeared from view.

Murugan ignored them. He scanned the clusters with a singular focus, hunting for the specific frequency he had felt from his Guru.

He found it drifting apart from the cluster, isolated and lonely.

Unlike the others, this globule did not shine. It flickered like a dying lamp. The surface wasn't smooth; it was pitted and scarred. Murugan watched with a grim expression as the grey, shapeless matter of the Chaos oozed into the sphere through jagged tears in its reality. The realm was quite literally drowning.

"There," Murugan whispered.

He steered towards the decaying sphere. The closer he got, the more the Chaos tried to repel him, sensing an order that didn't belong. But such repulsion was barely a bump in the grand scheme of things.

As he reached the boundary, it felt brittle like dried parchment.

Murugan didn't hesitate. He leaned forward and dove into the surface of the bubble.

There was a sudden, violent shift in pressure as he burst through. The tunnel of light that had dispersed reformed around him as he punched through the membrane.

Slowly, the tunnel of light started to split up into faint dots, signifying the stars and heavenly bodies in the night sky. The golden corona around him flickered and died, leaving him exposed to the elements.

Murugan blinked the spots from his eyes and looked down to claim his first glimpse of his Guru's home.

To call it a nightmare would be an understatement.

Below him lay a landscape of devastation. The ocean had risen to swallow the land, turning mountain peaks into desperate, isolated islands. The water was dark and churning, and restless with the fury of a storm that never ended. The sky was a bruise of purple and black, choked with ash that fell like snow.

And amidst the drowning peaks, he saw the ruins. White marble pillars, shattered and broken, jut out of the water like the ribs of a decaying beast.

This was his Guru's home.

Once again, Murugan silently admonished himself for his hastiness. Murugan had hoped that maybe jumping headfirst into his Guru's realm would offer some insight or inspiration for the kind of Dakshina he could offer to his Guru. But looking at the desolation and destruction around him, he was completely stumped. Because there was absolutely nothing for him to take back except ruin.

It wasn't that civilisation had ceased to exist altogether here. There were still remnants, but these were just societies that were barely scraping by.

The desolation forced Murugan to confront a truth about the nature of existence that most gods preferred to ignore. The cosmos was not a solid, immutable thing. It was a bubble of "sense" floating in an infinite sea of abject "nonsense".

Murugan looked at the grey mist seeping through the cracks in the sky. That was the raw stuff of the Void. It was potential without purpose, energy without direction. In a healthy realm, the presence of Divinity acted as a barrier. The gods were the surface tension. They were the logic that kept the madness at bay. Their existence, fuelled by the belief of mortals, reinforced the laws of nature and kept the nonsense out.

But here? The gods were dead. And the belief… The scant few that lived in this realm had given up on their gods. There was hope, but only in the self, not towards a higher power.

Without that divine pressure to hold back the tide, the barrier had rotted away. The abject nonsense was leaking in. And that was where the true horror lay.

Nonsense, by definition, has no form. But when it was forced into a container of "sense", it had to abide by some rules. It has to take shape. And since it has no creativity of its own, it latches onto the lingering psychic imprints of the realm - the realm's laws and the collective fears, nightmares, and traumas of the surviving mortals. It then gives it a form and flesh.

The ocean beneath him churned hungrily.

Murugan's musings were cut short by a sound that felt more like a drop in air pressure than a noise.

"Left!" he shouted.

His Peacock reacted within a fraction of a heartbeat of the first syllable leaving his lips, without question. It banked hard as its iridescent wings slapped against the heavy air.

A moment later, the space they had just occupied was obliterated.

A massive, slick black tentacle erupted from the roiling water. It soared hundreds of feet into the air and moved with a speed that defied its immense bulk. It snapped at the empty air where they had been, causing a sound like the cracking of a whip to echo across the drowned peaks.

Murugan pulled the reins, guiding Paravani higher, seeking the safety of altitude. But as they rose, the ocean surface began to boil.

It wasn't just one limb.

Dozens of them shot out of the water, like a veritable forest of black. The writhing pillars rose to blot out the horizon. They thrashed and weaved, creating a cage of crushing muscle. They were covered in suckers the size of chariot wheels, each one ringed with jagged, crystalline teeth.

Murugan gripped his spear tightly in anticipation. He scanned the water and tried to find the source of this assault.

A jagged fork of lightning tore through the purple sky and illuminated the dark depths for a fleeting instance.

Murugan froze.

Deep beneath the surface, staring up through the murk was a landscape of eyes. There were hundreds of them, reptilian and cold, glowing with a pale, sick yellow light. They were set into a mass of flesh that seemed to have no beginning and no end.

It looked like a giant Naga, but it was all wrong. It was a twisted mess of heads and coils that kept changing shape.

If madness wore a skin, Murugan surmised that it would probably look a little something like this.

A massive tentacle swept horizontally, aiming to swat the bird out of the sky like a fly. His Peacock banked sharply and dived under the limb with a grace that made the near-death experience look like a choreographed dance.

In the midst of this chaos, Murugan found his mind drifting.

It was ironic, really. Here he was, dangling precariously over a mouth that wanted to chew his soul, and he was daydreaming about a training session.

To an outside observer, this lack of focus might have seemed suicidal. It looked like the arrogance of a god who had forgotten what mortality felt like. But that wasn't it. Murugan wasn't being careless; he was just… capable.

The creature below was massive and strong, yes. But it was also mindless. Its attacks were driven by instinct, not strategy. There was no feint, no trap, no calculated malice. It just thrashed. And for a warrior of Murugan's calibre, dodging random thrashing took up maybe half of his mental processing power.

That left the other half free to wander. And it wandered back to the last time he had felt truly threatened.

It went back to his spar with his Guru.

That fight had been different. The intent behind every blow his Guru threw had been sharp enough to cut diamonds. There was a terrifying intelligence behind those fists and a calculated drive to dismantle him. Compared to that, this sea monster was just an angry storm.

Murugan frowned as he ducked under a spray of corrosive slime. The memory of that spar was frustratingly hazy.

He remembered the beginning clearly enough. He remembered the weight of his spear, the burning in his muscles, and the overwhelming pressure of facing a force of nature. He remembered being pushed to his absolute limit, his back against the wall, his options running out.

And then… nothing.

There was a hole in his memory. A void where the middle and end of the fight should have been.

He didn't remember the techniques he used. He didn't remember the blows he landed or the ones he took. It was as if his consciousness had just decided to take a break. He had effectively blacked out, only to be violently thrown back into the driver's seat of his own body right at the end, gasping for air and aching in places he didn't know existed.

He only knew what had happened in that lost time because his brother had shown him. And what he saw was astounding.

It was a jarring sensation. Imagine a friend you have known for years - a gentle soul who you assume is incapable of hurting a fly. Then, in a moment of crisis, you watch them dismantle a threat with the cold precision of a veteran killer. It isn't that they have suddenly changed or betrayed their nature. It is the terrifying realisation that the capacity for violence was always there. It was just coiled and waiting beneath the surface. You just hadn't seen it until now.

That was the horror Murugan felt. But it was infinitely worse because the stranger wasn't a friend. It was him. He watched a stranger wearing his face perform feats of violence he knew he was physically capable of, but spiritually opposed to.

The Murugan in Ganesh's vision moved like an animal. There was no hesitation between thought and action. In fact, there didn't seem to be any thought at all. Just pure, unadulterated rage, violence and instinct. Although Murugan could see no rationality in his eyes, his every action was a beautiful implementation of the knowledge and experiences he'd cemented as muscle memory.

Though primal, there was a strange beauty to the violence. The longer he looked, the more engrossed he became.

It was akin to watching his father perform. At first glance, his dance would seem chaotic, terrifying even. But if you looked past that and observed carefully, you saw the beauty hidden within.

"It is about losing yourself without losing yourself," his father had told him once. "There is a very fine line, son. A razor's edge between surrendering to your nature and maintaining your sanity. You need to find that line. It is not an easy task. But once you do, you will be able to express yourself in ways beyond your imagining."

It wasn't just empty wisdom. It was the family trade.

Every member of his family seemed to possess an innate map to this territory. His brother could pick up just about any instrument and vanish into the music. His fingers would blur and find rhythms that didn't exist in written scores. His eyes closed in a bliss that separated him from the world. At that state, he was no longer thinking about the notes; he was the notes, and the notes were him. His mother was a polymath of passion; whether she was painting, dancing, or even cooking! Once, Murugan had nearly cried with overwhelming joy after having a sip of his mother's Dal - A plain lentil soup that was a staple part of the diet in every average mortal's home was transformed into a tear-invoking masterpiece by his mother's hand!

For the longest time, Murugan had felt like the outlier. Although he knew that he was a prodigy in combat, he always felt that he was hitting a metaphorical wall. The wall that kept him from truly elevating his skill. The wall that could only be overcome by losing oneself, without losing oneself.

But the vision showed him otherwise. It showed him that he could do it too! The emotion he had to lose himself to was rage!

So, staring down at the writhing horror in the ocean, Murugan made a decision. Now that he knew of the existence of his "alter ego", he wanted to meet him. He wanted to grow acquainted with him. He wanted to conquer him!

But a minute was all it took for Murugan to realise that it was easier said than done. He just wasn't feeling it!

"Extreme results call for extreme measures," Murugan muttered as he patted his Peacock's neck. The creature responded by raising towards the sky. Once Murugan deemed their altitude as satisfactory, he grabbed his spear and leapt off his mount.

He spread his arms and legs wide to catch the wind and turned his body into a living sail as he plummeted. The air screamed past his ears. It tore at his clothes and whipped his hair into a frenzy. He fell fast and hit his terminal velocity within seconds.

He smashed through the layer of dense, ash-choked clouds. The mist felt cold and wet against his skin and blinded him for a heartbeat before he burst out the other side.

And then, he saw it.

A jagged fork of lightning split the sky, illuminating the world below in a stark, strobe-light flash. The ocean had disappeared under the gaping maw of the monstrosity. It was like a cavern of wet, black flesh lined with thousands of crystalline teeth.

And surrounding it, staring up at the falling god, were the eyes. Hundreds of them. Innumerable, reptilian, and glowing with a hungry, pale yellow light. They tracked his descent with predatory focus.

Murugan felt his heart hammer against his ribs. It beat so hard it hurt. It played a frantic rhythm that echoed the thunder rolling above.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

The ground - or rather, the monster - was rushing up to meet him. Five hundred feet. Three hundred.

His blood felt like it was turning into liquid fire. The adrenaline flooded his system. Every nerve ending in his body lit up. His fight-or-flight response screamed at him to fly, to summon his powers, to stop the fall.

But he didn't. He pushed the fear down, compressing it until it ignited into something else.

An excited, maniacal laugh bubbled up from his chest. It started as a chuckle but quickly tore through his throat as a full-throated roar. He bellowed into the storm with a sound so raw and powerful that it cut through the howling wind and the crashing waves.

"COME ON!"

The distance closed. One hundred feet. He could smell the rot on the creature's breath. He could see the serrations on the teeth.

His vision began to tunnel. The edges of the world turned black, pulsating in time with his heart. The fear vanished, incinerated by a white-hot surge of pure instinct. The conscious mind, the part of him that planned and worried and strategised, couldn't handle the overload. It flickered like a candle in a gale.

And then, right as the jaws opened wide to swallow him whole, Murugan blacked out.

The battle fractured into jagged shards of memory, piercing the void in blinding, staccato pulses of sensation.

Flash.

His fist buried itself in wet, rubbery meat. The impact shuddered through his shoulder, but it felt good.

Darkness.

Flash.

He was standing on a tentacle, riding the thrashing limb like a wild horse. He drove his spear down, and the flesh parted like water.

Darkness.

Flash.

A yellow eye the size of a shield loomed in front of him. He headbutted it. The lens shattered, spraying cold, viscous slime across his face. He heard a raw and guttural scream, and realised his throat was raw. He was the one screaming.

Darkness.

Then, silence.

Murugan woke up choking.

Liquid filled his mouth and nose. It was thick, salty, and tasted like copper. He thrashed. His heavy limbs fought the drag of the fluid and broke the surface with a desperate gasp.

He coughed and spat out the foul taste. He blinked out the sting from his eyes. He felt heavy. His muscles burned with a fatigue that went down to the bone - the kind that usually came after days of marching, not minutes of fighting.

He looked around. He was floating in a soup of purple and black. The smell was overpowering. It was a weird mix of ozone and an open slaughterhouse.

He didn't have the energy to swim. He brought two trembling fingers to his lips and blew a sharp, piercing whistle.

A screech answered him from above.

Wind buffeted the water as his Peacock descended. The great bird skimmed the surface with the precision of a kingfisher. Its massive talons reached down and gripped the back of Murugan's armour.

The bird heaved, and Murugan was hoisted into the air. He dangled limply as they ascended, letting the water drip off of him.

He looked down.

The monster was no more.

What he saw below was a debris field that stretched for a mile. Massive chunks of black flesh bobbed on the waves. Tentacles that blocked out the sky were now severed ribbons of meat drifting in the current. The ocean itself had turned a sickly, dark violet from the creature's blood.

But it was the gold that caught his eye.

Everywhere he looked, golden shafts glinted in the dim light. Hundreds of them. They peppered the floating remains like porcupine quills. His duplicated spears, thousands of them, had turned the monster into a pincushion.

The Peacock banked toward a nearby island. Maybe calling it that was generous. It was plainly a jagged tooth of rock jutting out of the carnage. The bird slowed and dropped Murugan onto the hard stone.

Murugan stumbled. His knees buckled, but he caught himself. He planted the shaft of his spear against the ground and used it as a crutch to stay upright.

He took a deep breath and steadied his shaking hands. He looked out at the horizon, at the floating graveyard he had created.

"Clean up," he muttered.

He lifted his spear just an inch and stamped the butt of the shaft onto the rock.

Clack.

Out at sea, the gold flashed.

BOOM.

The horizon disappeared in a wall of white fire. A chain reaction of explosions tore across the water as the duplicate spears detonated in unison. The remnants of the creature were vaporised instantly. The shock-wave raced toward the island, flattening the waves and hitting Murugan with a blast of warm air that dried his soaked clothes instantly.

He could help but let a faint grin arc across his lips.

But it was only momentary.

Murugan was not satisfied with his performance. He had lost himself far too deeply. The line his father alluded to was a few steps back.

No matter, there was no shortage of monsters in this realm.

The forest was a blur of grey trunks and black leaves.

Two figures tore through the undergrowth. The older one, a boy of maybe twelve, led the way. He gripped a battered round shield in one hand and his sister's wrist in the other. He pulled her along, forcing her to match his desperate pace.

They didn't look where they were going, only behind them.

Something was hunting them. They couldn't see it, but they could hear the heavy, wet thuds of its footsteps crashing through the brush.

The girl, breathless and crying, stumbled. Her foot caught on a thick, gnarled root that jutted out of the ash-covered soil. She went down hard.

"Brother!" she screamed.

The boy skidded to a halt. He spun around and fell to his knees beside her.

"Quick!" he urged, his voice tight with panic.

"I'm stuck!" The girl sobbed. She yanked her leg, but the root had curled around her ankle like a wooden snake.

The boy used his shield to claw at the dirt as he tried to dig her out. The earth was hard and cold. The cast-iron shield hit the dirt but clanged as though it hit something hard and rigid. It just wouldn't budge.

He froze.

The crashing sound had stopped.

Slowly, the boy looked up. He scanned the dense thicket of trees surrounding them. It was silent. Too silent.

Then, a low growl started. It didn't come from one direction; it seemed to vibrate from the air itself. It was an inhuman, rattling sound that shook the leaves on the trees.

The girl stopped crying. She went rigid. A dark stain spread across the front of her dress as fear robbed her of all control.

The boy grabbed his shield. And without thinking, he moved.

He leapt in front of his sister and raised the shield just as the trees in front of them exploded.

A nightmare burst into the clearing. It looked like a lizard, but it stood on two legs and towered over them. Its skin was pale and sickly, covered in sores.

It lunged.

Jaws filled with serrated fangs clamped down on the shield.

The impact lifted the boy off his feet. He was whipped into the air and dangled helplessly as the creature shook its head. He heard the metal of the shield cry with fatigue. The leather straps bit into his forearm.

"Let go!" his mind screamed.

He fumbled with the straps, and the buckle snapped open.

He dropped to the ground and hit the dirt with a heavy thud.

Above him, the creature bit down. The sturdy cast-iron of the shield crumbled like a dry biscuit. The beast spat the splinters out and threw its head back, letting out a deafening roar of triumph.

ROAAAAAR!

The sound echoed through the forest and shook the remaining leaves from the branches.

But as the echo faded, another sound answered it.

ROAAAAAAAR!

The boy blinked. The creature flinched.

It felt like an echo but didn't sound like it. In fact, it was a response - a challenge. It was louder, angrier, and distinctly human.

The creature looked confused. It tilted its massive head. Its yellow eyes scanned the canopy. The boy and girl looked up too.

A black dot appeared in the grey sky. It grew larger. Fast.

It was a man. He was falling feet first, like a thrown javelin.

He slammed into the creature.

There was a sickening crunch as the man's heels drove into the beast's skull. The monster's head snapped down, burying its snout in the dirt. The impact sent a shock-wave through the ground that knocked the boy onto his back again.

Dust and ash billowed up.

The man stood up from the crater he had just made on the creature's head. He didn't look at the kids. He threw his head back and bellowed again - a sound of pure, unadulterated rage.

Although dazed and bleeding after the sucker punch of an attack, the creature tried to rise. It then snapped its jaws at the intruder.

The man didn't even bother to dodge. He stepped into the bite. He grabbed the creature's upper and lower jaws with his bare hands.

Muscles bulged under his skin. Veins popped on his forehead. With a roar that drowned out the breaking of bone, he ripped the jaws apart.

The creature collapsed like a detached marionette.

The man didn't stop. He pounced on the twitching body. He was a blur of violence as he hacked and tore with a savagery that made the monster look tame.

The boy grabbed his sister. He hauled her to her feet. The root, loosened by the tremor of the impact, finally gave way.

They didn't look back. They ran. They ran until their lungs burned and their legs felt like lead. They ran from the monster that hunted them, and they ran from the man who had saved them.

They survived. And they had a story that no one would ever believe.

This time, Murugan deemed the performance to be far better.

He felt himself in control for over three-quarters of the length of that confrontation.

He remembered that there were two members in the audience as well and turned in their direction. But they weren't there any more.

He mentally brought down his score for losing track of his environment. He would have to keep better track of it in the future.

As he whistled for his Peacock, his feet collided against an object on the ground. He looked down and saw the mangled cast-iron shield.

"The shield is the first weapon every Spartan learns," he said involuntarily, mimicking his Guru's tone of voice. He let out a chuckle and picked up the "weapon".

He gazed at it for a while, and his mind started to churn with an idea.

"Huh," he evoked as he arrived at a conclusion. "This could work."

juniorsundar · Apr 16, 2026

Volume 1 is finished in my backlogged chapters. I am now beginning Volume 2. However, this may take time and there may be delays in the release of the upcoming chapters.

To that end, I am thinking of releasing access to the drafts of the upcoming chapters. It will be raw and full of grammatic errors, but for those interested in getting a sneak peek, you will have the option to do so. Keep an eye here for updates on this.

In many ways, combat was like dancing. Sure, your partner was now your opponent, but that was often the only difference. Both were expressions of emotion through physicality. While dance allowed for a wide spectrum of feelings, battle was almost always steeped in rage. In particular, just like dance, there was a specific "beat" to a fight: a prelude, rising action, a climax, and a denouement.

By that logic, Kratos was a veteran "dancer." A connoisseur, even. He had participated in every form of the art imaginable. So he was certain that when the "prelude" dragged on past its natural limit, the ten-headed Rakshasa was not here to fight him.

Well, it wasn't just the delayed tempo, but the setting itself. Instead of a prison cell - or worse - he was being housed in a rather decadent suite. And the Rakshasa was unarmed. That is, if one could overlook the horrific nails and dagger-like canines jutting from his crimson lips.

The monster let out a gust of air through his mouth. It sounded like an aggressive snort, but Kratos could sense that it was a weary sigh. It approached the large portrait hanging above the bed and ran its fingers over the frame.

"His name was Meghanad," it spoke sorrowfully. "He was bright. Strong! He was... my son."

"For someone who's lost his son, this one is oddly nonchalant when facing his son's murderer," Brahma commented from Kratos' hip.

At that moment, the door opened once again, and an imp-like creature skittered in, balancing a gold tray above its head. It turned past the bed and stopped in front of Kratos. Looking down, Kratos noticed a large brass cup atop the tray filled with an aromatic liquid that was a rich golden shade.

Seeing as the creature hadn't moved, Kratos realised that it intended for him to drink it. He lifted the cup, and on cue, the creature skittered out of the room, closing the door behind it.

Kratos took a whiff of the liquid. It carried a pleasant scent of ginger and other aromatic spices. It was warm to the touch. Without thought, he brought it to his lips and slowly sipped it. The liquid danced on his taste buds and activated a myriad of sensors that he didn't even know existed. It then gently caressed his throat as it slid down, coating every nook and cranny of his oesophagus with a soothing, thin film.

"It isn't nonchalance, Your Excellence," the Rakshasa expressed. The voice came from a single head that turned in their direction; the rest remained affixed at the portrait of the man. "I feel great sorrow and immeasurable rage. But it does me little good to express it. When-" all heads turned to face them, "-I knew of the nature of his demise at the time of his birth itself."

Kratos squinted his eyes as he tried to comprehend the Rakshasa's statement, when Brahma demystified it immediately. "His Astrological charts?"

All ten heads nodded solemnly.

"You believe in that nonsense?" Kratos spat in disgust. "One could get a more accurate reading of one's destiny from a blind fool."

"Do not dismiss the craft so plainly, Kratos," Brahma responded. "It gives the mundane a peek into the machinations of the universe. Not even I am exempt from the universe's whims."

"But you are the one who created all of this," Kratos argued, as he found the head's statement contradictory.

"It is a complex scenario to unwrap. You could say that the universe, as a concept, was created by a being far more powerful than me. My purpose was to simply populate it with the abstract and concrete 'things' that you see around you," Brahma explained.

"My eldest's charts foretold that he wouldn't inherit the Empire that I built. In fact, none of my children had the fortune of inheriting my Empire. And my own charts said that I would outlive my children," the Rakshasa continued. "I could not let that happen. I did everything within my power to alleviate it. And believe me when I say that I truly exhausted every. Possible. Avenue. But evidently, nothing changed."

The Rakshasa finally turned away from the portrait. He moved toward a heavy wooden table in the centre of the suite. His movements were fluid, lacking the jerky aggression one might expect from a creature of his size. He rested his hands on the table and leaned forward. The ten heads creating a disturbing fan of expressions - some mournful, others blank.

"It is like watching a lineup of stacked dominoes," he said. "I saw the sequence clearly. I saw the collapse. So, I reached out to try to remove a single tile. I thought if I took that piece away, the momentum would die, and the line would stand."

All his heads laughed together, forming a sort of natural echo and reverberation.

"But the line corrected itself. The momentum simply bridged the gap. The tile I tried to save fell all the same. I spent a lifetime, sacrificed everything to cheat the stars. Only to end up where I knew I would be from the very beginning."

Kratos set the cup down on a nearby side table with a heavy thud. "In that way, if I am just the force that knocked over your domino, why allow me to live?"

"I do feel rage," the monster confessed. His voice grew lower as he continued, "When I heard of my son's death. When I saw his quartered body. I felt unimaginable rage. I felt the urge to tear his executioner limb from limb and feed him his own appendages before ending his life once and for all."

"But then reality struck, and I was sobered immediately. I saw who his executioner was, and realised that in front of the momentum of the universe I am nothing but an ant," he concluded. "Because, in order to quell my invincible son, the universe sent an immortal incarnate of war."

Kratos' brows furrowed. He looked at the monster, who was now looking back at him. All ten of his heads revealed a tranquil smile.

"You know who I am," Kratos probed.

"We have met before," the monster suggested. "Maybe a more familiar form would spark your memories."

As he said this, the monster stood up. A translucent mist started to bubble out of his body, covering him completely. The mist turned more and more opaque as seconds passed before it dispersed within a split second.

Kratos had to lower his head because the large creature had disappeared, and in its place stood a human man.

The man returned a smile, or at least that was what the faint twitching of his exposed cheek sinews implied.

"Faceless!" Brahma exclaimed first.

"That is I, Your Excellence," he responded. "Though now I have been awarded a name by the masses. Ravana. That is what they call me."

The trio conversed about the time following Ravana's departure from Kailasha. Eventually, it veered in a direction so as to address the elephant in the room.

"What happened to you, kid?" Brahma asked. One of the (literal) impish attendants of the palace carefully placed a spoon filled with the sweet tea against the head's lips and allowed him to sip it slowly. "You were human when you left. But your 'scent' now is anything but."

"Ambition," Ravana said as he took a sip of his tea. "And a ceiling that I could not break with human hands."

"I had reached the absolute zenith of what a mortal could achieve. I had wealth, I had knowledge, I had strength. But when I looked up, I saw the Devas looking down. I saw Sages transcending reality."

"Then why not become a Sage?" Brahma asked. "You had the intellect for it."

Ravana revealed a wry smile; at least his facial muscles twitched that way. "Sagehood requires subtraction. To rise, a Sage must cast off his desires, his anger, and his connections. He must become hollow to be filled with the divine. That was not my vision. I did not want to be less, I wanted to be more."

He took another sip of his drink as his eyes darkened.

"I looked at my sons, at my people. If I became a Sage, I would have to abandon them to the whims of the gods. I would have to leave my empire defenceless against the 'momentum' of this petty universe." He slammed the cup down. "I refused. I needed power that did not require me to give up who I was. I needed a power that fed on desire, not one that starved it."

"So you chose the other path," Kratos realised.

"I paved my own," Ravana corrected. "Or at least I thought I did. You see, a Rakshasa is both born and made. They are a manifestation of strong, negative emotions. These emotions can coalesce in a location and form a Rakshasa. And then a Rakshasa can give birth to more of their kind. But if these emotions are contained within a sentient creature, they can trigger an evolution."

"You engineered your own corruption," Brahma noted, his voice tinged with a mix of horror and scientific fascination.

Ravana added, "But I realised that limiting it to my physical vessel wasn't enough. The power embodied by a Rakshasa is proportional to the concentration and volume of the emotion that triggers their evolution. And so, I extended the vessel to contain these emotions from myself to my Empire." Ravana spread his hands. "Ultimately, it changed me. It broke the limits of my human form. My mind expanded, splitting into ten to process the influx of raw knowledge. My body grew to house the strength I demanded."

"And your people?" Kratos asked. He remembered the imp-like creature and the guards outside.

"My Empire was my vessel," Ravana said simply. "When the head changes, the body follows. The ritual did not affect just me; it also turned my subjects - the ones with the same spectrum of emotions as mine. My transformation brought out their own and pushed them beyond humanity."

"It was unintentional, but a welcome outcome. Because it ultimately sparked an evolution of my Empire that placed it toe-to-toe with the kingdom of Svarga itself. I was finally in a position to fight against my assigned destiny. And yet," he glanced back at the portrait of his son, "here we are."

A morose silence pervaded the air after Ravana's confession.

Ravana added, "If I could go back in time and do things differently, I would. But I fear that I would end up in this position again."

"To fight against the hand that was dealt to you, you must be ready to abandon everything that you own," Kratos said in a low voice. "That is the only way."

"Fate is like gangrene," Kratos added. "You do not treat it. You cut it off."

"What should I have done, my Lord?" Ravana asked as he leaned closer, letting his composure crack slightly. "Is there no way to save my Empire without destroying the foundation?"

"What exactly is troubling you right now? The way I see it, your Empire seems pretty prosperous!" Brahma interjected with confusion.

Ravana pursed his non-existent lips and stood up. The weary sadness in his eyes shifted into something more desperate. "I will show you the powder keg."

Ravana led them out of the suite and through a series of winding, gold-plated corridors. They eventually arrived at a wide terrace that overlooked a lush, sunken garden. It was a stark contrast to the sharp, aggressive architecture of the palace. Here, nature had been allowed to breathe.

"There," Ravana pointed.

Kratos followed his gaze. In the distance, beneath the shade of an Ashoka tree, a woman sat. She was clad in simple, unadorned robes, collecting fallen fruit into a basket. She was far away, barely a speck against the greenery, yet the moment Kratos focused on her, the air in his lungs seemed to thicken.

A scent hit him. It wasn't perfume or flowers. It was a raw, visceral pull that bypassed his logic and tugged directly at the base of his skull. It felt like the call of a Siren, but where a Siren promised pleasure to mask death, this promised fulfilment. It was a gravity that demanded he step off the ledge and fall toward her.

Kratos gripped the stone railing. His knuckles turned white as he anchored himself against the sensation. He had felt mind control before. But this was subtle, like water seeping into stone.

He looked at Ravana. The human guise was failing. The mist flickered and tore apart, revealing the ten-headed monstrosity beneath. All ten faces were twisted in a grotesque mixture of adoration and agony, staring fixedly at the woman in the garden. He couldn't maintain the illusion; the sheer intensity of his emotion was tearing his control to shreds.

"Fascinating," Brahma murmured, seemingly unaffected. "I haven't seen a phenomenon like this in a while."

"She is a witch?" Kratos growled, forcing his eyes away from the woman to break the connection.

"Not a witch," Brahma corrected. His eyes analysed the distortion in the air around the garden. "In this world, Kratos, there are people who are naturally charismatic. They possess a 'Reality Distortion Field' of sorts. They don't just exist in a room; they warp the atmosphere of the room to centre around them."

Brahma gestured with his nose toward the woman.

"If she were a man, that charisma would compel armies to march into hell for him. She would command an Empire that would rival Ravana's own." Brahma paused. "But she was born a woman, and one with no martial capability to channel that power. So the universe corrected itself. The field warped. It transformed that command into desire."

"So you took the object of desire of someone powerful, it seems," Brahma commented offhandedly.

"You are correct in your evaluation, Your Excellence," Ravana responded. "This woman does evoke a field of that sort. I only realised it after I had kidnapped her and brought her to my Empire. And do you know something interesting, Your Excellence? The only way to suppress one Reality Distortion Field is with another. Evidently, this woman's husband was another such individual. And now, he has brought an army of Vanaras and creatures of every shape and size to my shores."

"Once again, the universe corrected its course and brought me to my inevitable conclusion," Ravana lamented. "Now, all I can do is fight pointlessly to my eventual demise. I can at least rest easy knowing that my Empire won't fall completely. The man has influenced my younger brother. I am certain that once he conquers these lands, he will place my brother in my stead, at least as a figurehead."

Once again, there was a long pause. The screams of the birds in the garden seemed to fade, leaving only the heavy breathing of the monster.

Suddenly, Ravana clapped his hands together. The sound was sharp, like a thunderclap in the small space. His expression had hardened. The melancholy was gone, replaced by cold resolve.

"Cut off the gangrenous limb..." he muttered.

He looked up at Kratos. "It has gone too far to save the body. But I refuse to let the mind perish entirely."

Without warning, Ravana reached up. His massive hand wrapped around the throat of his far-left head. The head's eyes widened in confusion, then terror. Ravana didn't hesitate. He pulled.

It was a brutal, wet tearing of sinew and muscle. A sickening crunch echoed as the spine gave way, followed by a dark fountain of blood that splattered across the golden terrace floor. The other eight heads screamed in unison, in a chorus of agony, but the main head remained silent, with its teeth gritted and focused entirely on the task.

He held the severed, bleeding head up. It was twitching and gasping for air that no longer reached it. Ravana brought it close to his central face. He began to whisper. The words were unintelligible, but reverberated silently nonetheless.

As he whispered, the flesh of the severed head began to grey. The panicked eyes solidified into quartz. The blood turned to dust. In moments, the gruesome trophy became a pristine statue of stone.

He held it out to Kratos.

"Please take this head with you, Lord Kratos," Ravana said in a ragged but steady voice. "As thanks for teaching me, I cannot return a proper Dakshina. I hope that in time, this gift will give you an apt Dakshina."

Kratos eyed the stone object. It was heavy with magic and secrets. He looked from the head back to the monster. Slowly, he reached out and took it. He fastened it to his belt, right beside Brahma's head.

At that moment, the heavy doors burst open. One of the impish servants rushed onto the terrace with its limbs flailing in a haphazard, panicked dance.

Ravana listened to the creature's unintelligible drivel, and his expression hardened to a silent rage.

"It seems we have unwelcome guests looking for you, Lord Kratos," Ravana expressed. He then gestured for Kratos to follow him as he left the terrace overlooking the garden.

Ram stood on the jagged outcropping and watched the water churn below. Minutes stretched into an uncomfortable silence, broken only by the wind whistling through the mountain pass. Finally, the surface broke.

Maruti shot out of the ocean and landed heavily beside Ram. Water streamed from his fur and pooled on the rock. He shook his head, spraying droplets everywhere, and looked at Ram with a sombre expression.

"Nothing," Maruti reported. "The curren' is strong, but I searched deep. There is no body. Neither of Meghanad nor the Traveller."

Ram hummed thoughtfully. He looked toward the south, where the dark silhouette of Lanka marred the horizon. "Then the probability shifts. The absence of evidence is evidence in itself."

"He's survived," Maruti concluded.

"I anticipate a thirty per cent chance that the man is still alive," Ram affirmed aloud. "If he does possess a sort of functional immortality, his survival isn't an impossibility."

Ram walked to the edge of the cliff. He clasped his hands behind his back. "However, if he is alive, he is in the heart of the enemy's stronghold. Ravana will not relinquish such a prisoner easily. Especially not the one who killed his son."

"Then we go get him," Maruti said, stepping forward. "I promised I would return for him."

"And we shall honour that promise," Ram agreed. He turned to the Vanara. "Furthermore, if Ravana refuses to hand him over, we will simply extract him alongside my wife when the war concludes."

Maruti offered his back, and Ram climbed on. "You sound cert'n of victory now, my Lord."

"Ravana is strong," Ram said as Maruti launched them into the air. The ground fell away, replaced by the dizzying blur of the ocean. "But he's lost the most powerful arrow in his quiver. Meghanad was the greatest thorn in our side. He was as cunning and powerful as his father. If both he and Ravana had descended onto the battlefield, we would be hard-pressed for a victory. But with him removed, victory is a straight path."

Maruti accelerated. The wind roared in their ears and tore at Ram's clothes, but he remained immovable. They pierced the cloud layer and left the whitecaps of the ocean far below.

"Lanka ahead!" Maruti shouted over the gale.

The Golden City glittered in the sunlight. It was a jewel of architecture, defiant and proud. But as they crossed the unseen threshold of its airspace, the city's defences reacted.

Dark shapes detached themselves from the towers. At first, they looked like a flock of birds, but they grew rapidly in size. Wings of leather and skin beat against the air. Shrieks echoed and pierced the wind.

"Patrol!" Maruti warned. He banked hard to the left and dodged a spear of magical energy that sizzled past them.

A horde of Rakshasas began to circle them. They were a motley nightmare - some with faces of boars, others with the wings of bats. They circled them and cut off their escape routes.

"They intend to swarm us," Ram noted calmly. He reached over his shoulder and unslung his bow. "Keep your course steady, Maruti. I will clear the path."

Ram nocked an arrow and pulled the string back to his ear. The wood groaned under the tension. But right as he was about to release, the monsters froze. In unison, their heads twitched in one direction behind them, and the swarm siphoned back to the tower they spawned from.

Ram lowered his bow and followed their gaze. Far below, on a high terrace, stood a lone figure. Even at this distance, the aura of authority was unmistakable. Ravana stood with his arms folded behind his back. His gaze was locked firmly onto Ram and Maruti.

He didn't attack. He didn't shout. He merely watched. It was evident that he was giving them an invitation to approach.

Ram tapped Maruti's shoulder. "He waits for us. Go."

Maruti hesitated for a second, wary of a trap, but he obeyed. He angled his descent and glided toward the terrace.

As they drew closer, the details of the infamous Rakshasa King became clear. He wore fine silks that fluttered in the wind, and his jewellery caught the light with every subtle movement. But Ram's eyes were drawn to something jarring.

Ravana was missing a head.

Where there should have been ten, there were only nine. A jagged, freshly-formed scar marred the space where a head used to be. Ram narrowed his eyes. Was it an illusion? A coincidence? Or was there a greater meaning to it?

Maruti landed on the terrace with a soft thud. Ram slid off his back and straightened his robes, meeting Ravana's nine-faced gaze.

"Not a particularly cordial welcome for envoys," Ram commented as he gestured to the retreating patrol.

"I would be a fool to welcome that monkey back here after what he did the last time," Ravana's primary head snorted derisively. "Remedying the damage he caused nearly drained our coffers."

"'twasn't my fault!" Maruti defended with a shrill shriek. "You set my tail on fire!"

"What do you want?" Ravana interjected, ignoring the Vanara's outburst.

Ram stepped forward. He kept his posture open and non-threatening. "My condolences for your loss."

The words were sincere. Ram knew the pain of loss, and he held no joy in the death of a father's son, even if that son was an enemy.

Ravana's eyes twitched slightly. The sorrow was there, buried deep beneath layers of pride and rage.

"What. Do. You. Want?" Ravana repeated with his voice dropping an octave.

"We came to pick up a guest who inadvertently entered our conflict," Ram explained. "He is merely a bystander-"

"A bystander kills my son, and you wish that I just return him to you?" Ravana cut in. He took a step forward, looming over them. "You think me so generous?"

"Be reasonable," Ram pleaded. "It was in self-defence. Your son was the one who instigated the conflict. He acted dishonourably by fighting outside of our agreed-upon times. The rules of engagement-"

"I never agreed upon anything," Ravana shrugged. "All is fair in war. I should just kill you right now and be done with it."

The threat hung in the air. A tense silence followed. But Ram didn't reach for his bow. He looked into Ravana's eyes and saw... nothing. No killing intent. No preparation for a strike. It was an empty threat.

"We are willing to concede-" Ram started, prepared to offer terms for the release of the Traveller.

Ravana raised his hand and cut him off.

"Your so-called bystander is not my prisoner," he said flatly. "He is free to leave as he wishes."

Ram stopped. His brows quirked inadvertently. For the first time, the stoic mask slipped, revealing genuine confusion. Something wasn't right. By Ravana's own words, a stranger kills his son, but isn't treated as a prisoner, or worse?

On queue, an ashen figure matching Maruti's description of the Traveller stepped out onto the terrace.

"Traveller! Knowledgeable Head!" Maruti exclaimed with an enthusiastic screech. The figure in question responded with a low growl. Ram, too, bowed as a greeting and received a growl of acknowledgement.

"I believe our guest is lacking his weapon," Ram stated, noticing the lack of the axe Maruti was talking about.

"Stop fishing for information," Ravana countered. He then turned to the ashen man and gave an unusually low bow. Ram did not think that the proud Rakshasa King was even capable of lowering his heads below his shoulders.

"I would like to say, 'till we meet again'," Ravana said with a bitter smile, "But I don't know if our paths will cross again the same way, My Lord."

This statement was also received with a growl of acknowledgement. Ram understood immediately that the Traveller was a man of very few words.

Maruti quickly approached the man and gestured for him to climb onto his back, which the man readily obliged.

"We shall meet again on the battlefield, Your Majesty," Ram said to Ravana.

"Sure," the Rakshasa responded offhandedly. His attention was still on the ashen man.

Maruti hovered slowly and grabbed Ram by his torso. Then, with a controlled ascent, they rose up towards the skies.

Ram looked back. He watched the figure of the Rakshasa King shrink until it was nothing more than a dark speck against the gold. Then, the clouds rolled in.

The return journey was silent. Ram was lost in thought as he dissected the anomaly he had just witnessed. Maruti focused on speed; he was eager to put distance between them and the enemy capital.

A while later, they descended rapidly. The cool mountain air was replaced by the humid, salty breeze of the coast. Maruti flared his limbs to break their momentum and landed on the sandy outskirts of the encampment. Sand sprayed outward in a wide arc.

Ram slid off the Vanara's grasp and smoothed the creases of his robe. The ashen man followed suit, landing with a heaviness that shook the ground beneath them.

The camp was buzzing. Vanaras paused their sparring and their chores. They stared with wide, curious eyes at the towering stranger who had returned with their Prince and General.

The man didn't acknowledge them. He turned to look north, towards the faint outline of the land bridge.

"I go now," he grunted towards Maruti.

He took a step forward, but Ram moved faster. He stepped into the man's path and raised a hand to pause

"Wait," Ram said gently.

The man stopped. He looked down at the Prince, his brow furrowing in irritation. "I have no business here."

"You saved our General," Ram countered while gesturing to Maruti, who was busy shaking the remaining water from his fur. "You fought our enemy. You are not a stranger here, but a guest."

"I do not require a host," Kratos replied. "I only require a path back"

"And you shall have it," Ram assured him. "But the sun is high, and the journey ahead is long. It is not the way of my people to let a guest depart with an empty stomach. Once that is done, Maruti will personally take you back to your destination."

The Vanara nodded eagerly from the side.

"It is simple tea," Ram pressed, noticing the man's adamant stance. His voice remained unwavering in its politeness. "A small meal, and a moment to wash the salt from your skin."

The ashen man stared at Ram and looked at the Vanara. Ram could see that a quick calculation had just transpired internally. The man then let out a sharp breath through his nose.

"Tea," he conceded. "Briefly."

Ram smiled and agreed, "Briefly," he turned and gestured towards his tent and added, "Please, follow me."

Hyperionthetitan · Apr 16, 2026

Huh.....the max charm field is a bit unexpected. But yeah that would explained why ravanna is such unhinged guy in the myth

juniorsundar · Apr 16, 2026

Hyperionthetitan said:
Huh.....the max charm field is a bit unexpected. But yeah that would explained why ravanna is such unhinged guy in the myth

I was looking through the key points of Ramayana a few times and realized that the kidnapping of Sita is what triggers the crucial confrontation between Ram and Ravana. Sita is also an incarnation of Laxmi. So some interpretations suggest that Sita was also incarnated with the express purpose of crossing the paths of Ram and Ravana.

However a lot of interpretations of Ravana show him as a level headed and knowledgeable figure. I mean to build up a civilisation like Lanka you would need to be a pretty capable and centred ruler. Plus he is a Rakshasa which is already a debuff towards his mental stability. It didn't make much sense to me personally for a strong willed character like that to devolve into abduction just by looking at Sita. There had to be something deeper at play.

Now looking at the way Ram just convinced one of the largest kingdoms (the vanaras) to align with him in his long drawn Conquest against Lanka, I also figured that he must have some max charisma to achieve that. I know there were some favours exchanged between the Vanara ruler and Ram, but that personally didn't feel like enough of a motivation to pledge an entire population in my opinion.

So putting all these factors together. I created the Reality Distortion Field theory. That Sita had to have a type of max charisma/charm nature that was strong enough to even affect a strong willed Ravana.

Hyperionthetitan · Apr 16, 2026

juniorsundar said:
I was looking through the key points of Ramayana a few times and realized that the kidnapping of Sita is what triggers the crucial confrontation between Ram and Ravana. Sita is also an incarnation of Laxmi. So some interpretations suggest that Sita was also incarnated with the express purpose of crossing the paths of Ram and Ravana.

However a lot of interpretations of Ravana show him as a level headed and knowledgeable figure. I mean to build up a civilisation like Lanka you would need to be a pretty capable and centred ruler. Plus he is a Rakshasa which is already a debuff towards his mental stability. It didn't make much sense to me personally for a strong willed character like that to devolve into abduction just by looking at Sita. There had to be something deeper at play.

Now looking at the way Ram just convinced one of the largest kingdoms (the vanaras) to align with him in his long drawn Conquest against Lanka, I also figured that he must have some max charisma to achieve that. I know there were some favours exchanged between the Vanara ruler and Ram, but that personally didn't feel like enough of a motivation to pledge an entire population in my opinion.

So putting all these factors together. I created the Reality Distortion Field theory. That Sita had to have a type of max charisma/charm nature that was strong enough to even affect a strong willed Ravana.

Thats why in my country bastardised version , the whole thing is a bet from ravana past life (vishnu grant his wish on a bet that he can beat him even as a human and ravana as a great rakshasa king with absurd amount of power ) ,the Gods arrange eveything else like had indra himself conjured the whole kiskindha for his son (mahabrali of this version who he sired for this bet as well) to rule/ to prepared an army for this exact battle and had ravanna born into rakhasa prince of Lanka royal family and had him having a habit of being a zeus (bro fuck everything from elephant to fish) to explain the kidnapping .

Shit is weird

juniorsundar · Apr 16, 2026

Hyperionthetitan said:
Thats why in my country bastardised version , the whole thing is a bet from ravana past life (vishnu grant his wish on a bet that he can beat him even as a human and ravana as a great rakshasa king with absurd amount of power ) ,the Gods arrange eveything else like had indra himself conjured the whole kiskindha for his son (mahabrali of this version who he sired for this bet as well) to rule/ to prepared an army for this exact battle and had ravanna born into rakhasa prince of Lanka royal family and had him having a habit of being a zeus (bro fuck everything from elephant to fish) to explain the kidnapping .

Shit is weird

You're making me more and more interested in learning more about this particular interpretation of Ramayana. Which country is this from? Because ive read about the Thai version but its a bit different.

Hyperionthetitan · Apr 16, 2026

juniorsundar said:
You're making me more and more interested in learning more about this particular interpretation of Ramayana. Which country is this from? Because ive read about the Thai version but its a bit different.

Its a thai version .

Pretty sure i recount it straight , whats the difference from what you read?

juniorsundar · Apr 16, 2026

Hyperionthetitan said:
Its a thai version .

Pretty sure i recount it straight , whats the difference from what you read?

I actually didn't know that the Thai had a version of Ramayana until I went there and visited Ayuthaya. I talked a little with our guide and she told me some differences between the Indian version and Thai version.

For one Sita is apparently Ravana's daughter in the Thai Version. She is prophesied to bring destruction to his kingdom so he sets her afloat on a lotus leaf. When he abducts her he doesn't know she is his daughter. And we'll ultimately upon bringing her back it results in his kingdoms destruction.

Hyperionthetitan · Apr 16, 2026

juniorsundar said:
I actually didn't know that the Thai had a version of Ramayana until I went there and visited Ayuthaya. I talked a little with our guide and she told me some differences between the Indian version and Thai version.

For one Sita is apparently Ravana's daughter in the Thai Version. She is prophesied to bring destruction to his kingdom so he sets her afloat on a lotus leaf. When he abducts her he doesn't know she is his daughter. And we'll ultimately upon bringing her back it results in his kingdoms destruction.

Yeah , i just dont wanna bring up incest angle(he cant rape her like others because one of the hermit curse him from his previous rape which is his niece)

her literal first sound outta the womb is " burn rav " three times, so yeah shit is omnious as fuck to anyone who witness it.

juniorsundar · Apr 26, 2026

The planning for Volume 2 is taking a bit more effort than anticipated. If I wait for completing a chapter of V2 before releasing one from V1 I don't think you guys will be able to finish V1 within the next 3 months.

So Im going to release 1 chapter till end of V1 weekly. So that we can close out the V1 story. Anticipate a release every Sunday.

juniorsundar · Apr 26, 2026

Ganesh opened his eyes and sat up immediately. His expression didn't change.

Today was the day.

Years of groundwork and planning were about to culminate right now.

He walked to his desk and picked up the roll of parchment. He gave the music score a final look. Every note was intentional, and every beat was measured, for there was no room for error. The irony was that it could not be rehearsed or mechanical; it had to sound improvised and impromptu. Usually, the music leads a performance. Ganesh hoped to instigate a very particular kind of performance, but it had to occur organically. The performers couldn't feel as though they were being led on a leash.

He scanned the final measure in silence.

Ganesh rolled the parchment tight. He didn't need to read it again. The music was already etched into his mind. The story had already played out in his dreams.

He lifted his Veena from its stand and felt the familiar weight settle against his hands. He waved his palms, and the Mridangam, Ghatam, and Tanpura floated behind him. He took a deep breath and stepped out into the hallway.

The garden waited.

Ganesh carried his instruments into the garden and found a spot in the shade. The afternoon sun beat down on the humble grounds, illuminating Parvathy as she moved between the rows of herbs and flowers with her hands coated in soil.

He settled cross-legged on the grass. He balanced the large Veena across his lap and rested the neck against his shoulder. He plucked the first string.

The note rang out sharply. Parvathy didn't look up from her work, but her head tilted slightly. Ganesh followed the sharp note with a quick arohanam and avarohanam, running up and down the scale.

Parvathy paused. She wiped a stray hair from her forehead with her wrist and made a few quick gestures with her muddy fingers.

'Too bright. Lower.'

Ganesh nodded. He adjusted his grip and repeated the scale with a flattened note. This time, Parvathy gave a short, satisfied nod and went back to inspecting the roots of a jasmine shrub.

Ganesh began to play in earnest. He started slow, letting the melody drift. He watched his mother work and let his fingers mimic her rhythm. When she smoothed the soil, the music flowed like water. Then, she froze. She pinched a leaf on the tulsi plant and plucked a fat caterpillar from the stem. Ganesh plucked a staccato - surprised high note.

A moment later, the family cat rolled enthusiastically into a pile of fresh dirt. Parvathy sighed, and her shoulders slumped. Ganesh plucked a sliding, discordant twang that perfectly mirrored her frustration.

The music became a shadow to her movements. It ebbed and flowed with the mundane chores of the garden.

Eventually, Parvathy stood up. She dusted off her hands and picked up a basket of freshly harvested flowers to head inside. As she walked away, Ganesh softened the volume and let the melody fade into a decrescendo. She stopped walking. The music halted instantly.

She turned and looked at him. Ganesh struck a single, playful note. Parvathy raised an eyebrow.

Ganesh smiled. After a second, she matched it.

She set the basket down on the grass. With practised ease, she tucked the pleats of her sari tighter into her waist and lowered herself into the arai mandalam - the half-seated stance.

Ganesh set the Veena aside and pulled the heavy Mridangam onto his lap. The air behind him shimmered, and two spectral arms sprouted from his back. They reached out and grabbed the long-necked Tanpura. He strummed it to create a flat, monotonous drone that underpinned the silence.

Mother and son locked eyes.

Ganesh slapped the leather face of the drum.

They began.

Ganesh's fingers danced over the percussion skins, and Parvathy moved in perfect collaboration. It was a pure display of Nritta - an abstract dance. It was a display of rhythm and skill, and not an expression of a story or narrative. Ganesh cycled through complex time signatures while Parvathy matched him with precise footwork, and the bells on her anklet jingled in time with his strikes.

As the tempo climbed, the garden gate creaked open. The pleasant chime announced Shiva's arrival.

He stepped in and froze. He watched his wife, currently lost in the movement, with a soft and enamoured smile. Ganesh moved to dampen the sound, but Shiva quickly waved a hand.

'Don't stop.'

Ganesh suppressed a smirk. He manifested another pair of arms from his sides. These hands grabbed the Ghatam, the clay pot drum, and pressed the mouth of it against his belly.

The "flavour" of the sounds changed. The deep, resounding bass of the Mridangam was now interlaced with the sharp, metallic twangs of the clay pot. Parvathy responded immediately and switched her style from fluid grace to sharp, forceful strikes against the earth.

From the corner of his eye, Ganesh saw Shiva's foot tapping against the gravel. The smile on his father's face was obvious now. Ganesh shifted the rhythm again and turned the aggressive beat into something more inviting. He laid down a sequence of introductory beats like a clear opening for a third participant.

Shiva didn't hesitate. He took four large, in-rhythm strides and entered the performance, and assumed a stance right beside his wife.

Parvathy glanced to her side. The joy on her face evaporated and was replaced with a careful neutrality. She straightened her legs and exited her stance. She nodded once to her husband and bent down to retrieve her flower basket.

Shiva's expression fell.

Ganesh didn't let the silence settle. He rolled his fingers across the drumheads, swelling the volume from a whisper to a booming command. The sound seemed to steel Shiva's resolve. The sadness in his eyes hardened into determination.

As Parvathy turned to leave, Shiva danced into her path and blocked her way.

Parvathy didn't speak. She bowed her head and side-stepped to the left. Shiva mirrored the move and cut her off again. She tried to feign to the right, but Shiva split his form. Suddenly, there were ten of him, forming a wall of movement around her.

Ganesh took a breath and split his own form. Now, multiple versions of himself sat in the garden. Their rhythms overlapped with impossible perfection and created an immense sound.

Parvathy looked around at the blockade of her husbands, and an irritated scowl twisted her brow. She let out a sharp exhale and fractured her own form, creating a copy for every Shiva that stood in her way.

For a heartbeat, the garden was still.

Then, every version of Ganesh struck their drums in unison.

The garden erupted into motion. It was an impromptu, chaotic, yet precisely choreographed sequence. Ten different, distinct yet cohesive rhythms resonated at once. The parents danced out a game of evasion and pursuit. Their feet kicked up dust as the music drove them harder.

When the intensity reached its peak, Ganesh began to de-escalate. He dissolved one of his copies into mist. Taking the cue, one pair of parents faded away. The pattern continued, and the crowd thinned out beat by beat, until only the original three remained in the center of the garden.

Ganesh transitioned the beat. He dropped the sharp percussion of the Ghatam. His spectral arms reached for the Veena again and overlaid a melody on top of the rhythm. The performance shifted from a display of technical prowess to an intimate conversation.

Shiva looked deep into his wife's eyes. She met his gaze, but only for a second. A faint shimmer of hope flickered across her face, but old disappointment drowned it out just as quickly. She looked away.

Shiva reached out. He took her chin in his hand and gently lifted her face until she had no choice but to look at him.

'Wife,' his eyes seemed to say.

Parvathy stared back. Her expression remained blank.

'I'm… I'm sorry.' He continued

'What for?' her eyes countered, cool and unbothered.

Shiva didn't have an answer. His hand fell from her chin. He turned his head and gestured toward his son.

Parvathy sank deep into arai mandalam. With her hands, she formed the Simhamukha mudra - her fingers curled into taut claws, while her elbows flared out to suggest the breadth of a massive chest. She moved with a slow, heavy gait and placed each foot specifically and silently. Her eyes did not show anger (Raudra); instead, they held a steady, unblinking focus that conveyed hunger without malice.

She switched instantly as her hands shot up in Mriga sheersha, mimicking an animal's pricked ears. Her neck darted from side to side. She trembled, and her eyes widened as she sensed the shifting air.

She snapped back to the predator. Without a mudra of hesitation or a glance of pity, she sprang forward. Her hands slashed downward in a violent diagonal arc, tearing through the space. She froze in the aftermath. Her chest heaved, but her face remained impassive without guilt or remorse.

'A tiger does not apologise to the deer before it mauls it.'

She transitioned into a posture of deceptively calm submission. She sat on her heels and suppressed her presence. She was a "tamed" beast. She accepted food as it was offered to her and bowed her head to her master's beck and call. Her eyes were lowered, and her movements were rigid and mechanical. Perfectly mimicking a creature that had learned to suppress its spirit for survival.

Then, Ganesh pushed the rhythm in a slow crescendo in both tempo and amplitude. A shift occurred. Parvathy froze. Her nostrils flared as a scent in the wind slithered in. The mechanical rhythm of her body stopped. Slowly, the Simhamukha mudra formed at her side, and once again trembled with repressed energy. She looked at her master, and her expression changed from submission to recognition.

The facade shattered. She rose slowly and shed her domestic posture. She paced the garden and marked her territory with heavy, sweeping steps. She lunged with a ferocious speed. In the end, the "taming" truly never took hold.

'To hunt is a predator's nature. No amount of domestication can erase that.'

Shiva understood the implication of his wife's expression.

Shiva approached his wife, who stood frozen in the rigid, unyielding stance. He circled her slowly. He searched her face for even a trace of Raudra (anger), but past the expression of bloodlust that symbolised the predator's gaze, he could only see blank apathy. He waved his hand before her eyes. She did not blink. His body recoiled as though impacted by an invisible weapon.

He reached out and gently touched her shoulder with an open palm. Immediately, he recoiled, burned by the coldness of her resignation. He retreated a few steps and used the Suchi mudra (pointing finger) to recall her past fury. He mimed her speaking up animatedly, with her chest heaving and her eyes flashing with rage. He clutched his own chest and smiled sadly at this memory, showing that her anger proved she still claimed him as her own.

He pointed to her now. He traced the flat line of her mouth. And finally, he shook his head violently. He looked at his own hands, still holding the faint shape of the "tiger" she described. And he immediately rejected it. He slowly unclenched his fingers and smoothed them until they were completely open and vulnerable.

'It pains me to realise that my behaviour has made you apathetic towards me. I realise that my actions have created this distance between us. But I want you to understand that I am changing.'

Parvathy stepped backwards slowly and deliberately created a physical gap that mirrored her emotional distance. She held her hands in the Sarpa Shirsha mudra (snake head) and enacted the shedding of old skin. Then, she revealed the "new" skin underneath, but then she struck forward with the same venomous bite. The creature remained a serpent regardless of its gleaming new appearance.

Next, she moved to a metaphor of elemental stubbornness to drive the point home. She cupped her hands to gather imaginary water and poured it over a clenched fist that represented a stone. She repeated this motion rhythmically to show the passage of aeons. Finally, she opened her hand to show that the stone was wet, but it had not become soft; it was still a hard and cold rock.

She turned her back on Shiva in Vimukha, refusing to witness a transformation she believed was impossible. She walked away in a straight, unwavering line, signalling that while his moods may fluctuate like the tides, her understanding of his nature is as fixed as the shore.

'People don't change'

Shiva stopped pleading. He understood that words were useless. In fact, even plain actions were meaningless for Parvathy. She needed to see something concrete.

He planted his feet wide in the warrior's stance, steadying himself for what must come. His gaze fell to his own chest. He clenched his right hand into a tight fist.

With a sharp breath out, he drove the fist deep into his own solar plexus.

Ganesh's hand stopped, and the music ceased altogether. Parvathy turned around, and her brows twitched in shock.

Shiva shot Ganesh an urgent look. In hesitation, Ganesh tapped the percussive instruments and resumed playing.

Shiva's body folded inward and curled around the blow. His face twisted in pain and disgust. His eyes rolled back. His left hand grasped his right wrist, and contrary to expectation, he did not pull it out but pushed it deeper - past flesh, past bone, into the very core of his being.

Then came the extraction. Slowly, he began to pull. He gripped the 'Rage' within him. He drew it out inch by inch as his whole body shook violently. At last, he held it before him. It was a jagged, pulsing ball of red energy, clutched in his fingers.

He looked at Parvathy. Then he looked at the Rage in his hand.

The climax was quiet. He did not wind up. He did not throw with force. He flicked his wrist and cast a crucial essence of his power away - as if it were dust. He watched it fall away from Mount Kailasha. His face showed only the hollow stillness of a predator who had torn out his own fangs.

She wavered for a second. The sight of Shiva's self-inflicted wound pulled a gasp from her. She took a single, impulsive step forward. Her hand reached out in Alapadma (the blooming lotus) to stanch injury. She almost touched him, but the shadow of the past stopped her hand mid-air. She withdrew. Her face hardened from pity back into resigned clarity.

She lifted her left arm, holding the Sarpa Shirsha (the cobra hood) mudra high. With her right hand, she mimicked the act of defanging the serpent. She acted out the extraction, tossing the invisible fang aside just as Shiva had cast away his rage.

But then she pointed to the empty gum. She crouched low and brought her face close to her hand. Using her index finger, Suchi, she traced the gum line. She pulsed her hand rhythmically to show the blood pumping and the life force returning to the wound. Slowly, agonisingly, her index finger unfurled from the fist once more. She did not rush; she showed the sharp, white calcium of the new fang pushing through the skin, as long and as sharp as the one before.

She looked at Shiva with Shoka (sorrow). She snapped the "jaw" of her hand shut and struck the air. Her actions implied that the fang's regrowth was a biological inevitability.

'Your rage is like the fangs of a snake. It may be gone now, but it will come back again.'

Shiva stepped into her space and ignored the invisible wall she had built. He sank into Muzhu Mandi (the full sitting stance) at her feet and lowered himself beneath her gaze. He gently took her right hand, still held in the Sarpa Shirsha. He turned her palm upward and opened her fingers into Alapadma (the blooming lotus).

He placed his own left hand beneath hers to support it. With his right index finger (Suchi), he touched the centre of her open palm. He slowly raised the finger and mimicked the fang rising from the gum, just as she had shown him. He watched it grow, acknowledging the truth of her words: nature would return.

But the moment the finger was fully extended, his right hand snapped into Mushti (a tight fist). He gripped the invisible fang resting on her palm. Without flinching, he jerked his hand back with a violent, snapping motion, miming the tearing of the tooth from its root. He cast it aside into the void.

He did not stop.

He immediately returned his finger to her palm. He raised it again to show the fang regrowing. He ripped it out once more. He raised it a third time. He ripped it out a third time.

Shiva stood in a neutral stance and met Parvathy's gaze. With his right hand shaped like a swan's beak, he reached toward the air as if catching an invisible thread. The symbolic thread of her words about the unchanging nature. His wrist twisted sharply, and he snapped it apart.

He stepped forward. His left hand clenched into a fist. His right index finger became a chisel, striking the stone again and again. The stone cracked. It softened. It reshaped itself beneath the blows until it became something new, something transformed. He showed her that even the hardest substance could yield.

He raised two fingers, holding them apart to mark a choice between two forces.

First, his body stiffened. A shudder ran through him. It wasn't a shudder of cowardice, but of awe before an endless void. His hand pushed outward, warding off a darkness he could not name. A tremor rippled from his shoulders down to his fingertips, the body betraying what the will could not.

Then, the tremor ceased. His hands softened and pressed together near his heart. His eyes half-closed. He swayed gently, like a flame sheltered from the wind. The rigidity melted away, replaced by a quiet warmth that flowed through his limbs.

He turned fully toward Parvathy. With a gentle hand, he traced the outline of her form in the empty air between them - her shoulders, her face, the curve of her presence.

Slowly, he covered his own eyes with both palms. When he drew them away, he looked at the space where she stood - but his eyes searched as if she were no longer there. He reached out, yet his fingers grasped at nothing. His breath quickened. His head turned left and right, hunting for what had vanished. He pointed to the emptiness before him, then pressed his palm hard against his own chest - as if to say: without you, what remains here dies.

He sank to his knees. His hands fell to his chest, feeling the pulse beneath the skin - the rage, the nature she feared. He looked up at her with his expression stripped bare. From the air, he gathered something delicate - a garland of flowers - and pressed it against his heart. He held it there as if willing it to sink into his flesh. His body tensed once, as something wild stirred within, but the weight of his devotion pressed down, stilling the beast beneath.

At last, he extended his hands toward her, asking for a boon. His eyes lifted, glistening with devotion. In that silence, he did not offer a promise of change, but a plea to trust the chains he had forged with his own hands.

'You are wrong to say that people cannot change. People can change. In this world, there are only two forces powerful enough to motivate change: fear and love. I know you cannot believe my promises of change.'

'But I want you to know that in this entire cosmos, there is only one thing I fear the most. And that is losing you - the only thing I love most. So I implore you. If you cannot believe in my words, at least believe in my affection for you. Believe that it is strong enough to motivate a change in me for the better.'

Parvathy hesitated, but only for a moment. She reached forward and held her husband's extended hand.

Ganesh gradually faded out the music. Once there was nothing but silence and the chatter of the fauna inhabiting the garden, Ganesh picked up his instruments and walked home with a satisfied smile on his face.

"If there is one thing in the world I have no doubt about, it is my husband's devotion to his family," Parvathy expressed with a bittersweet smile.

The duo exchanged a meaningful gaze until Pravathy broke away with a faint blush on her cheeks. "It is nearly time to eat. I must go prepare it."

The afternoon waned, and the golden light of the sun eventually gave way to the cool blues of twilight. The euphoria of the dance settled into a calm, domestic routine, though the air remained charged with the residue of high emotion.

Lunch was quiet. Without Murugan's chatter to fill the air, the silence sat heavy between them. The only break came from Ganesh, who hummed happily between mouthfuls and scraped his leaf clean enthusiastically.

Midway through their meal, Shiva paused. "I was hoping that you could extend the same benefit of the doubt towards our guest," he said to his wife.

Parvathy quirked a brow. "Are you referring to Murugan's Guru?"

Shiva nodded.

"I don't know him," Parvathy said sharply. "Why should I care about his struggles? One look is enough to see he isn't a good man. He carries too much blood on his hands." She set her food down, her appetite gone. "Every time Murugan goes to him, I worry. I worry he's turning our son into..."

"Of the many things my son has inherited from me, rage is amongst them," Shiva completed his wife's thoughts. "There is no denying it. You can either suppress it or learn to harness it safely and not let it take control of your life. His Guru is teaching Murugan how to do the latter. I know that you are following your son's learning and growth, both of which have shown appreciable progression. Murugan's Guru has done well to raise our boy."

Parvathy opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. It would have been a lie to say otherwise. She chewed her lip, frustration evident in the tight set of her jaw.

"I believe that his accomplishment warrants a reward," Shiva hinted. "To that end, if you could extend the leniency you have shown me to the man as well. It would be a very apt reward."

Parvathy let out a sigh and asked, "What do you wish that I do?"

Shiva shrugged his shoulders and responded, "Give him the benefit of the doubt."

"What exactly does that mean?" Parvathy said with a frustrated snap.

"I don't know," Shiva said. "Think about it."

"Speaking of," Ganesh cut in and leaned forward with genuine curiosity. "Where did Kratos go?"

The parents squinted their eyes as their gaze looked into the distance. Parvathy scoffed and let out a chuckle in schadenfreude, "He's definitely having one hell of an adventure."

This was one of the hardest chapters for me to write, but it is also the most important. The entire concept for Volume 1 - and much of this fanfiction as a whole - actually originated from the ideas in this specific chapter.

The biggest challenge was translating the dance into text. I had the music and choreography playing perfectly in my head, but I struggled to capture the heart of the performance without getting bogged down in overly verbose descriptions.

In Indian Classical Dance, Shiva and Parvathy are deeply revered figures. Any Bharathanatyam performance traditionally begins and ends with a prayer to Nataraja, the depiction of Shiva performing the highly energetic Tandava. By contrast, Parvathy is considered the creator of the softer, more graceful form of dance that focuses on emotion. Because of this rich history, I interpreted these two characters as beings who are naturally more comfortable communicating through movement rather than words.

My mother is a professional Bharathanatyam dancer, and she graciously reviewed this chapter and helped me iterate on it multiple times. I truly hope you found the result engaging and interesting to follow.

As a final note, the themes explored here are not a one-off. You will definitely see them return in Volume 2!

juniorsundar · 2026-05-03T19:12:17+0100

There was much Ram wanted to know about the enigma of a man seated in front of him. Who was he? Where was he from? And most importantly, how did he manage to leave Lanka intact and alive after slaughtering their Crown Prince?

Ram surmised that the ashen man, who had introduced himself as Kratos, and Ravana had a storied past. But it couldn't have been just an acquaintance made in passing. There had to be a deeper connection. One that superseded the relationship between a father and son.

Did such a relationship even exist? What could be more precious than the bond between father and son? Even Ram's own father passed away in heartache the day he left Ayodhya in banishment.

With his brother's recovery secured, the patient had been moved to the infirmary tent to recuperate fully. Yet, the pungent odour of various herbal medications hung in the air. It wasn't overpowering, but definitely olfactable enough to affect the taste of the tea they were supposed to be relishing. The scent of the medication was mounting a fierce campaign against the spices in the tea as they fought for supremacy on his taste buds.

On second thought, it would have been a better choice to host the man in the mess than in his tent. Unfortunately, Ram wasn't thinking that far. His objective had been to extract information. Tea was just an excuse.

Ram refilled Kratos' near-empty cup with the last dregs of tea from the kettle.

"How do you find the taste?" Ram asked. "I find it a bit difficult to swallow. It's very confusing."

"Too much," Kratos said without thought. The disembodied head that was still animated hummed in affirmation as it drew in a large inhale. Ram was certain that he had noticed the steam emanating from the cup snaking into the head's nostrils. "The spices are unnecessary. It is overpowering the citrusy undertones of the original blend. And this particular tea doesn't do well when mellowed out with milk."

"That's an interesting analysis," Ram mumbled in thought. "And all that without even a taste of the decoction?"

"The nose does most, if not all, of the heavy lifting when it comes to taste," the head said dismissively.

"I apologise, I did not receive your introduction," Ram finally addressed the head.

Ram hoped the statement was a hint enough for the head to introduce itself, but all he received was a pointed silence.

"It seems the respected gentleman does not wish to share his identity," Ram acknowledged with a nod.

His eyes darted towards the semi-wrapped head still hanging by Kratos' hip. Unable to contain his curiosity any longer, Ram probed, "You possess an unusual constitution, Kratos. Very few warriors can claim to have breached the golden gates of Lanka. Fewer still can walk away from a personal audience with its King after dealing such a fatal blow to his royal house."

Ram paused and took a slow sip of his ruined tea. He wanted to gauge Kratos' reaction.

"The Rakshasa is infamous for his terrible wrath. He does not forgive those who cross him, especially those who harm his kin. Yet, you managed to depart his stronghold without an army at your back. Such rare leniency suggests a deep familiarity between the two of you. Did a shared history stay his hand?"

Kratos returned a scowl, and in one motion downed the entire scalding cup of tea. He placed the cup carefully and stood up to leave.

"I apologise if I offended you," Ram quickly doubled back. But his words were met by deaf ears. Kratos bent down, picked up the animated head and hung it by his other waist.

"Thank you for the tea," he said before walking towards the exit.

"Forgive me if my words struck an unpleasant chord," Ram interjected. His voice lost its pleasantness and acquired a more calculated directness. "But any information on my opponent is valuable. I request that you please answer my questions."

"Am I a prisoner or am I a guest?" Kratos asked as he stood a step away from the tent's exit.

"Do not misunderstand," Ram answered as he raised his hands in a sign of submission. "You are my benefactor. Your actions have saved both my brother by blood and brother by philosophy from certain death. To that I am eternally grateful. But the fact remains that by coincidence or fate, you share a connection with Ravana. A connection so profound that he was willing to overlook the fact that you killed his son."

Ram paused to let the prelude sink in. He then said, "As you can see, we are fighting a steep, uphill battle here. Any information would be valuable for our cause."

"I do not care about this… squabble," Kratos snapped back.

"It is for a righteous cause!" Ram reasoned. Kratos turned slowly and bore down on Ram with an irritated scowl.

"What righteous cause?" Kratos poked.

"The monster kidnapped my wife-" Ram began, but Kratos raised a palm and interrupted him. "So you amassed an army, dragged them halfway across the continent and across an ocean, just to rescue your wife?"

"The act was unjust and dishonourable," Ram expressed solemnly. "To kidnap another's spouse is a violation of Dharma."

Kratos raised his right hand and said, "This is your wife." He brought his left down to the same level and said, "This is Dharma."

"What matters more to you?"

Ram looked affronted by the question. His jaw tightened, and a muscle feathered near his temple. "I believe this is a poor, over-simplification of the scenario-"

"No," Kratos interjected. "If it is your wife who is more important, you could very easily rescue her. Especially with that monkey in your command."

"That would be relying on subterfuge," Ram said with a decisive shake of his head. "That goes against my honour as a warrior."

Kratos let out a snort in mirth. "What if he does something horrible to your wife in the meantime?"

"Well-"

"Even if there is something staying his hand," Kratos continued. "What would the world think of a married woman who has been abducted and has lived in another man's home?"

Ram's eyes darted subtly, as those questions had inevitably passed his mind.

"Honour and righteousness," Kratos repeated. "What a joke!"

"My past and history with Ravana are irrelevant to your conflict," Kratos said with finality. "I am going now."

And then, without waiting for Ram's response, Kratos pulled aside the flaps and left the tent.

Watching his retreating figure, Ram descended into thought. Kratos' presence, though unexpected, had shifted the battlefield to a new equilibrium that placed them on equal footing with the enemy. And the conversation, though short, had made it clear that the man did not want to linger on the battlefield for another moment. The unaccounted variable was voluntarily making itself scarce, which was more than welcome.

One thing did worry Ram, though, and it was the two heads by Kratos' waists. The one that was inanimate was definitely Ravana's tenth head. What the Rakshasa's purpose was in handing it over to Kratos was still unclear, but as long as the man and the head were far away from the battlefield, Ram wouldn't have to worry about any unwanted interference. The animated head, on the other hand, just felt… somewhat familiar. Ram was certain that he had seen it somewhere before… but he just couldn't put his finger on it.

"The man claims to despise subterfuge, but he sure knows how to speak in circles," Brahma complained out loud.

"You are quick to introduce yourself, but you oddly stayed your tongue back there," Kratos probed.

"I have my reasons," Brahma muttered. "He smelt like someone I am not particularly fond of."

Kratos hummed. "This is the last time I help others."

"True, it would have been better to do nothing," Brahma agreed. Then, with a sarcastic drawl, he continued, "But then you would have missed out on a fun adventure."

Kratos let out a grunt in response.

As they arrived at the beach, Kratos and walked in the direction of the stone landbridge shrinking as it snaked into the horizon. It was at that moment that a familiar voice caught their attention.

"…TRAVELLER! … HEAD!" It was a soprano screech that sounded somewhat inhuman. Kratos turned towards the call and swiftly dodged to the right as a furry blur zipped past him. The entity tried to brake by shoving their foot into the ground, but the beach sand tripped them up and caused them to barrel out of control into a coconut tree.

"Ouch…!" It was the Vanara that had transported Kratos. The monkey stood up and nursed a minor bruise on his forehead. He revealed a relieved smile and said, "I got sc'red that I'd miss you guys!"

"Unfortunately, we cannot fly," Brahma said with a chuckle.

"That's okay!" The Vanara bellowed animatedly. "I can fly! Let me take you back!"

"That is not necessary!" Kratos cut in. He could already feel a headache creeping, and the monkey was definitely exacerbating the symptoms.

"Please! It is the least I can do," the Vanara pleaded. "I owe you my life, after all!"

Seeing the monkey's unwavering expression, Kratos was certain that he wasn't going to budge on the offer. "Fine…" Kratos relented.

The monkey crouched in front of Kratos and gestured for him to climb on his back.

It was an odd sight to see a mountain of a man hanging precariously on the back of an ape three-quarters of his size. Luckily, there were no others nearby to see it.

The moment Kratos secured himself on the Vanara, the monkey kicked off and burst into motion. What followed after was simply an inscrutable blur and an immense pressure akin to a small boulder pressing down on him. Though it lasted for half a minute before dispersing.

In the distance, Kratos saw the jagged peaks of the Himalayas approaching them.

"You are as swift as the wind!" Brahma exclaimed from his waist.

"That is my name, after all!" The Vanara preened.

"All this time, you still haven't told us your name," Brahma responded with a chuckle.

The Vanara chuckled as he landed with a gentle thud and kneeled to allow Kratos to dismount. "They call me Hanuman, but my birth name is Maruti."

"What a beautiful name! And apt as well," Brahma expressed. "Your parents must be so proud."

"I try," Maruti said with a wry smile.

"I am Brahma," the head said. "This is Kratos."

The monkey bowed instinctively, but froze midway. His gaze narrowed and darted rapidly between the head and the ashen man. Then, in another blur of motion, he collapsed into a prostrated stance by Kratos' feet.

"I am truly, truly sorry for the disrespec' that I have caused by my pr'sumptuos behaviour!" The monkey rattled. "To think that I addressed the Great Creator with such a mundane name… May the Heaven's smite me and may I be bor-"

"Please!" Brahma quickly interjected. "This isn't necessary! I am not here in my capacity as the Creator. I am merely an observer."

"But still-" Maruti defended, but was cut off by Brahma with a scowl.

"If I disliked your behaviour, I would have said so," he pressed. "It was pleasing to interact with you the way you were before."

Maruti sat with his legs folded and looked down in embarrassment.

A spark of remembrance ignited in the monkey's eyes, and he reached into the satchel by his waist. Carefully, he produced a plain conch shell. He brought it close to his lips and started to mumble into the shell's ear.

Once he'd finished, the Vanara stood up slowly and extended the conch shell towards Kratos with both hands.

"The Esteemed Warrior has saved this one's life. Had it not been for the Warrior, I would not be standing here," Maruti expressed with sincere gratitude. "It is only right for me to offer a rewar', but there is nothin' that is of equal value that can compare. Hence, for saving my life, I offer my life."

Kratos looked suspiciously at the extended shell. After being bound to the axe, Kratos was far more careful about picking up mundane items of suspicious origin.

Noticing Kratos' hesitation, Maruti clarified, "No matter where, when or for whatever reason it may be, while I am still alive, should the Warrior or the Warrior's descendants blow on this conch shell, I will be there at their service before its echoes fade into the wind."

Kratos frowned upon hearing that declaration. "That is not necessary."

"On the contrary! It is absolutely necessary!" Maruti argued. "It is unfortunate that I am a'ready bound by my pledge to Lord Ram to aid him in his battle against the Kingdom of Lanka. Otherwise, I would have bound myself to the Warrior's serv'tude immediately!"

Maruti shook his head frantically and added, "If the Warrior refuses to take the shell, then the only solution is for me to stay with the Warrior should he need my services…"

Kratos' hand shot out and grabbed the shell out of Maruti's extended palms. "There! I have taken it. Now go!"

The monkey wore an elated smile and bowed deeply. "I await your call!"

Without hesitation, he broke off into a sprint and burst into the air.

"You lost yourself a capable servant," Brahma mocked as they observed Maruti's figure shrinking into an imperceptible dot and disappearing into the sky.

"Annoying," Kratos responded with a growl. He stared thoughtfully at the conch shell in his palm before storing it in his satchel.

"That was some adventure, though," Brahma commented. "I did not think we would get to meet any of the three brothers again. The reunion could have been under better circumstances…"

Kratos remained silent.

"What do you think… Kratos?" Brahma probed. "Should we have remained to help Ravana?"

"No," Kratos answered decisively. "I should not have involved myself with that monkey in the first place. It is fortunate that Ravana did not pursue my interference any further."

As they arrived close to the portal leading to the peak of Kailasha, Kratos halted.

"Taking any side in a war is a difficult decision. Any action can cascade with many consequences," he said solemnly. "My single interference resulted in the removal of a key figure in Ravana's army - his son and the Crown Prince. The balance has shifted. From where I stood, the decision appeared straightforward. Taking a step back, and after knowing more about the situation, I do not know if I can make the same judgment."

He let his thoughts hang in the air for a moment and took a step through the portal.

Standing atop the tallest tree in the area, hidden within its branches and leaves, Murugan was struggling to come to terms with the sight before him.

Although he wasn't a genius like his brother, his mental faculties were far advanced compared to mortals. So it did not take long for him to grasp the language spoken by the survivors in these forsaken lands.

"Thrust it like you mean it!" A grizzled man, with one arm and an eye missing, bellowed to the rows of young boys before him. Scrawny, yet carrying a face hardened with resolve, the boys pulled back the ramshackle spears in their grasps and thrust it forward in unison.

"One more!" He yelled, and the boys drilled forward with a united, "HA!"

He then curled his lower lip under his upper incisors and let out a shrill whistle. "Dismissed!"

The boys stood taut in attention and yelled, "Sir, yes, sir!" and marched out.

All this was familiar. But their next actions were the cause of Murugan's current predicament.

The boys reformed into a single column and marched toward the far end of the clearing. Murugan's eyes followed them as they approached a thick tree with gnarled roots and broad, spreading branches.

In its shade, there was a stone idol that appeared rough and weathered. The carving was crude. The proportions were slightly off. But Murugan could not mistake what - or rather, who - it depicted. Well, it was the single golden-coloured spear in the statue's grasp that gave it away.

The statue was him.

Murugan's grip on the branch tightened.

The boys formed a line before the idol. Their faces softened with reverence. The grizzled instructor stepped forward and knelt on one knee. The boys followed, dropping to their knees in perfect unison.

Then, with voices that rang clear through the clearing, they shouted:

"Praise to the Golden Spear!"

"Praise to the Golden Spear!" they shouted again, and Murugan watched them bow until their foreheads touched the dirt.

"May He guard our backs," the instructor intoned.

"May His Spears never miss," the boys responded.

"May the War God grant us the power to protect what must be protected!"

After the echoes of their prayers settled, they stood up and dispersed from the area. Once he was certain that he was alone, Murugan descended from the tree and approached his facsimile.

"Huh…" he expressed with a mixture of confusion and amusement.

"Yeah… I should probably leave…" he concluded.

As he turned, his eyes landed on a wicker basket by the idol's side.

He leaned in and confirmed its contents - iron. An impromptu rite of passage for these teens was selecting an iron ore cluster and forging their own spear. Iron was a scarce resource, especially since any permanent resource harvesting fixture was a liability in these perilous and nomadic lands.

Murugan reached into the basket and picked up two of the largest ore clusters.

He then whistled for his mount.

Before his peacock could make landfall, he leapt up and mounted it.

"Time to go," he commanded.

The peacock beat its enormous wings and carried him away from the forsaken lands. They soared high into the sky and travelled out over a vast, unending ocean.

The rhythmic rush of the wind offered a brief moment of peace, but then a strange disruption on the water's surface caught his attention. Murugan leaned over his mount's neck and peered down at the ocean.

His eyes widened in surprise.

The skies of Svarga cracked again as something burst through unhindered. Following the first incident, caused by the mischievous spiritual offspring of Vayu, the realm had been further augmented to reduce the cascading catastrophic effects of such a breach. Technically, very few entities could cross realm barriers, and it was also impossible to completely block traversal between realms. Vayu and those with his blessing were amongst the few with unfettered access, as it was a trait that came as part of the element under his purview. After all, air was pervasive, and thus so was Vayu.

As a result of the precautionary measures in place, Svarga didn't quake as it did before. Nonetheless, Indra was still irritated by the unannounced interruption to the peace in his realm.

He snapped his fingers and called over a Palace servant. "Which pest dare intrude into Svarga?!"

The servant bowed low and responded, "Answering to His Highness. It appears to be Lord Murugan."

Indra swallowed the subsequent tirade dancing at the tip of his tongue and let out a long exhale. The authority of the King of Devas didn't mean much. Especially since a youngster a fraction of his age could burst in and out of his realm, and he could do absolutely nothing about it.

He cradled his forehead and waved the servant away.

The "intruder" in question swerved away from the Palace, towards a far corner of the realm. His destination was a peculiar spot.

Svarga, by its very nature, was an abstraction given form - a concept coaxed into shape and bestowed with a trait. But there existed corners of the realm where an additional layer of abstraction lingered, or perhaps, where the original abstraction had never fully hardened into definition. It was the shape before the shape. The thought before the word. Murugan's destination was one such place - a pocket of super-abstraction that still resisted the weight of form.

One would assume that such a place would be uninhabited. After all, what individual could dwell in a realm that refused to be defined? Yet this super-abstract corner of Svarga was not empty. It was home to a very particular individual. The architect of Svarga itself resided here. It was his mind that had birthed the environment - coaxed structure from randomness, meaning from emptiness. And for a consciousness so relentlessly active, so ceaselessly generative, his mere presence turned the world around him abstract. Reality bent to accommodate the friction of his thoughts.

Murugan dove into the abstract mess before him. The moment he passed the event horizon, all sense of direction dissipated.

"Lord Vishwakarma, I request your audience!" He yelled, or at least the mess of shapes that represented his mouth vibrated.

In an instant, the abstract chaos stilled, and a pathway of order appeared before Murugan. A flat circular area appeared before him, wide enough for his peacock to land. And at the end of the area stood a man garbed in plain, unassuming robes - the kind a common artisan might wear.

Murugan landed a few paces before the man and alighted. He gave a respectful bow and approached.

"What brings the Warrior of Kailasha to my workshop?" The man spoke with a calm baritone voice that was devoid of embellishment.

Murugan revealed a wry smile and said, "Calling me a warrior is a bit much, don't you think?"

"That is who you are, objectively," Vishwakarma stated. "My question still stands."

Murugan reached into his bag and pulled out the ore chunks. "I need a shield."

Vishwakarma collected the ores and brought them up to his face. With a sniff, he commented, "These are not from the known realms. They must be imported from beyond the chaos."

"They are from another land," Murugan affirmed. "I require a shield as Guru Dakshina."

"Okay," Vishwakarma said. He did not move. There was an odd silence that stretched for an uncomfortable duration.

"People usually provide more details and specifications of what it is that they need," Vishwakarma hinted.

Murugan nodded and added, "It must be practical."

Vishwakarma waited for more information, but it seemed that the sentence was all he would get.

"Some details about the user, what their preferences are, what it is that they will use this for, whether some enchantments need to be imbued into it… Please Lord Murugan, some verbosity in your response would aid me greatly," He suggested.

Murugan hummed in thought and listed, "My Guru is a great warrior skilled in many weapons, but the shield was the first he learned. So you could say that he is intimate with it. He knows how to use the shield in many different ways apart from just for defence. The shield needs to be useful, so it should be able to block most attacks, be it mundane or divine."

"Most…" Vishwakarma repeated. "Could you elaborate on that?"

"There are Astras that are inherently unblockable unless another Astra of similar or greater power is used. The shield doesn't have to protect against that," Murugan clarified.

"That makes things easier," Vishwakarma commented. "A shield that can block everything is a weapon of unlimited potential that is beyond my ability. But your requirements are within my power."

"As for the fees-" Murugan hinted and reached for his bag, but Vishwakarma stopped him.

"This is a trivial ask compared to what others request from me," Vishwakarma waved. "Though some creativity would very much be welcome."

At this point, an idea formed in Murugan's mind. "What about a condition as follows? The success of a block can be defined as a percentage chance. Depending on the nature of the attack being blocked, the percentage can vary. It will be guaranteed to block a weak attack, but nigh impossible to block an Astra like the Brahmastra; nigh impossible, not completely impossible. Now consider another metric, the ratio of the time between the initiation of a block in response to an attack and the time the attack makes contact. It should range between zero and one, with one being the case that the block is initiated exactly as the attack hits. The closer it is to one, the higher the chance of a successful block. In this way, if the block is initiated exactly as a powerful Astra hits, the chance of success is still low, but higher than if the block was initiated right as the Astra was fired."

Vishwakarma revealed an ecstatic grin and spoke with surprising excitement, "Now that is an interesting challenge!"

He extended his hand and brought them together in one swift motion. As he clapped, the small pocket of rational order deformed into abstract. It remained as such for an unknown duration of time before expanding out again and resuming the original state.

In Vishwakarma's hand, instead of the ore chunks, there was an intricately designed yet simple bracer.

"Umm… Isn't the shield… small?" Murugan questioned.

Vishwakarma handed the item to Murugan and said, "The one who is supposed to use it will know how to do so."

With an affirmative nod, Murugan thanked Vishwakarma and left the domain atop his peacock.

Another boom resounded across Svarga as Murugan burst through the barrier between realms, leaving a miffed Indra massaging his forehead behind.

"Chekov's Gun" in this chapter

Hyperionthetitan · 2026-05-03T20:18:02+0100

Oh hey ,kratos got his shield.

Also the parry mechanic lol

God of War - Karmic Cycle [AU]

Getting sticky.

Getting sticky.

Stuck in a tree

Professional Procrastinator

Stuck in a tree

Getting sticky.

Stuck in a tree

Getting sticky.

Stuck in a tree

Getting sticky.

Getting sticky.

Stuck in a tree

Getting sticky.

Stuck in a tree

Getting sticky.

Stuck in a tree

Getting sticky.

Stuck in a tree

Getting sticky.

Getting sticky.

Getting sticky.

Stuck in a tree

Users who are viewing this thread