The glow of laptop screens reflected shifting patterns on the drawn curtains of Kunal Garg's apartment.
Empty coffee cups stood sentinel beside stacks of hastily printed notes.
Outside, Mumbai murmured, oblivious.
Inside, the small living room had turned into a pressure cooker of intense research, fueled by caffeine and passing time.
It was well into the day after the cryptic message had arrived; now they have less than thirty-six hours remaining until the scheduled meeting at Elephanta Caves.
Kunal rubbed his tired eyes, scrolling through another digitized manuscript translation.
Centuries-old Pali script blurred into meaningless lines.
Beside him, Ananya meticulously cross-referenced timelines from Mauryan edicts with fragmented accounts from later Buddhist chronicles.
The silence was broken only by the soft click of keyboard keys and the occasional frustrated sigh and cursing.
"Anything?" Kunal asked, shifting his eyes from a dense paragraph about Ashoka's later Kalinga campaigns to his side to Ananya who looked more beautiful than ever when she was this focused on her work that she was doing for him, for which he couldn't appreciate her more.
"Standard accounts," Ananya murmured, highlighting a section on her screen while giving a blush when Kunal looked at her intently.
"Kunala blinded by Tishyarakshita's plot, Ashoka's grief, Kunala leaves Pataliputra with Kanchanmala, becomes a wandering ascetic… same story, different source."
She sighed.
"Plenty about Yuvraj, the beloved prince pushed away from the throne where he belonged. Nothing, absolutely nothing, about him ruling anything else, or matching the figure you described... any grand or epic throne."
Kunal leaned back, his chair creaking under the weight of fatigue and doubt.
The vision of that other throne blindingly brighter, vaster, mystical and epic was not leaving his mind. Like it has been printed there as a brand.
It wasn't Kunala's gentle nobility he remembered in those flashes; it was the unmatched sovereignty.
Something fierce. Something ancient.
He pushed a hand through his hair.
"I feel... there's something missing in all of this," he said finally, voice tight.
"Like a second story hidden deep behind the first. Like the records we have are only part of it."
Ananya looked up, glasses slipping a little down her nose.
Despite the exhaustion lining her face, her focus didn't waver.
"We'll find it," she said simply. Like it was a fact, not a hope.
That simple certainty which she gave him, it steadied something inside him he hadn't realized was shaking.
---
Hours passed like sand through hands.
The coffee went cold.
The glow of screens painted tired lines under their eyes.
Kunal found himself occasionally reaching for his cigarette packet time and time again but at some point when Ananya looked at him angrily when he kept smoking like an addict, without realising he started controlling himself , unknowingly he was trying to appreciate and please her, grounding himself by anchoring his thoughts to her while taking subtle glances.
He forced himself to stay alert, even as weariness pressed in like a growing tide.
Then suddenly a gasp.
"Kunal... quick. Look at this."
Ananya's voice cut sharply through the haze.
He leaned over a little closer than expected, his breath brushing against her hair, sending a faint warmth up her neck which he also noticed, though she gave no sign.
On her screen, a scanned page flickered.
It looked like a translation footnote, buried inside some dusty 19th-century colonial report on 'local peculiarities of Northern India.'
Dismissed by mainstream scholars as folklore.
Exactly the kind of place where some real secrets are still hidden. Without fire there won't be smoke.
Ananya read aloud, her voice trembling slightly:
"Alternative accounts, though lacking imperial verification, suggest Yuvraj Kunala did not simply fade into ascetic obscurity.
One fragmented Gandharan verse speaks of him meeting Emperor Ashoka one final time, years after his blinding and disappearance.
Before this meeting, it is implied he resided in a hidden sanctuary, aided by unknown patrons shielding him from the conspirators…
Shortly after departing, Kunala and his consort Kanchanmala were ambushed.
The attackers, described with serpent-like attributes and strange body shapes, reportedly took Kanchanmala hostage, slaying her before the Prince's unseeing eyes.
Enraged, the blind ascetic prince fought back fiercely, eliminating many assailants before himself being overwhelmed, humiliated and then killed."
Kunal's breath got stuck in his throat.
The phantom smell of burning iron filled his nostrils again but now mixed with the coppery sting of blood, the ragged agony of helpless rage and powerlessness.
Flashes broken, brutal, heart-wrenching tore through his mind.
Not visions.
Memories.
A woman's scream.
His own hands slick with blood he couldn't see but feel the dripping wetness.
The sickening crunch of bones breaking beneath his fists and feet.
The final, crushing silence.
His legs became weak, he supported himself against the table's edge while gripping it until his knuckles whitened.
Ananya's hand hesitated, then rested lightly on his forearm, supportive, but not intrusive.
"Kunal..." she whispered.
He couldn't speak for a moment.
Kanchanmala.
His wife. Who loved him more than anything. Who was with him even when he lost everything and everyone else.
Murdered in front of him while he stood powerless, helplessly begging.
She kept telling him till her last breath that how great of a person he was.
How lucky she had been to be with him till her last breath.
But then the sudden silence with a crunching sound tore his heart.
And then his own death, blind and raging, beneath the empty and cruel sky.
A jagged wound reopened across lifetimes.
---
When he finally managed to breathe again, his mind snapped back to sharper questions.
Who were the ones who aided Kunala after the blinding?
Who killed him?
And more terrifying, why did they have to kill a blind ascetic prince who has already left the royal family?
If these serpent-like attackers still existed…
If the ones who offered the invitation to Elephanta were linked to either side…
Were they truly offering help to him or just finishing an ancient hunt left incomplete? Or are the the hidden patrons who hid Kunala?
The apartment felt colder now.
The ticking clock on the laptop screen sounded like a hammer in the silence.
Less than twenty-four hours left.
And he was no closer to knowing whether he was walking into salvation...
Or a slaughterhouse.
To be continued…