"Ashes don't speak. They scream. You just need to remember how to listen."
---
The temple was silent after the battle with Shesha-Akriti, but Astha's breath grew ragged—not from pain, not from exhaustion—but from something deeper. Something unhealed.
His eyes locked onto the mural behind the ruined altar. And for the first time in years, he blinked longer than a second.
When he opened them again... the world was different.
---
Flashback — 8 Years Ago
Location: Aaryavrat, an ancient mortal kingdom untouched by divine governance, hidden beneath layers of myth and obscurity. It was a land of copper skies, sandalwood rivers, and a people who whispered prayers to the stars but owed no allegiance to the gods.
Astha was twenty. His hair was shorter, his eyes softer, his body lean but rugged. He smiled easily. He laughed. He was... whole.
Aaryavrat thrived on independence. The elders taught Vedic mantras as philosophy, not worship. Warriors were trained not to conquer, but to protect memory. And Astha was their brightest guardian.
He had a family.
He had a mother who sang old mantras as lullabies.
He had a little sister who painted with fire and a father who never bent the knee to the heavens.
He had peace.
Until the sky turned gold.
---
The Invasion Begins
The Divine Council called Aaryavrat "a distortion". A place that remembered too much. That questioned divine judgment. That refused the pantheon's order.
They called it heresy.
And so the gods sent their flame.
Not a warrior. Not a messenger.
But a ritual.
A divine plague: Shraddha Vinaashan — the Erasure of Faith.
It fell not like war, but like silence. People disappeared mid-sentence. Names faded from tombstones. Songs unlearned themselves.
Astha watched as his mother turned to dust mid-hymn.
His sister reached for his hand—and vanished before her fingers could close.
His father stood defiant before a divine envoy and said:
"You have no right to judge memory."
And then he was gone, burned not by fire, but by forgetting.
Only Astha remained.
---
He wasn't spared.
He wasn't remembered.
The ritual was meant to erase everything. But something cracked.
Astha didn't vanish. Instead, the erasure scarred him — burned through him and lit something inside.
The White Flame. Born not of divinity. But of rage, grief, and rejection.
When divine soldiers descended to complete the cleansing, he met them unarmed.
And he broke them.
He crushed a demigod's skull using only a stone slab and his knees.
He held a divine envoy by the throat until their mantra shattered.
He screamed so hard, a mantra collapsed mid-chant.
The gods called him an aberration.
He called them cowards.
---
When the last shrine of Aaryavrat burned, Astha walked into the pyre.
He took with him the ashes of every forgotten soul.
And from it emerged Smritidhaara — the chain-sickle bound to memory and pain.
The souls of his people, the cries of the unjustly erased — all wrapped into a weapon that remembers what the gods want to forget.
"I will never kneel.
I will never forget.
And I will never let them rewrite the truth."
---
Return to Present – Temple Ruins
Astha stood unmoving. Luv and Naira watched silently as the mural finished burning itself into the wall.
"Now you know," Astha whispered.
"They didn't just kill my people.
They tried to erase that we ever existed."
Luv said nothing. But his thunder hummed low — in respect.
Naira took Astha's hand.
And for the first time, he didn't pull away.