---
The sparring ring was slick with sweat and dirt, but Agasthya moved through it like shadow through silk.
He ducked, spun, and struck his wooden sword against the neck of a training dummy. Three clean hits. The head snapped back. The silence after was sharp.
Bhishma, standing by the stone railing, didn't speak.
He never did when Agasthya fought.
He only watched.
"Again?" Agasthya asked, lowering the blade.
But Bhishma didn't answer.
A rider approached instead, dust trailing behind his horse like smoke. He dismounted fast—too fast—and whispered something into Bhishma's ear.
The old warrior's eyes narrowed.
Then he looked at Agasthya.
"They've entered Mathura," he said.
Agasthya frowned. "Who?"
Bhishma didn't blink. "Krishna. Balarama. And the one you sent—Karna."
The air around Agasthya seemed to freeze.
"They've gone to kill Kamsa," Bhishma added.
Agasthya didn't respond right away. His fingers tightened around the wooden hilt.
Bhishma's voice was low. "Your exile from Mathura was never lifted."
"I know."
"You've been trained. Sharpened. But the streets there—those walls—they are not stone to you. They are blood."
Agasthya nodded slowly.
"I want to go."
Bhishma studied him. "For revenge?"
Agasthya didn't answer.
"For family?" Bhishma asked.
Still no reply.
Then Agasthya spoke—softly, but with a strange resonance behind the words.
"I need to see how much of me is still human."
---
The road to Mathura wound through three hills and five villages. Agasthya rode alone.
Cloaked, hooded, veiled.
The boon of Mahadev wrapped him like mist—no eye could recognize him, no seer could mark him, no omen would betray him.
But as he crossed the border into Mathura, he felt the world tighten.
The city did not remember him.
But the earth did.
The very stones beneath his sandals whispered fragments:
"Here, you were carried in silence."
"Here, your mother broke her breath to hold back your name."
"Here, you were almost erased."
The scent of saffron mixed with blood. The streets were vibrant with festival crowds—Kamsa's arena games were coming. Banners flapped. Drums echoed like thunder in hollow stone.
But Agasthya moved unseen.
He passed sweet vendors. Cowherds. Soldiers in bronze.
And then—
A voice.
Clear. Calm. Familiar.
Karna.
"You don't need to shove," Karna was saying, his hand calmly holding back a soldier's spear. "He's just a boy. Let him through."
Agasthya turned his head toward the commotion.
Through the crowd, through the dust—
There.
Krishna.
Ten years old now. Taller than memory. Dark-skinned like midnight woven into flesh, eyes bright as if lit from within.
He wore no armor.
Only a garland of peacock feathers.
But the street bent around him as if it knew who walked.
Agasthya stepped out of the alley, lowering his hood.
Krishna's gaze turned.
And their eyes met.
---
The crowd faded.
The noise dissolved.
For a moment, time itself slowed.
Krishna took one step forward.
So did Agasthya.
The distance between them was barely ten paces—but it felt like lifetimes.
Balarama glanced between them, puzzled. "Krishna?"
But Krishna raised a hand—silencing even his brother.
And then…
He smiled.
A slow, breaking, radiant smile.
"Agasthya," he said.
He had never been told.
Never heard the name.
But he knew.
Agasthya's breath hitched.
A child's breath.
But inside it: grief, awe, recognition.
They moved toward each other like moon to tide.
Karna stepped between them instinctively, protective—but stopped as Agasthya placed a hand on his shoulder.
Their eyes met too.
No words.
Only shared memory.
The river.
The snake.
The path.
The parting.
Karna stepped aside.
And Agasthya, for the first time in eight and a half years, embraced his brother.
Not in ritual.
Not in drama.
But in the stillness of a life that had long waited for this exact moment.
Krishna whispered against his shoulder, "I remember the sound you made when you left."
Agasthya closed his eyes.
"I remember the sound she made," he whispered back.
They didn't speak after that.
There were no explanations.
No apologies.
Only breath.
And the strange sound of fate exhaling.
---