The world glowed with a peace too vast to question.
Rivers ran clear, their surfaces smooth mirrors carrying temples and sky alike. Fields bent heavy with grain, golden heads bowing as if in reverence. Children raced through courtyards where laughter rose unbroken, so rooted it seemed part of the earth. Hymns drifted not as commands but as fragrance, curling unseen like incense, filling every space with rhythm and reverence. Even the wind moved gently, as though careful not to disturb such harmony.
At the heart of it all, a flute sang.
Its notes curved like light across water — playful, tender, timeless. A melody both intimate and vast, carrying secrets in its breath. Birds stilled mid-flight, feathers trembling but wings arrested, as though the sky itself had hushed. Waves softened against the shore, retreating like disciples from a teacher's step. It was not merely music. It was breath given shape, memory carried forward, the rhythm that held an age together.
For the flute's song was not just music. It was Dharma made audible.
Dharma was not a rulebook or decree. It was the pulse beneath all pulses — the unseen law that rivers followed in carving valleys, that seeds obeyed in breaking open, that stars obeyed in circling endless night. It was not obedience but harmony, not coercion but balance. Where Dharma thrived, so did laughter, harvests, and trust.
And so long as the flute sang, Dharma held sway.
But harmony is brittle.And shadows do not sleep.
At first it came unnoticed — a whisper so faint it could hide inside silence. It slipped into houses where lamps still burned, asking questions no one dared answer. Why should he reap more when you tilled the same soil? Why should her word bind you when yours cannot bind her?
It crept into vows sworn by fire and river, turning duty into burden. Why should you keep Dharma if it costs you everything while others profit?
It pressed coins into hands and murmured: This weighs more than kin. It stroked pride and called it strength. It named greed as destiny.
This whisper was not merely corruption; it was Adharma stirring — that which unravels balance.
Temples rose taller, but their hymns thinned hollow. Debate once meant to sharpen wisdom grew brittle with pride, each voice demanding obedience instead of truth. Priests who should have been guides grew fat on offerings. Kings who should have guarded Dharma learned to dress conquest as righteousness.
The whisper coiled tighter, pleased not with conquest but with distortion. For conquest was loud and obvious; Dharma could resist it. But when Adharma cloaked itself in Dharma's language, the rot spread unseen.
Still the flute played. But each note fell into ears deafened by want. Laughter still rang in courtyards, but it had sharpened — no longer joy shared, but triumph won over another.
Then came the breaking.
At a feast meant for kinship, blood spilled instead of wine. Brother struck brother, the clang of steel louder than hymns. Friend betrayed friend, whispers heavier than arrows. A mother clutched her child as benches overturned; the toy he held — a wooden horse carved by his grandfather — slipped into dirt, trampled as men rose with knives.
What had been whole cracked beyond repair.
And the one who bore the flute felt it most.
His song had once carried weary fields into bloom, steadied kingdoms on the edge of despair, bound Dharma like invisible thread through quarrels and wars. But now even melody faltered. No note, however pure, could mend what had chosen to break.
Each breath burned. Each note scraped raw against his chest, grief pressed into the wood itself.
"If kin no longer hear the song," he whispered, voice fraying like reed, "then it no longer belongs to me."
His fingers trembled. The lotus etched at the mouthpiece caught a last glint of sunset, as though the world itself wanted to hold that light for one more heartbeat. Then it dimmed.
Surrounded by many, yet utterly alone, he let the flute slip from his grasp.
It struck the earth with a sound heavier than any war-drum.
The silence that followed was unnatural. A child's giggle froze mid-air, mouth still open but sound gone. A lamp guttered, smoke curling into stillness. Even cicadas in the fields cut their rhythm short. What had seemed eternal trembled, fragile on the edge of ending.
And from far beyond, a conch thundered.
Its call rose unyielding, shaking earth and sky — not as summons, but as verdict. A sound deeper than time, reminding gods and men alike that cycles break, and what is broken must be reckoned.
The sea stirred, dark and immense. Waves rose against the horizon like mountains that had learned to walk. A temple bell clanged once, desperate, then drowned beneath the tide. Courtyards vanished, voices smothered in foam. Towers folded like reeds. Pride dissolved in spray.
The flute disappeared beneath the flood. Yet its last note lingered — a single thread trembling like breath in a dying throat. Too thin to turn the tide, yet too stubborn to die.
And in the silence that followed, the shadow deepened.
For though the song drowned, the whisper lived.
It lived in glass towers where contracts masqueraded as law. It lived in temples where Adharma wore Dharma's robes. It lived in council halls where truth was traded for power. The flood washed away kingdoms and crowns, but it could not wash away desire.
The whisper had always been here. Patient. Relentless.And now, with Dharma shaken, it stirred again — sharper, hungrier, ready to grow.
But the thread of the flute's song also lived on.A fragile note, carried forward by Dharma itself, waiting for breath anew.
And elsewhere — between dream and dawn — that breath began.