Chapter 4: The Shattered Mirror
The weight of Captain Rostova's words settled heavily in the chamber. India. A land of struggle, its ancient glory reduced to ruins and legends. Aarav felt a profound sense of dislocation, as if he were looking at a distorted reflection of his own world.
Ananya, ever perceptive, noticed the change in her brother. She placed a calming hand on his arm, a silent signal of support, before addressing the Captain herself. "This land you call India... its people must be very different from us."
"Different is an understatement, Your Highness," Eva said, leaning forward. "Their history is one of constant absorption. Invasions, migrations, new philosophies... they have a thousand different languages, dozens of major religions that have taken root. It's a mosaic of cultures."
This was the opening Aarav needed. He looked at Eva, the ghost of Rohan framing the questions with a desperate need for clarity.
"You mentioned religions," Aarav said, his voice regaining its focus. "But the people of Bharat, our ancestors, were one people. We followed the Sanatana Dharma. The Eternal Way. It was not a religion; it was the fabric of reality itself. Does this... unified culture no longer exist in India?"
Eva looked at the six-year-old prince, once again struck by the depth of his questions. She was speaking to a historian, not a child.
"Sanatana Dharma... I've read that term in old texts. Today, they call the primary religion Hinduism," she explained. "But it is not one unified thing, Prince Aarav. It has countless branches. Some worship Vishnu, some Shiva, some the Goddess. Every village can have its own traditions, its own local deities. It is not a single, monolithic faith like you describe."
Aarav felt a chill. The purity and unity of Dharma, the central pillar of Hindustan's society for 6,500 years, had fractured into a thousand pieces in the land of their origin.
"And the other faiths you mentioned?" Aarav pressed. "From where did they come?"
"From outside," Eva said. "Great religions came from the west—Islam, Christianity. Others were born from within India itself, like Buddhism and Sikhism, challenging the old ways. For the last thousand years, much of India's history has been defined by the clash and combination of these different beliefs."
The words struck the core of Hindustan's identity. Clash. Combination. Challenge. These concepts were antithetical to their perfectly preserved, unchanging society. To them, Dharma was a perfect, eternal truth. The idea that it could be challenged, or that other truths could exist alongside it, was a philosophical impossibility.
"So they have forgotten," Aarav said, the words heavy with a sorrow that was not his own, but the collective grief of his entire civilization. "They have forgotten the one true way."
"Forgotten?" Eva replied, a hint of a challenge in her own voice. "Some might say they evolved. They adapted. They created a culture that is famously tolerant of many different paths to truth."
Tolerance. Another alien concept. In Hindustan, there was only one path, one truth. It required no tolerance because there was nothing else to tolerate.
Ananya listened to Aarav's translation, her mind finally connecting the pieces. Her brother's strange knowledge, his questions, his profound sadness... it was not a divine gift. He was not just speaking their language; he was feeling their history. He spoke of Bharat not as an ancestor, but as a memory.
She looked at her little brother, and for the first time, she felt a sliver of fear. The greatest mystery in Hindustan was not the strange ship on their shores, but the small boy sitting beside her, who held the ghost of a forgotten world behind his eyes.
Aarav leaned back, his mind reeling. He now understood. Hindustan was not just a preservation of a kingdom; it was a snapshot. A perfect, unchanging photograph of a culture from 6,500 years ago. India, however, was a living, breathing, chaotic thing. It had been bruised, broken, and reshaped by history, but it had never stopped moving forward.
One was a perfect memory. The other was a complicated reality. And he, somehow, was a child of both.