Chapter 10: The Trial of Dharma (3)
The void shook.
Bhargav stepped forward, his bare feet leaving ripples in the blackness. Each ripple carried weight gravity itself bending to acknowledge his presence. His axe gleamed, not with light, but with inevitability, as though its edge was carved from the law of death itself.
I swallowed, gripping my own weapon tighter. My axe felt pitiful in comparison, little more than an iron tool beside a divine artifact. Yet it was mine. It was the reflection of all my struggles, my choices, my defiance.
"Why?" My voice was raw, scraped hollow by grief. "Why do I have to fight you? I've already cut away everything… I don't even know who I am without them."
Bhargav's gaze was merciless, yet not unkind.
"Dharma does not end in rejection. A man who only denies is hollow. A man who only clings is blind. To walk the path, Kael Arden, you must strike balance. To learn balance, you must face me."
His axe rose.
The air shuddered, collapsing into silence.
And then he moved.
---
The first strike was like a mountain falling.
I barely brought my axe up in time. Steel met steel with a soundless clash that echoed not in my ears, but in my bones. My arms screamed. My knees buckled. My teeth rattled like loose stones.
I was flung backward, tumbling through the void, until I slammed against something invisible. Air burst from my lungs, and I spat blood.
Bhargav didn't chase. He simply waited, axe resting against his shoulder, eyes boring into me.
"Rise."
Shaking, I forced myself to my feet. My palms were already torn open again, blood slick on the haft.
"Damn it," I hissed. "Fine. If this is what it takes…"
I lunged.
---
Each exchange was worse than the last.
Bhargav's blows were precise, unyielding, every swing embodying inevitability. It was as though he wasn't attacking me, but enacting a law—that I would fall, that I could not stand, that resistance itself was arrogance.
I parried once, twice. On the third, my axe shuddered, cracks spiderwebbing across its edge. My body screamed in protest, bones straining against each impact.
Still, I fought.
Because I had to.
---
"Tell me, boy." Bhargav's voice carried between strikes, calm even as his axe blurred through killing arcs.
"Why cling to the path of the axe? Of all weapons, it is the least refined. Heavy. Wasteful. Crude. The world reveres the sword, the spear, the bow. Even the staff has grace. But the axe? The axe is for butchers."
His axe whistled. Mine met it. Sparks spat into the void.
I snarled, teeth bared. "Because that's me! I'm not refined. I'm not graceful. I'm just—trying to cut through what's in front of me."
He pressed harder. My knees hit the ground.
"So you embrace crudeness? That is your path?"
Blood dripped from my mouth. My arms trembled. "If it's crude to survive, then fine. I'll be crude. I'll be brutal. I'll cut through, even if it makes me ugly."
The pressure lifted just enough for me to breathe. Bhargav stepped back, eyes narrowing.
"Then show me. Show me the axe not as tool, but as Dharma."
---
Bhargav attacked not only with steel but with words.
Each strike came with a question, a philosophy embedded in the weight of his blade.
"When faced with a foe weaker than you, will you strike?"
"Yes—if it means protecting others!"
"When justice demands blood, but mercy begs restraint?"
"Then I'll carry the burden of deciding. Even if I'm wrong."
"When the world itself becomes your enemy?"
"Then I'll cut the world apart if I have to!" I said full of roar.
Every answer left me more battered, more broken. My ribs screamed. My lungs burned. My legs were little more than trembling scaffolds holding me upright.
But something shifted.
With each clash, my axe grew steadier. Less frantic, more deliberate. The crude swings smoothed—not into grace, but into certainty.
The axe wasn't about elegance. It was about finality. Every strike carried weight. A decision. A judgment.
My judgment.
---
At last, Bhargav stopped. His axe rested against the void, blade glowing faintly with runes.
I panted, half-dead, body bent and broken.
But I was still standing.
"Why… why stop?" I wheezed.
Bhargav's eyes burned like twin embers.
"Because you have answered. Not correctly. Not incorrectly. You answered as yourself. That is Dharma. To act not as the world demands, nor as desire dictates, but as you truly are even if the path is cruel."
His axe dissolved into light. The void trembled.
Bhargav stepped closer, placing a scarred hand on my shoulder.
"You have walked through justice. You have severed desire. You have endured balance. From this day forth, you are heir not of my art, but of your own."
I stared at him, numb, unsure if my legs would hold another second.
"Then… what now?"
For the first time, Bhargav smiled. A faint, tired smile, like dawn after endless night.
"Now, Kael Arden… you climb again."
The void shattered.
---
Light swallowed me whole.
I gasped, stumbling forward. The sensation of solid stone beneath my boots returned. Cold air brushed my skin.
The dungeon walls loomed around me once more, silent, empty. No Bhargav. No void. No illusions.
Just me.
Me… and the faint, pulsing glow ahead.
The [Limitless] Artifact.
My axe weighed heavy in my grip—but this time, it didn't feel crude. It felt like a choice.
I took a step forward.
This beginning of my journey.
I return to the garden
The garden was too quiet. The koi stirred beneath the pond's surface, breaking ripples across the water, but the silence between Bhargav and me pressed heavier than the air.
I sat across from him, my legs numb, my palms still trembling from the aftershocks of the last trial. My lungs begged for rest, but my mind burned with the unease of unfinished words.
Bhargav's eyes were on the pond, but his voice carried across the stillness like the toll of a bell.
"Kael Arden," he began, "before I fade, you must hear what this world has forgotten. Not about me. Not about my small imitation. But about the true root of the axe. About him."
The way he said him made my throat tighten. There was weight in that pronoun, the kind that bent mountains.
I swallowed. "Who?"
Bhargav finally turned his gaze on me. His eyes were not angry, not kind—they were solemn, like a man preparing to carve truth into stone.
"Lord Parashurama. Sixth avatar of Vishnu. The first wielder of the axe, and the last mortal to be judged worthy of carrying it as justice made flesh."
The name struck something in me. A memory. Not my memory—my reader's memory. A fragment from an old mythology book I had skimmed years ago, back in my old world. Parashurama, the warrior-sage. Known for purging the kshatriyas… twenty-one times.
But that was myth, wasn't it? A story tucked between pages. To hear Bhargav's voice… it made it real. Too real.
Bhargav closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he wasn't looking at me anymore. He was staring into an age far older than mine.
"Long ago," Bhargav said slowly, "the world bled under arrogance. Kings who believed themselves untouchable, warriors who used their strength to grind the weak into dust. The land drowned in greed. Dharma—balance—was broken."
His tone shifted, resonant, like a bard reciting sacred verse.
"And then came him. Parashurama. Born not to palaces, not to luxury, but to fire and devotion. Son of a rishi. Disciple of Vishnu. His hands did not first hold a weapon. They tilled soil. They prayed. They served. Until the world forced him to take up the axe."
As he spoke, I could see it—the faint shimmer of imagery behind his words. A young man, bare-footed, callused hands gripping a wooden shaft, lifting an axe heavier than his body.
Bhargav's voice deepened.
"Do you know what he did, Kael? Twenty-one times, he scoured the earth. Twenty-one times he raised his axe against kings who drowned their people in arrogance. Each time, he cut corruption from its roots. He did not kill for bloodlust. He did not swing for glory. He swung to reset balance."
The image sharpened. A battlefield. Thousands of armored men, swords raised. And one figure cutting through them, each swing heavy, deliberate, ending more than flesh—ending hubris.
My mouth went dry.
I'd read those words before. "Parashurama destroyed the kshatriyas twenty-one times." I'd skimmed past them in seconds, treating them like a line of trivia. But here, as Bhargav spoke, the words turned to stone.
Bhargav's gaze flickered back to me, as if sensing my thoughts.
"You are thinking like a reader. Like those who treat these names as decoration. Stop. Listen. This was not metaphor. This was not exaggeration. This was truth carved into history. A man with an axe, carrying the burden of judgment."
My stomach churned. I'd buried this kind of thing under the label myth. But here, in this garden that should not exist, with a man who was nothing but remnant soul, could I still pretend?
No.