Mukul's childhood was unlike any other. While ordinary children played in the fields or learned their first letters, his days were spent beneath the watchful eyes of two of the greatest masters of the age.
Aditya Varma of the Celestial Forge taught him discipline, knowledge, and the foundations of power. Kabir Rathore of the Shadow Dominion tested him with trials of cunning, survival, and control. Their rivalry lived on in their methods, but in one thing they agreed—Mukul was no ordinary child.
By the age of three, he could read entire manuscripts in languages he had never been taught. By five, he could dismantle and rebuild complex machines after seeing them only once. At seven, his body moved with instincts beyond training—his footsteps silent as shadows, his strikes precise as lightning.
But it was not his skill that unsettled the masters. It was his presence.
Animals bent their heads when he passed. Flames flickered higher when he breathed near them. The air itself grew heavy when his anger stirred. There were times when Kabir swore he saw the boy's shadow move against the light, stretching long and sharp like a predator. And Aditya, for all his composure, admitted privately that Mukul's gaze could feel older than his years—as if some ancient spirit looked out through those eyes.
One evening, when Mukul was six, Aditya tested him with a puzzle of forged metals, designed to take weeks to solve. Mukul solved it in an hour, his small fingers weaving with precision that no child should have possessed.
"Impossible," Aditya muttered. "No forge-born prodigy could…"
But Mukul only looked up and smiled faintly. "The metal listens when you listen first."
Another night, Kabir set him in a chamber of illusions, a test that had broken even hardened warriors. The boy walked through calmly, unshaken, piercing every falsehood as though the world itself could not lie to him.
"Your shadows cannot trick me," Mukul said softly. "They already belong to me."
Kabir's spine tingled. He said nothing, but for the first time in years, he felt true unease.
Despite their fear, the masters could not deny what they saw. Mukul's genius grew with every breath, his body and mind racing far ahead of his age.
And always, at the edge of his innocence, lingered a power they could neither explain nor control. A power that whispered of storms yet to come.
But Mukul was still a child. He laughed, he stumbled, he clung to his mother Meera with wide-eyed devotion. At night, he listened to the gentle voices of Ishita and Anaya as they sang lullabies to their own daughters, who were growing swiftly in parallel with him.
Six little girls—Vanya, Kiara, Sakura, Aarohi, Liya, and Sirisha—played by his side, their bond with him unspoken but undeniable. They followed him as if drawn by an invisible thread, their tiny hands reaching for his without hesitation.
Even then, destiny had begun its weaving.
One night, as Meera watched her son sleeping peacefully, Aditya and Kabir stood outside, their faces grim.
"He is too strong," Kabir whispered. "One day, even we may not hold him."
Aditya's gaze lingered on the sleeping boy. "Or perhaps he will hold us all together. His strength will either destroy us… or save everything."
Neither master spoke again, but both knew the truth—Mukul was no mere child.
He was a storm contained in a boy's body.And storms never sleep forever.