The forest did not burn like any ordinary fire.It split apart.
One moment the Wayanad canopy whispered with the usual chorus of cicadas and parrots, the fragrance of wet earth lingering after the monsoon. The next, the sky tore open with a sound like stone grinding on stone. A streak of light carved itself across the heavens, but it was not lightning—it shimmered with a cruel intelligence, weaving serpentine patterns that burned the eyes.
Aadi clutched Arul's arm and dragged him across the field where their tribe had gathered, the air humming with terror. Cows bucked against their ropes, dogs howled, children wailed, and above them the sky churned with forms too immense to comprehend.
On one side, luminous figures clad in gold and fire descended—eyes sharp as blades, voices echoing with hymns older than language. The devas. Their arrival shook the air with the resonance of conches and the clash of celestial weapons.
On the other side, the asuras surged upward, rising from cracks in the earth itself. Horns and scales, shadows given flesh, their cries were less like war chants and more like the groan of mountains shifting. They carried weapons shaped from bone, stone, and flame.
And between them—caught as if on a sacrificial altar—was the world of mortals.
Aadi pressed his palms to his ears as the first clash erupted. A bolt of fire—was it an arrow, or a mantra condensed into light?—hurtled through the air, striking an asura and shattering into sparks that ignited the treetops. The counterstrike came in the form of a mace hurled with such force that the ground cracked open, splitting paddy fields into ragged fissures.
Villagers screamed. The fire leapt toward their thatched roofs.
"Move! To the river!" Aadi shouted, pushing the others forward. His body acted before thought; his mind was still shackled to the impossible sight of gods and demons locked in combat above. He had grown up hearing Angoor's tales of them, dismissing them as metaphors for storms and seasons. But here they were—no longer parables, but predators.
He pulled a girl from where she had stumbled into the mud. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and black with terror, then toward the sky. "Are they… here for us?"
Aadi wanted to lie. To say yes, the gods had come to save them. But his throat closed. He had seen too much already—the devas' weapons cutting through the forest, not sparing a single hut, a single tree. The asuras crushing fields beneath their charge, trampling cattle as if they were ants.
They were not fighting for people. They were fighting through them.
The sky blazed again, brighter than noon. A trident descended, spinning, tearing through a cluster of asuras. Their blood fell in hot rain, hissing as it struck the earth. But in its arc, the trident also obliterated three huts, their timbers scattering like broken bones.
Aadi's stomach twisted. His people's cries rose louder than the war above, yet neither side looked down.
The devas sang in voices of steel. The asuras roared in voices of stone. Neither sang for the tribe of Wayanad.
Aadi's knees buckled as the ground convulsed, hurling him against the roots of a jackfruit tree. Dust filled his mouth; his ears rang. When he pushed himself up, he saw Arul staggering with a stick, trying to herd a cluster of children toward the riverbank. Beyond them, the fields were splitting apart as if some giant hand were ripping the land itself.
Aadi's chest pounded. The war was not theirs. But its price would be theirs.
He sprinted toward Arul, seizing the boy's shoulder. "Go! Faster!"
A shadow passed over them. Aadi looked up—and froze.
Above, a figure of fire and wings met a horned titan in midair. They clashed with a force that tore a hole in the sky itself. Through it, for the briefest instant, Aadi glimpsed something beyond: a void swirling with fragments of stars, as if reality itself was bleeding.
He could not breathe. He could not look away. The air vibrated in his bones.
This was no war for humans. It was a tearing of the very veil that held the world together.
And yet—whether gods or demons won—it was the humans who would be left in ruins.
Aadi clenched his fists, dragging Arul and the children onward. The realization cut through him like a blade:
If he did not find a way to act, his people would not survive the games of gods.