Aakaash — The Moon-Blessed Prince of Swarnagad
The sea was not angry that night. It was mourning. Under a sky choked with bruised, churning clouds, the waves did not crash—they heaved, a slow, rhythmic sighing against the black cliffs of Swarnagad. The air tasted of salt and impending rain, and the moon was a prisoner, locked away behind the storm's vault.
From within that wall of mourning water, a new sound surfaced. Not the shriek of gulls or the groan of tide-worn rock. A cry. Thin, fragile, yet piercingly clear. A human sound where no human should be.
An old fisherman, Anant, drawn to the shore by a restlessness he couldn't name, froze. His lantern, a shuttered eye of trembling light, guttered wildly. He turned, peering into the inkwell darkness between waves. There, lifted on the crest of a heaving swell, was a small, woven basket—a tokri of river reeds, impossibly dry. Inside, a bundle of cloth.
His heart, a tired drum in his chest, skipped a beat. He didn't think. He waded into the icy, pulling surf, the water clawing at his knees, his thighs. His gnarled hands closed around the basket's rim, and he hauled it back to the wet sand, his own breath roaring in his ears.
The crying had stopped.
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through him. He bent over the basket, fumbling with the cloth. And then he saw.
The infant was awake. Not crying. Not sleeping. Simply gazing up at the turbulent sky with wide, tranquil eyes. As Anant's shadow fell over him, the baby's head turned. Its lips, a pale rose in the lantern's gloom, curved.
It smiled.
At that exact moment, the world hesitated.
The wind, which had been howling through the cliff passes, died mid-note. The thrashing waves slumped into gentle, lapping ripples. And high above, the mass of cloud tore apart—not as if blown by wind, but as if a giant, gentle hand had drawn back a curtain. Moonlight, pure and liquid silver, spilled through the rent in the sky, falling in a single, dramatic column onto the shore, illuminating the basket and the child within.
Anant stumbled back, his soul trembling. The baby's hair, fine as spider-silk, shone with the colour of fresh-minted silver coins. His eyes, vast and knowing, were not blue like the sea, but like the moon itself—pale, luminous, holding a cool, ancient light within their depths.
"This… this is no ordinary castaway," the old man whispered, the words torn from him by awe. "This is a blessing… or a burden the sea could not keep."
He never saw the Watcher. Hidden in the lee of a jagged rock, a figure stood cloaked in absolute black. Not a fold of cloth stirred. No breath fogged the air. It was less a man and more a condensation of the surrounding darkness, a hole cut into the fabric of the night. Its unseen gaze was fixed not on the miraculous child, but on the fisherman's reaction, as if observing the first ripple of a stone thrown into fate's pond.
Unaware, Anant gathered the basket with reverence now, not pity. Cradling it against his chest, he turned and hurried, not toward his humble hut, but up the winding path to the only place that could possibly hold such a mystery: the glowing palace of Swarnagad, perched on the cliffs above.
---
The Court of Swarnagad
The throne room of Swarnagad was a cavern of gold and sorrow. King Ratna Pratap sat upon the Sun-Throne, his bearing regal but his eyes hollow, the light within them dimmed by a loss too fresh to name. Five days. It had been only five days since the tiny, still form of his newborn son had been carried from the queen's chambers. Queen Nayantara stood beside him, a statue of grief wrapped in royal blue, her face a beautiful mask etched with lines of silent anguish.
When the fisherman was ushered in, grime and sea-spray on his humble clothes, the king's voice was flat, drained of curiosity. "Speak."
Anant knelt, placing the basket before him with infinite care. "Forgive this intrusion, Maharaj, at this hour of your sorrow. But the sea… the sea brought a mystery to my feet, one too great for a simple man to hold."
He told his tale—the storm, the impossible basket, the smiling child, the moon's obedient light. His voice shook with a truth that needed no embellishment.
King Ratna Pratap's frown was one of weary logic. "And you bring him here? The sea gives gifts; a man may keep them."
Anant pressed his forehead to the cool marble. "Maharaj, I am a lone man. To raise a child with hair of silver and eyes of moonfire… the village would call it witchcraft. They would fear him, or worse, harm him. I seek not reward, but sanctuary… for him."
Before the king could pronounce judgment, Queen Nayantara moved. It was not the glide of a queen, but the stumbling rush of a wounded creature toward water. She fell to her knees beside the basket, her hands hovering over the cloth.
"Justice?" Her voice was a cracked whisper, echoing in the vast hall. "No. This is not about justice." She looked up at her husband, her eyes blazing with a sudden, desperate fire. "Ratna… five days ago, the heavens closed a door. Tonight, the sea has opened a window. You may call it chance. I call it… an answered prayer."
With a tenderness that made the courtiers catch their breath, she lifted the baby from his reed cradle. The column of moonlight from the high window seemed to follow him, gilding his silver hair. She held him close, her tears falling onto the blanket.
"Look at him," she pleaded, her voice strengthening. "Does he look cursed? He looks… chosen. My arms have ached with emptiness. My heart has echoed in a hollow chest. I do not care from whose womb he came. From this moment, he is the child of my heart. My son."
King Ratna Pratap stared at his wife, at the strange, luminous child in her arms, and something in his own fortified heart splintered. The rigid line of his shoulders softened. He saw not a potential political problem, but the return of light to his queen's eyes.
He let out a long, slow breath. "Very well, Nayantara. If your heart claims him, then so does the crown." He turned his gaze to the fisherman, and now it was the king who looked back, sharp and calculating. "You have done a service to your queen, if not your king. You will be rewarded." He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a low, steel-edged whisper that carried to every corner of the silent room. "But hear this oath, fisherman. The tale you told tonight ends here. The child was born to the Queen in her private chambers, delivered early but healthy. That is the truth of Swarnagad. If any other truth ever passes your lips, your life, and the lives of any you hold dear, will be forfeit. Do you swear?"
Anant trembled, the weight of the secret and the threat settling on his old shoulders like a yoke. "I swear it, Maharaj. On my life and my ancestors."
As the fisherman was led away, laden with gold and a heavier burden, Queen Nayantara cradled the baby, her tears now of joy, whispering to the silent, watching moon through the window. "Thank you… thank you for returning my son to me."
---
The Moon Prince
Swarnagad awoke to joyous bells. "Prince Aakaash is born!" The news flowed through the city like a sweet, cleansing river. The official story was a balm on the kingdom's recent sorrow. Festivities bloomed in every street, gold leaf and bright cloth banishing the gloom.
Only two souls in the palace carried the full weight of the truth: the king, and his aged, razor-sharp minister, Shraavan. The secret became the hidden bedrock of the prince's life.
And Aakaash grew. He was a child of serene beauty and a quiet, observing nature. His laughter was a rare, crystalline sound that seemed to make the very air sparkle. His curiosity was boundless, but it was a gentle probing, never destructive. He was, in every visible way, the perfect moon-prince—luminous, calm, distant.
But fate scripts tragedies in the margins of fairy tales.
When Aakaash had seen ten monsoons, the unthinkable happened. Queen Nayantara, his sun, his heart, was laid low by a swift, merciless fever. The palace healers were powerless. In a matter of weeks, the light that had pulled Aakaash from the sea was extinguished.
The laughing prince vanished. In his place was a silent, pale boy who moved through the opulent halls like a ghost. The only anchor in his sudden, bleak ocean was Minister Shraavan. The old man, stern but infinitely kind, became 'Kaka'—uncle, guardian, teacher, and the last tether to the love he had known.
Shraavan raised him, filling the void with lessons in statecraft, history, and the subtle art of observing men's hearts. For Aakaash, he was everything.
Then, war came. A greedy eye was cast upon Swarnagad's legendary shores. Shraavan, though aged, took up arms to defend the kingdom he had served for a lifetime. He did not return. The news of his fall on the battlefield reached the palace, and for Aakaash, it was a second drowning. The anchor was gone. He was adrift once more, now in a palace that felt vast, gold-plated, and icily empty.
King Ratna Pratap, drowning himself in scrolls of governance and strategies of defence, saw his son's profound isolation not as a wound to be healed, but as a problem to be solved. The boy was too quiet, too inward. He needed hardening. Purpose.
"Send him to Gurudev Vishrayan's Gurukul," the king decreed, his decision swift and final. "The discipline there will forge him. Give him something else to think about."
And so, at twenty, Prince Aakaash of Swarnagad was sent away from the only home he'd ever known, carrying a small bag of belongings and a cavernous, unspoken grief within his moonlit eyes.
---
A Prince Enters the Gurukul
The royal chariot departed, leaving him before the ancient, vine-strewn gates. He stood for a moment, a slender figure in travel-dusted silvers and blues, his silver hair catching the dappled forest light. Then he walked forward, each step measured, calm, giving nothing away.
He found Gurudev Vishrayan in a courtyard of whispering pines.
"Pranam, Gurudev." His voice was quiet, melodious, but it held a distance, like a note played on a flute from very far away.
Gurudev turned. His wise eyes, which had seen the birth-cries of elements and the meeting of soul-bound children, took in the young man in one encompassing glance. He saw the princely posture, the elegant features, but he also saw the deep, still wells of sorrow in those pale eyes, and the way the very air around him seemed hushed, waiting.
"You arrive with the bearing of royalty, young one, yet your spirit walks a lonely path. What brings a prince of Swarnagad to our forest door?"
Aakaash bowed and presented a sealed scroll. "I am Prince Aakaash. My father, King Ratna Pratap, sends me to learn under your guidance, Gurudev."
Gurudev read the formal missive, his expression unchanging. He nodded. "Then you shall be a student here. Go with him," he gestured to a waiting disciple. "Rest now. Your lessons begin tomorrow."
"As you command." Another perfect bow.
As Aakaash followed the disciple away, his silver hair a fading beacon in the green gloom, Gurudev did not move. He watched until the prince disappeared into the shadows of a stone archway.
His whisper was so soft it was less a sound and more a thought given to the wind. "You carry not storms, child, but the profound silence after the storm has passed. A grief that has hollowed you into a vessel. You were born under a bending moon and a watching shadow."
A faint chill, unrelated to the breeze, passed through the courtyard.
"And like it or not, Moon-Prince, your life is a thread in a tapestry woven by a hand that dwells in darkness. A darkness that has been waiting for you since the hour you were found."
---
The Unanswered Question
The last of the tale faded in the study. The phantom scent of sea spray and night-blooming flowers seemed to linger. Acharya Shatrunjay sat motionless, his mind an echo chamber for the final, haunting image: the still, black figure watching from the rocks.
After a long silence, he found his voice. "Gurudev… I see now. Each of these five is a world of pain and power. Their pasts are not just stories; they are the roots of the trees they are becoming." He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a hushed, urgent whisper. "But one shadow remains. The man in black on the shore. Who was he?"
For the first time that evening, a flicker of something like unease passed through Gurudev Vishrayan's fathomless calm. His smile was gentle but carried the weight of galaxies. "That, my dear Acharya, is a question to which even I have no clear answer. Some presences in this world are like deep-sea currents—felt by their effects, but their source remains shrouded in the abyss."
He looked toward the window, where the first stars were pricking through the twilight. "Some truths are veiled not to be cruel, but because the light to see them by has not yet dawned. The future holds the key to that particular darkness."
Acharya bowed deeply, his scholarly mind humbled, his heart heavy with the majesty and mystery of it all. "I understand, Gurudev. My doubts are settled. Thank you for this… profound trust."
"Go in peace, Acharya. Tend to your students. Their pasts are prologues. The epic is yet to be written."
As Acharya Shatrunjay left, the weight of the five stories settled upon him. But one question echoed louder than all the answers, a persistent, chilling note in the symphony of destinies he now understood:
Who was the man in black? And what did he want with the moon-blessed prince he watched from the shadows?
The room fell into a hush that felt almost sacred.
Gurudev's tale had ended, but the echo of it still pulsed in the air like a second heartbeat.
And then—
just as Acharya Shatrunjay's final question dissolved into the evening light—
a sudden gust of wind passed through the study.
The candles did not flicker.
They bowed, their flames slanting sharply in one direction…
toward the window.
Toward the darkening forest.
Gurudev's eyes rose—not surprised, but accepting, as though greeting something inevitable.
Far beyond the courtyard, deep within the crushed-violet shadows of the treeline,
something moved.
A silhouette.
Not walking.
Not standing.
Simply present.
Unlit.
Unborn.
Unseen… except by those who knew how to listen to the silence.
Gurudev spoke, his voice softer than breath:
> "The shadow that watched his birth…
watches still."
Before Acharya could respond, the figure in the woods vanished—
not by movement, not by speed—
but like a memory blinking out of existence.
The candles straightened.
The air stilled.
And the mystery of Aakaash deepened.