Ketaki did not escape the Ghurid camp. He erupted from it.
The betrayal of Devdutt had not only guaranteed Ketaki's immediate utility but had also gifted him a perfect, catastrophic cover for escape. During a night skirmish with local guerillas, the Ghurid commander, distracted and overconfident, tasked Ketaki with shoring up a damaged supply wagon. Vivek, The Engineer, saw the opportunity, transforming the mundane task into a scientific act of sabotage. He laced a load of grain with a slow-burning, intensely acrid chemical mixture, a formula refined from his temple archives.
The resulting smoke bomb, when ignited by a misplaced lantern, did not kill, but it created an impenetrable, blinding chaos. The camp erupted in shouts, coughing, and confused swordplay.
"Move, now! Use the chaos; maintain the detachment," hissed Yoddha, The Warrior, seizing control of Ketaki's limbs.
Under Yoddha's command, Ketaki moved like a ghost, blending his Brahmin agility with the Turkish tactics he had meticulously studied in captivity. He avoided the main gates, instead scaling a ravine wall near the water source, using the rough-hewn techniques he'd learned repairing Ghurid fortifications. He navigated the panic not with panic of his own, but with a cold, almost detached professional focus on survival. The last trace of smoke and the scent of human fear clung to him as he vanished into the chaotic, moonless wilderness of Bundelkhand.
The following days were a blur of primal, solitary existence. The terrain was brutal: thorny scrubland, treacherous ravines, and oppressive heat. He was hunted by Ghurid patrols and actively avoided the desperate, broken Chandela survivors, whom Vivek judged a dangerous liability.
"A lone predator is the most efficient form of survival. Do not engage," Vivek advised, guiding Ketaki towards reliable, remote water sources and paths that minimized contact. "The goal is reconstitution, not sentiment."
But fate, or the need for a cohesive plot, had other plans. Hiding in a dry riverbed, Ketaki stumbled upon a band of Hindu refugees: farmers, displaced artisans, and a handful of lost, low-caste soldiers who had deserted before the fall of Kalinjar. They were starving, exhausted, and huddled together for psychological, rather than strategic, comfort.
Ketaki saw them not as people, but as an equation of desperate variables.
"A liability, yes," Vivek analyzed, his tone clinical. "Starving, directionless, and loud. They will attract patrols. But they are also raw manpower. An asset, if structured. A system. Tools."
"Weak. Pathetic. But capable of obedience," Yoddha countered, watching the soldiers among them, whose discipline had completely dissolved. "I can train them. I saw the Turkish method; it works on any man, provided the incentive is strong enough. A pack is stronger than a lone wolf."
The internal debate was swift and decisive. Ketaki understood: he needed infrastructure to protect his knowledge, and he needed soldiers to enforce that infrastructure. He needed a society, however small, built not on belief, but on absolute, practical utility.
He walked into the camp. The refugees, seeing a tall, imposing Brahmin scholar emerging from the dark, carrying the faint, strange scent of sulfur and steel, fell silent.
The old men saw a priest; the women saw protection; the soldiers saw a leader. But Ketaki saw only material to be engineered.
He exploited his Brahmin status immediately. He performed a ritual using dry twigs and water, framing it as the "Purification of the Severed Head," a cleansing of the failure of the old king. Vivek saw this as social engineering, using established ritual codes to secure immediate, unconditional loyalty. He became the Priest of Ketu; not the god of detachment, but the symbol of the necessary, violent severance from the failed past.
With his authority established, the transformation began in earnest.
Vivek took control of the logistics, turning the disorganized band into an efficient, resource-driven fighting machine. He used his knowledge to build swift, camouflaged defenses, find hidden water sources, and set simple, effective traps, implementing the guerilla warfare he'd studied. He repurposed farming tools into efficient weapons and established a strict, measurable quota for foraging and reconnaissance.
Yoddha, meanwhile, took the lost soldiers. He trained them with brutal, Ghurid-style, meritocratic discipline. There was no caste in his camp; only speed, efficiency, and obedience. He stripped away their old loyalties and replaced them with immediate, tangible goals: survival and revenge. He taught them flanking maneuvers, silent killing, and the precise, detached efficiency of the Turkish composite bowmen.
Within weeks, the desperate refugees were a cohesive, deadly militia. Ketaki, operating as the unified Architect, walked between the two worlds: the serene, ritualistic Brahmin priest dispensing wisdom, and the ruthless engineer dispensing punishments.
His people's survival was now guaranteed, but the cost was the traditional soul of their society. The old, spiritual order was gone, replaced by the nascent principles of the Engineered State. Ketaki's dual soul had found its purpose: to build a new civilization governed by absolute, amoral pragmatism.