Kurukshetra felt wrong before the first conch was blown.
The land itself resisted definition. Soil cracked without thirst. Wind moved without direction. The ground held memory too easily, as though it had been waiting for this war long before men gave it names.
"This place is thin," Aniruddha said quietly, standing beside Krishna at the edge of the plain. "Too many vows have passed through it."
Krishna's gaze rested on the horizon, where banners would soon rise. "That is why it was chosen," he replied. "Human wars prefer ground that is already tired of restraint."
When the armies assembled, attention fixed on formations, chariots, and oaths shouted into the open sky. Songs would remind us of those things. Names would be carried forward by blood and noise.
Aniruddha turned away.
He walked where no banners flew.
Where the space between camps stretched uneven and uncertain, where fear pooled without form and intention gathered before action. Here, the unseen pressed close—not boldly, not yet, but expectant.
The first presence revealed itself without violence.
A distortion in the air.A pressure that did not touch flesh.
"You arrive early," it said, voice like stone rubbed smooth by centuries. "The war has only begun."
"We do not wait for it to finish," Aniruddha replied.
The shape resolved partially—tall, insubstantial, stitched together from dried blood and unresolved oath. Not an Asura. Not a Rakshasa.
Something that followed wars.
"You cannot deny us," it said. "This field will feed us."
Aniruddha stepped forward.
The ground beneath his feet darkened slightly—not burned, not marked, but claimed. A boundary took shape without symbol or sound.
"I do not deny the war," he said evenly. "I deny you."
The presence recoiled, surprised—not by force, but by relevance withdrawn.
Others stirred.
Shadows gathered at the edge of the boundary, murmuring, testing, tasting for weakness. They did not rush. They waited for certainty to falter.
Aniruddha did not draw a weapon.
He breathed.
He held.
The ash beneath his skin anchored him—not to power, but to permission withdrawn. Each attempt to press closer dissolved not in pain, but in futility.
"You cannot stop the deaths," one hissed.
"I know," Aniruddha said. "That is not my task."
"What is?"
"To ensure they remain human."
By dawn, the unseen withdrew.
Not defeated.
Outwaited.
Aniruddha stood alone as the first conches sounded across the plain, announcing a war that would scar the age.
From afar, Krishna rested his hands on the reins of Arjuna's chariot. His gaze flicked, briefly, toward the place no one else marked.
That was enough.
The visible war began.
But beneath it, something older had already learned restraint—because the battlefield was no longer open ground.
It was guarded.