The sun was bleeding out over Tarain.
Eshaan stood at the edge of the cliff and watched the last light sink beneath the horizon. The western sky burned like an open wound, deep orange melting into crimson until the colours disappeared into gathering dusk. Wind swept across the plain, lifting his long hair, but he remained motionless. Bare feet rooted to the stone, shoulders relaxed, his axe, Kritanta hanging loosely from his left hand, he stood with such absolute stillness that, from a distance, he could have been mistaken for part of the cliff itself.
Below him, Tarain was dying.
For weeks, the same number had echoed through every campfire and command tent from Ajmer to the Yamuna.
A hundred thousand.
A hundred thousand men had marched here believing only one side would leave the field standing. From above, the battle no longer resembled an army. It looked like the land itself had fallen into violent convulsions. Dust climbed into the sky in towering columns while waves of steel, fire, and men surged across the plain. Every soldier below carried a life beyond this battlefield—a family waiting, children expecting their return, meals left unfinished in homes they might never see again.
The sounds reached him in rolling waves.
The clash of steel.
The cries of men.
The thunder of charging cavalry.
Beneath it all was a single relentless rhythm. Hooves struck earth. Shields crashed together. Spears splintered. The pulse of war travelled through the cliff into Eshaan's feet, through bone and muscle, until it settled beside the beat of his own heart.
He had watched long enough to understand the battle.
The Rajput left flank had vanished without a trace and all because of the Ghurid cavalry that had swept far beyond the reach of the Rajput archers before wheeling inward at an angle the defenders had failed to anticipate. The line had split open in an instant, and through that breach poured wave after wave of mounted warriors, driving relentlessly toward the centre where the royal standard still rose above the chaos.
Eshaan searched the battlefield.
His gaze ignored the confusion, the scattered duels, the clouds of dust. Years of discipline had taught him to look beyond the noise and find the pattern beneath it.
The eye of the storm.
There.
Prithviraj Chauhan remained atop his white stallion, surrounded by what little was left of his royal guard. At the beginning of this battle, this formation was meant to be a defensive ring but now, it was nothing more than a shrinking knot of exhausted Rajput warriors fighting shoulder to shoulder but held no formation.
The Ghurid cavalry pressed inward from every side with grim patience. There was no desperation in their advance, only certainty. They knew victory belonged to numbers and time.
Prithvi still fought.
His sword rose and fell with practiced precision, each strike buying another heartbeat. Blood streamed from a cut above his brow, tracing a crimson line down his face, unnoticed amid the fury of combat.
Eshaan measured the distance.
Four hundred yards.
From the foot of the cliff to the king.
Kritanta stirred.
A slow pulse ran through the weapon resting in his hand.
He lowered his eyes.
The blade was darker than night itself, a black so complete it seemed to consume the dying sunlight rather than reflect it. Crimson veins wound through the metal like living arteries, glowing with a rhythm that belonged to no mortal heart. At the centre of the blade rested the Eye.
Open.
Always open.
Yet now its gaze had sharpened, fixed upon the battlefield below with quiet anticipation, as though it had waited across centuries for this single moment.
When Kritanta strikes, what must end... ends.
The words surfaced unbidden.
He had repeated them countless times within the Ashram's stone halls, believing them to be little more than sacred doctrine. Only now did their meaning settle inside him. It was not understanding.
It was recognition.
The kind that arrives when truth has always existed within you, waiting for the moment you are finally capable of seeing it.
Eshaan lifted his eyes once more.
The sun's final sliver disappeared beneath the horizon.
Darkness claimed the sky.
Without hesitation, he stepped from the cliff.
The ground rushed up to meet him.
Eshaan struck the slope already running, his body pitched forward as gravity became an ally instead of an enemy. Loose shale burst beneath his feet, scattering down the hillside, yet every step landed with effortless precision. The Ashram had forged that instinct into him. Four years of relentless discipline, compressed into a single year beyond the ordinary flow of time, had stripped hesitation from his body until movement no longer required thought.
A hidden ledge vanished beneath him.
For an instant, he dropped.
He landed ten feet lower without breaking stride.
Kritanta swung at his side, its familiar weight no longer something he carried but something that belonged to him, as natural as another limb.
He reached the foot of the cliff and surged forward.
The battlefield swallowed him without notice. No one spared him a second glance. Every man had an enemy in front of him and death somewhere close behind. Eshaan slipped through the chaos, boots striking mud churned black with blood, weaving past shattered shields, fallen horses, and men who would never rise again. The air reeked of blood, sweat, burning leather, and freshly turned soil, a smell no training could ever prepare a man to endure.
Three hundred yards.
The fighting thickened.
Rajputs and Ghurids were too consumed by the struggle before them to question the lone warrior cutting through the chaos with unwavering purpose. A few turned as he passed. Their eyes lingered for the briefest moment before instinct urged them elsewhere. There was something in his stride, something in the calm certainty with which he advanced, that warned them he was not meant for them.
Eshaan never noticed.
His eyes remained fixed on one man alone.
Prithvi.
Two hundred yards.
The royal guard had all but disappeared. What had once been a defensive ring had collapsed into a desperate knot of exhausted Rajput warriors packed tightly around the white stallion. Shields overlapped. Swords rose and fell in frantic rhythm. They no longer fought to win.
They fought to delay the inevitable.
A Ghurid soldier on the edge of the melee caught sight of Eshaan.
His expression changed.
His mouth opened, but whatever warning he meant to shout died before it left his throat.
Eshaan raised Kritanta.
The crimson veins awakened.
Not with the brilliance of flame, but with something deeper, a glow that seemed to rise from within the blade itself, ancient and immeasurable. The Eye opened wider. Crimson light spread through the veins of the blade. Beneath Eshaan's grip, the Sanskrit mantras grew warm, then hot, until the metal felt alive against his palm.
The weapon had made its choice.
So had he.
Time unravelled.
The world did not stop. It expanded.
Vishuddha.
The fifth chakra answered his call, not as the scriptures described with serene perfection, but as all living power revealed itself with qualities that were untamed, overwhelming, and impossible to fully comprehend.
Every movement slowed.
He saw the shifting line of every shoulder.
The tilt of every helmet.
The widening gaps between men as they fought.
The exact path the axe would carve through flesh and steel.
Prithvi's sword descended toward an enemy who, though still breathing, had already reached the end written for him. Cause and consequence no longer stood apart. To Eshaan's sharpened perception, destiny had arrived before the strike itself.
His gaze settled upon the soldier nearest the king.
The point where Kritanta's journey would end.
He threw.
To those watching, the moment defied memory.
Later, no two survivors would tell the same story.
Some swore they had seen a streak of black tear across the battlefield like lightning cast sideways.
Others claimed the air itself had split apart, reaching into the melee to claim its chosen dead.
Many insisted they heard nothing at all—
until the heads struck the earth.
They fell as one.
The first soldier fell before he realized he had been struck.
The second turned just in time to see the blade.
The third never saw it at all.
Kritanta carved through the royal guard without slowing. Helmets split. Mail parted. Flesh offered no more resistance than water. The weapon never wavered, never changed its course.
Seven men.
Seven strokes.
The circle around Prithviraj broke open.
Kritanta buried itself deep in the skull of the last Ghurid standing within arm's reach of the king.
For a heartbeat...
Nothing happened.
Then the heads fell.
Blood erupted across the churned earth as seven bodies collapsed almost together, their weapons slipping from lifeless hands.
Silence spread through the melee.
Not across the battlefield but only here.
Within a few paces of the fallen men, swords lowered. Horses stamped nervously. Rajput and Ghurid alike stared at the axe standing upright in a corpse as though it had fallen from the heavens instead of crossing Two hundred yards of open battlefield.
Beyond that small circle, the battle raged on.
Here, time seemed unwilling to move.
Eshaan stepped through the opening.
He neither hurried nor hesitated.
The warriors nearest him gave way without thinking. Some took a single step backward. Others lowered their weapons altogether. None could have explained why.
Years later, those who survived would remember only a single feeling.
Recognition.
As though something ancient had walked among them for a single passing moment.
Eshaan reached the axe.
His fingers closed around the shaft.
He pulled.
Kritanta came free with a low, heavy sound, like stone shifting beneath a mountain. The crimson veins faded to their usual glow. The Eye narrowed, its watchfulness settling into silence once more.
Blood ran down the blade.
Eshaan turned.
Prithviraj Chauhan stared at him.
Even the white stallion had gone still, its ears pinned forward, its breathing shallow. Horses sensed what men could not, and this one refused to take another step.
Blood had dried in a dark line beneath the cut above Prithvi's brow. His sword still hung at his side, its edge wet with the day's fighting. His chest rose and fell with each measured breath.
For the first time since dawn...
He was no longer looking at the battle.
He was looking only at Eshaan.
Eshaan knew that expression.
He had seen it reflected in the mirror that morning in Ajmer after a year without seeing his own face.
It was the look of someone who had just discovered the world was larger than they had believed.
Prithvi's gaze lingered.
First on the long hair stirring in the evening wind.
Then the broad shoulders and bare chest marked by years of relentless discipline.
Then the dark pattern winding across Eshaan's right forearm—the peacock-feather mark whose meaning only a handful of souls still remembered.
Finally...
Kritanta.
The black axe rested quietly in his hand. The crimson veins had dimmed, yet the Eye remained open, watching without blinking. It looked less like a weapon forged by men than a relic carried out of an age that should have remained forgotten.
Prithvi swung down from his horse.
His boots sank into the blood-soaked earth.
Neither man spoke.
The wind swept across Tarain, carrying dust, smoke, and the distant cries of a battle that had not yet ended. Around them, thousands still fought beneath the darkening sky.
Yet within that small circle of fallen bodies, the noise seemed strangely far away.
Prithvi stopped an arm's length from him.
His eyes drifted to the axe.
To the seven headless corpses.
To the blood spreading through the dust.
Then they returned to Eshaan.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low, roughened by hours of command and combat.
"Who are you?"
The words lingered between them.
Eshaan answered with silence.
Prithvi searched his face once more, as though hoping to find something familiar.
Instead, he found only mystery.
His grip loosened around the hilt of his sword.
When he spoke again, it was almost a whisper.
"...Are you a god?"