The morning broke not with sunlight—but with thunder, thick and rolling like a dirge. Even the heavens hesitated, as if unwilling to bear witness.
Dark clouds churned low above the Black Citadel, swollen and heavy as if summoned by some ancient, wrathful prophecy. Wind howled through the Bloodwood, carrying the scent of iron, ash, and omen. The war drums of Hastinapura fell silent.
Chitrāngadha stood at the front lines, eyes closed, bare-chested beneath the crimson and gold of his war-cloak. His twin sabers, Hridaya and Nidarsha, hovered before him—one a beacon of golden radiance, the other cloaked in ruthless shadow-blue—together embodying mercy and judgment, light and darkness locked in eternal balance.
Around him, the Kuru army waited. The siege towers loomed behind like crouched titans. War-elephants, armored in chakra-forged steel, snorted and pawed the earth. Spirit-archers knelt on floating platforms, arrows of mantra-thread nocked and ready.
But all eyes were on him.
Yet something was wrong. Not visibly. Not in strength. But in balance. His qi flared too sharp, too vast—not in harmony with his breath, but spilling from him like an untamed storm. This was no advancement. This was deviation.His meridians screamed in protest, bleeding light where none should escape. The old masters called it the Spiral Path—a false ascension born not of cultivation, but collapse. A path that devours the cultivator even as it grants them power. It was not ascension. It was hunger mistaken for evolution. The same hunger that once whispered in Vāhini's bones. The same that Naraka once mistook for clarity.
The prince. The Sword-Born Sun.
He raised a hand. And the wind obeyed.
Qi flared—not only from his Core but from something older, wilder, buried deep within the shadowed recesses of his soul, an ember long kept beneath restraint's fragile dam.
The dream had lingered all week—a river winding through memory and fate. The words. The weight of his father's voice, heavy with unspoken warning. The sorrow in Bhīṣma's gaze that begged him to hold to the river… and not let it drown. As if he knew, even then, that the river could not hold forever—that one day it would demand to flood or rot.
But the citadel loomed like a curse against the sky. The land itself wept in its shadow.
Restraint had become a chain heavy as iron. Fire—the only language left to one who no longer could speak mercy. He had spoken of justice. Now, only the flame answered.
Chitrāngadha opened his eyes. And the storm opened with him.
And still, part of him trembled—not from fear, but from the cold knowledge that this path was a one-way descent, a breaking of oaths that could never be mended. He had prayed for a war that could be won cleanly. But the gates had not opened. The walls had not broken. Only he had.
He had not risen. He had bent. Cracked beneath expectation. Let the serpent within him uncoil. It had never spoken aloud—but it didn't need to. The shadow it left inside him, the remnants of Vāhini's cursed hunger, whispered in silence: "Let it burn. Let everything burn." And part of him listened. Each time he listened, the voice grew clearer—not louder, but truer. It did not tempt. It reminded. Reminded him how easily compassion becomes a noose.
If restraint was virtue, why did it demand the righteous bleed dry, while monsters feasted and laughed in shadowed halls?
"Initiate the Breach."
His voice was a blade that cut through the storm's roar, and at his command, the first wave surged forward—an unstoppable tide of iron and flame.
At his command, the first wave surged forward. The siege engines groaned, hurling boulders wrapped in flame-script. The outer wards of the Citadel flared in protest, their void-glyphs burning black against the sky.
Then—he moved.
Chitrāngadha leapt like a comet unbound, the flight array beneath his boots screaming beyond mortal limits. He tore through stormclouds, a blazing arrow of wrath and will—
A god cast down to break the gates of hell itself.
Toward the curse-forged walls of the Black Citadel.
Cultists on the ramparts screamed and unleashed void-laced arrows. War chants rose. From the highest towers, beams of dark qi fired like spears of night.
But they could not touch him.
Hridaya blazed—a searing arc of golden flame, tender yet fierce, cleaving the defense spire as though unraveling a thread of fate.
Nidarsha struck next—cold, precise, and merciless—a shadow's blade that severed with cruel grace.
He landed upon the uppermost gatehouse like a god of wrath, and with a cry that echoed through the realms, he drove both sabers into the blackstone.
"Let the gates remember my name."
The explosion tore through three layers of warding. The Citadel shook.
Chitrāngadha stood amid the crater, cloak reduced to cinders, qi leaking from him like a wounded star bleeding light. His eyes burned molten gold—alone, sovereign, and hollow.
For a moment—even the wind dared not whisper.