The celebration was a living thing, a roaring beast of sound and scent that coiled up from the courtyard below and seeped into the very stones of the palace. From his secluded balcony, Prince Kumaran watched it all, a silent ghost at the feast. The distant, rhythmic throb of parai drums was the beast's heartbeat, primal and insistent. Laughter, sharp and guttural, sliced through the thick night air, mingling with the clatter of weapons and the sloshing of liquor. He could see them, his father's men—the victorious horde of King Sengole Veeran. Warriors with eyes glazed by palm-wine and triumph accepted earthen pots of frothing toddy from women whose smiles didn't reach their eyes. Other women, their movements too fluid, too practiced, draped themselves over the soldiers, bestowing not just drink but the fleeting, hollow warmth of their embraces. It was a river of forced merriment, a deluge meant to wash away the memory of what had been done to secure it.
This was his father's victory celebration. Not for a conquered kingdom, but for a small, fertile province to the east. A speck on the map, yet rich with gold-threaded rivers and fields that yielded grain like amber tears. And people. Especially the people. Sengole Veeran's hunger was not sated by land or treasure alone; it was a thirst for possession. The gold, the water, the soil, the men, the women—all were to be his, absorbed into the ever-growing shadow of his realm. To own was to exist; to conquer was to breathe.
Kumaran's knuckles were white where they gripped the balcony's carved sandstone rail. The scene below was a vibrant tapestry of everything he had come to loathe. The air, heavy with the smell of roasted meat, cheap perfume, and something darker—the faint, metallic tang of blood that no amount of sandalwood incense could fully mask.
He had a dozen half-brothers, scattered like seeds from their father's many wives and concubines. But only two legitimate heirs: himself, and Nayagan, the Crown Prince. Nayagan was their father's mirror—broader, louder, with a laugh that boomed like a war drum and an affinity for subjugating wild elephants that mirrored his approach to governance. He was a born king, they said, a Jaga gulladi, a master of beasts and men. The throne's heir in spirit and sinew.
And then there was Kumaran. The second son. The quieter shadow.
This revelry, this conquest, was their ecstasy. For him, it was a slow poison. Every cheer from below was a needle in his skin. He turned his face away, a scowl twisting his features, overcome by a wave of nausea that had nothing to do with wine.
A soft flutter, a whisper of movement, and then a weight settled gently on his bare foot. He didn't need to look down. Paravani, his peacock, his brother in every way that mattered, had flown down from his perch on the balcony's edge. The magnificent bird nudged his leg with its beak, a silent question in its dark, intelligent eyes. Nagaan had his war elephants; Kumaran had a peacock who understood the language of his silence.
"They feast on ashes, my friend," Kumaran murmured, his voice lost in the din. "And call it ambrosia."
He stepped back into the dim light of his chamber, leaving the cacophony behind like a closed door. Paravani followed, his tail feathers whispering across the polished floor. Kumaran moved to a low table, picking up a golden plate. With deliberate, almost ceremonial slowness, he scooped a handful of kezhvaragu millet from a jade bowl and poured it onto the plate, setting it before the peacock. The simple, domestic act was a balm. Here was life, sustenance, peace.
His eyes drifted to the large, ornate bronze mirror leaning against the wall—a gift from a southern merchant. He approached it, needing to see the man this palace, this bloodline, had forged. The reflection that stared back was a stranger painted in sorrow and guilt. His eyes, usually a calm brown, were stormy pools, red-rimmed and shimmering with unshed tears. The angles of his face, so like his mother's, seemed sharper, etched with a worry far beyond his twenty years. His long, unbound hair framed a countenance that spoke not of a prince fresh from victory, but of an inmate fresh from a slaughterhouse. He saw the ghost of the boy he had been, drowned in the reality of the man he was being forced to become.
A single tear escaped, tracing a hot path down his cheek. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if to dam the flood within.
And in that darkness behind his eyelids, she appeared.
---
The memory was not a thought; it was an invasion. It hijacked his senses, vivid and brutal.
He was no longer in his chamber, but back in the smoldering village square just hours before. The battle was over, the resistance crushed. The air was acrid with smoke and the coppery scent of blood. He stood, his own sword clean, having been kept from the thick of the fighting by his father's "protection"—a guard detail to ensure the second prince didn't get harmed, or perhaps, didn't interfere.
Through the haze, she came running. A young woman, her world in ruins. Her yellow sari was torn and hastily wrapped, one end clutched desperately at her chest, but it gaped, revealing a shoulder, the curve of a breast. The fabric was a futile shield, its disarray screaming of a violent struggle interrupted. This was a society where women would give their lives to protect their modesty; her dishevelment spoke not of carelessness, but of a priority that had eclipsed even her own dignity—her husband. Her kaanavan.
Her face was a mask of dust and tears, a kungumam pottu on her forehead smeared into a grotesque crimson tear by sweat and grime. She collapsed at his feet, not in worship, but in utter, broken supplication. Her fingers clawed at the thin gold thaali around her neck, holding it up to him as if it were a universal symbol he must understand.
"Ayya! My lord! Please!" her voice was a raw scrape against the silence of the dead around them. "Let my husband go! I beg you! By the sun and the moon, I swear he was no warrior! He was a potter! He only defended our home!" Her sobs were physical things, wracking her slender frame. "He is my life! Take me instead! Enslave me, but let him live!"
Her cries drilled into Kumaran's ears, a torture more precise than any blade. He stood frozen, a statue of polished armor and impotent horror. His mouth was dry, his tongue a dead weight. He wanted to speak, to act, to command his father's soldiers who were watching with cold amusement. But he was Prince Kumaran, the second son, the one whose voice was a whisper against the roar of Sengole Veeran's will.
His inaction was his answer.
He saw the moment hope died in her eyes. It was not a fading, but a shattering. The desperate light was replaced by a fire of pure, unadulterated hatred. Her gaze, burning with a grief that would outlive the sun, locked onto his.
Then—a whistling sound. A wet, heavy thud.
Something warm and sticky sprayed across Kumaran's cheek, his neck, his armor. He flinched. A dark object rolled to a stop against his boot, wobbling slightly.
It was a head. A man's head. Eyes wide in surprise, mouth slack. The potter.
A scream tore from the woman's throat, a sound so full of primordial agony that it seemed to still the very air. "AYYOO DEIVAMAE!" Oh, God!
She threw herself upon the grisly remnant, her body convulsing with wails that were beyond language. She cradled the lifeless face, her fingers trying to smooth the hair, to close the eyes. Then, she looked up again, directly at Kumaran. Her tears cut clean lines through the dirt on her face. Her voice dropped to a seething, prophetic whisper that carried more power than any scream.
"You… all of you… you will perish. Your line will end in dust and sorrow. This victory is your poison. Your destruction begins today. With this blood, I curse you."
With a final, devastating look, she scooped a handful of the blood-soaked earth at her feet and flung it at him. The dirt, mixed with her husband's life, spattered against his chest plate.
Before the stunned soldiers could react, before Kumaran could even blink, her hand darted to the small knife at her waist—a tool for cutting fruit, not flesh. In one swift, defiant motion, she drew it across her own throat.
Kumaran watched, paralyzed, as the light left her eyes, as her body slumped over her husband's remains, their blood mingling in the dirt. A final, sacred union in death.
A guard finally gripped his arm, his voice urgent. "Young Prince, you shouldn't be here. Come away."
As Kumaran was pulled back, he saw other soldiers, his father's men, already moving toward the woman's body, their intentions clear even in her death. One laughed, reaching for the end of her ruined sari.
Kumaran turned and vomited.
The rest of the day was a blurred montage of hell. The village was put to the torch. Innocent farmers, their hands calloused from ploughs, not swords, were cut down. Children were wrenched from hiding places to be taken as slaves. Women were dragged, screaming, into lines, their futures erased. The granaries were looted, the temples defiled. The air grew fat with the smell of burning thatch, burning grain, burning flesh. The lamentations of the doomed were the chorus to his father's triumph. And the architects of this horror? His father, Sengole Veeran. His brother, Nagaan. And by his presence, his silence, his clean sword… himself. Kumaran.
---
He gasped, eyes flying open, back in his chamber, the memory's vividness leaving him breathless. The celebratory sounds from below now sounded like the jeers of demons. The guilt was a physical weight, a stone in his gut, a constriction around his heart.
"Aah!" The sound was torn from him, a raw exhale of pain.
Without thinking, driven by a fury directed entirely at himself, at his own reflection that had witnessed it all and done nothing, he balled his fist and slammed it into the bronze mirror.
CRACK.
A spiderweb of fractures exploded across the surface, distorting his anguished face into a dozen fragmented monsters. A sharp, searing pain shot through his hand. He pulled it back, staring dumbly at the deep gash across his knuckles, watching as fat, red drops of his own blood welled up and began to fall, splattering onto the cool stone floor like accusing tears.
The noise brought Paravani, who had been dozing, instantly alert. The peacock let out a soft, concerned croon, fluttering back up to the balcony railing, his feathers rustling in alarm. A single, iridescent eye-feather, dislodged in his startled movement, pirouetted slowly down through the still air, catching the lamplight in shimmering blues and greens.
Kumaran, his breath coming in ragged hitches, watched it fall. He knelt, ignoring the pain in his hand, and with his bleeding fingers, carefully picked up the feather. It was impossibly light, a thing of beauty born from a moment of fear. He looked from the feather to Paravani, who was now watching him intently from the balcony.
The dam within him broke.
Tears, hot and unrestrained, streamed down his face. He collapsed to his knees fully, his shoulders shaking. The proud prince, son of the great conqueror, was reduced to a weeping child on the floor of his gilded cage.
"I shouldn't have been there," he choked out, the words meant for the bird, for the universe, for the ghost of the woman in yellow. "I should have stopped it. I should have saved her. Forgive me, Paravani. Please, forgive me. I didn't want any of it… I didn't…"
His sobs were muffled, absorbed by the thick carpets and stone walls. Downstairs, the victory roared on. His father's laughter, Nagaan's boasting, the clinking of cups—they formed an impenetrable wall of sound. His grief, his crippling guilt, was a silent, private earthquake in a room far above. None of those reveling below would hear it. None would care. Their joy was built upon the very foundations of his despair.
But Paravani heard.
The peacock hopped down from the railing and walked slowly, regally, across the room. He approached the weeping prince and settled beside him, pressing his warm, sleek body against Kumaran's side. He let out a low, soothing murmur, a sound utterly alien to his species, reserved only for this broken human he called brother.
Kumaran leaned into the contact, the solid, living warmth a anchor in his sea of shame. With his clean hand, he stroked Paravani's back, the feathers smooth and real under his touch. His bloody hand still clutched the single eye-feather, their essences mingling.
"Forgive me," he whispered once more, the plea finally spent.
Slowly, his tears subsiding into hiccupping breaths, Kumaran rose and walked back to the balcony, Paravani at his heel. They stood together, looking out not at the celebration, but beyond it, to the distant horizon where the conquered province lay. Against the vast, star-dusted canvas of the night sky, they could see thin, grey tendrils of smoke still rising from the embers of the village, carried by the wind until they dissipated, becoming one with the indifferent darkness.
The laughter and music from below continued, a discordant soundtrack to the silent, smoldering aftermath. Kumaran's heart was a battlefield of its own.
I should have saved that woman, the thought was a cleaver through his soul. How can they find joy in this? How can I share their blood?
A resolution, cold and hard as forged steel, formed in the ruins of his conscience. "Never again," he vowed to the stars, to Paravani, to himself. "I will not ride to another war. I will not be a party to this carnage." The oath felt like the first true breath he had taken all day.
He thought of all his training—the endless hours mastering the vaal vettai, the spearwork, the art of mounted combat. He had been crafted as a weapon for the empire. And today, that weapon had proven utterly useless for the only purpose that mattered: saving a single, innocent life. The irony was a bitter poison.
The long night eventually wore on. The sounds of revelry below gradually dimmed, replaced by the snores of the sated and the drunk. Exhaustion, emotional and physical, pulled at Kumaran like a leaden cloak.
Finally, his eyes grew heavy. He slid down the wall onto the floor of the balcony, not bothering to seek his luxurious bed. Paravani, understanding, shuffled close. The magnificent fanned tail, usually a display of vanity, became something else entirely. He gently unfurled one side of it, letting the dense, soft feathers drape over Kumaran like a living, breathing quilt, shielding him from the night's chill.
In that cocoon of unexpected warmth and loyalty, Kumaran surrendered to sleep. The worries, the images, the guilt—they receded, not gone, but momentarily held at bay.
But this forgetting, he knew even in his dreams, was a lie. It was temporary, fragile. A fleeting ceasefire in a war that had just begun within him. The feast of ashes was over, but the taste would linger on his tongue forever. And the curse of the woman in the yellow sari hung in the air, waiting for its time to fall.