Seven monsoons since Kurukshetra, and Vrishaketu still heard his father's last breath in the wind.
On nights like this, when rain lashed the palace walls of Hastinapura, the memories came strongest. His father Karna, warrior of Anga, born with golden armor fused to his skin, abandoned on a river as an infant, rejected by those who should have embraced him, and finally revealed as a prince only after arrows had pierced his chest.
Vrishaketu adjusted the royal silk on his shoulders, a gift from the Pandavas. The garment felt like betrayal against his skin.
"Forgive me, father," he whispered into the empty chamber. "I serve the men who slew you."
The great war had consumed his brothers, uncles, and father, all fighting on the side history now called wrong. Yet when the victorious Pandavas discovered that one son of Karna had survived, Yudhishthira, eldest of the five brothers and now king, had summoned him. People whispered it was guilt, not mercy, that drove the new king's decision. Others claimed it was politics, better to keep the son of a legendary warrior close than risk him raising an army of the discontented.
Whatever the reason, Vrishaketu now commanded a division in the very army that had celebrated his father's death at the hands of Arjuna, the third Pandava brother. The archer who had shot Karna while he struggled to free his chariot wheel from the mud.
The irony choked him daily.
Thunder crashed outside. Another sleepless night awaited him. Vrishaketu carefully opened a small wooden box beside his bed. Inside lay a single arrowhead, salvaged from the battlefield days after his father fell, its tip stained with what he believed was Karna's blood. He carried it always, this fragment of his inheritance. He had never seen his father's face in life, knew it only through borrowed memories from soldiers who described a strong jaw, piercing eyes that seemed to hold the sun, and a perpetual expression of dignified solitude.
A knock interrupted his thoughts.
"Enter," he called, quickly returning the arrowhead to its box.
No one came in. The knocking persisted.
Curious, Vrishaketu opened the door himself. The corridor stretched empty except for shadows dancing in torchlight. He was about to retreat when he noticed a figure standing at the far end, a tall man wrapped in simple cloth, dripping wet from the rain.
"Who goes there?" Vrishaketu called.
The figure turned slightly, revealing the distinctive glint of a golden earring.
Vrishaketu's heart stuttered. Those earrings, Kundala, gifted to his father by Surya, the sun god himself. The divine mark of Karna's birth, part of the armor that had made him invincible until he gave it away to the disguised god Indra.
"Impossible," he whispered.
The figure moved away, disappearing around a corner.
Without thinking, Vrishaketu ran after him, barefoot, through the cold stone corridors. The palace slept as he pursued the apparition through unfamiliar passages, down stairways he didn't recognize, until finally he emerged into the rain-soaked courtyard.
The stranger stood in the center, face still obscured, water cascading down his form.
"Who are you?" Vrishaketu demanded. "Why do you haunt me with my father's symbols?"
Slowly, the figure turned. Lightning split the sky, illuminating a face that made Vrishaketu fall to his knees.
It was his father, exactly as the soldiers had described. The countenance of Karna stared back at him.
"My son," the apparition said, his voice both thunder and whisper. "Time passes differently for the dead."
"You cannot be here," Vrishaketu said, his voice breaking. "My father died at Kurukshetra. His body burned on the funeral pyre. I watched from a distance, too afraid to claim kinship."
"And yet, here I stand," the figure said, stepping closer. His movements were fluid, almost musical, each step precisely placed as if following an invisible pattern. "Don't you wish to embrace your father?"
Something in Vrishaketu held him back. The stories told of his father's unwavering directness, his inability to speak anything but truth. This man before him spoke in riddles, his words like honey, sweet but somehow disguising their true nature.
"If you are truly Karna," Vrishaketu said carefully, "then tell me why you have come."
"To complete what was left unfinished," the figure said, studying Vrishaketu with eyes that seemed far older than they should be. "To free you from service to your father's killers."
Rain mingled with tears on Vrishaketu's face. "Free me how?"
The stranger gestured toward the palace. "The sons of Pandu sleep unguarded tonight," he said, his voice lilting with a peculiar cadence that reminded Vrishaketu of temple chants. "Their warriors watch for enemies outside, not for the son of Karna within."
From within his robe, the figure produced not a dagger, but something far more meaningful, a bow. Not just any bow, but one Vrishaketu recognized instantly from the stories. Its curve was unique, its grip worn to the shape of a specific hand.
"Your father's bow," the stranger said. "Retrieved from the battlefield where it fell. With this, you could finish what he started. One arrow for each Pandava brother. Justice for your dead kin."
He extended the bow toward Vrishaketu.
"One choice," the stranger said, "and the circle closes."
Vrishaketu stared at the bow. His fingers twitched, memories of his dead brothers flooding his mind. The Pandavas had taken everything from him, and then offered him scraps from their table like a stray dog to be pitied.
He reached for the weapon.
But as his fingers brushed the polished wood, he hesitated. His father, the real Karna, had lived by a code even when the world betrayed him. He had fought openly on the battlefield, never through treachery.
And there was something else. Something in the stranger's eyes, a depth beyond human years, a knowing smile that seemed to wait for him to understand a hidden truth.
"No," Vrishaketu said finally, withdrawing his hand. "My father would never ask this of me. He would not turn his son into an assassin in the night. Karna faced the Pandavas in honorable combat, even knowing he might fall."
He stood straighter, looking directly into the stranger's eyes. "More than that, my father would never test his son with tricks and masks. Whatever you are, spirit, demon, or something else entirely, you are not Karna."
The figure straightened, and in the next flash of lightning, his appearance shifted. The face of Karna melted away, revealing another countenance, dark-skinned, with knowing eyes that held galaxies of wisdom and mischief in equal measure.
"Krishna," Vrishaketu breathed.
The Lord of Dwarka smiled gently. "The son sees what was hidden from the father."
"Why this?" Vrishaketu gestured to the bow. "Why pretend to be him?"
"Because some tests require the heart to speak before the mind can reason," Krishna said. "Kurukshetra was written in the stars long before the first arrow flew. But what comes after the story ends? That is where true dharma reveals itself."
"And if I had taken the bow?" Vrishaketu asked.
Krishna's eyes grew sad. "Another war. Another field of widows. Another generation orphaned." He paused, looking toward the palace where the Pandavas slept. "The earth is tired of drinking blood, Vrishaketu."
"And now?" Vrishaketu looked toward the palace, his supposed home.
"Now you choose your own path," Krishna said. "Your father was born with his destiny sewn into his flesh, golden armor that marked him from birth, a life and death that served a greater purpose. But you, Vrishaketu... you stand at a crossroads he never reached."
Dawn began to break over the horizon, the first rays of sun cutting through the rain clouds, a reminder of Vrishaketu's divine grandfather, Surya himself.
"He would be proud," Krishna said softly. "Not because you refused vengeance, but because you chose with your own heart, not one borrowed from the past."
When Vrishaketu looked back, Krishna was gone. Only the bow remained on the wet stones, now transformed. It was no longer Karna's weapon of war, but something new, a traveler's bow, simpler, meant for hunting rather than killing men.
Beside it lay a small bundle wrapped in silk. Inside, he found his father's earrings, the real ones, gold still warm as if remembering the touch of the sun.
***
That morning, as the royal court assembled, Yudhishthira found Vrishaketu's quarters empty. All that remained was the wooden box by the bed.
The King opened it, expecting some explanation. Inside lay only the arrowhead and a small leaf with words inscribed:
~Some happily-ever-afters cannot be built on other men's graves.~
By afternoon, whispers spread through Hastinapura that a lone traveler had been seen heading eastward at dawn. He wore simple clothes, a hunting bow across his back, and the rising sun glinted off golden earrings that marked him as neither Pandava nor Kaurava, but something altogether new.
In the great hall, Yudhishthira quietly ordered the search parties recalled.
"Let him go," he told his brothers, a strange peace settling in his eyes. "Some cycles are meant to be broken."
And somewhere far from Hastinapura, walking toward the unknown horizon where the sun meets the earth, Vrishaketu felt the weight of legacy fall away from his shoulders with each step. His father had been a warrior chained by fate and honor. He would be the first free man in a lineage defined by its bonds.
Behind him lay the ruins of a happily-ever-after never meant to be his.
Ahead stretched a story that belonged to him alone.
***
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