A dull throb pulsed relentlessly behind Kunal's eyes. His vision swam, the blurred shapes slowly resolving into the familiar, comforting yet now somehow distant, cracks on the ceiling of his bedroom. The air smelled faintly of damp clothes—and something sharper. Antiseptic.
He tried to sit up. A wave of dizziness crashed over him.
"Easy," said a gentle voice.
A hand pressed against his shoulder. Ananya.
Her face appeared, etched with worry lines he rarely saw. She sat on the edge of the bed, holding a glass of water.
"Ananya," he croaked. His voice was dry.
"You scared me," she said, helping him sip. "You didn't show up at the café. An hour later, I got a call—from Kokilaben Hospital. They said someone found you collapsed in the rain. Near your office. Their initial assessment was exhaustion and dehydration. But I had a feeling it was more than that."
Kunal stared at the ceiling, everything rushing back. The rain. The two figures. The voice in his mind. The name—????? (Kunala).
He took a breath. Then met her eyes.
"It wasn't stress," he said. "I saw them. Two of them. Figures in robes. A man. A woman. She spoke to me. Not aloud. In my mind. She called me… Kunala."
Ananya listened intently, her brow furrowed with concern but her gaze steady.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
He continued, the words tumbling now: the battlefield, the flashes of memory, the woman's voice saying it was time to remember. Then came the pain. The collapse.
When he finished, he waited. Expecting disbelief.
Ananya reached across, squeezed his hand.
"Okay," she said. "It's real. I don't get it, but I believe you. If they know who you are—who they think you are—we need to understand why."
A pause.
"Kunala… wasn't he Emperor Ashoka's son? The prince who was blinded?"
Kunal nodded. A chill rolled through him.
"Then that's where we start," Ananya said. "We find out who ????? (Kunala) really was. Maybe the past holds answers."
The heavy oak doors of the Asiatic Society Library closed behind them, muffling the city's noise and enveloping them in a hushed sanctuary of knowledge. Dust and paper, ink and silence.
They combed through texts on the Mauryan empire, Ashoka, and Buddhist chronicles. Prince Kunala was always a footnote. A tragic figure. A name lost in Ashoka's vast shadow.
Until they found it.
Tucked away in a dim corner was a brittle bundle—palm-leaf manuscripts tied with string. The script was Brahmi, faded but legible.
The moment Kunal's fingers brushed against the brittle, aged palm leaves, a jolt, faint yet unmistakable, ran through him. It wasn't reading in the conventional sense; he wasn't deciphering symbols. Instead, it was as if the knowledge flowed directly into his mind, not understood, but absorbed, like water into parched earth. The words weren't words—they were memories.
Flash.
A golden hall. Celestial maps painted on the domed ceiling. Bronze-armored warriors kneeling in silence. Beside him, a figure of a woman—her features indistinct, yet radiating a powerful, almost divine, aura. A voice echoed, ancient and absolute:
"????? ?????? ????????"
Dharmo rak?ati rak?ita?
"He who protects dharma is protected by it."
Flash.
A scream.
Blinding pain. Fire behind his eyes.
Then: nothing. Darkness.
A sharp voice, mocking, triumphant, laughing.
Flash.
Exile. Dust roads. Ragged clothes. A bitter, burning rage coiled in his chest like a venomous serpent.
A vow whispered under breath:
"??? ???? ??????????? ?????? ????????? ???????????"
Aha? puna? udayi?yāmi. Nyāya? punarāgamana? karavi?yāmi.
"I shall rise again. Justice shall return with me."
Kunal stumbled back from the manuscript. It hit the desk with a dull thud.
He clutched his head. His chest heaved.
Ananya was already by his side.
"Kunal! What happened?"
He looked at her. His voice cracked.
"I remembered… the betrayal. The blinding. The darkness."
His hands trembled.
"Ananya… I was ????? (Kunala)."
And with those words, history ceased to be past.
It had become present.
And it had come calling.
To be continued...
