There was no light, no sound, no time.
Only pressure.
A suffocating awareness, as though thought itself were sinking into something thick and endless. No body. No breath. Just the slow, creeping realization that I exist… still.
Agasthya—or whatever he had been—floated in the vast dark, memory in fragments. Cities. Blood. A train. A woman's scream. A hand reaching for a phone. Then the crack of metal and silence.
He was dead.
Yet here he was.
Where is here?
That thought echoed, but didn't bounce. It was swallowed.
Until—
"You are earlier than expected."
The voice wasn't heard so much as felt. It rang through the dark like a temple bell submerged in water. Not masculine. Not feminine. Not kind, nor cruel.
It simply was.
And it shook the dark.
"Who are you?" Agasthya asked—or thought he did.
"That name will only bind your understanding. But since minds crave form..."
A shimmer.
Then a figure.
He wasn't standing, because there was no floor, but he knew instinctively that the being before him was upright. Towering. Half-shrouded in smoke that moved like thought, not air. From the folds of shadow emerged a crescent moon. Coils of serpents. A flicker of fire in a matted braid.
The figure smiled.
"Mahadev."
Agasthya's soul shuddered.
"You remember enough, then."
"I'm dead," Agasthya said.
"Yes. But not complete."
"Then why… am I here?"
Shiva tilted his head—not as a human would, but like flame answering wind.
"Because the world remembers you incorrectly."
Agasthya blinked in thought. He tried to recall something deeper, but every time he reached, the thought was erased—as if his own mind was being censored.
"Who was I?"
Mahadev walked forward. The void obeyed his steps, blooming like ink in water.
"That truth is sealed, even from yourself. You are a variable fate tried to remove. But balance demands return."
"Return to what?" Agasthya whispered.
"To Kaliyuga's gate. Before dharma burns completely."
Silence stretched.
Then Agasthya asked, "What do you want from me?"
The smile faded.
"Nothing."
"This is not command. This is correction."
Shiva raised one hand, and with it rose a twisting coil of energy—neither light nor shadow, but something older.
"You shall be born again. But not known. Not to gods, nor men, nor fate itself."
A pause. The air stilled.
"This is your boon: the Veil of Anitya. So long as you do not name yourself, no being shall see what you truly are."
"And what am I?"
Shiva stepped forward, and for one terrifying second, Agasthya saw something in his eyes—a reflection not of a man, but of a power older than stars, wiser than fire, and more broken than time.
"You were the son of what cannot be written. And what cannot be written must walk unwritten paths."
That didn't make sense. It made echoes of sense.
"Why me?"
"Because you knew the story before it was written. And yet... you chose not to save yourself."
Agasthya felt heat rise in his soul. Not shame. Not guilt. Resolve.
The voice softened.
"You will be placed in a womb that was already blessed. A woman whose children are born under prophecy. Yet you will not be seen in the stars."
"You shall not walk Mathura until its tyrant falls. That is your first shackle. Honor it, and you shall be protected."
"And after that?"
"Then you begin to write."
The smoke lifted. The void cracked.
Agasthya felt himself being pulled—not falling, but descending—like mist rolling down a forgotten mountain.
And as he fell, something stirred.
A single white glyph, glowing inside his chest. A system without a voice. A book without a cover.
> [THE VERSEWALKER INTERFACE IS DORMANT.]
[FATE DEVIATION REQUIRED TO INITIATE.]
Then came warmth. Pressure. A pulse.
Thump.
A heartbeat, not his.
Thump.
Louder now. Wet walls. Confinement. Soft noise. A womb.
He couldn't speak. Couldn't move. But he felt the presence of another soul—gentle, burdened, filled with the scent of sandalwood and sorrow.
Devaki.
And just outside, somewhere beyond the skin of silence, a father's voice murmuring a prayer.
Vasudeva.
They did not know he was there.
No god whispered of his coming. No seer dreamed of his birth. No chakra aligned to herald his name.
And yet—he was born.
Agasthya.
Not a prince. Not a prophecy.
Just an anomaly.
But one that the Mahabharata would no longer be able to ignore.