The Sundarbans had changed.
Not visibly — the tides still rose, the mangroves still swallowed sunlight whole, the air still smelled of salt and ghosts —
but the heartbeat of the forest had altered ever since the day a six-year-old drenched boy had been carried out of the flood by an unknown deity wrapped in moonlight.
Years passed. And the forest began… bowing.
Not to the tides.
Not to the ancient spirits.
But to Amod.
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I. Amod, Age Sixteen — The Awakening
Under a sky as black as wet ink, Amod stood barefoot on a sliver of sandbar that only existed during low tide. The moon cut a white line down his cheek. His hair — longer, thicker, naturally falling into a wild mane — fluttered with a strange authority.
He was no longer the frail, frightened boy who clung to a stranger's chest.
He had become something else.
When he inhaled, birds in miles of forest inhaled with him.
When he closed his eyes, the river stilled, as if awaiting command.
When he exhaled, the mangroves shivered like soldiers saluting.
He had no master.
No teacher.
No guardian.
He had the forest.
And the forest adored him.
But he…
felt empty.
As if a piece of warmth, a piece of touch, a piece of voice had once lived in his ribs and then been ripped out.
He didn't remember the face.
Only a sensation — arms around him, warm as summer stormwater.
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II. Banesh — Watching from the Thorns
Deep in the tangled dark, unseen by even the oldest beasts, Banesh hovered in shadow form — a ripple of obsidian air, cold intelligence bleeding from every movement.
He had not approached Amod once in all these years.
Because he didn't dare.
Amod's divine aura — dormant in childhood — had now begun smoking from under his skin. Not fully awakened, but unruly and unpredictable, like a sun trying to burst out of a clay pot.
Banesh watched the boy's silhouette with the same strange mixture of awe and fear a god might feel witnessing a star collapsing into a black hole.
"My… husband…" he murmured bitterly, though Amod did not remember him and would not understand the word.
The title "Amod" had already begun echoing through the spiritual ecosystem —
the future Commander of All Forests of Bharatiya Bhumi —
the destined ruler of every creature, root, vine, and spirit across the mortal plains of Bhumi.
A position far higher than Hemketu ever held.
Banesh, the once mighty overseer of nature, felt for the first time that approaching his own spouse required caution.
The boy radiated the same quiet danger Hemketu once did —
only sharper, colder, more refined.
"I cannot go near him yet…" Banesh whispered, retreating into the briars.
Amod, who had been staring at the water, suddenly turned sharply, pupils narrowing.
Someone was watching him.
Again.
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