✵ I. Storm Over Rayalaseema
The day the boon descended, the sky over Rayalaseema finally remembered how to weep.
Clouds that had wandered for months without commitment gathered thick and dark over the rocky hills. The wind shifted, carrying a scent that was almost forgotten—wet earth, lightning, distant rain.
People looked up.
"Maybe today," they murmured. "Maybe this time it will actually fall here, not just pass us and go to someone else's village."
By evening, thunder rolled like chariots over stone.
In Uyyalawada, women hurried to pull clothes from lines, to shelter firewood, to shut half-broken shutters. Children stood in doorways, eyes shining, waiting for the first fat drops that would turn dust to mud.
In the chieftain's house, lamps were lit earlier than usual. The halls flickered with golden light as outside the sky darkened.
Narasimha sat on the stone step of the courtyard, wooden lion in hand, staring at the jagged streaks of lightning cutting the clouds.
"Appa," he asked, "why do the clouds come and go without raining? Are they also lazy?"
His father smothered a laugh.
"Clouds have their own orders," he said. "They listen to winds and mountains. But yes," he added dryly, "sometimes they look lazy when we are thirsty."
"Even sky does not like responsibility," Narasimha muttered. "I am not alone."
His grandmother thumped his shoulder lightly.
"Don't compare yourself to clouds, ra," she scolded half affectionately. "Clouds do not get dragged by their ear when they refuse to work."
Just then, a thunderclap boomed directly overhead.
The little boy's heart gave a strange leap.
For a brief instant, as the sky lit up, he had the absurd impression that someone up there had… laughed.
❖
The first drops came just after the evening aarti.
Heavy, round, impatient.
They struck the hard courtyard stone with sharp taps, darkening patches in a scattered pattern before turning to a steady curtain.
Children shouted with joy, rushing out to dance under the rain.
"Inside!" mothers shouted. "You'll get sick!"
"Let them get a little wet," someone else said. "They have been dry all year."
In the Uyyalawada house, Narasimha darted forward, only to be grabbed by the back of his shirt by his mother.
"You are not getting fever twice in one childhood," she declared. "Stay in the veranda."
He squirmed.
"Ammaaa… if the sky is crying, we should go console it."
His grandmother cackled.
"Sky is not crying, foolish boy. It is bathing the land. Not everything is sadness in your head."
He made a face, but obeyed—half. He stayed under the roof, but leaned so far out that the rain splashed his arms and face anyway.
Lightning flared again, then again.
The air felt charged, not just with storm, but with something else, less definable.
Somewhere inside that charge, threads of fate were tightening.
❖ II. A Visitor in the Rain
Under the banyan tree near the temple, a figure sat unmoved by the storm.
The wandering siddhar had returned.
His hair hung wet, the ash on his forehead blurred by rain, but his eyes were bright, as if the downpour only sharpened his sight.
The priest, hurrying from the temple to his small attached house, nearly missed him in the dim light.
"Swami?" he exclaimed, surprised. "You're sitting here in this rain? Come inside at least."
The siddhar smiled.
"Let the sky wash me," he said. "I have been walking long. Besides, I am waiting."
"Waiting?" The priest frowned, holding his cloth above his head uselessly. "For whom?"
The siddhar looked in the direction of the Uyyalawada house.
"For the boy," he murmured. "Tonight, his path… shifts. I came to see which way the river turns."
The priest's heart skipped.
"Narasimha Reddy?" he asked. "What will happen?"
The siddhar shook his head.
"If I say too much, dharma will scold me," he replied. "Just know this: tonight, someone who is not easily denied will knock on his door. And someone who is not easily ignored will answer."
He tapped his own chest.
"Not here," he added. "Inside him."
The priest swallowed.
"Is it good?" he whispered.
The siddhar laughed softly.
"Such questions," he said. "Is fire good? If you are freezing, yes. If you are in dry forest, no. It depends on what is near. For him… it will be both blessing and burden. But it was always coming. From the day the six looked at him and decided to try again."
The thunder rolled over them like affirmation.
✢ III. The Child Who Fell Asleep Too Deeply
The rain kept falling.
It drummed on roofs, danced in courtyard puddles, splashed into the well and over the parched fields like a blessing finally remembered.
The heat of the day ebbed. The air cooled.
Children, forcibly dragged inside and dried, finally collapsed into sleep one by one.
In the Uyyalawada house, after much resistance, Narasimha was scrubbed, fed, and laid down.
"Sleep," his mother commanded. "Tomorrow you can go and play in the wet mud and come back like a buffalo. Tonight, you stay."
He yawned dramatically, eyes already heavy.
"If tomorrow you ask me to count grains again," he mumbled, "I will still say I was too sleepy today."
"Sleep before you start bargaining with future," she said, amused, and smoothed his hair back.
Rain pattered steadily outside.
His breathing slowed.
The household quieted.
But the world around him… did not.
❖
Somewhere between waking and dreaming, he felt a shift—as if someone had gently lifted him from the bed, not with hands, but with… space.
The darkness behind his eyelids brightened.
He opened his eyes.
He was no longer on his mat in the small stone house.
He stood in a vast, open plain.
The ground beneath his bare feet was not dust or rock, but something like light made solid—soft, warm, steady.
Above him, the sky was strange.
Not the stormy sky of Rayalaseema, and yet… similar. Clouds rolled, but they glowed from within, lit by colours no sunset had ever shown him.
He turned slowly, clutching his wooden lion, which had come with him somehow.
"Where…?" he began.
Before the question left his lips, he knew.
Not with memory, but with recognition from a place deeper than thought.
This is not Earth.
This was… between. A meeting ground built for souls.
His small heart beat faster.
Not from fear.
From a sense that he had been here, or near here, long ago.
✶ IV. The Assembly of Six
He felt their presence before he saw them.
A warmth behind him, like sunlight on his back. A coolness ahead, like moonlight over water. A strength above, like a mountain's calm.
He turned.
They were there.
Not in their full, incomprehensible forms—such a sight would have shattered a child.
They stood in shapes his mind could bear: three shining figures, three radiant forms at their sides.
Brahma, with eyes that held countless beginnings.
Saraswati, serene, her gaze like clear river-water reflecting endless scriptures.
Vishnu, dark and gentle-eyed, wearing galaxies like ornaments.
Lakshmi beside him, every movement a blessing.
Maheshwara, still, terrible, and beautiful, his matted locks woven with starlight.
Parvati, her gaze strong enough to hold mountains and yet soft enough to cradle a child.
He knew them.
Not as "gods in stories," not as names in temple songs, but as something older, deeper—beings whose attention had rested on his soul from the very beginning.
His knees folded of their own accord.
He knelt, the wooden lion pressed to his chest, head bowed.
For a long moment, no one spoke.
The only sound was the echo of his own breathing, and a distant murmur like waves.
Then, Lakshmi Devi's voice, warm and affectionate, broke the silence.
"Look up, kanna."
He did.
He had thought their presence would make him feel small.
Strangely, it didn't.
He felt… seen. Entirely. As if every scar, every kindness, every complaint about responsibility, every vow spoken under Rayalaseema's stars was laid bare before them.
And instead of judgement, their faces held… pride. Concern. A tenderness that startled him.
"Swami… Devi…" he tried to speak, but his voice shook.
Brahma smiled.
"Do not fear, child," he said. "We have not called you here to scold you."
Saraswati's lips curved.
"Though we hear you have been grumbling quite colorfully about paperwork," she added lightly.
Narasimha flushed.
"E… everyone heard that?" he croaked.
Vishnu chuckled softly.
"We hear more than that, Narasimha," he said. "We heard you ask why Bhishma remained bound. We heard you vow to stand with your people, not on their shoulders. We heard you say that if you must take power, you will still hate the throne's weight."
Maheshwara's eyes gleamed.
"We like such honesty," he said simply. "Too many pray only for crowns and forget their edges are sharp."
Parvati stepped forward a little, her voice gentle.
"Nanna," she said, using the word like a mother would, "do you know why you are here today?"
He swallowed.
He thought of his vow on the rooftop, of the story under the banyan tree, of the strange moment when his anger had made the lane feel like a lion's gaze.
"I… think…" he murmured slowly, "you are going to give me… something. Or… ask something from me."
Lakshmi nodded approvingly.
"He is quick," she remarked.
"Quick to complain, quick to love, quick to stand," Saraswati agreed. "Good combination."
✹ V. The Truth of His Soul
"Listen well, Narasimha," Brahma said. His voice was gentle, but each word sank like a seed.
"In another age, far before this Kaliyuga dust, we crafted a soul together. Ours—mine, Vishnu's, Maheshwara's—and the essence of these Devis beside us. We meant that soul to be a Manu, an anchor of an entire cycle."
Parvati's eyes darkened with the memory.
"But we erred," she said softly. "We poured expectations heavier than mountains onto a vessel still not ready. It cracked. It hurt. And though that soul did not vanish, it could not bear what we asked then."
Vishnu's gaze rested on Narasimha, full of apology and determination.
"So we did something rare," he said. "We broke that old mould. We let the soul scatter, fall through many simple lives. No crowns, no cosmic thrones, no great epithets. Just… life. Small kindness, small mistakes, small joys."
Lakshmi smiled, eyes shining with a mother's memory.
"You were a boy who skipped homework," she reminded him gently. "You were a son who hid novel-reading behind textbooks. You were a young man who donated his first salary quietly to an orphanage instead of a temple box, but still took the Lord's name while doing it."
Saraswati added,
"You walked with friends, argued about stories, admired heroes. You loved a man on a bed of arrows and still asked, 'Why did he not move?' You died thinking of duty, of your parents, and still found a corner to laugh in your mind about trucks in stories."
His chest tightened.
Fragments flashed through him—moments from a life of different streets, different clothes, different languages, yet the same him at the core.
A classroom.
A hostel room with posters.
Rain on a city bus window.
A woman's warm cooking.
A phone in his hand, a Marvel movie on screen.
Headlights.
Impact.
He exhaled shakily.
"So… that was… also me," he whispered.
Saraswati nodded.
"And you were not a rishi. Not a saint," she said. "You did not save nations. But you did what you could, when you could. Not for fame. Because your heart twisted when you saw hurt, and relaxed when you gave what help you could."
Parvati stepped closer, her gaze intense, but soft.
"Understand this, child," she said. "We did not bring you here again because we wanted a tool. We brought you because, after all those lives… you still chose to be kind when you could have been tired. That matters more to us than any epic war."
Narasimha's eyes burned.
He clutched his lion harder, as if it was the only thing keeping him from breaking.
"Then… why this life?" he asked hoarsely. "Why again… something big? Why not let me just… live small? Work, eat, complain… die… quietly."
The admission slipped out rawer than he meant.
For a heartbeat, the six were silent.
Then Vishnu's voice grew gentle, but firm.
"Because, kanna," he said, "whether we like it or not, this world is breaking in many places. Empires trample land. Shadows stir that are not of one world alone. You love quietly, but when we watched you step in front of that officer for a girl's anklet… we saw that if we gave you nothing, you would still throw only your small body between swords and those you wished to protect."
Maheshwara's aura seemed to darken, not with anger at the boy, but at the pictured injustice.
"If such a soul is born without strength," he said, voice like distant thunder, "the world snaps it in half. We have watched that too many times. This time, we refused."
Lakshmi added,
"We decided: if you insist on standing up, we will at least give you a spine that does not break so easily."
Saraswati smiled faintly.
"And a mind that learns faster than most."
Parvati's gaze grew emotional.
"And a heart that we will guard as much as we can, even if we cannot shield it from every pain."
Brahma lowered his hand as if placing it on an invisible script.
"So now we ask," he said. "Will you, Uyyalawada Narasimha Reddy—born in dust and drought, filled with too many complaints for a five-year-old—take on a boon that will change the way death approaches you?"
Narasimha swallowed.
His throat was dry, even in this strange, luminous place.
"What boon?" he asked quietly, though he already sensed part of it in his bones.
✹ VI. The Boon of Chosen Death
The space between them seemed to hold its breath.
Then Maheshwara spoke, each syllable measured.
"We offer you a shard of a very old boon. You know its name," he said. "Ichha-Marana. The choosing of one's own death."
Images flickered in Narasimha's mind unbidden—Bhishma on his bed of arrows, the old storyteller's voice, the unease he had felt.
"But not as it was before," Saraswati added quickly, reading his thoughts as easily as she'd read mantras. "Not bound to a promise made for someone else's weakness. Not chained to a throne you did not wish. Not frozen in one rigid idea of what dharma must be."
Vishnu lifted both hands, palms open.
"Listen to the conditions," he said, voice kind but serious. "For we will not trick you. This is not a gift you can return later."
Narasimha nodded, heart beating faster.
Vishnu's eyes met his.
"First," he said, "no one will be able to take your life against your will—not disease, not poison, not blade, not bullet, not foreign invader, not demon, not even many of our own servants. You may be wounded, hurt, thrown down… but as long as some thread of your will says 'I will live'… you will."
Lakshmi continued,
"Second: your body will age slowly—very slowly. Seasons will touch you like a breeze touches stone. You will heal faster than others, recover from things that keep strong men in bed. From thirty onward, your face may change, but far less than those around you. You will watch many grow old and return to us while you still walk."
Narasimha's fingers tightened around the lion.
That part… hurt to hear.
"Third," Maheshwara said, "when you finally decide: 'I have done what I came to do. I am ready.' Then, and only then, will death come. That moment, once chosen, will not be moved."
Brahma's voice grew solemn.
"Fourth: you cannot use this boon to run away from dharma. If you try to call death just to escape responsibility, or guilt, or weariness, it will not answer. Only when your work's essential threads are tied may you go."
Saraswati added gently,
"Fifth: your mind will be strengthened—to endure long memory, repeated losses, the loneliness that walks beside those who live long. We will weave into you a fortress—not to shut you off from love, but to keep you from shattering."
Parvati's eyes softened further.
"And last," she said, "this boon will not make you invincible in arrogance. You will still feel pain. Wounds will burn. Grief will tear at you. You may be beaten, humiliated, held down. We grant you the right not to die until you choose, not the right to always win."
Silence fell.
The weight of the offer pressed around the small boy.
Ichha-Marana.
The very thing he had admired and mistrusted in Bhishma.
To live long.
To watch many go.
To have the right to call one's own end.
A strange mix of feelings roiled in him.
Part of him thrilled at the thought of standing like a rock in front of storms, unbreakable.
Another part whispered:
You will be alone, often. You will stay while others leave.
Another part, quieter but stubborn, reminded:
You promised. Under the stars. You said you would keep hitting injustice until it could not stand. How will you do that with an ordinary lifespan?
He closed his eyes.
Inside, he saw again:
the girl's anklet,
the pot taken,
Rangaiah's bent back,
the British officer's smirk,
Bhishma's bed of arrows,
his own vow, spoken with childish mouth and ancient soul.
He was only a child.
Children should choose toys, not the terms of their death.
And yet, the universe had never treated him like just a child.
He opened his eyes again.
They were wet—but steady.
"Will I… still be able to laugh?" he asked, surprising them all.
Saraswati's brows lifted.
"What do you mean, kanna?" she asked.
Narasimha licked his lips.
"If I see so much pain," he said slowly, searching for words, "if I live… long… and fight… long… will I still be able to sit with my people and complain about my work? Will I still be able to cry in my house and then wipe my face and go be 'Dora' outside? Or will I become… something… hard? Like a sword all the time?"
Lakshmi's gaze gentled even more.
"That depends partly on you," she said. "But we do not wish to make you a stone. We want you to remain… you. The boy who grumbles and still shows up."
Vishnu smiled.
"This boon strengthens your spine," he said. "Not erases your heart. If you guard your humour as carefully as your honour, you will keep both."
Parvati nodded firmly.
"And we will help," she promised. "Whenever we can. Without breaking the rules we set for ourselves."
He drew a shaky breath.
"Then… I accept," he said.
His voice was quiet, but something in the plainness of it made even the cosmic plain seem to lean closer.
"I don't want to die like Bhishma," he added bluntly. "Stuck in one place, regretting things I did not stop. If I live long… then I want to move my feet. I want to stand where I must. And when I finally call death… I want to look back and say, 'I did not stand and watch when I could move.'"
Brahma's eyes shone.
"Well said," he murmured.
Maheshwara inclined his head.
"Then take it," he said. "Take this seed of death-chosen and life-anchored, and grow it in your own way."
✹ VII. The Touch of the Boon
They did not raise weapons.
They did not crown him.
The boon did not come as thunderbolt or halo.
It came as touch.
Maheshwara extended his right hand, fingers seeming to hold space itself.
Vishnu placed his palm over Shiva's.
Brahma laid his atop theirs.
The three goddesses stepped forward and laid their hands over the three.
Six hands, one stack.
"Narasimha," Parvati said softly, "come."
He stepped forward on unsteady legs.
His small hand, clutching the wooden lion, rose almost of its own accord.
He placed it atop the stack.
The moment his skin touched theirs, the plain vanished.
Light—not blinding, but deep—poured through him.
He felt:
his bones thrum, as if hammered and remade,
his heart gain… weight, but not the crushing kind—more like an anchor,
his breath lengthen, as if threads were being added, one after another, to his allotted span,
his mind clear, sharpen, walls quietly building in its unseen rooms.
He saw brief flashes.
A future where he bled on a battlefield and still stood.
A future where he sat in a court full of candles and frightened eyes, voice steady while his hands shook in his lap.
A future where he looked barely older while those around him grayed, wrinkled, left.
A future where he faced something not human, not fully earthly, its power like a storm, and still refused to kneel.
He flinched at the loneliness in some of those images.
He thrilled at the strength in others.
The light wrapped around his soul like armour and like chain.
Not a chain that pinned him to a throne.
A chain that tethered his life to his own will.
As the last threads settled, a symbol flickered briefly on his chest—visible only in this space.
Not an arrow-bed.
A lion's head, roaring, encircled by a ring that looked like both shield and sun.
Then it sank into him.
The gods withdrew their hands.
The light dimmed to the faint glow of the strange plain.
He staggered, almost fell.
Parvati stepped forward, steadying him with a touch on his shoulder that felt like every reassuring hug he had ever gotten.
"Easy," she murmured. "New strength feels heavy at first."
He took a deep breath.
His small chest rose and fell.
His body felt… the same, but different.
Like the same house, but with deeper foundations laid in secret.
Vishnu looked at him, eyes full of both pride and sorrow.
"There is one more thing," he said. "Someone else would speak to you, if you are willing."
Narasimha blinked.
"Who?" he asked.
The air in front of him shimmered.
✶ VIII. The Man on the Bed of Arrows
He knew the figure before the form fully coalesced.
White hair.
Broad shoulders.
Armour – shining and yet spattered with old blood.
Eyes that had seen too much and had not moved when perhaps they should have.
Bhishma.
Not as a copper statue in a temple story panel.
Not as a drawing in an old book.
As a presence, vast and weary, standing straight now, freed from arrows.
Narasimha inhaled sharply.
The elder Kuru prince looked at him with a gaze that weighed but did not judge.
"So," Bhishma said, voice deep, carrying distant battlefield echoes, "this is the child who looked at my story and said, 'I respect him… but I wish he had walked away sooner.'"
Narasimha flushed.
"I… did not mean disrespect, Pitamaha," he said quickly. "It's just that… my heart felt… tight."
The old warrior's lips twitched.
"Do you think you were the first to say it?" he asked. "I had that thought myself, more than once, on that bed of arrows."
Narasimha looked up, startled.
Bhishma's gaze drifted briefly—not in this place, but somewhere far, remembering.
"I chose my vow with pride," he said slowly. "I thought I was strong enough to bear whatever came. I did not account for how others' sins would ride on my oath. Many praise me. Some blame me. Both are correct, in their own measure."
He focused back on the boy.
"But know this, Narasimha—when these six decided to use my template as material for your path, I went to them myself and said: 'Do not repeat my mistake. Give him strength like mine—but do not bind his feet as I bound my own.'"
Narasimha's throat constricted.
"You… came?" he whispered.
Bhishma's smile held a sadness that had made peace with itself.
"I have had much time to reflect," he said. "If my story can be used so that another walks more freely, then some of my arrows were worth it."
He stepped closer, the air around him smelling faintly of iron, incense, and river water.
"You admired me," he said. "And you questioned me. Good. Keep both. Admire what is worth admiring. Question what tightens your chest. Do not become a slave to my legend, nor any other's."
He reached out and placed a hand—a hand that had once held the fate of kingdoms—on the boy's head.
"I give you this," he murmured. "My steadiness in battle. My refusal to step back when I have judged a stand necessary. But I also give you something I did not use enough: the courage to say 'no' even to the thrones that fed me. Take my strength. Leave my chains."
Narasimha's eyes overflowed now.
"Pitamaha," he whispered, surprising himself by using the intimate term as if it had always been there. "I… won't waste what you give. When I call death one day, I want to look you in the eye and say, 'I moved my feet.'"
Bhishma chuckled softly.
"I will be there," he said. "See that you do."
He stepped back.
His form began to fade.
"Remember," his voice echoed as it dissolved, "boons are not shields from pain. They are tools. Use this one with a lion's heart and a man's humility."
Then he was gone.
✵ IX. Yama's Commentary
As the light of Bhishma's presence dissipated, another presence stirred at the edge of the plain.
Dark.
Measured.
Not malicious—but… inevitable.
Narasimha felt it more than saw it.
A figure leaned in from the edge of reality—staff in hand, buffalo at side, crown gleaming faintly in unseen light.
"Hmm," said Yama, Lord of Death, in a dry, wry tone. "They have done it again."
Narasimha blinked.
"Done… what?" he asked, caught between fear and curiosity.
Yama's eyes glinted with a peculiar fond exasperation.
"Handed me another headache," he said. "First Bhishma, now you. Do you know how difficult it is to schedule the death of someone with Ichha-Marana? All my clerks complain."
Lakshmi suppressed a smile.
Parvati's lips twitched.
"Dharma-raja," Vishnu chided gently, "do not frighten the child."
Yama snorted softly.
"He has accepted worse than my face today," he said. Then, to Narasimha, his tone grew more formal. "Listen, boy. Your boon means this: my noose will not find your neck by surprise. But it also means this: when you finally call, we will come. And from that moment, I will no longer be patient."
Narasimha nodded quickly.
"I will not… use it foolishly," he promised.
Yama's gaze softened, just a fraction.
"I am not your enemy," he said. "I am the door at the end of every story. Those who live as you intend to—shield first, king second—are my most honoured guests when they finally arrive. Do your work well. Do not hurry to me. But when you come… come with your head high."
Then he inclined his head to the six.
"Do not abuse this pattern," he told them dryly. "You cannot fill the world with Ichha-Marana heroes. My department is not a bazaar."
Maheshwara's eyes glinted with amusement.
"We choose carefully, Dharma-raja," he said. "You know that."
"Hmph," Yama grunted, and withdrew, his presence fading like a shadow at noon.
✦ X. Return to Rain and Stone
The plain dissolved.
The gods' forms blurred into light.
Narasimha felt a gentle push—not from hands, but from every direction at once.
The next breath he drew tasted of:
smoke from their kitchen hearth,
damp lime-washed walls,
and the iron tang of Rayalaseema's dust soaked by new rain.
He opened his eyes.
He was lying on his mat.
The house was dim, the only light a small lamp flickering in the corner.
He heard the steady hiss of rain outside.
His mother hovered over him, face pale, eyes wide.
"Amma…?" he croaked.
She exhaled a breath she had clearly been holding for too long.
"Look," she whispered hoarsely. "He's awake."
His father, standing by the door with the priest and the siddhar, took two quick strides and knelt beside him.
"Narasimha," he said, trying to sound calm and failing, "what happened? You went to sleep like any other night. Then your body became… hot. Not like fever. Like… like a lamp. And you would not wake. We called, we shook you. You just… breathed. Deep. Steady. Too steady."
The priest's hands were still trembling.
"I have seen death," he said quietly. "I have seen deep meditation. This was… neither. And his chest…" He looked at the boy with awe. "It glowed. Just here."
He touched a spot over his own heart.
Narasimha's hand flew to his own chest.
The skin was warm. Under it, something felt… different. As if an extra drum now beat slowly alongside his heartbeat.
The siddhar stepped forward, eyes keen.
"Did you dream, kanna?" he asked.
Narasimha thought of the six.
Of Bhishma.
Of Yama's dry complaint.
Of the weight of the boon now sitting quietly in his ribs.
He hesitated.
Then he nodded once.
"Yes," he said simply. "I… met some very… old people."
His father's shoulders loosened in a half-laugh, half-sob.
"Only you," he muttered, "would describe gods like that."
The siddhar chuckled, eyes bright with understanding.
"Then it is done," he murmured. "The lion has been given a longer road."
The priest folded his hands, bowing toward the boy instinctively.
"Dora," he whispered, "your son… he will not be an ordinary man. Death will think twice before coming to this house."
Narasimha's mother clutched her son closer, torn between pride, fear, and the simple human wish that he would never have to test such a thing.
"Let him be a child for some more years first," she whispered fiercely. "Whatever devatas have planned, they can wait."
The rain outside roared in agreement.
✵ XI. The First Test of the New Thread
The next few days, Narasimha remembered his dream only in pieces—not because it was fading, but because it was too large to fit entirely into his waking mind at once.
What remained clear was:
the weight in his chest,
the knowledge that death had a new rule with him,
and the understanding that one day, far in the distance, he would have to decide when to call it.
He went back to being a five-year-old.
Mostly.
He still complained about counting grain.
He still argued with his mother about baths.
He still tripped, scraped his knees, cried when a stone was too sharp.
But little things began to show the change.
Once, while running, he slipped full-force on wet stone and crashed, his head striking the edge of a step hard enough to make everyone nearby gasp.
"Blood!" someone cried.
His mother turned white.
The priest rushed forward.
The siddhar, who happened to be passing through again as if by "chance," watched with narrowed eyes.
For a second, the world held its breath.
Then Narasimha groaned, pushed himself up, rubbed the back of his head, and glared at the step.
"You hit me," he told the stone accusingly. "Unfair."
The others stared.
A blow like that should have left him dizzy at least, faint at worst.
He only winced, shook his head once like a wet dog, and then fixed his mother with a pleading look.
"Amma," he said, "see? I am injured. I should rest. No counting grain today."
She burst into tears and laughter at the same time, smacking his shoulder lightly.
"You demon child," she cried. "I thought you were dying and you are bargaining about work!"
The siddhar smiled, satisfied.
"It holds," he murmured. "The threads hold."
✦ XII. The End of the First Arc
That night, as the rain finally lessened to a gentle drizzle and the land began to drink properly for the first time in months, Narasimha stepped outside alone.
The courtyard stones were cool and damp under his feet.
He looked up.
The clouds had thinned in places, showing patches of deep, star-filled sky.
He pressed his hand flat against his chest.
"I accepted it," he whispered up into the night. "I took your boon. I will not run from it. But…" He squinted upward, half-glare, half-prayer. "You remember what I said. I still reserve the right to complain about every extra year of paperwork you give me."
From somewhere far above, there was a sense—just a faint one—of amused approval.
In Vaikuntha, Lakshmi smiled.
"He started bargaining already," she told Vishnu.
"As is proper for one born in Kaliyuga," Vishnu replied, eyes warm.
Parvati shook her head fondly.
"He will cry like anything when he has to sit in court for hours," she said. "Then he will go home and ask why he was not born as a farmer who can just sleep after work."
Maheshwara's lips curved.
"And the next morning," he said, "he will still put on his angavastram and go sit on that same seat again."
Saraswati closed a script that had his name on its spine.
"Childhood arc complete," she murmured. "Birth, first injustice, first vow, first boon."
Brahma turned a page in a greater book.
"Now," he said, "we will see what he does with the years we have given him."
Down below, in Uyyalawada, a small boy with a lion carved in wood tucked under his arm went back inside before his mother could shout at him for getting his feet wet.
He did not yet know trade routes, espionage, politics, soldiers, or cosmic crises.
He only knew that:
he could not turn away when someone was trampled,
he had promised to stand with his people,
and he would live long enough to see that promise through, even if it meant living through more pain than most.
The seed of Ichha-Marana rested quiet in his chest.
It would not bear full fruit for many years.
For now, it was enough that the lion cub of Rayalaseema had been given a spine the world could not easily break—
and a say, one day, in how his own story would end.
The Silent Lion of the South was still just a child.
But on that storm-wet night, the universe itself shifted slightly to make room for the roar that would come.