CHAPTER 1 — The Ashes of Kaalravan
The stars had died the night Kaalravan spread his wings.
When the heavens still bled with the light of the old era, the Raven Monarch had descended upon the gods themselves. The sky was a wound; rivers of molten gold carved the plains of Svarga. With every beat of his shadowed wings, mountains split and oceans boiled. He was the end given form — Kaalravan, the devourer of fate.
Yet even calamity can falter.
Before the final dawn, his heart cracked beneath the combined chants of a thousand Rishis. The gods tore his body apart, but before his essence scattered, he sealed a fragment of it — a black seed of wrath and sorrow — inside an obsidian ring.
"Let Samsara forget me," he whispered, "until grief calls my name again."
The world turned, centuries passed, and the echo of his wings became legend.
A thousand years later, in the shadowed valley of Bhramapur, a boy knelt before an altar of cracked stone. Rain fell, thin and cold.
His name was Vayodhra — born of a poor family of mantra scribes, children of a lineage once touched by divinity and long since abandoned by it.
The world called him Ash-Born, cursed by his ancestors. His limbs were frail, his back scarred by the switch of the temple guards. He endured. He had to — for his mother's smile, for his father's tired promise that one day the gods would forgive their line.
But forgiveness is a cruel jest.
The Mahavidyalaya of Prana stood at the heart of the valley, a fortress of sandstone and incense. It was where the chosen trained — masters of mantra, keepers of siddhi, servants of the heavens.
Vayodhra's parents were among the lowest scribes, charged with maintaining the sacred scrolls. They owned nothing but the boy and their faith.
One dawn, before the temple bells could finish their second chime, soldiers dragged them from their cell.
The accusation spread like wildfire through the marble halls:
"They have uttered the Aghora-Mantra, forbidden under heaven! They sought to open the Gate of Kaal!"
Lies, bought with gold.
The Shatkund Clan, rivals of his mother's bloodline, had waited for this. They bribed witnesses, forged scrolls, and whispered poison into the ears of the council. By the time the sun reached its zenith, judgment had already been decided.
Vayodhra screamed until his throat bled. No one listened.
The courtyard filled with disciples, their faces hidden behind sanctimonious pity. The High Priest stood atop the pyre, his staff crowned with sapphire flame.
"By the decree of the Gods, impurity shall be burned. Their prana shall return to the Source."
Vayodhra's mother turned toward him once — her eyes still soft even as fire was kindled at her feet.
"My child," she whispered, "karma will remember you."
The flames roared; her voice was gone.
When the fire died, two shadows were all that remained — carved into the stone by divine heat.
And there, glinting among the ash, lay a small obsidian ring, untouched by the inferno.
For days he wandered through the rain, numb and silent. The villagers shunned him. Children threw stones, chanting "Ash-Born, Ash-Born." He did not fight back. He could barely breathe.
By the fourth night, he collapsed beside the river. The ring slipped from his fingers and rolled into the mud.
He watched it catch the moonlight — dull, cracked, ancient.
Something in its stillness called to him, a whisper beneath the sound of the storm.
He reached out.
The instant his skin brushed the metal, the world froze.
The rain hung mid-air; the wind turned to glass.
Then — a heartbeat.
Then another.
A pulse echoed from the ring, deep and resonant, like a drum from beneath the earth.
Who weeps beneath my ashes?
Vayodhra's breath hitched. His mind filled with fire. Visions tore through him — a battlefield under a black sun, a raven's wings covering the sky, a god's scream cut short. Pain seared his veins as black sigils bloomed across his arm, crawling toward his heart.
You… carry my sorrow.
He fell, writhing, as the air thickened with the scent of burning feathers. From the horizon rose a storm — clouds twisting into the shape of wings vast enough to blanket the stars.
A phantom figure loomed within the storm, its eyes twin abysses.
My name is Kaalravan. Sleep, child. When your hatred ripens, I shall awaken.
And the vision shattered.
When Vayodhra opened his eyes, the river had receded. His arm burned where the sigils had branded him — a mark shaped like a raven's eye.
The ring lay on his finger, fused to flesh.
He tried to pull it off. It didn't move.
He whispered, "Who… are you?"
No answer. Only the faint echo of wings fading into silence.
Far away, within the forgotten ruins of the old world, a temple bell rang for the first time in a millennium. Dust fell from its cracked surface as unseen eyes stirred in the dark.
And thus, after a thousand years of silence, the wheel of Samsara began to turn once more.