(The Scream and The Penance)
In the dense southern forest, the rain had settled into a steady, mournful drizzle. Agni, numb to everything but the bone-deep ache of exhaustion and hunger, trudged forward until the sight of a rocky outcrop gave him a sliver of hope. Half-hidden behind a thick curtain of vines and cascading moss was the dark mouth of a small cave. It seemed less like a shelter and more like a wound in the side of the mountain.
"Perhaps this place will give me refuge from the drowning sorrow, if only for a little while," he thought, the words forming with a hollow detachment in his mind.
He pushed through the vines and stepped inside. The air within was markedly cooler, still, and carried the damp, mineral scent of stone. It was a profound silence, broken only by the distant drip of water. In his state of utter depletion, Agni didn't bother to inspect the cavern. He simply walked a few paces into the gloom and let his body collapse onto the cold, uneven floor. His eyes, wide and unseeing, simply stared into the darkness as his senses surrendered to a pain that was no longer physical, but spiritual.
In a deep recess of the cave, hidden by shadow and a natural rock formation, a sage sat in profound meditation. His body was wrapped in a simple, faded cloth, his posture so still, his breathing so shallow and measured, that he was indistinguishable from the stone around him. He was a part of the cave's ancient silence. Agni, drowning in his own private ocean of grief, did not see him at all.
---
The Eruption of Agni's Soul
As Agni lay there, the dam of controlled numbness he had built over days of travel finally shattered. The images he had been fleeing flooded in with merciless clarity.
He saw his mother's face not in death's peace, but in the moment of her dying breath, her eyes holding that final, unbearable tenderness for her killer-son. He saw Neer's face, twisted not with battle-rage, but with a heartbreak so profound it had forged a curse—the tears streaming through the grime, the lips shaping words that had seared themselves into Agni's destiny.
The pressure built in his chest, a geyser of anguish. It started as a low, animal groan, torn from a place deeper than his throat. Then, the groan stretched into a ragged, broken sob. He forgot where he was, who he was supposed to be. He pushed himself up onto his knees, and the sob transformed.
It became a scream.
The sound ripped through the sacred silence of the cave, bouncing off the walls, multiplying, becoming a chorus of his own torment.
"WHY?! WHY DID I DO IT?! WHY WITH MY HANDS... WHY?!"
He clawed at his own head, fingers tangling in his wet, matted hair, and began to beat his forehead against the cool stone floor. Not hard enough to seriously injure, but with a frantic, self-punishing rhythm.
"What right do I have to LIVE?! I am Agnivrat, who killed his father! Who broke his mother's heart! Because of whom... because of whom Neer lost his father! That curse... it was JUST! It was RIGHT!"
His voice was raw, stripped of all princely bearing, reduced to the pure, unfiltered essence of regret and self-hatred. All the fire that had refused to spark from his hands was now erupting from his soul in a torrent of sound.
"I am the one who drowned Tejgarh's sun! I am the one who ruined Nilgarh! Neer hates me, and he is RIGHT to hate me! I should be DEAD! Now... this very moment... I have NO RIGHT! NONE! NONE!"
His strength gave out. The screaming dissolved into wrenching, body-shaking sobs. He collapsed forward, his face pressed into the gritty floor. His tears mixed with the cave's dampness, but these tears were different—they were hot, they were acidic, they carried the very essence of his shattered soul. He was no longer a prince in exile. He was a broken boy who wanted the world to end, starting with himself.
---
The Sage's Awakening
The echoes of Agni's final, guttural cry faded, leaving a ringing silence that felt even heavier than before. In the deep corner of the cave, a change occurred. The sage in meditation had been immersed in tapa, his consciousness withdrawn from the external world. But Agni's grief was not merely external noise. It was a seismic event of the spirit—so raw, so truthful, and so powerful that it vibrated through the very fabric of the cave's stillness and cracked the shell of his deep concentration.
Slowly, with a grace that spoke of ages, the sage opened his eyes. They were not the eyes of a man who had been sleeping. They were ancient pools of calm, holding a wisdom that had witnessed countless cycles of sorrow and redemption.
He turned his head. His gaze fell upon the young man curled like a wounded animal on the cave floor, his body still shuddering with spent sobs. The sage's voice, when it came, was deep, resonant, and imbued with a tranquil power that stood in stark contrast to the scorching agony it addressed.
"My son," the sage spoke, the words gentle yet filling the space completely. "That cry of yours is the most sorrowful sound this forest has ever held. Rise now."
Agni jerked up as if struck. He scrambled back, his tear-streaked face a mask of shock and sudden, shameful awareness. He had believed himself utterly alone. Now, he saw the figure in the shadows—not a statue, but a living man whose presence felt as immovable as the mountain itself.
"You... who are you?" Agni croaked, his voice ruined.
A faint, compassionate smile touched the sage's lips. "I am the one whose tapa your true sorrow has broken. And when sorrow is true, the breaking of tapa is also right."
---
The Sermon of Duty
The sage unfolded his legs and rose with effortless ease. He moved to sit before Agni, not on a higher stone, but on the same level, his posture open and unthreatening.
"I was listening, Agni. You wish to die because you believe you have forfeited the right to live. But self-annihilation is the ultimate act of cowardice."
A spark of the old fire flashed in Agni's eyes, his shame igniting into a defensive anger. "You don't understand! The magnitude of my sin—"
"Be still, Agni," the sage interrupted, not harshly, but with an authority that demanded obedience. "I heard everything. You made a mistake. A terrible, tragic mistake. But regret for a mistake is not death, my son. Regret is this: to live, and to atone."
The sage's gaze held Agni's, seeing through the anger to the devastation beneath.
"You crave death because death is easy. Life is hard. You must wrestle with your sorrow. You must master yourself. Your mother entrusted you with Tejgarh, and here you lie on the ground, wishing to surrender that duty to the grave?"
"Tejgarh?" Agni's voice was a broken whisper. "What Tejgarh? There is only my shame there. My blood on its stones."
"There is your kingdom," the sage insisted, his voice gaining a compelling strength. "There are your people, who still wait, lost and leaderless. And most crucially—your friend Neer, he too is alone in his grief. You are bound to him not by death, but by the curse born from life. As long as he lives, your atonement is incomplete."
The sage leaned forward, placing a hand on Agni's trembling shoulder. The touch was not warm, but it was steadying, like an anchor.
"Rise, Agni. Your true tapasya begins now. Your penance is this: to conquer yourself. Until you master your own storm of guilt and rage, you cannot hold Tejgarh. And until you can hold Tejgarh, you cannot hope to break the curse that binds you and Neer."
He paused, letting the weight of the choice settle.
"Now tell me: Are you prepared to fight? Or will you choose the easy silence of death, leaving everything—your kingdom, your friend, your very soul—to Neer and his curse?"
Agni stared into the sage's fathomless eyes. The desire for oblivion still pulsed within him, a seductive, quiet end. But against it, he felt the stirring of something else—the echo of his mother's last command, the undeniable truth in the sage's words, and beneath the hatred, a stubborn, unkillable thread of responsibility towards the friend he had destroyed.
He swallowed the last of his screams. The chaotic fire of his breakdown was receding, not gone, but banked. In its place, a new resolve, cold, hard, and clear as mountain ice, began to form.
He nodded, just once.