Aniruddha learned stillness before speech.
He would sit where other children ran—at thresholds, at the edges of courtyards, beneath stairways where light thinned and sound hesitated. He did not fidget. He did not seek attention. His gaze rested on places that looked empty only to those who had never waited long enough.
Servants noticed.
They spoke of it quietly.
"He doesn't wake crying.""He doesn't startle.""He watches corners."
Rukmini listened and smiled when she could. Every child was different, she reminded them. Every soul arrived with its own pace.
But even she felt it sometimes—those moments when her son's attention fixed on nothing she could see, when the room seemed to hold itself a little tighter around him.
Krishna said nothing.
He watched.
When Aniruddha was four, a palace guard collapsed near the eastern gate. His body convulsed without cause, breath stuttering as though something had tightened around it from within. Panic spread quickly. Physicians shouted. Water was brought. Prayers rose.
Aniruddha stood up.
He did not run.
He walked toward the fallen man and stopped just short of touching him. He tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing—not in fear, but in focus.
"No," he said.
The word was small.
It carried.
The convulsions slowed. Then stopped.
The guard lay gasping, eyes wide, alive.
"What did you do?" someone whispered.
Aniruddha looked up, puzzled by the attention. "It was feeding," he said. "It left."
No one asked what it was.
That night, Krishna sat with his son beneath an open sky. Stars hung low and sharp, as if listening.
"What did you see?" Krishna asked.
Aniruddha traced a line in the dust with his finger. "Something unfinished," he said. "It didn't know where to go."
Krishna nodded once.
"Did it speak?"
"No."
Radha, seated nearby, watched the boy with quiet intensity. "Did it frighten you?" she asked.
Aniruddha shook his head. "It was more frightened than I was."
Radha's gaze shifted briefly to Krishna. Something passed between them—recognition without alarm.
As Aniruddha grew, the pattern held.
He sensed illness before symptoms.Unease before arguments.Corruption before it spoke aloud.
Once, he refused to enter a temple. He stopped at the threshold, feet planted, eyes dark.
"There's something wrong inside," he said.
The priests laughed gently. "There is nothing to fear here, little prince."
Aniruddha shook his head. "I'm not afraid."
Krishna closed the temple that evening.
No explanation was given.
Radha became Aniruddha's refuge—not by shielding him, but by grounding him. She did not demand stories. She did not ask for clarity. She listened the way rivers listened to rain.
One afternoon by the Yamuna, she asked, "Does it tire you?"
Aniruddha nodded. "Watching all the time."
Radha dipped her fingers into the water. "Even watchfulness must breathe," she said. "Or it becomes hunger."
That night, Aniruddha dreamed for the first time.
Not of the palace.Not of the city.
A forest without paths.Ash on stone.A presence that did not move—but waited.
When he woke, his forehead felt cool, as if brushed by dust not yet placed there.
Krishna sat beside his bed.
"You saw him," Krishna said.
Aniruddha nodded. "He didn't speak."
Krishna's lips curved faintly. "He rarely does."
Outside, thunder rolled though the sky was clear.
Krishna rested his hand on his son's head—not in blessing, not in warning.
"The dark has noticed you," he said quietly."And soon," he added, "it will ask whether you are watching back."
Aniruddha met his gaze steadily.
"I already am," he said.
Somewhere beyond the city's walls, in places where intention gathered before action, something shifted—
because the boy was no longer merely seeing.
He was recognizing.