The world did not end when Krishna left it.
That was the final lesson.
There was no fracture in the sky, no trumpet of judgment, no moment where time announced its turning. The departure came quietly—like a breath released after being held too long. Necessary. Irreversible.
Dvārakā felt it first.
Not as panic, but as loosening.
The sea altered its rhythm. The city's laughter thinned. People continued to pray, to trade, to love—but something essential stepped back, leaving humanity a little more alone than it had been in generations.
Aniruddha stood on the western cliffs when it happened.
He did not look toward the city.
He looked toward the horizon—where certainty ended and endurance began.
"This is where it starts," he said softly.
Mahadev came without sound.
No trident.No ritual.
Just presence, vast and exact.
"You have fulfilled your role in this age," Shiva said. "You may rest."
Aniruddha smiled faintly. "You wouldn't be here if that were true."
Mahadev's eyes held something close to approval. "Kaliyuga will not announce itself with monsters," he said. "It will wear reason. It will speak of progress."
Aniruddha nodded. "I know."
"You will be required to adapt," Shiva continued. "The line will move. You must move with it."
"Bind me properly," Aniruddha said.
Mahadev lifted his hand.
The ash that had once marked Aniruddha's forehead settled deeper—not darkening, not blazing, but fixing itself into his being. It no longer signaled where he stood.
It defined what he was.
"Until the age exhausts itself," Mahadev declared, "you will walk where needed and be forgotten where forgetting is safer. You will age when the age demands it. You will endure when it does not."
Aniruddha felt the weight of centuries settle—not crushing, not dramatic.
Permanent.
"And when I fall?" he asked.
Mahadev's answer was immediate. "Then the age will deserve what follows."
That did not frighten him.
It clarified everything.
Krishna came to him one last time at twilight.
Not as Vishnu.Not as a charioteer.
As a father standing before a son who had stepped beyond childhood, beyond war, beyond illusion.
They stood close. No embrace. No ritual.
"You will walk paths I cannot," Krishna said.
Aniruddha inclined his head. "You already have."
Krishna smiled—fully, openly, unburdened.
"Remember," he said, "you were never meant to replace me."
"I know," Aniruddha replied. "I was meant to remain."
Krishna placed his hand briefly against Aniruddha's chest.
"Wherever people choose restraint when cruelty is easier," he said, "you will feel me."
And then he was gone.
The ocean roared.
Dvārakā began its long surrender to the sea.
Aniruddha did not turn back.
He stepped forward—into unnamed forests, into villages that would rise and fall without record, into centuries that would mistake decay for destiny.
Sometimes he walked as a healer.Sometimes as a traveler.Sometimes as nothing more than a presence that made the dark hesitate.
Songs forgot him.Chronicles missed him.
But when certainty paused without knowing why…when cruelty stalled without explanation…when the dark reached and found nothing to grasp—
Aniruddha was there.
Watching.Standing.Remaining.