I was there.
Not as a hero, not as a prince, not as a name you’d find written in the shining scrolls of destiny. Just a soldier. Just Varun. Son of nobody, friend of Abhimanyu.
And that day, on the red plains of Kurukshetra, I followed him into the chakravyuh—the spinning, spiraling fortress of death.
Dr. Kira Rao wasn’t supposed to find it. She wasn’t even supposed to be in that database at 2 AM, sipping reheated coffee in the cold hum of her lab at the Institute of Molecular Evolution. But curiosity—mixed with boredom and caffeine—was stronger than sleep.
It began with a glitch.
For thirty years, The Kshira drifted at the silent edge of the solar system, near the Oort Cloud’s whisper. It was a colossal station once designed for colonization missions, now reduced to a tired hulk of recycled steel, worn plastic, and something more valuable—willpower.
They no longer used machines to fabricate tools or grow food. They used thought.
It started, as all great love stories do, in line for overpriced coffee at Comic Con.
Ishaan stood there, fidgeting with his con pass, glancing sideways at the woman next to him. Cargo pants, boots slightly scuffed, a subtle enamel pin of the One Ring on her canvas tote. Glasses slightly askew. Not cosplay, but dangerously close to I-know-more-lore-than-you energy.
“Long line,” he said, casual, like a normal person.
“Yeah,” she replied, squinting at the menu. “I’m only here for caffeine. And maybe mild existential dread.”
He chuckled. Okay. Good start.
The rain tapped against the windows like an old friend trying to be let in. Inside the small apartment—faded yellow walls, the smell of coconut oil and incense lingering in corners—Ananya sat cross-legged at the edge of her mother’s bed.
It was late. The kind of late where the world outside felt paused.
Her mother, Sushmita, was lying sideways, her soft cotton saree bunched around her waist, grey hair loose, her glasses slightly tilted. She had been listening for over an hour as Ananya spoke about college, work, books, and safe, proper things. Things daughters are supposed to share with their mothers.
Ananya wanted to be that daughter. She really did.