The air in the hospital ward was sharp, metallic, and cold — a constant undertone of antiseptic that clung to every breath. Outside, the Chennai monsoon was in full swing, hissing rain against the tall, glass‑slatted windows and washing the orange streetlights into shimmering blurs.
Preeti shifted slightly on the narrow hospital bed. Her back ached from hours of labour and another three filled with restless half‑sleep after they'd taken her newborn away "for observation." Observation — the sterile word had been repeated so many times by the nurses that it had begun to feel like a wall between her and him.
The soft thunk‑thunk‑whirr of the ceiling fan blended with the occasional echo of footsteps from the corridor. Each sound curled her nerves tighter. She was used to noise in the city, but this was different — the kind of quiet that comes when trouble is present but hidden, the way clouds go still before lightning.
When the door creaked open, her chest eased instantly.
Smrithy stood there in the pale hallway light, slightly damp from the rain, a dupatta bunched over one shoulder and a small plastic shopping bag swinging from her wrist.
"Don't tell me you walked here in this rain," Preeti said, but couldn't help the smile tugging her lips.
Smrithy shrugged. "Bus dropped me two streets away." She came in, dropping the bag on the side table. "Thought you'd want a change of clothes and something edible that's not boiled to death."
Preeti gestured vaguely toward the small bassinet by her bed — empty. "He's still in NICU."
Smrithy's eyes softened. "You've seen him since they took him?"
Preeti hesitated. "…Yes. Once. They let me in for ten minutes earlier. He's… quiet."
"Quiet's good," Smrithy said. Then, lowering her voice with mock‑seriousness, "Quiet means he's already plotting how to take over your life."
Preeti smiled properly this time, and then, as if on cue, the nurse arrived, wheeling the bassinet in.
The bassinet's wheels whispered on the tile, stopping beside Preeti's bed.
Inside, swaddled snug in white cotton, lay the tiny figure she had been aching to hold since they'd wheeled him away. His eyes — dark, steady, far too alert for a day‑old baby — shifted between the two women.
Preeti's face softened instantly.
She leaned over, brushing her fingertip along the faint scar line on his chest. "Hai, little baby… my sweet baby… You always worry your mom. You little cutie…" Her voice wavered between a laugh and a sigh. "It's ok… you didn't know… you love your mom, right? You'll be all right…"
From the plastic visitor's chair, Smrithy smirked, one eyebrow lifting. "How the mighty has fallen. Look at your face. Making the same goo‑goo face you always despised."
"He… he… I can't help it," Preeti said, glancing up but never taking her hand off the baby. "Look at him. When he's so cute, how can I not talk to him?"
"Forget it." Smrithy crossed her legs, leaning back. "It just feels weird, looking at you like this. So… what's your plan? Going to look for his father?"
Preeti's jaw stiffened. "Who? Him? …No. I don't know anything about him — couldn't even remember his face clearly. He came… drugged me… raped me… and left. What's there to look for? The only good thing that came out of it is my baby. I don't want him anywhere near my baby."
Smrithy didn't look entirely convinced.
"And you're still sure it was him…? How do you know you were drugged and raped? Your clothes weren't disturbed, tests were negative, and you didn't even remember him until you were pregnant."
"Leave it," Preeti said flatly. "I don't want to talk about it."
Silence for a beat, filled only by the soft murmur of voices from the hallway and the steady beeping from the bassinet monitor.
Smrithy raised her hands in surrender. "Ok, ok. So… what are you going to do? Are you going to keep him?"
Preeti's head snapped up. "What question is that? Of course I'm going to keep him. It's me and him against the world. Isn't that right, my cute little son? Yes… Mom is going to take care of you." She stroked the baby's cheek with the back of her fingers. "Look at him. So serious. You don't have to worry… Mom will take care of everything."
Smrithy leaned forward, peering. "He is cute… So what's his name?"
"Vaikarthana."
Smrithy made a face. "What kind of name is that? You're going to doom him."
"No, he's not going to be doomed. It's the name of my favourite hero."
"No it's not. Your favourite hero is Karna. And that's not Karna."
Preeti's lips curved knowingly. "It is one of his other names. It means 'one who peeled his own skin for dharma.'"
Smrithy groaned. "You and your mythology. You know it's forbidden to use a religious name for a child."
"It's not religious," Preeti shot back. "And I'm not Hindu. Nobody knows about this name except you and me. I got it from a damaged book the professor gave me."
"Fine, fine," Smrithy relented, though the gleam in her eyes said she wasn't done teasing. "But as his aunt, I'm not calling him that. I'm going to call him Kanna… heh. Which one do you like, cute little baby? Mom's name or cool Aunt's name? Tell me… tell me…"
Preeti giggled. "He looked at me. That means I win. And P.S., you're also making a goo‑goo face."
"Yuck. You're contagious with oozing motherhood. I have to get away from you as soon as possible! And I will get you for that, Kanna, when you grow up. Look at him… I think he understands me."
Preeti lifted her chin proudly. "Yes, that's my son — Vaikarthana, the upcoming genius."
Smrithy tilted her head. "What about his skin? Anything to worry about?"
From his cocoon of swaddle and sensors, the infant Karna—Vaikarthana—watched the world with startling clarity.
He did not yet have language, but he understood tone: the warmth in Preeti's murmurs, the playful challenge in Smrithy's teasing.
The babble of voices became a dance of energies, rising and falling like distant war cries and lullabies.
He traced each sound as rhythm, not meaning.
Preeti's voice wrapped his senses in a shelter—each syllable pulling him closer to calm, reminding him unconsciously of another mother, another river, another loss.
Smrithy's laughter, sharp and bright, made him tense for a moment before he recognized the humor and the affection that circled it.
Their faces framed him—one open, one skeptical, both containing secrets they could not voice.
Outside the room, the rain sharpened.
Monsoon wind rattled the window, as if a thousand invisible warriors were testing the hospital's walls.
Somewhere down the corridor, a nurse's cart squeaked and hummed.
The scent of hospital—the sharp spirit of alcohol, the flatness of sanitizers, and the faint undertone of wet earth creeping in from outside—layered the air.
Karna's ancient consciousness flickered:
"This is not the war I remember. These women speak in codes; they joke at the edge of wounds. The blackness I came through lingers in the back of my mind—a shadow, unspoken."
A brief moment passed when Smrithy leaned closer, her face fragmented by the pale neon light, and whispered, "What about his skin? Anything to worry about?"
Preeti hesitated, unsure. "Doctors said it's just unusual marks—maybe a birth effect. I'm not scared. I'll protect him."
They didn't know a third pair of eyes was trained on them from outside.
At the doorway, the NICU nurse paused just a moment too long, as if memorizing the scene. Her gaze slid from the baby to the women, then out toward the corridor—where the same grey-suited figure from earlier, red tilak glimmering on his forehead, watched from shadow between wards.
He pulled out his old Nokia phone, thumbed a message under his breath:
"The marked child is under constant watch. Will update after next test."
The nursery lamp in the corner flickered in the draught, oil flame swaying but never extinguishing.
Karna felt its persistence as a promise, the first ember in a long battle yet to come.
The rain outside had found its rhythm—sharp needles against the glass, an endless percussion underscoring the measured blips of the monitor by Karna's head.
The room was dim now, the harsh midday lights muted into small halos above each bed.
Preeti had finally gotten her son back for the night. She sat cross‑legged on the hospital bed, cradling him in her lap, his swaddle pulled loose so she could trace his tiny fingers.
No one watching would guess she was still sore from the stitches or that she hadn't eaten since morning. All her attention was on the boy, his unblinking gaze fixed on her face like he was reading something behind her eyes.
"You don't blink much, you know that?" she murmured. "Strong little fellow."
Her voice was softer now, for his ears alone. "You probably won't understand me for a long time… but I hope you'll feel it. That I want you safe."
Karna didn't understand the words yet—each sentence was still a ripple of sound without meaning—but the tone reached somewhere older than this body. In another life, such a vow would have been sworn over a drawn bow, under the gaze of gods.
She kissed his brow. The rain picked up again, rattling the high louvers, sending shadows dancing across the far wall.
In the corridor beyond, the grey‑suited watcher wasn't the only one at work.
The young doctor in green—hair now flattened, smelling faintly of clove oil—made his third slow pass by the room. He pretended to check the wall chart, but his eyes flicked in, marking who was there, how long they'd stayed, what had been said.
Further down, two nurses gathered at the end counter, whispering over cups of watery chai. Preeti caught a fragment in Tamil:
"…like someone's been waiting for this child… see the way the senior keeps asking?"
The other nurse shushed her when she realised their voices carried.
Preeti turned her head slightly, instinctively protective. Karna caught the subtle shift of her arms, the tightening of her hold—she was already a shield, even without weapons.
Hours blurred.
Karna drifted in and out of shallow newborn sleep, yet each time he woke, the world arranged itself into patterns: the hiss of oxygen from a neighbouring crib; the buzz and falter of a failing fluorescent tube; Preeti's breathing slowing when she finally surrendered to rest, still holding him.
Between the window's rain‑tracks, a single strip of sky glowed faintly amber where the city lights caught the clouds. His ancient mind thought it looked like the last embers of a fire behind a battlefield's smoke.
And he found himself holding onto the same truth he had carried from the Prologue's void:
Whatever this is, whatever this place believes to be war—I will be ready.
Morning Shadows
The morning was not golden.
It arrived as a pale wash leaking through the blinds, flattening the edges of the room into dull silhouettes. The rain had eased to a slow patter, the air heavy with the scent of soaked concrete drifting in from the open corridor windows.
Preeti stirred before the nurse came in. She had slept in bursts, her head rolling against the pillows, always waking to check the small bundle at her side.
Karna lay as he had through the night — eyes part‑open, as if sleep was just another way to watch the world.
When the nurse finally came, she carried a tray with thin porridge and a spiced tea, placing them on the side table with clinical efficiency.
"Doctor will do rounds in twenty minutes," she said, glancing briefly at the baby, then moving on to note something on the chart clipped to the bed.
Her eyes lingered a fraction too long on the column marked Special Observations. Preeti noticed, but let it pass.
From the corridor came the muted shuffle of visitors arriving. Relatives of women down the hall, carrying tiffin carriers and bags of fruit, their voices spilling quick laughter before being swallowed by the ward's hush.
Among them, a tall, spare man with an umbrella dripping at his side walked too slowly past each NICU window, eyes scanning each bed. When his gaze reached Preeti's, it paused.
A slight nod — not of greeting, but confirmation. Then he moved on.
Preeti's brows tightened. "Did you see that?" she murmured to Smrithy, who had just returned from fetching coffee.
"See what?"
"That man — outside just now. He was staring."
Smrithy took a casual sip. "Hospitals make people stare. Always too much time waiting, nothing to do."
But Karna, from his wrappings, felt the bristle of being marked — exactly the way a soldier knows when an enemy lays eyes on him from across the plain.
Patterns and Intuition
The morning unfolded with hospital ordinariness:
Doctors sweeping in with their entourage, checking vitals, murmuring in clipped medical code; nurses replacing linen; the squeal of a medicine cart's wheel needing oil.
Yet beneath it was a subtle emphasis on this bed, this child. His monitor was checked twice as often. Notes were written in shorthand no other mother nearby seemed to warrant.
Preeti sensed the extra attention, though no one spoke of it openly. She cradled his head in her palm, smiling as one would to deflect inquiry.
Inside, she thought: Whatever you are, my boy, they don't know half of it.
Bridging Forward
By mid‑morning the clouds had begun to tear open, shafts of light warming the wet courtyard below. From her bed, Preeti could just see a strip of green: the hospital gardens, slick with rain, petals trembling from the weight of droplets.
Smrithy picked up her bag. "I'll be back this afternoon. Don't let the nurses bully you."
"They won't," Preeti said. She glanced at Vaikarthana, whose gaze was steadily fixed on the play of light shifting across the ceiling. "He's already learning."
Smrithy gave the baby one last wink, then slipped out into the corridor.
Karna watched her go, his head turning fractionally despite the swaddle. One ally gone from the room — one shield fewer. The watchers outside felt a step nearer.
After Smrithy's departure, the world contracted. The busy-ness of the morning faded to pockets of calm—nurses changing in and out with routine efficiency, orderlies pushing the laundry cart down polished corridors, the low clink of a metal water jug setting untouched on the side table.
It was, for a while, just Preeti and her son.
She took him out of the bassinet and held him—really held him—for the first time that morning. Outside, the rain was now a faint hiss, every droplet magnifying the warm softness between her arms and his feather-weight body.
"Look at you…" she whispered, smoothing the creases from his forehead. In better light, she could see every unusual mark: the tiny white patch over one shoulder, the notched earlobes, the faded lines drifting from collar to chest as if drawn by another, invisible hand.
In her heart there was both fear and a fierce resolve. She pressed her lips to his head, breathing in the powdery, newborn scent—something so vulnerable it ached inside her ribs.
"I won't let the world scare you," she promised. "If anyone tries to hurt you—or take you—let them try."
Her words were low, nearly lost in the rise and fall of the oxygen machine at the window. Yet Karna, even in this infant form, soaked up her intent. He could not decipher sentences, but the force behind them—the ancient vibration of a mother's vow—was to him as powerful as Vedic mantras.
**
Time slowed. Sunbeams dappled the farthest wall, casting soft squares and leaf patterns. Preeti freed one hand just long enough to reach for her phone, snapping a blurry picture of his crooked smile.
In that instant, she wondered—what kind of destiny had bound him, brought him here, placed him on her lap instead of in another's arms?
A pulse of worry: Would his marks fade? Would people see him as special, or as something to fear or suspect?
There, in the pause when her heart skipped, an old sadness rose up—a fear of judgment, of gossip, of being alone if it all became too much. Yet she forced herself to push it aside, pulling Karna closer.
She whispered, "Don't let them decide your story… They didn't decide mine."
**
From the observation window, a shadow lingered—one of the senior nurses, her sari tucked high for practicality, watching with a mixture of professional detachment and unnameable apprehension. Another nurse, younger, shuffled over and murmured:
"Is that the one? The miracle baby?"
"Shh. Eyes everywhere. Orders from the top—no rumors."
But as always, rumor has its own wings.
**
Karna, for his part, was drinking in the world. Every blink of fluorescent light, every glint off the lunch tray's steel rim, and every tremor of Preeti's hand was filed in an order only old souls know. He felt the pulse in her fingertips, the tremors of sorrow she hid, the pride in her tone.
He did not yet have the language to say it, but the ancient part of him understood:
This is a new dharma. Defend the hand that holds you. Guard the soul that risked exile for your sake.
**
A hospital PA system clicked on—an old man's voice warbling:
"Attention: Pediatrics, please report to Station B. Pediatrics, Station B."
It meant nothing to Karna; to Preeti it was only another interruption—one among so many—yet both of them were learning what it meant to live at the mercy of strange rituals: schedules, codes, tests and medications whose meanings are hidden until someone chooses to explain.
**
Later, a medical intern with a fresh badge and uncertain steps entered. She offered a polite smile and a clipboard.
"Ma'am… I'm supposed to check the baby's vitals once more, if that's alright."
Preeti nodded. The girl's hands, gentle but brisk, worked quickly—temperature, pulse, a flashlight to the pupils, a measured tap to one tiny knee. Through it all, the baby's dark eyes never left hers.
"Are you sure…" the intern paused, wary, "your family knows about the marks? We must document everything, but sometimes it's… difficult for relatives to see."
Preeti nodded, determined. "He's my son. That's all my family needs to know."
The intern wrote something in her file, then looked up—curiosity itching at her brow, but respect holding her tongue. She left quietly.
**
With the ward empty again, Preeti found herself humming—an old lullaby, half-remembered from her own mother, words trailing into melody:
"Rain on the yam leaves,
Lamp in the corner shines.
Don't fear the thunder,
The sun waits behind."
She soothed the baby with this song, her voice and heartbeat carrying hopes older than memory and fresher than rain.
Nightfall Eyes
By late afternoon, the humidity had returned with weight. The rain was gone but left behind a damp heaviness that clung to the air like a wet shawl. Outside the window, clouds bruised to violet began swallowing the last streaks of orange.
Inside the ward, the nurses moved in quieter tones, switching on bed‑side lamps before dimming the harsh overhead lights. Their words were still sharp and efficient, but beneath them was something heavier — the hush that settles when night begins to own the place.
Preeti sat upright with Vaikarthana in her arms, his head nestled into the crook of her shoulder. The day's visitors were gone, the bustle reduced to an occasional squeak of a wheel or the soft slap of slippers against the tile. She took a slow breath, letting herself feel the small rise and fall of his chest against her skin.
In the stillness, she watched his eyes. They didn't wander like most newborns — they tracked. They held. In the golden pool of lamp light, his gaze felt like an ancient soldier measuring distance on a battlefield.
"You see more than you should, little one," she whispered.
Senses Beyond Age
Karna's ears caught every layered sound:
the rhythmic pip… pip… pip of a heart monitor two cribs away,
the shuffle of cotton‑soled feet,
the faint tinkling of steel utensils in the distant staff kitchen,
and, threading through it, the low murmur of voices at the nurses' station.
He could not grasp their words yet, but he learned their intent.
Tired tones belonged to those ending shifts. Tight, deliberate ones… those were discussing him.
One voice, a man's, low and guarded:
"Guruji says the yuga‑mark is true… scars as foretold."
A woman's, quickly:
"Keep it quiet. Even the mother doesn't know."
The Closer Watcher
Near the doorway, half‑shadowed beyond the glass, stood the grey‑suited figure again. Tonight, he was closer — close enough that the outline of a beaded rudraksha mala was visible against his shirt beneath the jacket. In his palm, a small folded paper.
He didn't open it, only kept it hidden, watching the soft exchange of mother and child with the patience of someone who can wait years for a signal.
When a nurse approached, he stepped back into the dim corridor and was gone.
Preeti's Guard
Preeti's instincts prickled. She glanced toward the window but saw nothing but her own reflection and the small flame at the shrine in the corner, still holding steady despite the draught.
Kissing her son's temple, she murmured, "It's okay. Nobody's going to take you from me."
Karna couldn't shape reply, but in the hall of his newborn mind, the vow she'd spoken earlier that day echoed like a war declaration. And deep withThe Flame and the Shadow
Night settled deep over Chennai.
From the high windows of the ward, only the distant shimmer of streetlamps bled through the curtain gaps, each beam muffled by the mist still hanging after the rain. The city beyond was a blur of horns, motorbike growls, and the intermittent ringing of a temple bell in some hidden street below.
Inside, the ward had come under the rule of the machines: soft electronic beeps, patient as tides; a whisper of oxygen through tubes; the sighs of sleepers disturbed by dreams.
Preeti lay on her side, one arm curved protectively around Vaikarthana. She could not sleep deeply — every murmur at the nurses' desk, every unexpected footstep in the hallway pulled her halfway back to waking. Her fingers, even in sleep, remained curled against his swaddle.
Karna's eyes were open.
The newborn body he inhabited was warm, fragile, helpless by any measure — yet his mind reached beyond the glass walls of his crib. He let his gaze drift to the corner shrine again, to the oil lamp whose soft flame danced against the photo of Ganesha. Shadows wavered across the walls, growing, shrinking, like unseen spectres shifting in the dark.
In the Prologue's void, his father's parting warmth had been an unshakable sun.
Here, this little lamp felt like its first fragile echo — the first stubborn light in a world of wires and humming devices.
Two Conversations
Through the thin ward walls, two separate conversations wove into one another.
From the nurses' desk, medically neutral:
"Bloodwork ready tomorrow… keep files sealed… Doctor's orders."
From the far end of the corridor, the hushed tones of the watchers:
"He's the one. Yuga-mark confirmed. We begin preparations."
One voice asked, "And the mother?"
The reply came after a pause:
"She will not be told… yet."
The Silent Vow
Preeti stirred and pressed a soft kiss to her baby's temple, unaware of the whispers.
"Goodnight, my little lion," she murmured, before slipping back into uneasy rest.
Karna watched the slow, stubborn flame.
In his past life, war was served with the roar of conches and the blaze of sunlight on steel.
In this one, it seemed, war might come quietly — in whispers, in files, in the patient gaze of men who will not reveal their faces until it is too late.
So be it.
His eyes closed at last, but the vow from the void burned on:
I will burn, however small. I will last, however besieged.
Outside, unseen, the grey‑suited man stepped into the rain‑dark street, phone pressed to his ear.
His final words before vanishing into the night:
"The flame is lit."in, he answered without sound:
Let them try.
The Flame and the Shadow
Night settled deep over Chennai.
From the high windows of the ward, only the distant shimmer of streetlamps bled through the curtain gaps, each beam muffled by the mist still hanging after the rain. The city beyond was a blur of horns, motorbike growls, and the intermittent ringing of a temple bell in some hidden street below.
Inside, the ward had come under the rule of the machines: soft electronic beeps, patient as tides; a whisper of oxygen through tubes; the sighs of sleepers disturbed by dreams.
Preeti lay on her side, one arm curved protectively around Vaikarthana. She could not sleep deeply — every murmur at the nurses' desk, every unexpected footstep in the hallway pulled her halfway back to waking. Her fingers, even in sleep, remained curled against his swaddle.
Karna's eyes were open.
The newborn body he inhabited was warm, fragile, helpless by any measure — yet his mind reached beyond the glass walls of his crib. He let his gaze drift to the corner shrine again, to the oil lamp whose soft flame danced against the photo of Ganesha. Shadows wavered across the walls, growing, shrinking, like unseen spectres shifting in the dark.
In the Prologue's void, his father's parting warmth had been an unshakable sun.
Here, this little lamp felt like its first fragile echo — the first stubborn light in a world of wires and humming devices.
Two Conversations
Through the thin ward walls, two separate conversations wove into one another.
From the nurses' desk, medically neutral:
"Bloodwork ready tomorrow… keep files sealed… Doctor's orders."
From the far end of the corridor, the hushed tones of the watchers:
"He's the one. Yuga-mark confirmed. We begin preparations."
One voice asked, "And the mother?"
The reply came after a pause:
"She will not be told… yet."
The Silent Vow
Preeti stirred and pressed a soft kiss to her baby's temple, unaware of the whispers.
"Goodnight, my little lion," she murmured, before slipping back into uneasy rest.
Karna watched the slow, stubborn flame.
In his past life, war was served with the roar of conches and the blaze of sunlight on steel.
In this one, it seemed, war might come quietly — in whispers, in files, in the patient gaze of men who will not reveal their faces until it is too late.
So be it.
His eyes closed at last, but the vow from the void burned on:
I will burn, however small. I will last, however besieged.
Outside, unseen, the grey‑suited man stepped into the rain‑dark street, phone pressed to his ear.
His final words before vanishing into the night:
"The flame is lit."