Arjuna, seeing the fear in the eyes of his soldiers and the sheer scale of the slaughter, felt a flicker of his old despair. He fought with all his skill, but for every arrow he fired, Bhishma seemed to fire a hundred. He could hold the grandsire at bay, but he could not stop the wholesale destruction of his army. He turned to Krishna, his face grim. "Madhava, look at him! He is not a man; he is Yama, the god of death, himself! At this rate, our army will be gone by sunset. My love for him stays my hand. I cannot bring myself to use my full power against him. What are we to do?"
Krishna's serene expression hardened. His eyes flashed with a divine fire. He saw the wavering in Arjuna's heart, and he saw the devastation on the field. He knew that a moment of crisis had arrived, a moment that required a divine intervention. "If your love makes you weak, Arjuna," Krishna's voice was low and dangerous, "then I will do what must be done!"
Releasing the reins of the horses, Krishna leaped from the chariot. In his hand, as if manifested from pure light, was his ultimate weapon, the Sudarshana Chakra, the flaming discus of the sun. Its serrated edges whirled, emitting a sound that was the hum of creation and destruction itself. Ignoring Arjuna's frantic cries of "Stop! You vowed not to fight!", Krishna advanced on foot towards Bhishma, the discus raised, his face a mask of terrible, divine wrath. The entire battlefield froze. Friend and foe alike stared in stunned silence as the Lord of the Universe, who had sworn to be a mere charioteer, now advanced to kill the grandsire of the Kuru clan.
Time itself seemed to stop. The cacophony of war—the clash of steel, the screams of the dying, the trumpeting of elephants—all faded into an awed, terrified silence. Every eye on the battlefield was fixed on the two figures at its center: the ancient, white-clad grandsire, standing tall and resolute on his chariot, and the dark-skinned Lord of the Universe, advancing on foot, his form radiating a light that dimmed the sun, the fiery Sudarshana Chakra spinning in his hand, ready to be unleashed.
Bhishma saw Krishna coming, and a profound, ecstatic joy filled his war-torn heart. For his entire life, he had worshipped Narayana, and now, that very Lord was coming to grant him death with His own divine hand. This was the highest honor, the greatest liberation a devotee could ever dream of. He threw down his bow. He joined his palms in a gesture of loving surrender. "Come, O Lord of the Worlds!" he cried, his voice ringing with pure devotion. "Come, O refuge of your devotees! To be slain by Your hand is the greatest of all boons! Grant me this final mercy! End my suffering and take me to your abode!" He stood there, his chest bare, his arms open, a willing sacrifice on the altar of war.
Arjuna, seeing this, was jolted from his stupor. He leaped from the chariot and ran, tackling Krishna around the waist, desperately trying to hold him back. "No, Madhava! No!" he pleaded, his voice choked with tears. "You cannot break your vow! You promised you would not fight! If you do this, the world will call me a coward, a man who had to be saved by God because he could not fight his own battles. The sin will be mine, not yours! I beg you, put down the Chakra! I swear to you, I will fight! I will fight with all my strength! I will not hold back! I will unleash the full power of the Gandiva! I will not fail you again!"
Krishna stopped. He looked down at his friend, who was clinging to him, his face streaked with tears and dust. He looked at Bhishma, who stood waiting with blissful anticipation. A slow, compassionate smile touched Krishna's lips. His divine anger receded, and the fiery Sudarshana Chakra vanished from his hand as mysteriously as it had appeared. He had never intended to throw it. His act was a divine play, a lila, designed to shatter Arjuna's lingering attachment and reignite the true warrior's fire within him. He allowed Arjuna to lead him back to the chariot.
The spell was broken. The battle roared back to life. But something had fundamentally changed. The hesitation in Arjuna's heart was gone, burned away by the fire of Krishna's wrath. He picked up the Gandiva, and it felt light as a feather in his hands. A new, terrible power flowed through him. He was no longer just Arjuna, the grandson of Bhishma; he was the chosen instrument of the divine, and his duty was clear.
He turned his chariot and plunged back into the Kaurava ranks, and what followed was a massacre. His arrows now flew with a purpose and a fury that was terrifying to behold. He invoked celestial weapons, the astras, that filled the sky with fire and thunder. He became a whirlwind of destruction, a golden blur of motion from which death rained down incessantly. The Kaurava soldiers, who had been advancing with confidence just moments before, now broke and fled in terror. They saw not one Arjuna, but a hundred, a thousand, his divine form seeming to fill the entire battlefield.
The sun began to set on the third day. The Kaurava army was in full retreat, their magnificent Garuda Vyuha shattered and broken. They had been saved from total annihilation only by the coming of dusk. As the conches blew to signal the end of the day's fighting, the Pandavas let out a mighty roar of victory.
In the Kaurava camp that night, there were no accusations. There was only a stunned, fearful silence. Duryodhana approached Bhishma, not with anger, but with a newfound, terrified respect. "Grandsire," he said, his voice humbled, "today… today I saw your true power. And I saw the power of Arjuna when he is unleashed. Forgive my foolish words."
Bhishma looked at his grandson, his eyes filled not with triumph, but with a deep, tragic pity. "Today, Duryodhana," he said softly, "you saw what happens when God Himself decides to intervene in the affairs of men. You are not fighting the Pandavas. You are fighting destiny. And that is a battle you can never win." The third day was over. The Pandavas were victorious, their morale soaring. But the war was far from over, and the heart of the old grandsire was heavier than ever before.