Morning found Akash awake before he meant to be.
He lay still on the bed, one arm tucked beneath his head, watching the pale light creep along the wall. It wasn't sharp yet—just enough to show that the night had ended without asking his permission. The house breathed softly around him. Somewhere outside, a pot clinked. Footsteps moved and stopped. The day was beginning the way days always did.
What unsettled him was not what had happened.
It was what hadn't.
He kept returning to the same thought, turning it over as carefully as one might handle a blade.
They didn't say I was wrong.
His mother hadn't laughed it away.
Hadn't told him he imagined the voice.
Hadn't even told his father—not at first.
She had listened. Then she had gone quiet.
Later, when his father knew, he hadn't demanded explanations either. No anger. No disbelief. Only warnings—spoken carefully, as if the wrong words might wake something.
That was what frightened Akash.
If it were madness, they would have named it.
If it were fear, they would have shared it.
But they had done neither.
Lying there, staring at the ceiling, Akash understood something he didn't want to understand yet.
They hadn't tried to protect him from the truth.
They had tried to protect the truth from moving too soon.
And that left only one possibility he couldn't push away:
If they didn't deny it…
then it had happened before.
The quiet did not last.
It never did.
A distant rooster cried, late and irritated. Somewhere nearby, a bucket scraped against stone. The low murmur of voices drifted through the walls—his parents, speaking softly, careful not to carry the sound into the room. The house was fully awake now, though it pretended otherwise.
Akash shifted slightly, the wooden bed giving a small, familiar creak. He stilled again, listening. These were ordinary sounds. Reassuring sounds. The kind that reminded a person the world still held its shape.
Beside him, Vidya moved.
At first it was only a change in her breathing. Then she turned onto her back, one arm falling across her stomach. Her eyes opened slowly, unfocused, as if she had woken in the middle of a thought and was trying to remember where she had left it.
For a moment, she said nothing.
Then her gaze settled on the ceiling, the same crack Akash had been watching.
"So it's morning," she said quietly.
"Yes," Akash replied.
She sat up, brushing her hair back with her fingers. The light caught her face now—clear, unhurried. If not for the heaviness in her eyes, she might have looked untouched by the night.
"They didn't wake us," she said.
Akash shook his head. "They didn't need to."
Vidya glanced at him then, really looking.
"You were awake before me," she said.
It wasn't a question.
Akash didn't deny it.
Outside, the village grew louder by degrees. A door opened. Someone called out a name. Life continued to announce itself, piece by piece.
Vidya drew her knees closer, lowering her voice though there was no one to hear.
"Are you still thinking about it?" she asked.
Akash looked toward the window, where the light had finally reached the frame.
"Yes," he said.
Vidya nodded once.
"So am I."
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Vidya leaned back against the wall, drawing a slow breath, as if testing the weight of the day before standing inside it. Akash noticed how calm she looked. Not relaxed—decided. It was a look he had seen only once before, long ago, when something had already been chosen and fear no longer had a place to stand.
"We should go early," she said at last.
Akash nodded. He had already reached the same conclusion, though he wasn't sure when the thought had settled into him. It felt less like a decision and more like remembering something he had forgotten.
"The king won't stay in one place," Vidya continued. "Not now."
"He already didn't go somewhere right?😅," Akash said.
That earned a faint, knowing smile.
Vidya swung her feet to the floor and stood. The morning light followed her, stretching thin shadows across the room. She tied her hair back, movements precise, unhurried.
"You don't feel like this is a mistake," she said.
"No," Akash replied.
"Neither do I."
That, more than anything, made the room feel smaller.
Akash stood as well. For a moment, they faced each other, the space between them filled with things neither of them named—forest paths, unheard voices, questions that refused to stay silent.
Vidya lowered her voice.
"Whatever this is," she said, "it didn't start with us."
Akash understood.
"And it won't end if we stay here," he said.
She reached for the door, then paused.
"Akash," she said, not turning.
"Yes, big sis?"
"If they try to stop us…"
He didn't let her finish.
"They won't," he said quietly. "They'll warn us."
Vidya looked back at him then, something unreadable in her eyes.
"Then let's not waste the warning."
She opened the door.
The day waited.
They found his parents in the main room.
His mother stood near the hearth, adjusting a pot that did not need adjusting. His father sat on the low stool by the wall, tying the strap of his sandals with slow care. Both of them looked up at the same time.
For a brief moment, no one spoke.
Akash noticed how his mother's gaze moved first to his face, then to Vidya's, as if measuring something invisible between them. His father finished tightening the strap before straightening.
"You're awake early," his father said.
"Yes," Vidya replied.
Akash waited. He had the strange feeling that if he spoke first, something would break.
His mother wiped her hands on her cloth and stepped closer.
"You're not going near the forest today," she said.
It wasn't a question.
It wasn't even an order.
It was a boundary, placed carefully.
Akash nodded once. "We're not."
His father's eyes narrowed slightly—not in suspicion, but in recognition.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"To the king," Vidya said.
The air shifted.
His mother did not ask why. She only looked down for a moment, then back up again, as though steadying herself.
"You'll come back before evening," she said.
Again, not a request.
His father stood now, testing his weight on his feet. "If you hear anything," he said slowly, choosing each word, "anything that doesn't fit… you leave."
Akash met his eyes.
"What if it follows?" Akash asked.
Silence.
His father did not answer immediately. When he did, his voice was lower.
"Then you walk where people walk," he said. "You do not stand alone."
His mother reached out and adjusted Akash's collar, a small gesture, almost ordinary. Her hand lingered for half a breath too long.
"Some paths open only once," she said quietly. "You don't have to walk them all."
Akash felt the pull again—that deep, unarguable sense that this was not a choice being offered to him.
"Yes," he said.
It was the only answer that fit.
His parents did not try to stop them.
That was how Akash knew the warning was real that his head is giving him since the dawn his parents must knew something but he didn't questioned.
They left the house together.
The door closed behind them with a soft sound that felt louder than it should have. Morning had fully settled over the village now. Sunlight lay across the path in pale bands, broken by the shadows of roofs and trees. Someone called out a greeting as they passed. Someone else argued good-naturedly over the price of grain.
Nothing about the world suggested it was waiting for answers.
Vidya walked beside Akash, her pace steady. Neither of them looked back.
The road toward the king's place was familiar, worn smooth by years of footsteps. As they approached the outer boundary, Akash noticed something he hadn't expected—the guards did not stop them for long.
One of them looked at Akash's face, then at Vidya, and finally past them, toward the village they had come from.
"You're his son," the guard said.
Akash nodded.
The guard hesitated, then stepped aside. "Go on."
No questions. No delay.
As they passed through, Akash felt a faint tightening in his chest. The ease of it unsettled him more than resistance would have.
"They know him," Vidya murmured.
"Yes," Akash said. "Or they remember him."
Inside, the air felt different. Not threatening—expectant. People moved with purpose, voices low. A man with a bundle of papers paused when he saw them, then turned away without a word.
They were asked a few things. Names. Where they had come from. What they wished to speak about.
Akash noticed how carefully the answers were weighed before they were accepted.
Then came the pause.
"The king isn't here," one of the men said.
Vidya frowned. "Where is he?"
The man exchanged a glance with another before answering.
"In the forest."
The words landed heavily.
Akash felt it immediately—the invisible line connecting the warning, the voice, the morning silence.
Behind him, he heard his father's voice, low and sudden.
"Is that coincidence," his father said, "or does it have to be my son?"
Akash turned.
His father stood at the edge of the space, face unreadable. He hadn't followed them in before. Akash hadn't even noticed when he arrived.
The man did not answer.
Akash's father looked at him then—not with fear, but with urgency.
"We're going home," he said.
Now.
Akash didn't move.
He had never heard his father speak like that before. Not hurried. Not sharp. Just certain, as though time itself had leaned close and whispered something only he could hear.
Vidya looked from Akash to his father, confusion flickering across her face.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
Akash's father didn't answer.
He was already turning back the way they had come, eyes fixed ahead, jaw set.
Akash followed, unease tightening in his chest.
Something had shifted.
Something they were not meant to see yet.
And as they stepped back onto the path, one question echoed in Akash's mind—quiet, insistent, impossible to ignore:
(Why his father suddenly wants to go home with them does something isn't right?)