Indrasen Sundav's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Sen lifts his head from the mat. Mayu's flame trembles for the first time. She folds the scroll with slow hands. "There is more you must hear," she says. "Before I lost you, I found another. A boy in his dead mother's arms. I took him. I raised him as my decoy. I called him Nandi." She rises and steps to the door. Sen follows. Outside, near the hut, a small earthen pot sits in the dirt with a wilted tulsi inside. A child's hand has pressed shells into the rim. "He watered it each morning," Mayu says. Batuji's knuckles whiten on his spear. "He is gone," the guard says. "Taken at first light. Mara's riders." Sen's chest knots. A brother he never knew. A father who already moves against blood. "Mara does not know the boy is not me," Mayu says. Her voice stays level, but the flame gutters low. "He will learn. And when he learns, he will come for the true son." Sen kneels by the small pot. He presses his palm flat to the soil, the way his feet first knew the ground. The name Sen sits heavy now. So does Nandi. He stands. "Then we go after him," he says. Batuji nods once. Mayu shields the flame with her hand. The vigil has a new direction.