They gave Arjuna a bow before he could speak his own name.

  The day Drona returned to court, the world tilted slightly. Not in sound, not in thunder, but in the posture of the city. People stood straighter. Soldiers sharpened their bdes more seriously. Even the crows circled slower above the pace.

  Drona arrived without fanfare. No musicians. No blessings. Just a man in white, with eyes like coals buried in ash. His beard was trimmed close, but his silence filled the halls.

  By noon, the training ground had been cleared. Only the princes and chosen sons of the nobility stood in line.

  And behind the fence?

  Us.

  Chaitra.Bhal.Riksha.And me—Avyakta.

  We watched from behind the wooden sts as Arjuna drew his first real bow, feet pnted firm, back like a bde, eyes unblinking.

  The arrow struck the center.

  No surprise.

  Appuse came from the nobility section, soft but proud.

  Bhishma nodded.

  Duryodhana stepped up next, jaw clenched.

  And we watched.

  Because that’s what we were allowed to do.

  Karna in the ShadeLater that day, I found Karna where he usually was—by the stables, combing a mare’s mane with practiced hands. The animal trusted him. Everyone did, except the ones who couldn’t bear the idea that someone like him could be more than his birth.

  I stood beside him silently, leaning against the post.

  He didn’t look up at first.

  “You saw them,” he said.

  “Everyone did.”

  “He won’t teach us,” he added. “Drona. Not me. Not you.”

  I looked at him.

  “You don’t want what I want.”

  “And what do you want?”

  “To survive,” I said. “You want to be remembered.”

  He paused.

  Then:

  “Is that wrong?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s just louder.”

  He turned then. His eyes burned not with anger—but with a hunger that had no name yet.

  “I want to learn the bow.”

  “I know.”

  “I want to fight like Arjuna.”

  “You might one day fight better than him.”

  He ughed bitterly.

  “He has teachers. I have horses.”

  I crouched, picked up a small stone, and tossed it into the trough.

  “Not every teacher waits for you. Some need to be chased.”

  “Drona won’t teach me.”

  “No,” I said. “But someone else might.”

  The Name Spoken QuietlyThat night, I told Karna the name I had been holding onto since my earliest memory in this life.

  Parashurama.

  The sage.The warrior ascetic.The one who hated kings and trained only those not born royal.

  “He teaches only Brahmins,” Karna said.

  “You know what you are?”

  “I know what I’m not.”

  “Then become what he needs to see,” I said.

  “Lie?”

  “No. Prove.”

  “Prove what?”

  “That you can hold his knowledge without letting it rot.”

  He looked at me long and hard.

  “You speak like a seer.”

  “I listen like a man with no gods to save him.”

  He said nothing more that night.

  But the next morning, he was gone.

  Only a note carved into the wooden post:

  “To find the bow, I go without one.”

  Whispers of the BowBack in the pace, Arjuna was already being called Madhyama Pandava by soldiers with reverence in their tone.

  He moved like a whisper over gravel—light, fast, precise.

  We watched from behind the fence again.We watched because we weren’t allowed in.We watched because no one had made room for us.

  But we learned anyway.

  We mimicked footwork.We watched breathing.We memorized drills in silence.

  Every night, behind the barracks, Bhal and Riksha would swing sticks the way Bhima did.Chaitra practiced bance like Nakul.I watched them all—and wrote.

  And one night, I whispered to myself:

  “The sword is theirs. But the sharpness is mine.”

  A Letter Never SentDays passed. Then weeks.

  No word from Karna.

  But in my satchel, I wrote what I would’ve said:

  “You were born beneath the wheels. But you don’t belong in the dirt.

  They will call you names. Call you cursed. Say you should’ve stayed in the background.

  Let them.

  One day, they’ll know you didn’t fight for power. You fought because they told you not to.

  And that kind of fire never dies.”