But it didn’t need to.
There are truths that echo through blood, through stones, through the soul-string that binds generations.
So they came—not loudly, not with drums—but like the rain before a storm, falling one by one upon the Rawat land.
On the seventh night after Kartik’s birth, a hooded rider appeared at the edge of the forest. His horse was white, speckled with ash. His eyes were sharp, his speech was ancient.
“I am Rawat Bhairav of the Outer Hills,” he said to Baba Devdutt.
“I felt the blood awaken. The heir has returned.”
Then came the three veiled women, from the Misty Path near the Valley of Wolves.
They wore rudraksha veils, their arms lined with silver bangles carved with mantras.
They did not speak, but hummed the song of the ancestors—a tune only the Rawat clan knew, lost even to some of its own.
They circled the child once, then disappeared into the shadows.
Then came the protectors—not men, but something older.
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From deep within the Nanda Devi forests, emerged a being the villagers called only Bhrigunath—a giant of a man with dreadlocks trailing like roots, eyes glowing faintly gold.
“This child is born under trinity’s gaze,” he said.
“I was bound to his line five hundred winters ago.
I will guard him until he walks on his own feet.”
Even the animals near the Rawat home grew still as Bhrigunath sat cross-legged beneath the banyan tree.
And on the ninth night, when Kartik's mother lay asleep, a wind unlike any other blew through the house. The oil lamp flickered, and the shadows moved like dancers.
Baba Devdutt knelt near the child.
He saw them.
The ancestors.
Not as ghosts—but as light-forms, tall and silent, dressed in the war garb of centuries past.
One wore a torn saffron cloak.
One held a spear made of black stone.
Another held nothing but prayer beads and fire in his eyes.
“We have returned,” they said in a voice that filled the room without sound.
“We come to bear witness. To guard our rebirth.”
The Rawat Clan—keepers of the invisible vow.
Once warriors.
Once temple guardians.
Once scholars of the stars and the silence between mantras.
But time buried them.
Empires rose. Kings changed. Books were rewritten. And the Rawats chose to fade, rather than be twisted.
They scattered into smaller lines—some forgot, others remembered.
But all had the same whisper in their soul:
“When the right one is born… we gather again.”
Kartik slept through the night.
But his little hand glowed faintly under the moonlight, the mark of the sacred thread briefly reappearing on his crown.
And the elders knew—
He was the one.