Year: 1718 A.D. — Garhwal Himalayas, Devbhoomi
Darkness.
Not the kind that scares you, but the kind that holds you. Cradles you.
Kartik floated in silence—no breath, no sight, just awareness. The kind of awareness one shouldn’t have. At least, not yet.
He remembered falling asleep beneath the Bodhi tree near Suryagaon ridge… in 2025. The wind had been strange that day. The mantras from the temple louder than usual. And just before his eyes shut, he had seen... a face made of flame. Whispering his name.
Then nothing.
Now?
Now, he was floating in warmth, wrapped in a pulse that wasn’t his own. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. A heartbeat. Steady. Ancient. His mother’s.
Not his modern mother—but another. One rooted in the soil of Devbhoomi, centuries ago. He couldn’t explain how he knew it, but he did.
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He was a baby.
Unborn. But aware.
And the air around him vibrated with energy far older than anything he’d ever studied. It wasn’t science. It wasn’t a glitch in time.
It was karmic design.
“You were not ready. So you shall be born again.”
The voice echoed inside him—not from outside, but from the core of his being.
Outside the womb, the world moved with the rhythm of 1718. The Rawat Clan, still strong in tradition, guarded ancient secrets in the pine-covered hills above Lansdowne. The clan's yogic line had remained hidden for generations, protectors of cosmic knowledge that empires would kill to possess.
And now, the heir had returned—not through memory, but through rebirth.
Meanwhile…
In a small wooden home near the village temple, Meera Rawat, a woman of strength and silence, lay resting under thick wool blankets. She was eight months into her pregnancy—her first child—and had begun seeing strange dreams. Of fire. Of rivers flowing backward. Of her unborn son chanting mantras in his sleep.
The village elders said it was a blessing.
But it was Raghunath Rawat, the clan’s eldest, Meera’s grandfather and Kartik’s great-grandfather, who truly understood. His beard was white as ash, his eyes clouded with time but sharp with insight. A master of forgotten vidyas, he had been waiting for this moment—foretold in scrolls kept hidden beneath the temple stones.
“This child is not ordinary,” he whispered, after placing his palm gently on Meera’s belly. “He carries memory not of this world, but of another time.”
Only Devendra Rawat, Meera’s husband, said nothing. But when no one was looking, he sat beside her, resting his hand over hers and asked the unborn child, “Who are you, little one?”
And deep inside her womb, Kartik Rawat, born in one age, now growing in another, began to remember.
Shall we dive into Chapter Two, where Kartik is born during a celestial alignment and strange signs begin appearing? Or would you like a flashback from Raghunath’s perspective next?