The training ground smelled like dust and bruises.

  Every morning, just after the temple bells, the boys not born of kings would line up behind the southern barracks—bare-chested, sore, half-fed, and half-ready.

  We were the sons of spearmen, guards, messengers, charioteers. Boys with fathers who bled for crowns they’d never wear. Boys whose names were written in chalk that could be wiped away with a sneeze.

  We were not here to become heroes.

  We were here to keep them company while they trained.

  To take their blows.

  To fall when they needed to win.

  Brothers in the BackgroundIn this gray half-light, I met the first people in this life who felt like family.

  Chaitra, who ughed too loudly and always got hit twice for it.Bhal, taller than the rest, quiet and slow-moving, but sharp behind the eyes.Riksha, the youngest—too skinny, too fast, with a scar running across his lip.

  We trained in the dirt together.

  We ate together, scraped food from the bottom of cy bowls, and shared the one bnket on the coldest nights.

  They didn’t ask me where I came from.I didn’t ask them why they stayed.

  We didn’t need to speak of what we knew—that we were born to fill gaps in a world that only remembered gods and kings.

  But still, we watched.Still, we trained.

  Because something inside all of us said: We will not be forgotten.

  Karna in the StablesKarna still fed horses.

  Despite his age, his hands moved like he was older. Precise. Controlled. But his eyes never stayed down. They watched the warriors sparring across the field. The way Arjuna held his bow. The way Bhima twisted his hips when striking.

  He saw everything.

  I began speaking to him more.

  Not every day. Not publicly.

  Just small exchanges near the water troughs, behind the barracks, in the spaces between noise.

  He was curious. Hungry. Not just for skill—but for belonging.

  One day, while brushing down a warhorse, he asked me directly.

  “Do you think someone like me can learn to use a bow?”

  I paused.

  “You have hands. Eyes. Breath. Why not?”

  “Because I’m the son of a charioteer. Because Drona teaches only the royal-born. Because when I pick up a stick, people ugh.”

  I said nothing for a while.

  Then I crouched down and drew a line in the dirt.

  “This is what people say you are.”

  Then I drew another, cutting across it.

  “And this is what you can be.”

  He frowned. “Lines are easy to draw.”

  “So are paths. But not everyone walks them.”

  He stared at me.

  “You speak like a priest.”

  “I listen like a nobody.”

  Then I stood and said something I’d been holding onto for too long:

  “The world will try to write you into the margins, Karna. But margins can bleed. If you put your mind to it, you can redraw the whole story.”

  He blinked.

  “You think I can change history?”

  “I think you already did. You just don’t know how far it’ll reach yet.”

  He didn’t understand.

  Not fully.

  But he didn’t ugh either.

  That mattered.

  The Fall of RikshaIt was two weeks ter when it happened.

  We were in formation—wooden staves in hand, sweat already dripping from our necks before the sun had fully risen.

  One of the higher-born boys—Viraj, a second-cousin to a prince—was practicing strikes.

  We were his targets.

  The blow was supposed to stop at the shoulder.

  It didn’t.

  Riksha stepped wrong. The staff came down hard—against his temple.

  He dropped like a bird struck mid-flight.

  No one moved at first.

  Then Chaitra ran to him, shaking him, shouting his name.

  I knelt. His lip was split again. Blood pooled beneath his ear. His breathing was shallow.

  The instructor looked over, muttered something, and turned away.

  “He shouldn’t have flinched.”

  That was it.

  I stood.

  Not fast. Not loud.

  Just enough to be seen.

  “He was struck down. Not trained.”

  The instructor’s eyes narrowed.

  “Are you his voice now?”

  “No,” I said. “But someone should be.”

  There was no punishment.

  But that night, Vidura sent for me again.

  The Second ConversationHis room smelled of sandalwood and ink.

  He didn’t ask how I was.

  He already knew.

  “You spoke when silence was safer.”

  “Silence would’ve buried him.”

  He looked out the window.

  “You speak as if you don’t fear consequence.”

  “I don’t fear being ignored. I fear becoming part of the forgetting.”

  He smiled again—just slightly.

  “That’s a dangerous thing to say.”

  “So is truth.”

  He nodded.

  Then, for the first time, he said:

  “Tell me about the fire again. And the floor. And the windows.”

  So I did.

  This time, I didn’t downpy it.I told him the logic. The purpose. The memory of what came before.

  When I finished, he was quiet for a long time.

  Then he said something that would haunt me:

  “Sometimes, those who see too far must learn to walk with their heads bowed.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then you must be twice as strong. Twice as patient. And three times as silent—until the world cannot ignore you.”

  The Echo of a Future WarThat night, I sat beside Chaitra and Bhal, watching over Riksha’s sleeping form.

  His bandage leaked slowly. His breath was thin.

  I stared at the fire and thought:

  “This is the war before the war.The one without banners.Fought not for nd or pride—but for the right to be seen.”

  And somewhere in the stables, Karna probably still practiced with stolen wood and imagined arrows.

  And I—Avyakta—wrote again.

  Not in chalk. Not in ash.

  But in fire:

  “The epic has many heroes.But I will remember the ones who were never named.The boys who fell before the first horn blew.”