---
Ganga did not cry.
Even as Bhishma stepped off the boat and approached the riverbend with his sword sheathed and eyes heavy with resolve, she remained composed.
Her expression was one of eternal knowledge—the kind only water can hold.
Agasthya stood beside her, barefoot, hands folded at the front. He was two and a half years old, but his posture was already unnaturally straight. His eyes, too knowing.
Bhishma stopped a few paces away.
No one spoke at first.
The river said everything.
Finally, Ganga broke the silence. "So it begins."
Bhishma nodded. "He will be raised in shadow and silence. When the time comes, he will step into the world already sharper than it."
Agasthya looked up at Ganga.
"Will I see you again?"
"Not until you remember why you were born," she replied, brushing back a lock of his hair. "And by then… you may not want to."
Agasthya didn't cry either.
He reached out with both hands—Ganga knelt to embrace him. The moment lasted longer than Bhishma expected.
Then the child stepped back.
Bhishma knelt before him, bringing his eyes level. "From now until the age of seven," he said, "you are mine. Not my son. Not my student. You are my sword—unsharpened but unbreakable."
Agasthya nodded once.
"I will teach you to kill," Bhishma said. "But more than that, I will teach you to think."
"I already do," Agasthya said softly.
Bhishma raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
He turned. The child followed.
Neither of them looked back.
But Ganga watched until the boat disappeared from view—and only then did she whisper to the wind:
"Don't let them make you into what they fear."
---
The training compound was not in Hastinapur.
It was a ruined outpost in the forest—a stone fortress half-sunk in moss and memory, where Bhishma had once bled as a younger man.
Here, he trained the boy.
Each day began before the birds rose. Cold baths. Stretching. Stances. Blade drills. Barehanded grapples with older boys who often left with cracked ribs and confusion.
At night, he studied war texts, ancient treaties, histories of failed kingdoms.
He read faster than the scribes.
He asked questions Bhishma didn't expect, like:
"Why do kings fear silence in court?"
"Why do generals lie before battles?"
"Why do oaths taste like iron in the mouth?"
Bhishma's instructors, loyal and disciplined, began to whisper:
"He isn't learning—he's remembering."
Agasthya never complained. Never refused a task. But he kept his distance from others. He spoke only when asked. He ate like he was measuring each bite for balance. And he slept with a blade tucked beneath his cot—though no one had taught him that yet.
---
By age four, he could disarm full-grown soldiers.
By five, he could predict where a spear would land by the angle of a man's wrist.
Bhishma once tested him in secret—sent three assassins from the outer wall, dressed in shadows.
Agasthya didn't even flinch.
He waited until they stepped on the stone that cracked under pressure—and moved like water.
When Bhishma asked how he knew, Agasthya simply said:
"I listened to the ants earlier. They avoided that path."
Bhishma didn't respond.
But that night, he did not sleep.
---
Despite the brutal training, Agasthya never grew cruel.
He sparred with grace, not pride.
He bowed before each duel, no matter how small the opponent.
But every now and then, in the stillness of a moment—Bhishma caught a flicker in the boy's eyes.
Something older than strategy.
Something hungrier than vengeance.
The boy was not growing stronger.
He was awakening.
---
One evening, as red light spilled over the compound walls, Bhishma sat beside him after practice.
"You are not like the others," he said.
Agasthya nodded.
"You never ask for praise."
"I don't need it."
"You never ask when the training will end."
"It won't."
Bhishma studied him. "Do you remember your parents?"
Agasthya looked up at the horizon.
Then down at his sword.
"Only the part where they let me go."
Bhishma didn't speak after that.
He simply rose.
And for the first time, he saluted the boy with his blade.
Not as student to master.
But as warrior to warrior.
---