Rise Of The Descendant (Excerpt)

Prologue

1966

Tales are often told from one generation to another. That is why we say stories never die. Stories of love are widely spread across the globe, but stories of hatred usually get no place. It's not invalid, I shall say. After all, it is better that love gets more place than hatred. But a story cannot be left untold forever. Words find their own way. Stories, somehow, reach their destination. You can never keep them buried. You might be able to supress one. But remember, words have their own patience.

One such tale is of the Sooryakanthans. It is a tale of hatred—the hatred which has its roots hundreds of years back. The story begins centuries before the time I am starting from. But the event that lit a fire in the pages of this tale took place in 1966. As I recite this tale to you, the epistemology of why it was kept hidden will appear. After all, we hide stories for some reason.

It pains in both the ways, whether you lose blood or tears. The village was losing both at the moment. Pain was inevitable in the worst way they could ever imagine.

In a corner of the village, a man in a dhoti, his wife and his four-year-old son were hiding themselves inside a large pit coated with mud in their hut. They were hiding from the red royals, as they used to call them.

The four-year-old kid seemed more horrified than he had ever been. He had seen all his friends and most of his relatives struggling for a chance to escape their brutal deaths. But the red royals provided them with no mercy.

Soon, the tears of three started falling faster than before when they heard footsteps approaching.

"The royals are nearing," the man said to his wife. "You know what we have to do."

The woman nodded to her husband, tears covering her brown eyes and mud clinging to her dry hair. The man kissed his wife on her forehead, held his sword and ran out of the pit and then out of the hut.

Before the other two could make any move, they heard the scream of the man. The woman understood that her husband had witnessed the brutal death they were trying to escape from. She held her crying son tightly and ran till a little distance in the large pit, but stopped when she heard something and turned back. She widened her eyes in horror when she saw a pocket-sized sack thrown down in the pit with a thin thread sparkling in fire. It did not take much time for her to realise that it was a bomb made by the red royals with gunpowder filled in a small pocket-sized container.

Before the woman could run ahead, the bomb burst, leaving a shockwave which forced the woman and her kid into the hard wall of the pit several metres behind them.

The kid opened his eyes after half a minute. Tears flowed faster than before but he tried his best to cry silently. However, as he was just four years old, he was not successful in this attempt. The cry got louder when he turned his eyes towards his mother. His mother was stuck to the wall with a thick wooden nail pierced through her stomach.

She gasped for air in pain. If they were lucky enough, her son would be the last person of the tribe to live. She forced a soft smile and took a little of the blood flowing from her stomach and drew a tilak on her son's forehead in the shape of Om (ॐ). "My son, have the honour to fulfil the prophecy. When the world would be falling because of its sins, you will be there for betterment. When God would be losing His trust on humans, you will be there to win that back. When the evil would be able to swallow the good, you will be there to eat up the evil. Be the last Sooryakanthan and the descendant..."

She forced her last breath out and her lifeless eyes kept looking at her son even after her soul had left her.

"Mama!" The kid cried. He was left with nothing other than blood and tears to lose.