A Change of Fate

Half-Sick of the Shadows (Part-1)

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For often through the silent nights

A funeral, with plumes and lights,

"I am half-sick of shadows," said

The Lady of Shalott.

Lord Alfred Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott

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"Vasusena is a Vaikartana..." Kripa whispered, his voice tinged with awe and disbelief.

His mind flashed back to the first time he had laid eyes on the boy. He had looked frail, malnourished and smaller than his peers—a child whose physical form concealed the power that he would, even in those days, wield with ease.

But what had struck Kripa most was the haunting emptiness in those eyes, a void so profound it seemed the boy didn't belong to this world. They were the eyes of someone who did not belong. He looked like a soulless puppet mimicking life, a child whose presence felt more like an intrusion into the world than a part of it.

Yet, in battle or the throes of learning, those same eyes burned with a fierce intensity that made everyone, even Kripa himself, uneasy. It was as if, in those moments, the lifeless shell was possessed by something far greater, something dangerous. There was a reason why Vasusena was called Rakshasa by all the other trainees.

It was a gaze that unsettled even the most hardened of warriors, a fierce and disconcerting presence that made Kripa's blood freeze in his veins.

It was as if Vasusena, in those moments, transcended human limitations, becoming something altogether different.

Kripa had once chanced upon servants discussing in hushed tones that Vasusena was not a child at all, but an unfinished creation of Lord Vishwakarma—a lifeless golem masquerading as a human. He had been inclined to agree.

But now, the revelation that this cold-blooded child was born out of the essence of Surya Narayana shattered his understanding of the world. The shock rippled through him, challenging everything he thought he knew.

When he had been Vasusena's teacher... Kripa had felt that the power should be more suited to a Kshatriya rather than a suta. And it turns out, he was only slightly wrong. Vasusena was not just any ordinary Kshatriya. He was a Devaputra by birth.

The clash between him and Arjuna... Kripa knew it would haunt him for the rest of his days. The battle—laid bare before him by Vishwadhipathi—was seared into his memory with an intensity that defied words.

"How could that adharmi, that scoundrel, be a Devaputra like my own grandsons?" His step-brother's voice cracked with anguish, his disbelief palpable as he grappled with the jarring revelation of the boy's divine lineage. "Even after all the adharma he has wrought, I am bound by vow on our behalf by Krishna and the wrath of Surya Deva. I cannot kill him for the division he has caused in our family!"

"Pitrvya... please, calm yourself," Vidura pleaded, his eyes filled with concern.