InkVoyager4
📖 CHAPTER 1 - "I AM FIRE"
I do not remember light.
I remember heat.
Heat that pulsed like a heartbeat.
Heat that whispered my name before I even had one.
When I first opened my eyes, the world was red-
flames rising and circling around me like guardians,
chanting priests swaying in rhythm,
and the fragrance of ghee swirling through the air like destiny itself.
I was not born.
I was summoned.
Called out of sacred fire by a father whose pride had been broken...
whose humiliation carved a wound deeper than any sword could cut.
THE WOUND THAT CREATED ME
My father, King Drupada of Panchal, was once a man of immense dignity-
a warrior whose footsteps echoed like thunder across the gurukuls of Aryavarta.
But before he was a king, he was simply Drupada,
a student who shared half his life...
and half his dreams...
with another boy.
That boy was Drona.
They studied together, laughed together,
shared stale rotis on hungry nights
and grand ambitions on long afternoons.
And one day, in the blooming innocence of youth,
my father promised:
"When I become king, half my kingdom will be yours."
Friendship made the vow sweet.
Life made it bitter.
Years passed, and fate hardened both of them.
My father became King Drupada of Panchal.
Drona became a penniless Brahmin with a brilliant mind and a burning hunger-
a hunger sharpened by rejection, by poverty, by humiliation.
They met again.
Not as friends.
As fire and wind, destined to clash.
When Drona arrived at the gates of Panchal seeking help,
my father-surrounded by guards, drowned in the intoxication of power-
looked at him with eyes that did not recognize the boy he once loved like a brother.
"How can a king share his kingdom with a beggar?"
Those words were arrows.
Sharp. Merciless.
Unforgettable.
Drona left with a wound on his soul.
A wound that demanded repayment.
And one day... he did.