Some places welcome death.
Some are guarded by it.
The Saadhak had walked all night.
The path was broken. Disappearing.
Mud turned to ash beneath his feet.
Trees thinned.
Above him, stars vanished into smoke-shaped clouds — like rising funeral fire.
Just before dawn, he arrived at the cremation ground.
No flames.
No bodies.
And still… the air smelled like something had ended.
In the center stood a lone figure.
Tall. Draped in black.
A skull-topped staff in one hand.
He didn’t move.
Didn’t breathe.
His eyes were shut.
And… he had no shadow.
The Saadhak stopped, a few feet away.
The wind spoke again — not in words, but in weight.
The kind of silence that comes just before truth is revealed.
Then the figure’s eyes opened.
But they were not eyes.
They were mirrors.
And in them, the Saadhak saw himself — not as he was,
but as he had hidden.
A frightened boy.
A bleeding man.
A sinner.
A saint.
All layered. Flickering. Shifting like smoke.
He tried to speak.
The Rakshak raised one finger.
“श्मशान सत्य माँगता है, शोर नहीं।”
“The cremation ground asks for truth, not noise.”
The Saadhak stepped closer, heart pounding like a warning drum.
The Rakshak pointed to a mound of ash.
Something beneath it moved—barely.
He knelt. Reached in.
His hands touched red cloth, edges burned.
Wrapped in it — a severed hand holding a small bell.
On the wrist: a rudraksh thread. Like his own.
Then — the bell rang.
Not from wind.
From remembrance.
And the world around him cracked.
He was no longer in the cremation ground.
He stood before his childhood home.
His mother lit incense.
His father chanted.
And in the center — his younger self, holding that same bell.
Time bent inward.
Ash drifted down like snow.
The Rakshak’s voice sliced through:
“The one you buried is still waiting. You must die… before you can go ahead.”
The bell stopped.
So did his breath.
He knelt by the mound, the severed hand still warm with a memory that did not belong to this life alone.
The bell in its grasp—tiny, bronze, rim cracked—had a sound that didn’t echo outward.
It sank inward.
Into his bones.
Each ring brought back something buried:
The time he lied to save himself.
The time he walked away from love.
The time he ignored the call.
The time he laughed when he should’ve listened.
The time he watched the flames and felt… nothing.
The Rakshak stood motionless, like a sculpture cast in ancient grief.
And then came a faint child’s voice.
Not in the air—but inside him.
“Why didn’t you come back for me?”
He dropped the bell.
Breath hitched.
Vision blurred.
Because he knew that voice.
It was his own.
Not from this age.
From one long past—or maybe from a lifetime he hadn’t finished living.
Tears didn’t fall.
In this place, even sorrow burned before it touched the ground.
The Rakshak finally spoke:
“You wear the beads, but you haven’t earned them.”
“You carry fire, but never sat inside it.”
“You seek God, but run from your ghost.”
Then, a question:
“Will you walk into your pyre, if I light it?”
The Saadhak didn’t answer.
He stood. Picked up the bell again. Held it to his chest.
He nodded.
The Rakshak turned and walked toward a square of black stone—the cremation pit, unused for years.
He poured oil from a clay pot that hadn’t been there before.
The Saadhak stepped in.
Sat cross-legged.
Not resisting.
Not praying.
Just being.
The Rakshak lifted his hand—fingers snapped.
The flames rose.
Bright.
Then blue.
Then black.
But he didn’t burn.
He bloomed.
From ash, came a new name whispered by the wind:
“Pashupati awaits.”
The bell rang once more.
This time, from inside his chest.