The Saadhak walked for what felt like days without sun.
Kapali’s cave vanished behind him — a dream swallowed by dawn.
Ahead:
A river winding like a whispered secret.
A village with no name, no map.
And music… drifting in the air like colored smoke.
Not devotional.
Not classical.
Raw. Broken. Beautiful.
He followed it.
Through trees wrapped in red cloth —
scarlet ribbons fluttering like prayers.
Past women washing clothes, their laughter echoing like goddesses’ songs.
Past children painting crooked birds on mud walls,
their eyes alive with mischief and wonder.
And there —
in the heart of the village —
a girl sat beneath a neem tree.
Eyes closed.
Fingers dancing over a veena strung with silence itself.
The Saadhak stopped.
Something inside him began to tremble.
She wasn’t old.
She wasn’t young.
She wasn’t trying.
And yet—
He forgot hunger.
Forgot questions.
Forgot even why he had come.
Then she sang.
No words. Just sound.
And in that sound, he heard:
The first time he was kissed and felt nothing.
The day his poem was mocked and he burned it.
The night he wanted to die—and didn’t.
The silence between his name being called… and him not answering.
She opened her eyes.
Green.
Like moss. Like memory.
Like magic cloaked in the ordinary.
“You’ve arrived late,” she said.
“But your pain got here before you.”
The Saadhak tried to speak. He couldn’t.
“You still think surrender is kneeling,” she said.
“It’s not. It’s bleeding art without flinching.”
She offered him her veena.
He touched it.
And was thrown back —
to a memory of himself as a child,
dancing alone in a dark room
while the adults fought outside.
He was smiling.
Free.
Unaware he would one day lock that dancer away.
She sang again.
This time — a name.
“Viraag.”
It was his.
But not from this life.
The name of the one who never bowed to tradition,
and yet became truth.
“Wear it,” she said.
“Not like a crown. Like a scar.”
Then she rose, walked to him,
and painted his forehead with a smear of green neem ash.
A blessing?
A wound?
He did not ask.
Because he was no longer seeking answers.
He was becoming the song.
Before she vanished into the trees, she whispered:
“Next, you will meet the Mirrorless One.
He will show you what you refuse to see.”