Before the journey, there was only the grey ash of a life that had burned too brightly. The man who now called himself Hriday was a hollowed-out sage, a ghost haunting the ruins of his own brilliance. He had once been a name spoken with reverence in the halls of scholarship, his intellect a blazing sun. But in his pride, he had sought to make another soul into a mirror of his own light, and in doing so, had shattered it completely. The mind of his student, Mitra, once a vessel of peerless potential, had been broken by the weight of knowledge forced upon it too soon. Now, the only sound in Hriday's inner world was the silent, screaming echo of that shattered vessel.

He wandered the lands of Bharata, a pilgrim with no destination, his guilt a shroud that no sacred river could wash clean. He saw the world celebrating the return of Lord Rama from Lanka, the final victory of Dharma. He watched the festivals, the joyous processions, the coronation that promised a new age of righteousness. But for Hriday, the colours were muted, the music was distant, and the joy was a language he no longer understood.