Chapter 1: The Cave of Legends
The sun scorched the copper-red rocks of Hampi, its rays trickling through the ancient banyan trees scattered like sentinels across the dry, crumbling landscape. Makardvach Rathore wiped sweat from his brow as he crouched beside a series of shallow glyphs etched into a half-buried slab of granite. The markings were worn, fragmented by centuries of erosion, but unmistakable in their symmetry. Not Sanskrit. Older. Wilder.
“Akshay,” he called out, adjusting his sunglasses. “Scan this panel. Overlay the monkey glyphs from the Kishkindha scripts. I think we’re close.”
Akshay Sharma, lean and energetic in a sweat-stained tee, jogged over with a tablet. His drone buzzed overhead, capturing the terrain. “You’ve been chasing this legend for six months. You really think Hanuman’s hiding place is under our feet?”
“Not Hanuman. Something left behind. Maybe a shrine. Maybe a memory. Maybe more.”
Makardvach stood and looked west. Anjanadri Hill loomed in the near distance, shrouded in a strange stillness. No birdsong. No wind. The silence made his skin prickle.
“We’re standing where the wind once bowed to a god,” he said, almost reverently. “There are whispers in this soil. We just need to dig deeper.”
They had already unearthed several relics from the surrounding ruins—small statues, broken chakras, and ceremonial bells. But this panel felt different. Alive.
Akshay tapped the glyphs on his screen. “This symbol… it matches the one from the Anjaneya scrolls. The one that appeared with the words ‘Divine Gate.'”
Makardvach crouched again. His hand hovered over the deepest groove—a spiral inscribed with what looked like a tail wrapping around a celestial weapon. The moment his fingers brushed the stone, the ground trembled.
A thunderous crack echoed across the valley. Birds scattered. Dust burst from the ground as a crevice opened in the earth. Akshay stumbled backward, shielding his eyes.
Makardvach stared in awe.
A staircase, ancient and chiseled into the rock, spiraled downward into shadow. The temperature dropped instantly. The air reeked of moss and something older—iron and incense and time.
Akshay exhaled. “That’s not a shrine. That’s a tomb.”
“No,” Makardvach whispered, heart pounding as he stepped toward the mouth of the opening. “It’s a memory.”
They descended slowly, each step groaning under their weight. Glowsticks lit the way, casting green hues on the carvings that lined the passage. Scenes of war. Demons. Vanaras. A massive figure wielding a glowing gada.
Makardvach stopped. His fingers traced the name engraved beneath the figure.
MAHABALI HANUMAN.
His breath caught.
The passage widened into a cavern.
And at its center stood a raised stone dais—on it, embedded in black stone, rested a gada. Not rusted. Not broken. But pristine. And glowing faintly with golden light.
The cavern pulsed with a sound that was not sound. A vibration beneath the skin. A call.
Akshay’s voice trembled. “This isn’t archaeology anymore, Makardvach. This is something else.”
Makardvach stepped forward, as if pulled by a tether from lifetimes past.
His fingers closed around the gada.
And the world shattered in light.
Makardvach staggered back, blinking furiously as the radiant pulse from the weapon seared through his nerves like liquid lightning. His fingers hovered just inches away from the handle now—he hadn’t fully touched it. Not yet. The moment his skin brushed the metal, it had reacted, almost… aware.
The golden glow dimmed slightly, then flared brighter, as if breathing.
Akshay, crouched near the edge of the dais, stared at the weapon with unblinking awe. “That… that doesn’t look like anything human-made.”
Makardvach didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the object, tracing every impossible detail. The mace—no, the gada—was about the length of his forearm, but thicker than any war club he’d studied. Its surface shimmered with inscriptions—not carved but alive—Vanara script that shifted subtly under the light, reconfiguring like molten geometry.
Each glyph danced, flowed, as though whispering a language the bones remembered, even if the brain did not.
One symbol caught his eye—a swirl flanked by two arcs. It pulsed gently, as if syncing with his heartbeat. It was the same symbol from the scrolls, the one that had haunted his research.
“This isn’t an artifact,” he murmured, “it’s a relic… a living relic.”
Akshay stepped cautiously closer, sweeping the gada with a scanning lens. “I’m getting nothing. No metal signature. No radiation. Just… bio-resonance?”
“Bio-resonance?” Makardvach echoed.
“Yeah. Like it’s tuned to a living frequency. Almost like… it’s listening.”
Makardvach stepped onto the dais. The stone didn’t protest. The glow from the gada intensified, spilling warmth across his chest. He extended his hand again, slower this time.
The air thickened. The silence grew heavier. Even Akshay stopped breathing.
As his palm hovered an inch from the weapon, the carvings on the stone platform flared to life. Intricate Vanara runes burst into view, spiraling outward in circular patterns, bathing the chamber in light.
Suddenly, the room trembled—not violently, but reverently, like a temple awakening after eons of sleep.
And then he touched it.
Fully.
The instant his skin met the handle, a surge of images, sounds, and sensations exploded through his mind—a maelstrom of divine memory. War horns. Screaming skies. Ten-headed demons roaring across blood-soaked plains. A colossal Vanara warrior, fur ablaze, his eyes burning like twin suns, swinging this very gada in arcs of celestial destruction.
He saw an ocean part beneath the force of a strike.
He heard a name echo, deafening and eternal:
“Makardvach.”
And then another voice, gentler, older, full of sorrow and pride:
“Descendant.”
He collapsed.
His knees hit the stone hard. The gada slipped from his hand and floated—yes, floated—hovering inches above the dais, glowing like the heart of the sun.
Makardvach panted, hands on the floor, gasping like he’d just surfaced from drowning. His skin glistened with sweat, his veins tingling with unfamiliar heat. His ears rang with the last echoes of the divine voice.
Akshay rushed forward. “Bro! Hey! Talk to me—what the hell just happened?!”
Makardvach looked up, eyes wide, pupils golden for a split second before fading back to brown.
“I saw him,” he whispered hoarsely. “Hanuman. I saw him.”
Akshay’s face blanched. “Saw who?”
Makardvach didn’t answer. He looked at the gada again, still floating above its stone cradle.
And for the first time in his life, he felt small.
And watched.
The chamber grew impossibly still.
Makardvach didn’t move. He couldn’t. His body felt tethered—pulled not to the ground, but inward, downward, as if gravity itself had changed direction.
Then came the sound—low, like thunder wrapped in reverence. It began beneath the floor, or within his bones, or somewhere older than both. The gada, still hovering above the dais, began to rotate slowly in midair. As it turned, beams of golden light spilled outward, striking the surrounding cavern walls. Where the light touched stone, images bloomed—moving murals.
Akshay stumbled backward, swearing. “Dude, are you seeing this?!”
Makardvach couldn’t reply.
The murals were alive.
One wall showed a jungle blazing under moonlight, with a thousand Vanara warriors—furred, howling, armed with ancient weapons—launching through the trees like living storms. Another revealed demons with skeletal wings and serpent eyes, their roars cracking the heavens. In the center of it all, wielding the same glowing gada, was a figure larger than the others, golden-furred, fire-eyed, leaping between mountaintops like a god of war.
Hanuman.
But not the gentle Hanuman from temple idols. This was Hanuman the Vanara general, the divine storm, the destroyer of evil.
And then everything shifted.
Makardvach’s eyes rolled back as the light from the gada flared again—too bright to be real, too deep to be seen. The physical world vanished in a blink.
He was there.
Not watching.
Inside.
The sky was burning.
Ash rained from clouds the color of dried blood. The ground split beneath stampeding hordes of rakshasas—twisted giants clad in obsidian armor, wielding weapons forged from bone and screaming flame.
Hanuman charged across the battlefield, taller than any mortal, gada raised high. Every swing sent shockwaves across the land. Mountains fell. Demons shattered. Time seemed to bend around him.
A monstrous horn blew from the far side of the battlefield.
A new figure emerged—twice the height of the tallest demon, cloaked in shadows, with tusks like sabers and eyes like dead suns.
Kalnemi.
Hanuman roared, and the earth shook.
Makardvach felt it—his bones screamed with the echo. He could feel the rage, the grief, the sacred duty.
Then Hanuman turned.
Looked directly at him.
And said nothing.
Because behind him, unseen by the demons, stood Makardvach himself, wearing armor of wind and fire, clutching the same gada—no longer floating, but glowing from within his own hand.
And in that moment, both Hanuman and Kalnemi vanished.
Everything fell silent.
And a voice, older than language, filled the void.
“Descendant.”
Makardvach screamed—but there was no sound. His body convulsed.
Akshay caught him just before he hit the stone.
Makardvach’s eyes fluttered, lips trembling, skin pale as chalk. The gada returned slowly to its resting place with a gentle clang, like a bell tolling at the end of an age.
Akshay shook him. “Bro, breathe! Wake up! What just happened to you?!”
Makardvach’s chest rose with a gasp.
He stared at the ceiling, eyes wide and wet, as one word tumbled from his mouth—soft, confused, and ancient.
“Descendant…”
The weight of the word still echoed in Makardvach’s mind as he was hauled back up the stone steps, slung over Akshay’s shoulder like a wounded soldier. The world outside the cave was harsh, loud, real—a slap after the silence of the sacred.
“Water! Get me water!” Akshay barked to the rest of the team as they scrambled to set Makardvach down on a shaded tarp. “Come on, man, stay with me.”
Makardvach groaned, shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare. It felt… alien. Too bright. Too fast. Everything around him was suddenly moving with jarring speed—as though the world had changed gears and left him behind.
“No… I’m fine,” he muttered.
“You passed out for four minutes!” Akshay hissed, pushing a bottle of glucose water into his hand. “Your heart rate was crazy. I thought you were stroking out!”
Makardvach sat up slowly. His muscles ached, but not with pain—with pressure, like his body was resisting itself. Tensing for something. Ready to leap, fight, flee, all at once.
His skin tingled.
His heartbeat felt… wrong.
No, not wrong.
Too strong.
“Where’s the gada?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“Still down there,” Akshay said. “And glowing like it wants to start a cult.”
Makardvach stood.
“Whoa—what are you doing?” Akshay tried to block him. “You just had a supernatural seizure, and now you want round two?”
Makardvach brushed past him—and in doing so, snapped one of the thick support rods of the canopy with his elbow.
The steel pipe bent like paper.
Both men stared at it.
Makardvach blinked. “I didn’t… mean to…”
Akshay’s voice was quiet. “You didn’t even hit it hard.”
Makardvach looked at his hands. They were his hands. Same scar on the knuckle from a bike crash at age ten. Same tan line on the ring finger.
But they didn’t feel like his hands anymore.
He picked up a stone the size of a cantaloupe and crushed it, accidentally, like it was chalk. The dust slipped between his fingers.
Akshay took a slow step back. “Okay… okay, we need a baseline. Blood pressure, muscle scan, something. Because this is not normal.”
“I know,” Makardvach said, eyes wide with a strange mix of fear and fascination. “I know it’s not.”
That night, after camp was packed, Makardvach returned to his quarters. The rest of the team was out celebrating the discovery—though they had no idea what they’d really found. He stood alone in his tent, staring into the mirror.
He could hear crickets outside.
He could also hear two kilometers away—a car backfiring near the old temple road. He could smell rain before the clouds had even gathered. And his eyes… they saw shapes in the dark that weren’t visible to any other man.
Makardvach held up his hand.
No tremble. No sweat.
Only certainty.
He curled it into a fist and punched the wooden table beside him.
It splintered.
The air didn’t feel like air anymore.
It felt like something he could move.
Then came the whisper.
Faint. Delicate. At first he thought it was his own mind repeating the word again.
But no.
It was different.
From the shadows of the tent, a whispering wind spoke:
“Vanara…”
Makardvach spun.
The tent was empty.
But the whisper remained.
And so did a trail of golden footprints, barely visible, burned into the floor—monkey-like, impossibly real—and leading to his study.
And there, in the center of the floor, resting calmly as if it had always belonged there—
Was the gada.
Makardvach didn’t breathe.
He couldn’t.
The golden gada sat upright on its end, still and heavy as a monolith, its surface dimly glowing in rhythm with his heartbeat. Not bright—no, not like in the cave. Here, it pulsed softly. Warm. Present.
It was waiting.
He stepped forward slowly, the floor creaking under his bare feet. With every step closer, the room felt less like a tent and more like… a sanctum. The air thickened. The shadows pulled inward, like the night itself was watching.
He knelt beside it, hesitant, reverent. He reached out—not to touch it, not yet—but to confirm that it was real. Not a hallucination. Not a dream.
The moment his palm hovered above it, the air shifted.
A wind blew through the closed tent.
Gentle.
Scented with sandalwood.
Makardvach’s hand trembled.
“How did you…” he whispered.
There was no answer. At least not in words.
But something responded.
A memory.
No—not his. Not from this lifetime.
He saw, in a flash, the gada cleaving through a battlefield. Blood sprayed from a demon’s mouth. Hanuman—vast, radiant, terrible in wrath—let out a roar that cracked the heavens. The gada shimmered in his grip like an extension of his soul.
The vision faded, leaving only silence and the low hum of power.
Makardvach leaned back, stunned. “This isn’t just a weapon,” he murmured. “It’s a… witness.”
A knock came from the tent flap.
He leapt up instinctively—fast. Too fast. In less than a blink, he’d crossed the space. His hand had already gripped a trekking pole like a weapon before his mind caught up.
It was Akshay.
“Hey—what the hell, man!” he said, ducking back. “You trying to give me a heart attack?”
Makardvach exhaled. He lowered the pole.
“Sorry. Reflex.”
Akshay peeked in. “You okay?”
Makardvach hesitated, then opened the flap fully.
Akshay’s eyes widened the moment he saw it. “Is that…?”
Makardvach nodded.
“It followed me.”
Akshay stepped inside cautiously, circling the weapon like it might explode. “I scanned that thing earlier—it was embedded in stone. There’s no way anyone lifted it without a crane, and now it’s just… here?”
Makardvach crouched again, brushing his fingers over the carved shaft. The metal wasn’t cold. It felt like holding breath. Like potential.
“It came to me.”
Akshay looked between his friend and the weapon. “Okay, serious question. On a scale of one to possessed-by-ancient-demon, how weird do you feel right now?”
Makardvach didn’t answer immediately.
Then, without thinking, he stood—and held out the gada to Akshay.
“Try lifting it.”
Akshay raised a brow. “What, like Thor’s hammer?”
“Just try.”
Akshay snorted, stepped forward, and gripped the handle with both hands. He grunted. He strained.
Nothing.
He backed up, massaging his palms. “Okay, that’s… humiliating.”
Makardvach grasped it with one hand.
It lifted like it weighed nothing.
Akshay’s jaw dropped. “That’s either magic or you’ve been sneaking steroids.”
Makardvach’s gaze didn’t waver. He wasn’t smiling.
“I think,” he said slowly, “it knows me.”
Akshay pointed. “So what now? You gonna start swinging it around? Fight crime in spandex?”
Makardvach’s voice was quiet. “I don’t think I have a choice.”
Outside, a wind rose suddenly—unnatural, loud, pressing against the canvas of the tent with invisible fingers. Thunder rumbled far in the distance. But no lightning followed. No rain.
Just a pressure in the night.
A promise.
Akshay looked around. “What the hell is that?”
Makardvach didn’t answer.
He turned back to the gada.
And for the first time in his life, he felt claimed.