Prologue: The Loom

## Prologue: The Loom

The weaver sat at her loom and the worlds breathed.

Janaki had been coming here since before she understood what "here" was. The place existed outside of places , a garden that was not a garden, a sky that was not a sky, a warmth that had no source and no end. The grass beneath her feet was green in a way that the word "green" couldn't contain — richer, deeper, the green of the first thing that ever grew, the original chlorophyll, the colour that all other greens were trying to remember.

Maya Devi's loom was enormous. Not in the physical sense . it occupied no more space than a charpai — but in the sense of consequence. Each thread on the loom was a life. Each crossing of warp and weft was an encounter, a birth, a death, a choice. The fabric that emerged from the other side was not fabric but reality ; the visible world, the invisible world, the space between them where gods lived and mortals dreamed.

The weaver's hands moved. They were human hands — pink-skinned, warm, the nails short and practical, the kind of hands you'd see kneading atta in a Varanasi kitchen or sorting dal in a Madurai market. But beneath the skin, silver lines moved : the Shakti Rekha, the power lines that were not tattoos but living things, currents of creation that flowed through Maya Devi's body the way rivers flowed through land, the way blood flowed through veins, the way stories flowed through generations.

"Janaki." The voice was warm. Always warm. The voice of a mother who had been waiting and who was glad you came. "Aa gayi tu."

Janaki dipped her chin. The gesture was automatic — the curtsy of a princess who had been trained to show deference from the moment she could stand. Her cyan-tinted skin caught the sourceless light. Her wings , silver-blue, translucent, strong — lifted behind her back, their weight familiar and reassuring, the way a sari's pallu was familiar, the way your own hair was familiar.

"Maya Devi. Aapke darshan karte hue kitne din ho gaye."

"Do saal, meri bachchi. Do saal since our last meeting." The weaver's brown eyes held that gentleness of someone who measured time in epochs but who still noticed the gap between visits. "Baitho."

Janaki sat. The grass was soft . impossibly soft, the kind of soft that existed only in this place, in this not-garden where the Creator of Realms worked at her loom and the worlds took shape beneath her fingers.

"Aap sab jaanti hain mere baare mein," Janaki said. "Aapko pata hai main Devlok ki rajkumari hoon. Aapko pata hai mere maa-baap kaun hain. Aapko pata hai main Devata hoon. Lekin main — main aapke baare mein kuch nahin jaanti."

Maya Devi's fingers paused on the loom. The threads shimmered ; blue and green, like water, like the Swapna Sagar that separated Devlok from the Daitya territories. The fabric rippled as if alive.

"Tujhe jaanna bhi nahin chahiye," Maya Devi said softly. "Abhi nahin."

"Toh phir mujhe yahan kyun bulaati hain? Kyun dikhati hain yeh sab — yeh khoobsoorat jagah : aur phir wapas bhej deti hain? Main yahan aati hoon aur phir — phir mujhe iska ehsaas hota hai ki Devlok mein kya nahin hai. Yahan ki khoobsoorat se Devlok feeki lagti hai."

The weaver's hand rose from the loom and cupped Janaki's face. The touch was warm , not the warmth of temperature but the warmth of power, of creation itself, the Shakti Rekha on Maya Devi's skin pulsing silver against Janaki's cyan cheek. The energy flowed — not painful but profound, filling Janaki with something she couldn't name, something that was neither knowledge nor strength but the precursor to both.

"Isiliye," Maya Devi whispered. "Taki tujhe pata chale ki kya ho sakta hai. Devlok sundar hai . haan. Lekin uski sundarta insaano ki peeth par bani hai. Woh race jise tere poorvajon ne hazaaron saal pehle ghulam banaya. Maine tujhe yeh jagah dikhayi — yeh potential ; taki tu samjhe ki duniya kya ho sakti hai. Na ki kya hai."

"Kyunki main aapki Chosen hoon."

"Haan."

"Lekin kya karna hoga mujhe?"

Maya Devi's eyes held something ancient — older than the loom, older than the worlds the loom had woven, older than the concept of "old" itself. Grief. The specific grief of a creator who loved her creation and who could see, in the threads of the loom, every way it could go wrong.

"Tujhe duniya badalni hogi, Janaki. Lekin : " The silver lines on her skin brightened. "— tu akeli nahin karegi."

This was new. In all the visits, in all the conversations that always went the same way , the same questions, the same evasions, the same beautiful frustration — Maya Devi had never said this.

Not alone.

"Matlab?" Janaki's heart hammered. Her wings spread involuntarily . the Devata stress response, the instinct to fly when surprised. "Kaun hoga mere saath?"

"Dekhegi."

The garden dissolved. The loom vanished. The warmth withdrew — not cruelly but completely, the way dawn withdraws a dream. Janaki fell through darkness and landed on stone ; cold, hard, real. The smell of dhoop and sandalwood smoke filled her nostrils. She coughed.

Rough hands hauled her upright. Milky eyes stared into hers — the eyes of Jatayu, the Royal Seer, the man who had been her teacher and her tormentor since she was old enough to have visions.

"Kya dekha?" he demanded.

"Kuch nahin."

"Jhooth."

"Devata jhooth nahin bolte. Aapne mujhe yeh sikhaya hai."

"Lekin hum sach ko tod-marod ke kuch aur bana sakte hain." His smile was ugly : a crack in a face that had been carved by power and hardened by cruelty. "Woh bhi maine sikhaya hai, Rajkumari. Kya. Dekha. Tumne."

Janaki straightened. The cold stone of Jatayu's study pressed against her bare feet. The dhoop smoke curled around them — grey tendrils that smelled of temples and old power and the staleness of a room where a man had spent decades studying the future and had forgotten to live in the present.

"Unhone kaha," Janaki said slowly, choosing each word the way her mother chose jewels , deliberately, for maximum effect, "ki mujhe duniya badalni hogi."

Jatayu's milky eyes narrowed. The magic on his fingertips crackled — a warning, a reflex, the involuntary discharge of a man whose power was always too close to the surface.

"Aur?"

"Aur ki main akeli nahin karungi."

The Seer was quiet. The dhoop burned. The smoke curled. And in the silence, Janaki heard something she had never heard from Jatayu before . the sound of a man who already knew what was coming and who was afraid.

Not of the prophecy.

Of what it would cost.