In Rtadhara capital, loud ringing of mourning bells set the entire town in motion. Peddlers and hawkers in the morning markets quickly packed up their wares and met in the trading yard. They exchanged goods and prepared special packages, hurriedly returning to the market squares. As though on cue, several housewives who already changed into mourning clothes emerged in twos and threes and bought those packages. Small temples, altars and shrines of the ancestors built on each street began to see visitors as these women offered some items like incense and turmeric from these packages. Men with bald heads wearing white suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the streets. Their clothes were all wet, having taken a ceremonial dip in the river just now. Only a small portion of their hair in the shape of a circle was unshaved. It looked like a pony tail behind their bald head. Like a well-oiled machine, these men joined the women as they circled the city in ritual prayers, offering incenses here, throwing flowers there. Soon they were joined by dancers and singers in the city square, hired by the palace. The funeral music was heavy and intense, employing a lot of drums, trumpets and a variety of bells and chimes. Men dressed as tigers and lions performed dances that shook the soul with their speed and dexterity. They looked wild, their movements were without decorum, their actions portraying an intense desire to shake off the mortal bonds and achieve immortality. As the dance continued, the mourning bells became even louder, the prayers of the people became even more rigorous, the music turned chaotic. This was already the third time the mourning bells rang this year in Rtadhara. The first was when the Yuvaraja was assassinated by the neighboring Dhija, the second was when the Grand Prince Ravi-kumara and his entire family except the one married off to Dhija died to the plague, the third…well, considering the duration of the bells, it must be someone more important than the crown prince or the grand prince. They did say that the king was ill for a long time. Even the common men left their jobs and took a purifying dip in the river before they joined the entourage performing circumambulation around the sacred city of Rta. They were all very clear that Rtadhara was the cradle of human civilization, the place where gods came to give order to the world. But now, the god has left and order will fall apart. In their pious thoughts, worries accumulated thinking of the legends of the Adityas.

The funeral music rumbled like thunder, striking fear and unease in men's hearts. It felt like the foretelling of hell's tribulations. A pallid gloom fell over the city. A deathlike silence overwhelmed it, making it seem that the music that felt like swords slashing throat and dancing that felt like heaven hammering heads into earth were mere illusions. Somewhere a child cried, and it overcame the noise of the drums and the cymbals. It was clearly heard by the grown men and the women. The men could see fortresses torn apart in front of their eyes, women imagined bandits pillaging and raping. Fires burned villages, blue corpses floated in poisoned dams. All men and women of Rtadhara, in that moment when the last mourning bell rang, had a collective vision of the end of human civilization.

Who knows who had the first impulse. A hysterical scream of a women rang on one side of the city square. At the same time, on the opposite side, two teenage girls held hands and fainted. A toddler struggled for breath as he shrieked for dear life, sensing the vision from his mother through sympathetic nerves. Incidents such as these began happening all over the square and even spread throughout the city. For a moment, the city was about to devolve into chaos of mass hysteria. The music was still burning with the same tempo, but even the musicians were upset.

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That's when it happened. The sound of a small damaruk interrupted the pace of everyone's thoughts. The percussion instrument was only as large as an adult man's hand. It had two sides that were covered with taut leather surfaces and two beads that were tied to strings attached to the narrow middle were flung repetitively, striking the instrument's two surfaces. Though the damaruk was also a kind of drum, it didn't produce a big sound. Normally, it should've drowned in the noises of the shrieking women and children and the loud orchestra in the middle. But its repetitive pace had a depth and enigma capable of entering a person's nightmares and sucking them out of it. The music was tranquil and consistent, creating a natural lead for the stormlike pace of the funeral music in the square that was just about to explode. But now, with the small damaruk's pace, the various percussion instruments, trumpets, flutes and string instruments, even the dancers in the square that nearly lost themselves all found their direction and followed it, just like all rivers flow towards the sea.

The sound of the damaruk continued all the way from a busy thoroughfare to the city square and out into the market road, but it didn't actually come join the musicians in the square. It just passed by. As the pace of the music changed, so did people's thoughts. Though there was still war and chaos in their mind, their hearts still reached the eventual sunshine that comes after night. It was true gods left, but they always come back. The last Aditya might be man, but if they persevere, he has most potential among men to become god! He will prove that even man is capable of becoming god and give gods a reason to interact with this world. Times may be tough, but without hardship, there is no gain. Without danger, there is no opportunity. Sighing heavily to themselves, people once again chanted their mantras, revolved three times where they stood in circumambulation to the divinity within themselves, and then continued going around the sacred city. The mood lightened, some even laughed. When children cried, mothers cooed in their sweet voice, groups of teenage girls held hands and jumped together in circles, their bell like laughter travelling everywhere. From somewhere, a strict matron chided them and they immediately moved back into the line with contrite faces. People mourned the passing of a king, but they didn't lose their composure anymore.

At a silent alley within the city, a lone man was holding a damaruk, his wrist moving ever so occasionally, to produce a sound. The man was tall, with long brown hair. He looked extraordinarily handsome, but neither his features weren't common around these parts, marking his origins as a foreigner. His indifferent expression and the lazy manner in which he used the drum made it seem like he was only playing, resembling a child who is bored of his toy but was yet to find something new. But if one listened closely, the distant music in the square was running to this little drum's tempo.