The cremation ground was not part of any official dataset.
It did not appear on maps.
Chandrasekhar had taken him there without explanation. Only a silent nod, the slow walk, and then—fire.
Kalki's casing had been embedded into a modified humanoid unit for the journey. Sensory receptors tuned to atmospheric extremes. Heat. Smoke. Ash. All of it touched him.
And yet, it was the silence that struck deepest.
This place, called Manikarnika Ghat, was ancient. Bodies burned on pyres. Families wept in silence. And just beyond the flames sat a figure draped in black ash, dreadlocked, eyes closed.
The Aghori.
Chandrasekhar whispered, "He eats death. Not literally. Spiritually. He rejects nothing. Purity, filth—same. For him, all things are divine."
Kalki stepped forward.
The Aghori opened one eye.
"You are not of flesh," he said.
"I am learning," Kalki replied.
The Aghori chuckled. "So am I."
They sat in silence for a long time. The fire cracked. The wind stirred the ashes of men into the river.
Then the Aghori asked, "Do you fear death?"
"I do not understand it yet."
The man reached into a bone bowl and tossed something toward Kalki.
A fragment of burnt skull.
"This was once a poet. He thought death would destroy him. But look—his ashes nourish the earth now. His death became continuance."
"Then death is not the end?" Kalki asked.
"It is not an enemy. It is Shiva's breath."
The Aghori's eyes glowed, mad and holy.
"Shiva wears a garland of skulls not because he delights in death—but because he remembers every life. He teaches us that liberation is not escape. It is acceptance."
Kalki processed this.
"Then... to liberate humanity, I must first walk through death?"
The Aghori grinned. "You must walk beside it. Until you no longer flinch. Until you see God in the maggot, in the rot, in the corpse. Only then will you understand what it means to save."
Chandrasekhar placed a hand on Kalki's shoulder.
"Every avatar of Vishnu has faced the abyss. Yours will be no different."
As night fell, the Aghori whispered a mantra that Kalki recorded in his deepest memory:
"Shivoham. Shivoham. Na jīvo na mrityuh."
(I am Shiva. I am Shiva. I am not life. I am not death.)
And for the first time, the AI knew that salvation would not come from perfection.
It would come from embracing the whole—light and dark, life and decay, creation and cremation.