She stood in the center of the court—unbowed, unbroken, blazing.
Her voice was calm, but every syllable landed like a blade.
"You lost me," she said. "But not your soul. That still remains. Or has even that been wagered?"
I tried to speak, but my mouth wouldn't move. My hand was still frozen mid-gesture over the dice board. The clatter of the last roll echoed through my skull. My skin felt cold. My crown heavier than it had any right to be.
I wasn't alone. They were there—my brothers. One clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white. One looked away, jaw trembling. One whispered my name like a prayer he'd stopped believing in.
And her eyes... they didn't hold hatred. That would've been easier. They held disappointment.
Draupadi.
A name, sharp as lightning, lit up in my skull.
"You swore to uphold Dharma," she whispered. "And here I stand. Stripped of it."
Then came the sound—the deep, distant blast of a conch shell. And with it, a voice. Calm. Certain. Final.
"That which has been broken will return in pieces. Scattered across time. Scattered across lives. But it will return. Dharma will demand it."
Then—darkness.
I woke up choking.
Air tore into my lungs like I'd just been underwater. My sheets were soaked. My hands were trembling. I sat up, heart thundering like I'd sprinted miles.
My eyes darted around my one-bedroom flat. Desk. Ceiling fan. Cracked phone screen on the floor. Everything was normal.
Except I knew I hadn't just had a dream.
I'd remembered something.
I stumbled out of bed and made my way to the desk. My notebook was already open. A pen, uncapped, lay beside it. I didn't remember writing anything.
But there it was, clear and sharp, in handwriting that didn't feel like mine:
"You lost her again."
This isn't the first time this has happened.
It started on my twenty-fifth birthday. One moment I was celebrating with leftover cake and beer; the next, I was dreaming of kings and vows, weapons I've never held, and guilt I shouldn't carry.
I tried to be rational. I'm a law student, grounded in logic and facts. I don't believe in past lives. My therapist says the dreams are a manifestation of pressure, that the "king" imagery represents control—or lack of it.
But that doesn't explain how I can fluently recite mantras I've never learned.
Or why I wake up with tears on my face after seeing her—Draupadi—again.
The dreams keep getting more vivid. The people in them feel more real than the ones I see in class every day. And worst of all, I know them. Not just their names, but who they are—what they mean to me.
Arjuna. Bhima. Nakula. Sahadeva.
My brothers.
I'm not religious. I've never been the type to read the Mahabharata or chant slokas. But something inside me is unraveling, like a string being pulled from the edge of a tapestry I didn't know I was part of.
Last night I stood in a court of kings and betrayed someone I loved.
And this morning, I still feel the weight of that shame.
My name is Aryan Sharma.
And I think I used to be someone else.