In the months leading up to the promise, Megha lived in the silver glow of the moon. Every night, she would stand by her window, tracing the stars of the Dudhganga (the Milky Way), wondering if Sudarshan was looking at the same constellations from his distant capital. At midnight, she would press her palm to the floor, whispering a prayer to Mother Earth to hold her steady until the day arrived. Then, the morning of the year-mark finally dawned.
Megha didn’t wait for the sun to hit its zenith. Driven by a heart that had been beating in a countdown for 365 days, she used her magic to leap across the sea to Parijat Island. The island was in full, glorious bloom—vibrant flowers erupted from the soil like a celebration. To Megha, every rustle of a leaf sounded like his footstep; every minute felt like a grueling day of waiting.
But as the appointed hour came and went, the silence of the island began to feel heavy. The banyan tree offered no laughter, and the shore remained empty.
A devastating sorrow took root in her chest. She wanted to stay—she wanted to wait until the moon rose—but her own pride and her promise stood in her way. “If you do not come by the end of the period, I will never return,” she had said. To stay would be to admit her love was a weakness. With tears stinging her eyes and her heart feeling like lead, she vanished, returning to Varunaprastha just as the tide began to turn. Cruelly, destiny was simply running late.
Shortly after Megha disappeared, Sudarshan arrived. He looked at the sun, calculating its height, and convinced himself he was early. He sat by his Samadhi, his heart finally open and ready to greet his "Devika." He waited as the sun crossed the sky. He waited until the shadows grew long and the colorful flowers began to close for the night. She never came.
The silence broke him in a way no battle ever could. He knew Megha’s spirit; he knew she was a woman of her word. If she weren't here, she had chosen to move on. To protect his soul from the agony of a broken heart, Sudarshan turned to the most merciful weapon he knew: the Smritipal Mantra.
With a trembling voice, he wove the spell. He locked the image of the girl from the lake into a dark corner of his mind, burying it behind a seal of magic. He told himself he had only come to the island to gather sacred Padma flowers. When the spell took hold, the warmth in his chest went cold. He stood up, adjusted his robes, and looked at the island with the eyes of a stranger. He was the President again, and duty was his only companion.
Krishnapriya watched the memory blur as Megha, too, performed the same ritual of forgetting in Varunaprastha. Both lovers walked through the next few years as ghosts of themselves, their true hearts locked away behind magical veils.
The vision accelerated—the clash of steel, the roar of invading armies, and finally, the moment their eyes met across a battlefield. Krishnapriya felt the violent, electric shock that surged through Megha’s body as the "Smritipal" seal shattered. In that single look, a decade of buried love, resentment, and longing came rushing back.
But there was no time for a reunion. The memory darkened as the shadow of Sage Durvasa loomed over the shore. Krishnapriya felt the weight of the curse—the cold, crushing embrace of the ocean as Megha’s body dissolved into the salt and foam.
Back in the Tridevi temple, Krishnapriya’s eyes snapped open. Her face was wet with tears—not her own, but the phantom tears of a sister who had died waiting for a promise that was only minutes too late.
She looked at Vidhi, who was still in deep meditation. The secret of the golden fish, the silence of the island, and the tragedy of Sudarshan were now hers to carry.
