Rangoli, the living world, had lost its melody.
The mountains no longer hummed; their jagged peaks stood silent, as if the wind itself had forgotten how to dance. Rivers flowed in unnatural stillness, carrying no whisper of life, only the dull echo of absence. Even the air seemed hesitant, as though listening for a cue that would never come. At the heart of this silence, villages fell into decay; crops withered, children forgot their own names, and the world trembled in a void that was neither dark nor light—it was simply the absence of sound.
In a small, crumbling village at the edge of the Eastern Plains, a boy crouched over soft, trembling soil. His hands were already coated in a fine layer of dirt, scraped and raw from hours of digging. The boy's name was Kutty, but he himself did not know what that meant. To him, names were whispers that the wind sometimes carried, half-forgotten songs of the world. Yet, for all the confusion around him, he had a gift—a rare, unnatural gift: he could hear the earth.
The soil beneath Kutty's fingers pulsed like a heartbeat. Not just the earth—but the rocks, the roots, the very bones of the land. Each tremor spoke in subtle vibrations, urging him to move, to dig, to run. He dug for hours, uncovering broken clay pots, fragments of old bones, and the occasional wilted flower, but he did not know why. And then, from beneath a particularly stubborn root, he heard it: a voice that was not human, yet it spoke in unmistakable urgency.
"Run."
Kutty froze. The voice vibrated through his bones, through the very marrow of his being. He glanced around at the village, where nothing stirred. Not the goats, not the few surviving villagers. Silence reigned. But this voice… it had weight. It had truth. He rose slowly, brushing dirt from his tattered tunic. The wind did not carry sound, yet he felt it move against his cheek, a gentle push toward the forest beyond the plains. He did not question it. In Rangoli, when the world spoke, one did not argue—it obeyed.
From the shadows of a gnarled tree, a figure emerged. A woman, not more than twenty-five by appearance, moved with the quiet grace of flowing water. Her feet did not seem to touch the earth, yet they left no mark. Her hair, the color of midnight, fell like liquid silk around her shoulders. Her eyes were deep pools that reflected every motion in the world around her, as though she had seen everything before it happened.
"You hear it too," she said, her voice low, resonant—not loud, but impossible to ignore. Kutty nodded slowly. "The earth… it's… calling me. But I don't understand."
The woman smiled faintly. "Few ever do. I am Tamilselvi, earth-speaker. I feel the pain before it occurs, the wound before it opens. And I know what happens next." She paused, scanning the horizon. "Naayak's soldiers are coming. They hunt the awakened, the named, and the ones who can listen. They will erase you if they find you."
Kutty swallowed hard. He was not brave—not yet—but he felt the truth of her words like a physical weight. "What do we do?" "Run," she said. "Not for yourself—but for the song. The world remembers its song through those who can listen."
Before Kutty could reply, a series of distant drums rattled the plains. Soldiers emerged from the horizon, cloaked in gray, their movements deliberate and unnerving. Each step seemed to devour sound. The villagers did not scream; they did not cry. They simply stared, eyes blank, mouths silent. This was Naayak's work: erasure without violence, annihilation without death.
Kutty's heart thumped. Tamilselvi grabbed his hand, and they ran, the forest swallowing them into its shadowed embrace. They did not run alone. From the trees above, another figure dropped silently—a woman whose body seemed woven from darkness itself. Her movements were fluid, her eyes hollow yet piercing. Kalaavathi, shadow-dancer, once the deadliest assassin of Naayak, had chosen this night to intervene. Her shadow split from her form, stretching like black tendrils, striking the soldiers in silence, neutralizing them without a sound.
Kutty's eyes widened. "How…?"
Kalaavathi's lips curved in a brief, sardonic smile. "Don't ask. Just follow, or die."
They ran together through underbrush, across small streams, over roots that seemed to rise to impede their flight. And then Kutty heard it again—a vibration in the soil, stronger, pulsing, almost alive. It was the heartbeat of Rangoli, and it trembled with fear.
Tamilselvi's eyes narrowed. "The land is scared. It knows what comes next. You must learn to listen… truly listen."
For hours, they ran. The soldiers never stopped, but neither did the shadows that protected them. Along the way, Kutty began to hear other voices—not human, not even words. The mountains hummed low, a note vibrating in his chest. Rivers whispered in half-syllables. Even the wind carried fragments of a melody he did not yet recognize.
By dawn, they reached the edge of the Forest of Lost Names, a place where reality itself thinned. It was a treacherous path, tangled with roots, roots that seemed to watch, stones that hummed warnings, and pools of water that reflected not faces, but memories.
"This is where your training begins," Tamilselvi said. "The song of Rangoli has chosen you. If you fail… all will be lost." Kutty felt the weight of every life in the plains he had left behind, every child erased by Naayak, every song silenced before it could be sung. And for the first time, he understood the meaning of the word responsibility.
He took a deep breath. "I… I'll listen."
"Good," said Tamilselvi. "Because listening is the first step to singing again." And somewhere, deep in the still mountains, a pulse began—a note that had waited for a name to hear it.