Ujjayini — Eshaan's Quarters
For several moments after Kripa finished speaking, Eshaan did not know what to say. The lamp between them burned quietly, its flame moving whenever the night breeze entered through the half-open window, while the three damaged manuscript leaves remained spread across the table between the two of them. The words written upon them had seemed strange enough when Eshaan had first found them, but now that Kripa had admitted seeing the same phrase in the records of the Navagranthika, they had acquired an entirely different weight. Eshaan had spent months trying to understand the Nine Books, the people who guarded them and the reason he had somehow become connected to one of them. He had assumed that the Nine Books were the centre of the mystery because that was the knowledge he had been given. But if the Navagranthika themselves used the term Nine Seats, then perhaps the Books were only one part of something much larger.
