I remember the day I met Indra. He was seven years old, standing in the palace courtyard with a wooden practice sword that was far too heavy for his small frame. The other instructors were coddling him, letting him "win" to please the King.
I watched for an hour, my arms crossed over my breastplate. Finally, I stepped into the ring. I didn't use a sword; I used a simple reed. Within three seconds, I had the boy in the dirt.
The court went silent. The King's face turned a dangerous shade of purple. But Indra? The boy didn't cry. He didn't run to his tutors. He wiped the blood from his lip, looked at the reed in my hand, and asked, "How did you move faster than the wind?"
"I didn't move faster than the wind, little Prince," I told him, helping him up. "I simply knew where the wind was going before it arrived."
I saw it then—the spark of the Revenant. Most children are afraid of the dark; Indra was curious about what lived inside it. I took him under my wing, not as a royal student, but as an apprentice of the blade. I taught him that a King must be a servant to his soldiers. I told him, "Veda is the shield that protects the throne, but you must be the heart that makes the throne worth protecting."