Nishaan

There was no one left to kill.

He pointed to the horizon, where the ber tree stood alone. “To live,” he said. “That is the only target worth aiming for.”

He threw it high into the air, a silver ring against the vast, indifferent sky. It spun, catching the sun, and then sailed far, far away, landing with a soft thud in the tall grass of the Yamuna’s bank.

“The mark is all that is left of him, Mother,” Arjun would reply. nishaan

Arjun felt his pulse become the drumbeat. He did not confront Sukha. He did not draw his chakram . Instead, he waited.

He did not throw it at the tree.

The heel was new. But the man’s gait—that slight drag of the right foot—told Arjun everything. He had been born with a twisted ankle. The nishaan in the mud five years ago had been a limp, not a boot. There was no one left to kill

And for the first time in five years, Arjun Rathore smiled. The nishaan of revenge had been replaced by the nishaan of a new beginning.

She looked at his empty hands. “What is your mark now, my son?”

Arjun stood before the ber tree, the morning light now fully upon him. He looked at the hundred knife marks. He looked at the red clay circle he had drawn every day for five years. Then, he raised his chakram one last time. “That is the only target worth aiming for

The next morning, before the sun bled over the fields, Arjun went to the ber tree. He took out a small, folded piece of paper. On it, he had sketched the boot print—the half-moon crack. Then, with a steady hand, he drew a line connecting it to a name he had finally uncovered by bribing an old servant: Ratan Singh , Sukha’s elder brother, who had died in a cart accident three years ago. Ratan had the limp. Ratan had the boot. And Ratan was dead, killed by his own guilt-ridden horse falling into a ravine.

Old Thakur Ajit Singh had been murdered five years ago. No one knew who held the smoking gun, but everyone knew why . A land dispute. A whispered insult. A line crossed. The nishaan of the killer’s boot had been found in the wet mud by the well—a distinctive half-moon crack on the heel. For half a decade, Ajit’s only son, a quiet, intense young man named Arjun, had kept that cracked imprint burning in his mind like a hot coal.

“The nishaan is gone, Mother,” he said.

Then, one night, a wedding procession wound its way through Kheri. Drums beat. Horses wore garlands. And in the groom’s party, Arjun saw the walk. The slight, arrogant limp. The way the man kept his right hand always near his belt. The man’s name was Sukha, a rival from across the river. As Sukha dismounted, the lantern light fell upon his boot.