About 100,000 years ago, in the land that would one day be known as North India, there existed a vast kingdom called Aryannia. This empire stretched across what would become China, parts of Russia, and most of the Middle East. It was an age when magic flowed freely through the world, and gods walked alongside mortals. The kingdom arose some 50,000 years after the great war of Mahabharata, and about 2 million years after the Ramayana Saga, living by the tenets of these ancient tales.
Aryannia was unlike any other realm, for all its citizens were blessed with a form of immortality. Its people were trained to excel in both mind and body - some becoming scientists, others warriors, and still others artists. Yet only warriors could ascend to the throne, for the kingdom held a terrible secret: it was built around a rift, a portal to a dark and desolate world of purgatory, from which monsters would emerge to threaten the world.
The kingdom's law demanded that one king shouldn't exist in the kingdom forever. After every hundred years, the king had to fight the next strongest warrior and best him to remain on the throne. The rules of succession applied due to the sacred and magical bloodline - the king had to fight his sons. For the last thousand years, King Aryavrat had been forced to fight, best, and kill his sons. Though it hurt him deeply, his sons were happy to give up their lives, understanding that their lives were not worth more than the people of this world.
Everything changed with the birth of his eleventh son, Rudra. Unlike his siblings, Rudra came to the world as a stellar egg, descending from an unknown universe. When Aryavrat touched the egg, his blood seeped into it, cracking it open to reveal a human child. From birth, Rudra displayed an innate understanding of combat, yet possessed an uncommon kindness. Though a prince, he spent time among the common people, helping them and sharing their meals. His fighting style was described as graceful, reminiscent of a dancer, with unprecedented control over his movements and extraordinary strength. He became so strong and expert at all forms of weaponry that Aryavrat often sent him to battle in his stead. For the first time, Aryavrat wanted to die by the hand of one of his sons, but Rudra was unwilling - he loved his father too much and wanted to remain by his side.
As Rudra approached his hundredth year, having stopped aging at twenty-one, the dreaded day of challenge approached. Standing over six feet six inches tall, with skin a mixture of pale and brown, many considered him the eternal king-to-be. The night before their combat, father and son spoke for hours, each secretly planning to forfeit the match to save the other.
"I would let him win and be at peace," Rudra thought.
"I would run away from my dharma, if it would mean letting my son live," thought the father.
The next morning, as twenty-three billion citizens - humans, elves, orcs, and lizard people alike - gathered to witness the battle, the combat horns blared. People were sad, for they loved both their king and prince equally.
The battle began with father and son circling each other, neither willing to strike the killing blow. But before their combat could reach its climax, emergency sirens started to blare.
"The breach has increased in size!" "Millions are pouring through!"
Both warriors stopped, relieved at avoiding their confrontation but alert to their kingdom's plight.
"Rudra, get ready now, and go to the front. I will be right behind you," the king said.
"I will leave some monsters for you to kill too, father," Rudra replied.
Rudra advanced with 100 soldiers, all immortal and blessed with supernatural powers, though none matched his own. Meanwhile, the king retreated to his chambers, where his minister Mrinal walked beside him.
"This may be the final battle, my king. The breach is expanding at a pace that could engulf the entire kingdom within days," the minister warned.
"How much time do we have?" the king asked.
"Six hours, at most," replied the minister.
The king emerged with his sword, crafted inside the dark world but blessed with Hanuman's essence - an instrument capable of sealing the breach permanently.
On the battlefield, Rudra engaged the enemy with ferocious efficiency. With a spear in each hand, his lightning speed and strength allowed him to slash through hundreds of monsters in a single blow. Many monsters feared him, knowing him as the demon of Aryannia.
The battle continued for four grueling hours. Though Rudra remained unscathed, his brothers-in-arms suffered heavily. Of his hundred soldiers, only ten remained. In those four hours, over two million monsters had fallen. Rudra switched from dual spears to his self-developed bow-sword as his remaining soldiers struggled to hold the line.
"A few moments more, men," Rudra encouraged. "Father is on his way."
Suddenly, a giant monster emerged, towering fifty feet tall, its eyes fixed on Rudra. It became clear that the monsters considered him, not Aryavrat, humanity's last bastion. His remaining soldiers moved to protect him, but Rudra leaped over them, deploying his special gauntlet that shot ropes to climb the behemoth.
The monster swung its arm to crush him, but Rudra somersaulted over it, stepping on it with his bow-sword. Landing briefly, he clenched his buttocks and launched himself thirty feet into the air with a cry of "Jai Hanuman!" As he neared the monster's eyes, it tried to swat him again, but Rudra twisted mid-air like a wheel with blades, cutting through the monster's arms before thrusting his weapon into its eyes. The behemoth fell, crushing smaller demons beneath it, with Rudra standing triumphant atop its corpse.
Aryavrat witnessed this display as he arrived with three million soldiers, all hailing their prince: "Rudra! Rudra! Rudra!"
But the real battle was only beginning. Fifty more behemoths emerged from the portal, crushing everything in their path. Aryavrat wielded Excalibur, slashing through twenty of them in a single strike. The king leaped and cut through the armada while Rudra fought beside him - kicking, dashing, slicing, jumping, and flinging monsters aside. Their army worked in perfect coordination, forming mobile shield walls and using their battle shoes to fly toward the enemy in formation, dropping like a barrage of meteors.
The battle raged for two days. The king's army suffered massive losses, and Rudra's ten comrades fell one by one. Grief-stricken, the prince shut off all emotions except anger, transforming his inner self into a beast. He told his father to stand back as he lunged at the demons like a monster himself, abandoning weapons to tear through them with his bare hands and teeth.
Then the Queen of the Damned, progenitor of the monsters, made her entrance. She appeared calm at first, her twelve hands - six on each side - giving her the appearance of a goddess. Both father and son knew better, but her presence was strong enough to shake Rudra from his savage state.
"There is no point in fighting," she said in a savage voice. Yet both warriors stood strong with their remaining soldiers.
The king attacked first, swinging his sword with precise strikes, but the queen proved too fast. With one swift move, she thrust her arm through his heart, ripping the king apart. King Aryavrat, protector of the world, fell without ceremony or glory.
Rudra stood shocked, unable to move or breathe. But he quickly came to grips with his new reality, for such was the way of Aryannia. War was their way of life, and he took pride in his father's honorable death against an insurmountable foe.
Stepping forward, Rudra retrieved Excalibur and faced the queen.
"Don't you know that it isn't worth it?" she taunted.
Rudra took a deep breath and lunged at her. As expected, she dodged. "She's prepared and can see my moves," he thought to himself. He attacked again and again while she dodged each time, laughing at his apparent futility.
But Rudra had a plan, remembering his father's words about Excalibur's hidden mode, unlocked by his great grandfather's blood. The sword needed energy - one hundred swings without drawing blood. His father had already performed forty swings, and Rudra had completed fifty-eight. The sword's curse meant it always hit its target, making deliberate misses the true achievement.
At the hundredth swing, the sword began to glow. Rudra understood instinctively what would happen on the hundred and first swing. When he executed it, the sword's blade twisted and fragmented like a whip, extending its reach not just to strike the queen but to trap her.
The queen's smile vanished as she thrashed in the sword's grip. She grabbed the blade and pulled Rudra toward her, hoping to give him the same death as his father. But Rudra was tactical - he released the sword at the last instant, dodging her punch with fiery speed before leaping over her to grasp the hilt again and pull hard.
The sword cut through the queen's skin, drawing a groan of pain that triggered her transformation into a hundred-foot behemoth. The sword shattered, and Rudra fell. Just as the queen moved to crush him, King Aryavrat appeared behind her, using his last ember of life to stab her with a piece of the broken sword.
Rudra seized another fragment and lunged at the queen from the front. His eyes met his father's one last time as tears flowed freely. The king, proud to the end, pushed his son to safety while using the momentum to drag himself and the queen into the portal, which sealed behind them.
Rudra collapsed from exhaustion, but something extraordinary happened - the pieces of the sword turned to ether and merged with him. The sword, being eternal, could only be controlled by an eternal soul. Unlike the standard immortality of Aryannia, where people merely stopped aging but could die in battle, Rudra was revealed as truly immortal - unable to die even if he wished it.
As for the king, lost within the portal, he would find his way into another universe entirely. There, he would be reborn as the Emperor of Mankind, his experiences in Aryannia - leading a diverse empire, battling monsters from beyond reality, and sacrificing everything to protect his people - shaping his actions for millennia to come as he forged a new empire among the stars.
