Not useless — unnecessary. The work no longer needed me. The bridge had been built, and now people were crossing it on their own, in both directions, and the bridge-builder's job was done.
Kritya found me on the surface, sitting on the edge of the fissure, watching the scholars descend.
"You look like a man who's finished something," she said, sitting beside me.
"I look like a man who doesn't know what to do next."
"That's the same thing, in my experience."
We sat in the Wastes — no longer dead, no longer grey. Green things were growing. The Asura descendants had begun replanting, using seeds preserved for three centuries, and the first shoots were visible in the ash. Small, fragile, but growing. The land was coming back.
"What happens to the Remnant?" I asked.
"Some will stay in Patala. It's home. Others will move — to the cities, to the reclaimed territories, to wherever they want to go now that hiding isn't necessary." She picked up a handful of soil — the grey ash mixed with new earth. "Uncle Bala is opening a farm. Right here. In the Wastes. He says the soil is the best he's ever tested — three centuries of mineral accumulation, untouched by agriculture. He's already arguing about crop rotation."
I laughed. "And you?"
She looked at the horizon — the wide, flat Wastes, the distant shimmer of the Meru Range, the sky that went on forever.
"I'm going to build something."
"What?"
"I don't know yet. Something new. Not Tripura — Tripura belongs to the past. Something that doesn't exist yet. A place where Asura and Deva can live together, not because they've forgotten the war but because they've decided it's over."
"That might be naive."
"It's definitely naive. But remember what I said? There's a difference between naïveté and hope."
I remembered.
"Vrik."
"Yes?"
She turned to face me. The same sharp features, the same dark eyes, the same intensity that I'd seen on the first day in the council chamber. But warmer now. The intensity of a woman who was looking at a person, not a bridge.
"Thank you. For finding the library. For learning our language. For carrying the truth across the line. None of this happens without you."
"None of this happens without you either."
"Then we're even." She stood. Extended her hand — the open Asura greeting. I took it.
But I didn't let go. And she didn't pull away. And we stood there, on the edge of a fissure that led to the past, holding hands, looking at a landscape that was slowly turning from grey to green.
Two people from two civilisations. Standing on the scar, watching it heal.
