The first time I changed something in this world, it was just to help my mother breathe.

  She had spent most of the morning cooking with her face half-hidden in a cloud of smoke. The open hearth spat fire and ash up into her eyes, and I watched her press the back of her hand against her forehead between stirs—wincing, wiping away tears that had nothing to do with emotion.

  It wasn’t just the fire. It was the room.

  No chimney. No vent. No airflow. Just smoke trapped in mud walls, choking us slowly.

  And I remembered, from my old life, how my grandmother used to say, “A kitchen should feed you, not burn you.”

  So I changed it.

  The First Change – A Cleaner FireThat night, while my parents slept, I dug a shallow trench just beside the cooking area.

  By morning, I had outlined the rough shape of what I needed: a raised cy stove made from discarded bricks and river mud, sealed tight with straw and dung. I formed a small inlet tunnel near the base—a way to pull air under the fire. Then, with leftover pottery shards, I built a snted flue toward the back wall.

  When my mother saw it, she stared as if I had broken a rule.

  “What is this, Avyakta?”

  “The fire will burn better. The smoke will leave. You won’t cough anymore.”

  She ughed once. Dry and short.

  “You’re five. Don’t talk like a rishi.”

  But she tried it.

  And for the first time in years, she cooked without blinking through tears.

  By the third day, she called it “the breath-fire.”

  The Second Change – Healing a WoundMy father was the second.

  He came back from a week-long patrol with a gash down his forearm—clean but deep. Another soldier had said it would heal on its own, wrapped in cloth.

  But I saw the swelling. The dull red around the cut. The cloth reeking of sweat.

  I stopped him before he could rewrap it.

  “Let me clean it,” I said.

  He looked down at me, not unkind, just skeptical. “You think you’re a healer now?”

  “I think you won’t have that arm next week if you keep sealing dirt inside it.”

  He didn’t ugh this time.

  I boiled water—let it cool slightly—then cleaned the wound carefully. I ground turmeric with a pestle and added crushed neem leaves, applying them as a paste. Then I tied it with clean cloth strips, freshly sun-dried.

  He grunted, more out of surprise than pain.

  Three days ter, the swelling was gone.

  He said nothing, but he didn’t stop me when I did it again.

  The Third Change – The Floor That Breathed WarmthNights were the worst.

  The chill crept through the floors and into our bones. Even wrapped in cloth, sleep felt like shivering under stone.

  That’s when I remembered something: the way Romans used to heat floors using fire tunnels beneath bathhouses. And from stories of Himayan caves where monks would sleep on warmed rocks heated through tunnels.

  So I began digging again.

  This time, a narrow channel under the back of the hut—two hand-widths deep, sloping slightly upward. At the mouth, outside, I built a small stone-lined pit for the fire. I packed the trench with stone sbs, then sealed it with dried mud and dung.

  When I lit the fire outside, the heat slowly traveled under the house.

  By nightfall, the floor was warm.

  Not burning. Not bzing. Just enough to take the bite out of the cold.

  My mother touched the floor and whispered, “Are you a ghost?”

  I just smiled. “No. I just remember things.”

  Windows That Could BreatheOne afternoon, I watched how the smoke from the fire drifted upward and curled near the thatch. Trapped.

  So I cut a vent.

  High in the back wall, I carved a small hole—just enough for the rising heat to escape. Then I widened a front window, just above waist height.

  The cross-breeze was slow, but it worked. Within hours, the air inside was cooler.

  I showed my father how to hang wet cloth over the front opening during the day.

  “It cools the air. Water steals the heat.”

  He didn’t understand the words, but he felt the breeze.

  After that, he stopped asking me why. He just let me build.

  The Vilge NoticesPeople noticed.

  First, it was our neighbor, an old widow who came to borrow onions and asked why there was no smoke in our hut.

  Then it was the young boys from my father’s company, who came to see “the stove that doesn’t bite your eyes.”

  Whispers spread.

  “The warrior’s son changed their fire.” “His floor stays warm in winter.” “They say the house breathes.”

  Some came to learn. Some came to scoff.

  One elder spat at the door and muttered, “Fire is fire. The gods don’t need fixing.”

  But one man listened quietly.

  Vidura.

  The Decision – To Become a WarriorA week after the third house tried to copy my design, my father came home with a strange look in his eye.

  He sat beside me near the hearth, the new vent letting the smoke drift zily up.

  “I registered you for training.”

  I didn’t respond right away.

  “You’re strong. Sharp. It’s expected.”

  “I never said I wanted to be a warrior.”

  He didn’t raise his voice.

  “This world doesn’t care what you want. You are born into duty. And we serve.”

  He left no room for refusal. I nodded.

  But something inside me felt like sinking stone.

  Vidura’s InterestTwo days ter, my father was summoned to the pace.

  Not to the war hall.

  To Vidura’s private quarters.

  He didn’t tell me at first. I found out by eavesdropping on a stable boy who’d heard the guards whispering.

  “The Pitamaha’s brother called him in. Asked about the boy. The one who made fire flow like wind.”

  When my father returned, he was pale and silent.

  I waited until he sat down, poured him water, then asked:

  “What did he want?”

  “He asked questions. About you.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “What you made. Why. How.”

  “And what did you say?”

  He looked at me, tired.

  “I said you were strange. But useful. That I didn’t understand what you did, but it worked.”

  “Was he angry?”

  “No,” he said. “He smiled.”

  That terrified me more than anything.