Krishna began to speak the names, one by one, and each name landed on Arjuna's heart like a stone.

"Droṇam ca," said the cosmic form. Drona — the great teacher who had taught Arjuna everything he knew about the bow, who had once called him his finest student, who had loved him almost like a son.

"Bhīṣmam ca." Bhishma — the towering grandfather of them all, the oldest and most honoured warrior alive, who had carried little Arjuna on his shoulders long ago.

"Jayadratham ca, Karṇam." Jayadratha, and Karna — Karna, whose strength matched Arjuna's own, a fighter as great as any on the field.

These were the very faces Arjuna had been weeping over at the start. These were the people he could not imagine fighting. And now Krishna was naming them aloud, and telling Arjuna the hardest truth of all: "Mayā hatān" — they have already been slain by Me.

"Their hour has come," the form said gently. "Not by your hand first, but by the turning of Time, which is Me. You did not begin this, and you cannot stop it. So do not tremble, Arjuna. Mā vyathiṣṭhāḥ. Do not let your heart shake apart."

It was not a command to be cruel. It was a release from a guilt Arjuna had been carrying like a mountain. He had believed that if these great men fell, it would be because he, personally, had destroyed them — that he alone bore the blame for the ending of teachers and elders and heroes. Now he was being shown that the great wheel was already turning, and that his small, trembling self was not the author of the whole tragedy.

"Fight," Krishna said, "and you will conquer your foes." Not because Arjuna was the strongest, and not because he hated them — he did not — but because his part in the story was to stand up and do his duty with a steady heart, and to leave the unbearable weight of fate where it truly belonged: with the Lord of Time, and not with him.