The sun was fully up now, flooding Kurukshetra with light. Krishna's voice, when he spoke again, had the steadiness of a vow.

"Listen well, Arjuna, child of the great line of Bharata, for this is the promise at the very centre of everything I have told you."

Arjuna sat very still.

"There is a thing that holds the whole world together," Krishna said. "Call it goodness. Call it the right way of living — kindness, truth, courage, fairness, the care of the weak by the strong. It is like a great invisible thread woven through every home and every heart. When it is healthy, children sleep safe, neighbours share bread, and the strong protect rather than crush."

He paused, and his face grew grave.

"But there come times — dark times — when that goodness droops and fades, the way a flower wilts when no one waters it. People grow cruel. The greedy take what is not theirs. The cruel are praised and the gentle are trampled. Wrongdoing swells up like a flood, higher and higher, until it seems nothing can stand against it."

The wind stirred Arjuna's hair.

"Hear my promise," Krishna said. "Whenever that happens — whenever goodness grows weak and cruelty grows strong — I do not stay hidden and far away. I come. I send myself into the world. Not once, not only in the old stories, but again and again, age after age, in whatever form the times require. As long as there are hearts worth saving, I will keep coming back."

Arjuna's eyes were wide and bright. "Every time? You promise?"

"Every time," said Krishna. "When the night is darkest, look — and you will find that a light has already begun to rise. That light is me, keeping a promise I have never once broken in all the long ages of the world."

On the field, the two great armies waited. And Arjuna understood, at last, that the friend beside him was not only his charioteer for this one battle. He was the one who comes back, every time, for everyone — and this morning, he had come back for him.