Chapter 1 — Axe
I am Nuo, the Unbegun
the silence before stars learned to burn.
And thus begins the Eighth Wandering of the Unbegun.
Karkala.
Now, children.
This Wandering is special.
Not because it is another prequel.
The council looks around at the rapidly expanding pile of prequels.
Yes.
I know.
There are many.
At this point,
the Archive appears to be moving backward faster than it moves forward.
Kasol was once:
The Beginning.
Then Goa appeared.
Then Bangalore crawled out from eleven years ago.
Then Kochi arrived carrying toddler evidence and completely destroyed the chronology.
And now
Karkala.
The council raises a hand.
How many prequels are there going to be?
Children.
Apparently,
all of them.
Because I made one fundamental mistake when I began writing the Wanderings.
I thought becoming a wanderer was recent.
I thought Kasol did it.
That something happened there.
That one impulsive solo trip transformed me into a creature who looked at roads differently.
The council nods.
Reasonable assumption.
Then memory started opening locked doors.
And suddenly
no.
I had been doing this long before Kasol.
Before Goa.
Before Bangalore.
Before university.
Before I could probably pronounce the word Wanderer.
The council looks toward Kochi.
Three.
Children.
I was three.
Apparently curiosity had been running unauthorized expeditions since toddlerhood.
The evidence is overwhelming.
I did not become a wanderer.
I merely became old enough to notice that I was one.
The council grows quiet.
And honestly?
That explains the prequels.
They outweigh the rest because the name came late.
The behavior didn’t.
For years,
there were journeys that did not know they were Wanderings.
No Archive.
No titles.
No council.
No bone bracelet.
No ceremonial endings.
Just memories sitting around without classification.
Then Present Nuo arrived with paperwork.
The council laughs.
Retroactive Wanderer Administration.
Exactly.
We are simply filing them properly.
Now.
Why is Karkala special?
The council leans forward.
Axe.
The council pauses.
Ah.
Axe.
Children.
If you remember Bangalore,
you remember Axe already fully installed in the party.
Girlfriend.
Window seat tyrant.
Negotiator.
Professional user of devastating romantic sanctions.
The woman who could defeat sacred Rock Paper Scissors law with one sentence.
The council nods.
But Bangalore was later.
Karkala?
Earlier.
Much earlier.
At this point
Axe was not my girlfriend.
The council gasps dramatically.
Not yet?
Not even close.
She was
a classmate.
That is all.
The council looks suspicious.
Just a classmate?
Children.
History is about to become complicated.
But yes.
At the beginning of this file,
Axe and I were classmates.
Two people occupying the same university ecosystem.
She existed.
I existed.
Occasionally these facts overlapped.
That was it.
No relationship.
No cuddling.
No bus seat treaties.
No slapping me after search parties.
No shared criminal logistics.
Nothing.
The council opens a new file.
AXE: ORIGIN.
And so,
Karkala is not merely another prequel to the Wanderings.
It is a prequel to us.
The council smiles.
Romantic origin story?
You would assume so.
The council prepares flowers.
Put those away.
Children.
You would assume:
Perhaps they travelled together.
Perhaps there was a beautiful temple.
Perhaps somewhere among ancient stone and hills,
two young people looked at each other differently for the first time.
Perhaps hands touched.
Perhaps music played.
Perhaps the architecture witnessed the beginning of love.
The council sighs dreamily.
Wrong.
The council immediately drops the flowers.
Very wrong.
Children.
I am the Unbegun.
Nothing involving me should ever be approached with the assumption that events unfolded normally.
If you hear:
“This is the story of how I got together with my girlfriend,”
and the storyteller is Nuo,
prepare for structural damage.
The council puts on helmets.
Good.
Now.
The setting.
University.
Before Bangalore.
Before the attendance festival.
Before Axe and I became anything beyond classmates.
University Nuo existed in his natural habitat.
Not the toddler collector.
Not yet the cow cart cryptid.
Just
student.
The council raises an eyebrow.
Student?
Fine.
Enrolled person.
The council nods.
More accurate.
And somewhere during this period,
a trip appeared.
Karkala.
The council turns toward the map.
Children.
Karkala.
Hills.
Temples.
Old stone.
Architecture carved and built with the sort of patience modern humans usually reserve for loading screens they cannot skip.
A place that deserved attention.
A place worthy of being wandered.
Did University Nuo know any of that in advance?
Probably not enough.
The Archive remembers the destination more clearly than the planning.
But eventually,
there was a journey.
And somehow
Axe was part of it.
The council leans closer.
Now,
Present Nuo knows where this road leads.
He knows Bangalore comes later.
Knows there will eventually be a relationship.
Knows Axe will become one of those names that survives long after ordinary classmates dissolve into blurry faces.
But Story Nuo?
No.
Archive law remains.
He gets no prophecy.
At the beginning of Karkala,
she is simply:
Axe.
Classmate.
One human among many.
The council nods.
That is important.
Because origin stories become dishonest when you let the ending contaminate the beginning.
You start pretending every glance mattered.
Every conversation carried hidden meaning.
Every coincidence was fate.
Children.
Usually,
people are just people until suddenly they aren’t.
The council grows quiet.
And whatever happened in Karkala
it happened before I knew which category Axe would eventually occupy.
Friend?
Girlfriend?
Person I occasionally spoke to?
Potential accomplice in bad decisions?
Unknown.
The council checks future records.
Potential accomplice was extremely accurate.
Do not spoil.
The council closes the file.
Now.
There is another thing I like about Karkala entering the Archive here.
It proves once again that Wanderings did not always begin with intention.
Sometimes the road only reveals its importance afterward.
Kochi began because of bottle caps.
Bangalore because of attendance.
Karkala?
At the beginning,
it was simply a university trip.
A place.
A classmate.
Whatever group of idiots happened to be travelling together.
Nothing announced:
This journey will become important.
The council nods.
No glowing quest marker.
No narrator voice.
No dramatic title card saying:
THE ORIGIN OF AXE.
Just life.
And that is often how real beginnings behave.
Quietly.
They sneak past while you are busy living them.
Then years later,
you look backward and go
Oh.
That was the beginning.
The council listens.
But children
do not mistake this for sentimentality.
Because I remember enough of Karkala to know that whatever romantic movie you are currently imagining?
Wrong genre.
The council changes the reel.
This is not:
Before Sunrise.
This is:
Two University Idiots Make Decisions.
The council laughs.
Potentially featuring temples.
Now.
There is something almost absurd about the location itself.
Karkala is the kind of place you can describe with dignity.
Stone temples.
Hills.
History.
Architecture.
A sense of age.
The sort of environment where one should walk slowly,
observe carvings,
think about the people who built them,
perhaps experience some spiritual reverence.
The council looks at University Nuo.
And then there was us.
Exactly.
Ancient civilization built monuments.
University Nuo arrived.
Humanity is a cycle.
The council sighs.
Still,
something about the place survived.
Enough that years later,
when I found an old tag in a drawer and tried to remember where it belonged,
one name restored the entire file.
Karkala.
The moment I heard it
recognition.
Not:
Maybe.
Not:
Could be.
No.
Karkala.
The council nods.
Some places live like that.
Their name alone unlocks a room in memory.
And inside this one
Axe.
Before Axe became Axe.
Before she was the person beside me in Bangalore.
Before the relationship.
Before any of the later nonsense.
This is where her Archive begins.
The council grows quiet.
Not necessarily with romance.
Probably with something far stupider.
Again
we are dealing with me.
But origin nonetheless.
Children.
That makes Karkala special.
The Wandering is old.
The memory fragmented in places.
But unlike Bangalore,
where the great mystery is:
How did I wake up on a bullock cart?
Karkala’s mystery is different.
Not:
Where did I go?
But:
How did this person become important?
The council listens.
And perhaps the answer will not arrive in one dramatic moment.
Maybe it will.
The Archive remembers what it remembers.
We will let it speak.
No forced fate.
No manufactured foreshadowing.
No turning every joke into symbolism.
Just events.
As they happened.
Classmates first.
Whatever came next
next.
The council nods.
So let us establish the timeline properly.
Kochi:
Toddler Nuo.
Definitive beginning.
Karkala:
University era.
Before Bangalore.
Before Axe and Nuo.
Bangalore:
Axe already girlfriend.
Then whatever later roads came after.
The council writes carefully.
Chronology temporarily stable.
Children.
Do not say temporarily.
Memory can hear you.
The council whispers apologies to the Archive.
Good.
Now.
Picture University Nuo.
Not yet aware that one day he would wear bone tags from each of these places around his wrist.
Not aware Karkala would someday be excavated from a drawer.
Not aware that a classmate nearby would become Axe in the full sense of the name.
Not aware that decades later,
Present Nuo would sit down and title this:
The Eighth Wandering.
He was simply there.
Young.
Restless.
Probably underqualified for whatever academic purpose had brought him along.
And somewhere nearby
her.
The council leans forward.
Axe.
Classmate.
For now.
Children.
The origin story begins before either person knows it is one.
Which is fitting.
Because most important things do.
Thus concludes Chapter One.
The Prequel Problem.
The Born Wanderer Revelation.
The Ancient University File.
Before Bangalore.
Before Girlfriend.
Before The Window Seat War.
And Before Axe Was Axe.
Children.
This is not a love story.
At least
not yet.
And perhaps not in any recognizable form when it does become one.
Because this is Karkala.
The Eighth Wandering of the Unbegun.
The road where one ordinary classmate
began becoming someone I would remember by name
long after most of the classroom disappeared.
