A further strand of Kamadeva's mythology, found in texts such as the Harivamsa and the Bhagavata Purana, holds that after his incineration by Shiva's third eye, the essence of Kama was eventually reborn as Pradyumna, the son of Krishna and his queen Rukmini, giving the abstract principle of desire a second, more conventional narrative life within the Krishna cycle rather than leaving him permanently reduced to the bodiless, invisible presence described in his primary myth. According to this tradition, the infant Pradyumna is kidnapped shortly after birth by a demon named Shambara, who, having learned of a prophecy that this child would one day kill him, throws him into the sea, where he is swallowed by a fish; the fish is later caught and brought to Shambara's own household, where a woman raising the rescued infant comes to love him as he grows into a beautiful and formidable young man, unaware of his true origin.
Pradyumna eventually learns his identity, kills Shambara in fulfillment of the old prophecy, and returns in triumph to Krishna's court at Dvaraka, reunited with his parents after this long and dramatic detour. Because Pradyumna is understood in this tradition as Kama reborn, he inherits some of Kamadeva's own character and associations, particularly beauty and the power to inspire love and desire, and the story gives the otherwise bodiless, invisible principle of desire a concrete second life as a celebrated hero within the wider Krishna narrative, closing the circle opened by his earlier destruction at Shiva's hands.