Sauptika Parva, the Book of the Sleeping Warriors, delivers the war's final and most morally shocking act just as the Pandavas believe victory is secured. Ashvatthama, Drona's son, consumed with rage over his father's death and Duryodhana's dying encouragement, sneaks with two companions into the Pandava camp at night while the exhausted victors sleep, and rather than seeking honorable combat, murders the sleeping soldiers in cold blood, including Draupadi's five sons and her brother Dhrishtadyumna, who had killed Drona; only the five Pandava brothers and Krishna, absent from the camp that night, and Satyaki survive among the major figures on their side.
The book's brief second half follows Ashvatthama's pursuit and eventual confrontation with the surviving Pandavas, in which he releases a devastating cosmic weapon aimed at destroying the unborn heir in Arjuna's daughter-in-law's womb, an attack Krishna counters directly, and Ashvatthama is cursed by Krishna to wander the earth eternally, diseased and friendless, unable to die, as punishment for the massacre, rather than being killed outright, an unusual and deliberately unresolved form of judgment within the epic. Duryodhana, mortally wounded but still alive as the parva closes, witnesses the massacre from where he lies and is said to find in it a bitter, final satisfaction, a detail that keeps his own character's capacity for vindictiveness present even in his last recorded moments.