Shalya Parva compresses the war's final collapse into a single dense book: with Bhishma, Drona and Karna all dead, Shalya, king of Madra and, notably, the maternal uncle of the Pandava twins Nakula and Sahadeva who had nonetheless fought for the Kauravas under an earlier obligation, takes command only to be killed by Yudhishthira on the very same day, one of the war's shortest tenures for a supreme commander.
With Shalya gone and the Kaurava army effectively destroyed, Duryodhana, the war's original instigator, is finally left facing Bhima, the Pandava brother whose vow to break Duryodhana's thighs for his conduct during Draupadi's humiliation has hung over the entire epic since Sabha Parva. Their climactic mace duel is fought under agreed rules forbidding blows below the waist, and Bhima, unable to defeat the more skilled Duryodhana within those rules, strikes his thigh only after Krishna signals Arjuna to remind Bhima, through a gesture, of his old oath, breaking the agreed terms of combat to finally bring Duryodhana down, mortally wounded though not yet dead as the parva closes. The parva also narrates a lesser known but pointed episode, a dispute between Yudhishthira and Arjuna over the honor due to Karna once his true parentage is revealed, a brief but genuine argument that briefly threatens the brothers' own unity even in the moment of final victory.