Sanskrit
शुक्लकृष्णे गती ह्येते जगतः शाश्वते मते । एकया यात्यनावृत्तिमन्ययाऽऽवर्तते पुनः ॥
śuklakṛṣṇe gatī hy ete jagataḥ śāśvate mate ekayā yāty anāvṛttim anyayāvartate punaḥ
Translation
Light and darkness, these are thought to be the world's everlasting paths; by the one he goeth who returneth not, by the other he who returneth again.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Krishna names the two paths explicitly as light and darkness, “the world’s eternal paths,” and compresses their outcomes into a single line: one leads to no return, the other to return again. This is the formal statement the imagery of verses 24-25 was building toward — and it is, notably, one of the more literally cosmological claims in the text, tying the fate of the soul to actual astronomical timing rather than ethics or mental content alone.