The killers struck during the Hour of the Wolf—that sleepy moment before dawn when palace guards battle with their lids. Shaurya Jaydev had just driven Prince Udai Kesari to his lakeside mansion, sure that it was Suvarnagar's most secure corner until the city resolved Ranajit Shrey's betrayal.
Udai was still grinning as they stepped over the mosaic threshold."Old War‑God, you fret like a village aunt! Ranajit's in shackles, my father breathes, the coup is crushed. What danger hangs in the balance?"
Shaurya removed one blood-soaked boot, face impassive. "The sort that hides behind celebrating."
A creaking ceiling beam sounded overhead.
Shadows fell.
The Three Blades
Three shapes descended with the boneless, feline ease of stalking cats. Their boots made no sound on polished marble.
High-grade specialists, Shaurya noted in a single breath:
Hook-Blade Karys—tall and slender, sleeveless, forearms wrapped in black silk; dual crescent swords already spinning.
Needle Saint Korun—bent and bald, bandolier of jade-tipped stilletos crossing his torso like fatal prayer beads.
Masque-Master Virudh—grayer, hair greased back, spectacles poised on a face too austere for murder; empty-handed yet radiating muted menace.
Virudh politely nodded. "The Prime Minister respectfully regrets unresolved business."
Prince Udai, half to a divan, blinked. "Oh—assassins! Wonderful. One bows or curtsies, I suppose?"
Karys attacked. Korun spun high, needles glinting up at Udai's throat. Virudh merely stepped in, bare hands shining with dim oil.
Shaurya's armor across the room, sabre Vijranta against the wine rack. Too far away. He exhaled, feeling the throb at the base of his spine—the Vanadevata Spirit like old root-magic awakening.
The palace drew a breath.
From among the joints of marble tiles burst vines as thick as anchor chains. Teak saplings pushed up, shattering the inlaid floor. Karys's hook‑swords shrieked against sudden ironwood trunks. A vine as thick as a wrist encircled Korun's mid‑air ankles, drawing him off course; his needles flowered harmlessly into a wall now clothed in flowering wisteria.
Virudh dodged, spectacles flashing. "Reports minimized your communion with flora, General."
Shaurya flexed his fingers; chlorophyll‑green sigils flickered beneath his skin. "Allow me to provide an updated edition."
Nature obeyed. Thorny creepers braided into living whips, slashing in synchronized arcs. Karys severed one, two, a dozen vines—only to find each stump regenerating barbed offshoots. Korun spat a curse as violet blossoms sprouted from his eye sockets, the toxins on his own needles feeding the rampant growth.
Udai, meanwhile, had mounted a gigantic cabinet and begun hurling rotten peaches down. "Take that! And that! Oh dear, out of fruit."
Virudh slithered across overthrown tiles, drawing out a serpent-shaped blowpipe. He drew in a breath—but Shaurya's command was faster. The wooden screen above exploded into banyan vines, reversing the direction of the blowpipe back against Virudh's throat. He gagged, eyes protruding.
The fight went on—hook-blades clashing on hardened bark that flashed like metal; poison quills ripped asunder by sap hardening into amber shields. Shaurya did not stir much—he guided, a conductor in a symphony of chlorophyll and fury.
Minutes slipped by, and quiet.
Korun was half-sunk in a bed of roses; every thorn had jade-green poison covering it and his own blood. Karys was stuck to the ground by teak roots, wrists bound above his head, hook-blades useless. Virudh, still vastly calm, kneeled amidst curling vines, one ear cleanly sliced off.
Shaurya approached, vines withdrawing at his heels like obeisance. "Who bought royal blood?"
Virudh touched the missing ear. "We serve brokers, not flags. But our retainer was received from Maharatna by Indraprastha. Money followed to the accounts of Mithra Rajya."
"Not Bhujraj?"
"A neutral lamb, or so the book accounted." The murderer could manage a wry smile. "If you sow reeds in stagnant water, do not grumble when serpents make nest."
Shaurya accepted the reply. A teak branch extended, snapping Virudh's neck.
Prince Udai probed behind the collapsed cabinet. "Are we quite finished?"
"For now," Shaurya said, gathering up his sabre. "Keep at my back."
Flight Through a Dying City
Bells of alarm tolled in distant towers—the capital waking from deeper corruption. Shaurya shielded Udai and took him through servants' corridors that stank of damp stone and lotus oil.
The moon had gone down. Braziers alone colored the courtyards in quivering cinnabar. Shaurya sensed roots under every paving‑slab, each of which whispered the same word: danger.
At the stables of the manor, they saddled a black war-mare. Shaurya rode through side streets instead of main thoroughfares; above roofs he saw torches wildly flailing, patrols battling under questionable banners. He received rumors—King Suryapratap captive, although paralyzed, Prime Minister Ranajit kidnapped from his cell by unknown friends, city gates closed.
Three out of four great states now drain us from within, he thought. And the serpent-head is Mithra.
The mare's hooves resonated as she made the final turn to Shaurya's lakeside manor. Vines obediently swung open the gate. Inside, it was dark—a defective, confining darkness.
Udai stepped down from the saddle. "Your home is… chillier."
Shaurya preceded Udai, spirit-sense jangling. The entrance stank of crushed flowers—and blood.
He found the first body in the corridor: a maid he remembered from Sneha's childhood, throat slit neatly. Further along, other servants were strewn like broken marionettes, no signs of struggle. Professional.
Adrenaline froze. He ran.
The Nursery of Nightmares
The nursery door stood ajar, red light playing inside. Shaurya pushed it open.
The scene was a scripted terror:
Arun Raj sat headless against the far wall, hands folded over his own chest in affected calm. His decapitated head rested on a windowsill, eyes still soft, lips set in mid‑prayer.
Sneha Raj hung by silk threads from a beam above, wrists shiny with blood, toes tracing nothing. She lived—pulse stuttering in her throat—but her breath panted like shattered reed pipes.
In the room's center, hands clasped behind his back, stood Dhairyaveer Mithra.
The Patriarch's silver locks were bound up in a ribbon far too rough to be cloth. His face creased in kindness; his famine‑wolf eyes glinted hollow. No blemish marred his ivory silk garments—beyond one line of red where he'd sucked the last tidbits from his fingers.
"Shaurya!" he called out, as though greeting an old chess rival. "And ever‑darling Prince Udai. What convenient timing."
Udai stepped in, face pale. "Lord Dhairyaveer? This is madness."
"Moonmadness?" Dhairyaveer laughed, teeth smoothed like marble. "No, child. This is vision. An empire must lop off rot to grow."
Shaurya's vines snarled at his feet like sleeping cobras. His voice was the rumble before landslides: "Free my daughter."
"Trade, then," Dhairyaveer said carelessly, glancing at Udai. "First prince—or her. Your choice."
For a brittle beat of a heartbeat, the world was still.
Then Shaurya seized Udai by the collar and tossed him. The prince flew through lamplight, shouting: "NOT AGAIN—!"
Dhairyaveer's reflexes, honed by years of training, had him snagging the struggling prince on autopilot. That brief moment of divided attention was all Shaurya needed.
Garden of Carnage
The manor shook. Roots burst carpets, shattering floor‑joists. Wall‑panels cracked open into fountains of throbbing sap. A hundred thorn‑vines lashed out, creating a whirlwind of emerald needles. Dhairyaveer bared his teeth, calling on his own blood‑magic: Arun's spilled lifeblood coalesced, becoming ruby glass splinters which struck back in a lethal tempest.
The room was an ecosystem battle—chlorophyll versus hemoglobin.
Rose thorns, stiletto long, raked across Dhairyaveer's chest. He retaliated, shaping clotted blood into whips with jagged teeth that stripped vines before they struck. Sneha dangled over the chaos, cords spooling out beneath the stress of shifting beams.
Udai, ever willing in the face of dread, stuck himself to Dhairyaveer's leg like a drunken koala. "Unhand her, you powdered ghoul!"
"Let me go, fool!"
Their fight cost Dhairyaveer. A root burst from the oak armoire, spiking through his shoulder and tearing his right arm off in a gout of dark red. The arm landed on the floor, fingers still twitching.
"Your weakness," Dhairyaveer spat, voice bubbling blood,
"is sentimentality."
"And yours," Shaurya said, eyes ember‑bright,
"is monologue."
But victory remained out of reach at the end: Dhairyaveer, bleeding, smiling, mumbled a glyph. The blood beneath him ran, convulsing into a mirror‑polished pool. He caught Sneha's flailing ankles.
A desperation throw. Shaurya hurled a vine—missed by inches.
Dhairyaveer, Sneha in his possession, turned into scarlet quicksilver. The pool seeped between floorboards, vanishing with a hiss.
Silence descended crashing. Shaurya let the vines go; they hung, exhausted, petals losing their color from too much use.
Udai lurched, sleeve torn by rogue thorns. "General. your daughter—"
"We'll bring her home," Shaurya said, the words tasting bitter. He removed Sneha's restraints; only the silky cords fell to the floor, empty. His blood smeared on the marble.
From the corner, a soft gurgle. Bundled in a reed‑woven cradle, baby Rishi gazed up at carnage with serene wonder. For an instant, his dark eyes flashed the same violet flicker that lay dormant within Vijranta's steel.
Alarm bells clanged louder outside—the rhythm of the coup quickening. Shaurya cradled his grandson against dented armor. "Hold to me, little seeker. Storms are not finished."
Udai straightened, back erect. "The empire needs two things these days: a sword—and a witness. I shall be the latter."
Shaurya nodded once and tore a tunnel in the smoldering, root-clamped wall, entering the brooding courtyard.
Lake Aranyani winds carried distant howls and gleams of burning. Iron-colored clouds gathered over them, being whipped up by earthly as well as celestial forces.
Shaurya Jaydev, last loyal sword of Kesari Samrajya, drew Vijranta back into its sheath. The burnt smell of rebellion filled his lungs.
"Dhairyaveer Mithra," he whispered to the night, "you have sown thorns in my soil. Now reap the forest's wrath."
He vanished into darkness, creepers unfolding like curtains behind him, and somewhere—beyond mortal ears' reach—the ancient Vanadevata Spirit hummed, green and foul, to ready the land itself for war.