"She is destruction incarnate-everything she touches turns to ash."
Ishani, a sharp-witted and fiercely independent businesswoman from the modern world, trusts no one, least of all men. But fate has other plans. Thrust into a treacherous era of warr...
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The Himalayas had frozen King Brihadbala's body, but not his resolve. For aeons, he knelt upon the glacial throne, his lips cracked with prayers, his skin blackened by frostbite. The wind screamed like the ghosts of warriors he'd slain, mocking his penance.
"If the Gods shall not answer me, then this earth shall learn the regret and wrath of a failed father!" He whispered, prayers in the depth of his soul.
A shadow fell over him. Not the soft, forgiving dark of twilight, but the presence of something older than the mountains themselves.
"You still kneel."
A figure emerged from the blizzard, her form wreathed in shadows and crimson silk. Ten arms fanned out like a macabre lotus, each holding a weapon dripping with celestial blood. Her eyes were pools of infinite night, her smile a crescent of gleaming fangs. The voice was a chorus—a thousand whispers of women who had died screaming, laughing, praying. Brihadbala did not dare look up. The goddess's bare feet, black as polished obsidian, appeared in his vision, her toes ringed with bones.
"Kali Maa," Brihadbala croaked, his voice raw from silence for a span of centuries.
Kaali Maa tilted his chin up with the curve of her sickle.
"Most kings beg for armies. For gold." Her breath smelled of graveyard blooms. "You beg for a daughter who does not know you."
Brihadbala's voice was raw from disuse. "Kaali Maa. Let me earn her."
The goddess's laugh sent avalanches tumbling down distant peaks. "Earn her? She is mine now. The curse made you think she was yours." The Goddess of Destruction stepped forward, her bare feet leaving no imprint on the snow. "You seek a daughter, the one born from us." Her blood red eyes darkened as a hint of softness remained. Her blade traced his throat. "But are you prepared to lose her all over again?"
Brihadbala's tears froze before they could fall. "I deserve worse."
Kali's laugh was the sound of bones breaking. "Finally, honesty." With a slash, she opened her palm. Blood—black and glistening—dripped onto the snow. Where it struck, the ice melted into a perfect reflection: Ishani, standing in a sun-drenched courtyard, her borrowed sword flashing as she sparred with a dark-haired warrior. "Go to Suryapura. Witness what your cowardice cost her."
The mountain vanished beneath him.
The desert citadel of Suryapura rose like a mirage—golden spires forged from sunlight, streets paved with crushed topaz. Karna had built it in a single night, his divine inheritance as Surya's son manifesting in towers that gleamed like captured dawn.
Yet it was empty.
No bustling markets, no laughing children—just wind whistling through vacant palaces, their halls echoing with the ghosts of a kingdom not yet lived in.
