The assassins struck at the Hour of the Wolf—that bleary cusp before dawn when palace guards fight their own eyelids. Shaurya Jaydev had just ferried Prince Udai Kesari to his lakeside manor, convinced it was the safest corner of Suvarnagar until the capital untangled Ranajit Shrey's treachery.
Udai was still laughing as they stepped across the mosaic threshold."Old War‑God, you fret like a village aunt! Ranajit's in chains, my father lives, the coup is crushed. What danger remains?"
Shaurya tugged off one blood‑flecked boot, expression unreadable. "The kind that hides behind celebration."
Above them, a ceiling beam quivered.
Shadows fell.
The Three Blades
Three figures landed with the boneless grace of hunting cats. Their boots made no sound on polished marble.
High‑class specialists, Shaurya noted in a single heartbeat:
Hook‑Blade Karys—lean, sleeveless, forearms wrapped in black silk; twin crescent swords already whirring.
Needle Saint Korun—hunched, bald, a bandolier of jade‑tipped stilletos across his chest like lethal prayer beads.
Masque‑Master Virudh—older, hair slicked, spectacles perched on a nose too stern for murder; empty‑handed but radiating quiet menace.
Virudh offered a courteous nod. "The Prime Minister humbly regrets unfinished business."
Prince Udai, halfway to a divan, blinked. "Oh—assassins! Marvelous. Does one bow or curtsy?"
Karys lunged. Korun pivoted high, needles flashing toward Udai's throat. Virudh simply advanced, bare palms gleaming with faint oil.
Shaurya's armour lay across the room, his sabre Vijranta propped against a wine rack. Too far. He exhaled, feeling the pulse in his spine—the Vanadevata Spirit stirring like ancient rootwork.
The palace breathed.
From the seams between marble tiles burst vines thick as anchor chains. Teak saplings speared upward, shattering the inlaid floor. Karys's hook‑swords shrieked against sudden ironwood trunks. A vine the width of a wrist coiled around Korun's mid‑air ankles, yanking him off trajectory; his needles flowered harmlessly into a wall now overgrown with blooming wisteria.
Virudh darted sideways, spectacles flashing. "Reports understated 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 scrambled atop a towering cabinet and begun pelting overripe peaches downward. "Take that! And that! Oh dear, out of fruit."
Virudh slid across uprooted tiles, producing a serpentine blowpipe. He inhaled—but Shaurya's command was faster. The wooden lattice overhead erupted into banyan tendrils, twisting the blowpipe back toward Virudh's throat. He gagged, eyes bulging.
The fight escalated—hook‑blades ricocheting off hardened bark that sparked like metal; poison barbs shredded by sap that clotted into amber armor. Shaurya moved little—he directed, a conductor in a symphony of chlorophyll and fury.
Minutes later, silence.
Korun lay half‑submerged in a thicket of roses; every thorn dripped jade‑green venom and his own blood. Karys was fused to the floor by teak roots, wrists bound above his head, hook‑blades useless. Virudh, still astonishingly calm, knelt amid curling vines, one ear neatly sliced away.
Shaurya approached, vines withdrawing at his heels as if bowing. "Who paid for royal blood?"
Virudh dabbed at the missing ear. "We serve brokers, not flags. But our retainer arrived from Maharatna by way of Indraprastha. Funds traced to the coffers of Mithra Rajya."
"Not Bhujraj?"
"A neutral lamb, or so the ledger claimed." The assassin managed a rueful smile. "If you plant reeds in stagnant water, do not complain when serpents nest."
Shaurya accepted the answer. A teak branch expanded, snapping Virudh's neck.
Prince Udai peeked from behind the toppled cabinet. "Are we quite finished?"
"For now," Shaurya said, retrieving his sabre. "Stay close."
Flight Through a Dying City
Alarm bells tolled from distant towers—the capital awakening to deeper rot. Shaurya wrapped a cloak around Udai and guided him through servants' passages that smelled of damp stone and lotus oil.
The moon had set. Only braziers painted the courtyards in jittering cinnabar. Shaurya felt roots beneath every paving‑slab, each whispering the same word: danger.
At the manor stables they mounted a black war‑mare. Shaurya chose back alleys over main avenues; above rooftops he glimpsed torches sweeping, patrols loyal to uncertain banners. Whispers reached him—King Suryapratap alive but paralyzed, Prime Minister Ranajit spirited from his cell by unknown allies, city gates sealed.
Three of four great states now bleed us from within, he thought. And the serpent‑head is Mithra.
The mare's hooves struck sparks as they rounded the final bend to Shaurya's lakeside estate. Vines obediently unbarred the gate. Inside, all was dark—a wrong, suffocating dark.
Udai slid from the saddle. "Your home feels… colder."
Shaurya strode ahead, spirit‑sense prickling. The entry smelled of crushed petals—and copper.
He found the first body in the hallway: a maid he'd known since Sneha's childhood, throat neatly opened. Beyond, more servants sprawled like broken marionettes, no struggle marks. Professional.
Adrenaline became ice. He ran.
The Nursery of Nightmares
The nursery door was ajar, crimson light flickering inside. Shaurya pushed it open.
The scene was a curated horror:
Arun Raj sat headless against the far wall, hands folded over his own chest in mock serenity. His severed head rested on a windowsill, eyes still tender, lips frozen mid‑prayer.
Sneha Raj hung by silk cords from a ceiling beam, wrists blood‑slicked, toes grazing nothing. She was alive—pulse fluttering in her throat—but her breath rattled like cracked reed pipes.
At the room's center, hands clasped behind his back, stood Dhairyaveer Mithra.
The Patriarch's silver hair was bound with a ribbon too raw to be cloth. His grandfatherly face beamed warmth; his famine‑wolf eyes glittered void. Not a spot marred his ivory silk robes—save for a single streak of red where he'd licked a finger clean.
"Shaurya!" he sang, as though greeting an old chess rival. "And the ever‑charming Prince Udai. What fortuitous timing."
Udai stepped in, face ashen. "Lord Dhairyaveer? This is madness."
"Madness?" Dhairyaveer chuckled, revealing teeth polished like marble. "No, child. This is clarity. An empire must shed rot to grow."
Shaurya's vines writhed at his feet like awakened cobras. His voice was the rumble preceding landslides: "Release my daughter."
"Trade, then," Dhairyaveer said breezily, glancing at Udai. "First prince—or her. Choose."
For one brittle heartbeat, the world stopped.
Then Shaurya seized Udai by the collar and hurled him. The prince arced through lamplight, shrieking: "NOT AGAIN—!"
Dhairyaveer's reflexes, honed by decades of silent war, made him catch the flailing prince on instinct. That instant of divided attention was all Shaurya needed.
Garden of Carnage
The manor shuddered. Roots ruptured carpets, crushing floor‑joists. Wall‑panels split into cascades of glowing sap. A hundred thorn‑vines lashed out, forming a vortex of emerald blades. Dhairyaveer snarled, calling on his own blood‑magic: Arun's pooled lifeblood rose, hardening into crimson glass shards that counterattacked in a lethal storm.
The room became a duel of ecosystems—chlorophyll versus hemoglobin.
Rose thorns, length of stilettos, raked across Dhairyaveer's chest. He retaliated, shaping coagulated blood into serrated whips that flensed vines before they struck. Sneha dangled above the maelstrom, cords fraying under the strain of shifting beams.
Udai, ever resilient in the face of terror, clamped himself to Dhairyaveer's leg like a drunk koala. "Unhand her, you powdered ghoul!"
"Release me, imbecile!"
Their struggle cost Dhairyaveer focus. A root bulged from the oak wardrobe, spearing through his shoulder and tearing his right arm away in a fountain of dark red. The arm hit the floor, fingers still twitching.
"Your flaw," Dhairyaveer hissed, voice bubbling blood, "is sentimentality."
"And yours," Shaurya replied, eyes ember‑bright, "is monologue."
But victory slipped at the finish: Dhairyaveer, bleeding yet smirking, muttered a glyph. The blood beneath him liquefied, swirling into a mirror‑slick pool. He seized Sneha's dangling ankles.
A last‑second gamble. Shaurya hurled a vine—missed by inches.
Dhairyaveer, Sneha in tow, melted into scarlet quicksilver. The pool seeped between floorboards, vanishing with a hiss.
Silence crashed down. Shaurya dismissed the vines; they drooped, exhausted, petals paling from overuse.
Udai staggered, sleeve torn by stray thorns. "General… your daughter—"
"We'll find her," Shaurya said, though each word tasted like ash. He severed Sneha's bonds; only the silk cords fell, empty. A single drop of her blood hit the floor.
From the corner came a soft gurgle. Swaddled in a reed‑woven cradle, baby Rishi blinked up at carnage with serene curiosity. For a breath, his dark eyes flashed the same violet flicker that slept within Vijranta's steel.
Alarm bells tolled louder outside—the coup's tempo quickening. Shaurya cradled his grandson against battered armor. "Hold to me, little seeker. Storms are not done."
Udai steadied himself, spine straightening. "The empire needs two things now: a blade—and a witness. I will be the latter."
Shaurya nodded once, then tore a hole in the ruined wall with entangling roots, stepping into the silent courtyard.
Wind off Lake Aranyani carried distant screams and the crackle of fire. Overhead, clouds the color of iron gathered, roiled by forces earthly and divine.
Shaurya Jaydev, last loyal blade of Kesari Samrajya, slid Vijranta into its scabbard. The scorched 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 the gloom, vines closing like curtains behind him, and somewhere—far beyond mortal hearing—the ancient Vanadevata Spirit hummed, green and terrible, readying the land itself for war.