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- Kamal Asthaan, Ujjain, Bharat -
- February 7, 1939 -
Inside Aryan’s private study, the lamps burned low and warm, pushing the late winter chill into the corners. Outside, the sprawling palace grounds lay hushed under a soft blanket of night — the scent of marigolds drifting through the half-open windows, the distant shuffle of guards and the quiet, rhythmic chant of the wind through carved stone corridors.
Aryan sat behind his wide teak desk, sleeves rolled up, collar loose — a far cry from the imperial figure the newspapers loved to print. Papers lay scattered across the polished wood: crisp reports bound in black string, maps marked in tiny runes, handwritten notes with edges smudged by sleepless fingers. A single cup of tea had gone cold at his elbow.
Karna leaned back in the chair opposite, boots planted wide apart, jacket slung carelessly on the armrest. His hair was still damp from the train ride — he’d co straight from the Western Ghats, carrying the mossy scent of the forest with him. Beneath the tired lines under his eyes, the sa spark of restless purpose flickered — the sa spark Aryan trusted more than any vault or fortress.
"So," Aryan said, voice low but carrying an undercurrent of wry warmth. He tapped a finger against the edge of a recruitnt file. "Eleven thousand. That’s the number we’re settling on?"
Karna cracked a small grin, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. "Eleven thousand, three hundred and twenty-two, technically. If we’re counting the girl from Assam who turned up three days late and nearly beat two instructors black and blue just to prove she belonged."
Aryan chuckled — the sound cutting through the gravity that always clung to this room when the maps ca out. He flipped the file open, eyes scanning the neat columns of nas, codes, training scores. His thumb paused on a small mark: dormant inhuman gene. There were more than a few.
"It’s our biggest intake since we lit the Fla," Aryan murmured, almost to himself. "Farm boys. Fishern. Car chanics. A few bright engineers and a surprising number of runaway librarians." His eyes lifted, warm but sharp. "And now mutants. Over two hundred."
Karna’s grin faded into sothing more thoughtful. He leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees. "Beta-level mostly — manageable, if handled right. A dozen alphas too. That’s where the real ga changes. And the tests—" He tapped a separate page Aryan had pulled aside — the thin paper rattled like dry leaves. "The inhuman gene markers. Barely a handful know they carry it. Could be nothing. Could be... not nothing."
Aryan closed the file gently, as if it were a living thing. "We’ll need watchers on them. Trainers who won’t flinch if sothing old and wild wakes up inside one of ours. The world outside won’t give them patience — we must."
Karna nodded, eyes shadowed but steady. "We’ve co far, Arya. Back then, we were only a few in numbers following your lead. Now we’re sifting through bloodlines across Bharat for its future."
A small silence hung between them — not heavy, but edged with the ghost of old battles and darker days when their victories were paid for in whispers and gunshots in the night.
Aryan broke it first, voice softer now. "And now you are ready to take it further, I presu?"
Karna lifted his gaze, eyes reflecting the lamplight. "Yes, as you already told , the last ti, We’ve rooted deep here. That’s good. But Bharat’s safety won’t end at our borders, not anymore. The west — they watch us rebuild, they’ll watch harder when we outgrow them. We need ears in their streets, hands in their shadows. Factories, ports, newspapers — and the n who own them behind curtains."
Aryan rubbed his thumb over a ring on his finger, thinking. "Where are you headed first...to Arica?"
"Aye. They think they’ve tad magic into patents and stage tricks. But there are cracks, under their cities, sa as here. Broken people, sharp ones. People who owe nothing to flags. And Europe — well. If another storm brews, we’ll know first."
A tired smile tugged at Aryan’s lips — the kind only Karna ever drew out of him. "You’ll vanish for months."
Karna snorted. "Wouldn’t be the first ti. But the Fla won’t gutter out while I’m dancing with Yankees and old empires."
He leaned back, nodding toward another neat stack of papers — these signed not in code, but in careful royal ink.
"Shakti and Nalini," Karna said, more gently now. "They’re ready. Both have teeth sharper than mine, sotis. And brains that could run this continent twice over if they ever tead up properly."
Aryan’s face softened at the ntion of them — the lines on his brow easing like iron warming in firelight. He folded his arms, gaze drifting to the window where the city lights of Ujjain flickered like distant embers.
"They’ve done enough for this country already," he said, more to the dark outside than to Karna. "I asked them to finish their degrees — stand among the scholars, the thinkers. Be more than my shadows. And they did. Even as they ran this machine behind my back."
Karna’s grin returned, wide and wicked. "They didn’t run it behind your back, Arya. They ran it for your back. So you could stand out front and let them move the parts no one sees."
Aryan sighed, but his smile betrayed him — a warmth that made him look more a man than a crowned phantom of Bharat’s future.
"I suppose they’ll keep the embers alive while you play ghost abroad," Aryan said. "And I keep playing Samrat in the sun."
"You’ll be more than that," Karna said. He rose, the old floor creaking under his boots. He stepped around the desk, rested a hand on Aryan’s shoulder — heavy with years of brotherhood and trust that no file or code word could ever bind tighter.
"This Fla we built," Karna said, voice low, eyes bright, "will outlast us. Not because we hold it, but because we trust the right ones to carry it when we must step away."
Aryan clasped his friend’s wrist — two boys once hiding in a jungle hut, now rulers of shadows and sunlight alike.
"Be safe, Karna," Aryan murmured. "If you find monsters, make them ours."
Karna’s grin was all teeth now. "And if they won’t co willingly, I’ll send word. You’ve always had a talent for rewriting monsters into legends."
Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the lamps. Sowhere in the distance, the first cries of a temple bell rose through the sleeping city.
Inside, two n — a Samrat and his shadow — stood in the hush that follows a promise kept alive too long to break now. And sowhere far beyond these walls, eleven thousand silent embers waited in hidden halls, in crowded city alleys, in villages by dark rivers — ready to guard a dream no crown could wear alone.
—
- University of Bombay -
- February 8, 1939 -
The midday sun filtered through the high windows of the university cafeteria, gilding everything in a warm, lazy glow. Laughter and the clatter of cutlery rose and fell in gentle waves, but around one table near the far end, an invisible circle seed to hold the noise at bay — not out of fear, but reverence.
There sat Shakti and Nalini, side by side, books piled around their untouched tea. A half-eaten plate of vada pav rested between them, but it was clear neither of them really cared much for food just now. They were deep in soft, companionable talk — a giggle here, a teasing poke of a finger there. Two young won who looked like they might be discussing lectures or dance recitals.
Yet everyone who passed — from wide-eyed first-years balancing heavy books to professors pretending to be absorbed in their files — stole glances. So couldn’t help but stare outright. Whispers blood at the edges of the room: Maheshvara’s pillars, soone murmured. His heartbeat.
They were beautiful, yes — but it was more than their dusky glow and the proud tilt of their chins. It was the sense that these two carried sothing vast behind their smiles — a promise that the new Bharat, fierce and tender in equal asure, was no longer a man’s alone to shape.
A young cleaning boy paused by the pillar, gawking until a kind-eyed clerk nudged him gently away. Even the oldest professor near the window tipped his head in quiet respect when Shakti caught his eye and gave him that small, bright grin that had won half the student union to her side last winter.
Between them, Nalini brushed an ink stain off her thumb and laughed. "You know, if you keep smiling at every old uncle who bows to you, they’ll na the entire alumni hall after you next."
Shakti snorted, covering her laugh behind her palm. "Better that than another bronze statue of so colonial leftover."
Nalini was about to reply when she felt it — that soft, tingling warmth blooming under the skin of her wrist. She glanced at Shakti, whose eyes were already dropping to the mark hidden by her bangle — the faint outline of the Hidden Fla seal glowing like an ember under flesh.
An accident. A village hospital. Collapsed roof. Trapped patients. Too close for anyone else to reach first.
They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. Nalini only nodded once. Shakti pushed her chair back so smoothly the legs didn’t scrape.
As they stepped into the open courtyard outside the cafeteria, the warm chatter behind them faded to a hush that spread like ripples on a pond. People stood where they were — cups halfway to lips, papers paused mid-turn — watching these two figures stride into the bright afternoon.
Then, with a soft rush of wind and a shimr of golden runes at their ankles, they lifted off the red stone courtyard. Nalini rose first, hair lifting around her like a silk banner. Shakti followed, a calm force under her feet pushing the earth gently away.
Soone gasped. Soone else whispered a soft prayer. A girl near the pillar clutched her notebook to her chest, eyes wide with hope more than awe.
And then they were gone — two bright shapes slicing into the sky above Bombay’s dos and old clock towers, headed south where the hills curled around the quiet green heart of a village now crying for help.
—
- A village outside Bombay -
- An hour later -
Dust still hung in the air where the old hospital wing had given way, bricks and beams fallen into a snarled heap. A wail rose from the back of the crowd — families pressed close, too afraid to step inside, too desperate to walk away.
When Shakti and Nalini landed by the broken courtyard wall, the village headman nearly stumbled trying to bow and speak at the sa ti. Shakti’s hand on his arm steadied him.
"How many inside?" she asked, voice calm as stone.
"Six, maybe seven — a woman who just gave birth — and the baby —"
Nalini was already moving, boots crunching over broken tiles. Shakti followed, eyes scanning the fallen beams, runes flickering just under her palms as she pressed them to the cracked doorfra. With a breath, the old timber shifted — the crack of splintering wood replaced by a gentle creak as she forced the rubble apart just enough for Nalini to slip through.
Inside, the air was thick and close — dust, antiseptic, and the faint sharpness of fear. A muffled cry led Nalini deeper, stepping over a fallen cabinet. She spotted the new mother first — pinned by a crossbeam, her face wet with tears but her arms curled protectively around a tiny, red-faced baby.
Shakti appeared behind her, eyes quick. She lifted a hand — the beam trembled, then rose an inch at a ti, held by a hum of energy that pulsed through the splintered wood until the woman could drag herself free, baby pressed to her chest.
Behind them, Nalini guided two nurses out from under a half-buried doorway, their faces pale but alive. Another trapped man groaned, foot pinned by stone — Nalini crouched, strength rippling through her arms as she lifted it like it weighed nothing.
In ten minutes, the ruins had given up every hidden breath. By the ti Shakti and Nalini stepped back into the warm dusk light, the courtyard had beco a sea of grateful hands and hushed weeping.
The young mother, cradling her daughter in a rough blanket, sank to her knees before the two won. Words tumbled from her lips — thanks too big for one voice to carry.
When she lifted her eyes, she whispered fiercely, "We will na her Shakti. And if another daughter cos, she will be Nalini. So they know what strength looks like when the world tries to bury it."
Nalini’s eyes glistened, but she only smiled and bent to touch the baby’s tiny head.
"Raise her strong," Shakti said softly, her palm brushing the woman’s hair back from her brow. "Make her free."
Behind them, the villagers watched not just two heroes, but two promises — flesh and blood reminders that Bharat’s daughters would never again stand at the back of the crowd or wait for permission to fly.
And above the broken hospital’s ruin, the first stars flickered awake — tiny lights mirroring the quiet embers carried now in every heart that had seen what these won could do when the sky called them higher.
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