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- United States of America -
- May 5, 1939 -
For the next few days, Karna hardly slept. Sleep felt like a luxury when shadows were your kingdom and every secret you stole tonight could save lives tomorrow. He moved like a breeze through the veins of American cities — New York, Chicago, Boston — never staying long enough for a scent trail to form. He'd sit quietly In a greasy spoon diner beside dockworkers, or stand in the smoke-hazed corner of a club where the music was too loud and the deals too quiet. Everywhere he went, he left threads behind — people stitched into place, ordinary on the outside, eyes wide open on the inside.
His subordinates had come with him from Bharat in ships that had no names on any ledger that mattered. Now, they wore other skins: dockhands, cooks, railway porters, janitors sweeping hotel floors where foreign dignitaries whispered behind closed doors. Some slipped into unions where word traveled fast and careless. A few found home in the darker streets — stepping right into the worn boots of American gangs who thought they ruled the night. Karna never liked using his people that way, but he knew the truth — you couldn't fight rot if you didn't first live in it.
One by one, they made contact with old rackets, bribed a stool pigeon here, scared a small-time thug straight there. Some went deeper in places like the Hell's Kitchen — slowly claiming corners of the underworld the American police pretended they didn't see. It wasn't about profit. It was about eyes and ears — the kind of eyes that noticed who sold guns to whom, who whispered to foreign spies, who planned to bleed Bharat from across an ocean.
Every night, Karna gathered the pieces. Some nights he stood on a roof above Brooklyn's rattling train lines, talking quietly through the Hidden Flame's enchanted seal pressed cold to his palm — Anaya's voice crackling into his ear even from thousands of miles away.
She'd done more in days than some spies did in years. Disguised as Corbin, she moved through secure bases like a phantom in uniform — filing fake reports, steering real orders, slipping Karna classified chatter about troop movements, secret test sites, whispered suspicions that the government pretended didn't exist.
Hydra, though — that was still the nest no torch could easily reach. Even Anaya, for all her gift, had to tread carefully. One wrong step and they'd smell the lie on her skin. Karna knew she'd get there — she always did — but he checked in more often than she liked, just to hear her voice and know she was still fighting. He trusted her with the work — but he still carried the fear for her like a blade under his ribs.
When he could, Karna visited Sofia and her family. Just once, a quiet night when the city's lights glowed soft behind a fogged window and Sofia's mother fussed over him like he was her own lost boy, even the young Lila, Sofia's younger sister, treated him like her older brother. They talked about nothing and everything — laughter, new inventions, the things Aryan might do next. When he left, he promised he'd come back soon. They knew he would — and they knew he wouldn't say when.
He knew Hydra's eyes were out there. Watching the Rajvanshi engineers, the Kalachakra Group suits who came with polite smiles, lucrative business opportunities in Europe and cutting-edge blueprints that made American tycoons drool. Elias was already too valuable to hide — so Karna did the next best thing: he made himself disappear while never leaving at all.
His P'otoki'esis was more than vanishing — it was rewriting light until truth bent out of shape. The version of him that boarded the Rajvanshi ship home — chatting with engineers, shaking hands at the docks — was perfect down to the stray hair ruffled by the Atlantic wind. An illusion that would fool even the sharpest Hydra rat peering through binoculars from a crumbling warehouse roof. When that ship sailed, it carried his ghost.
The real Karna had no plans to take the safe route. He watched his mirage vanish into the Atlantic's darkness. Then he stepped off the pier alone.
At the edge of the sleeping city, where the last street lamp gave up its fight with the night, Karna stood barefoot on wet stone, wind cutting past his collar. He breathed in deep — salt, cold, a hint of oil drifting from some far-off tanker.
He closed his eyes and let his mind split the world into currents of light — every photon a stair if he bent it right. His heartbeat steadied. Muscles tightened, coiled, ready to throw him not into the sea but across it.
And then he ran.
One foot slapped the shallow surf. Then another. The ocean rose beneath him — cold claws that should have dragged him down. But the light bent, the air clung tight around him, holding him just above the waves. His feet kissed the Atlantic's skin again and again, faster than any eye could follow. A blur of motion, a phantom sprinting over black water while the moon trailed him like a silent witness.
His people were in place. Anaya was inside the wolf's den. The Hidden Flame burned quietly under foreign stars. And Karna — he was already racing east, carrying the spark across a world ready to be remade from the shadows out.
Above him, the wind roared its cold applause. Ahead, Europe waited.
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- Kamal Asthaan, Ujjain -
- May 6, 1939 -
Ujjain, Bharat's new heart, hummed quietly under the fading glow of the evening sun. The sprawling gardens of Kamal Asthaan — Aryan's palace of blooming lotus marble and quiet pools — shimmered with soft lanterns and drifting flower petals. Somewhere, hidden among the neatly tended paths, the world's noise fell away until only the rustle of leaves and the soft splash of a fountain remained.
Aryan lay back against a low stone bench carved with old mantras, his hand resting over Shakti's as she leaned close. Her hair — that brown shade the sun loved to set aflame — brushed against his shoulder every time the breeze dared to move it. Her green eyes caught the last bit of daylight, reflecting back the kind of warmth that made even a man like him feel less like a god and more like just a man in love.
He turned his head slightly, studying her face like he was memorising it for the thousandth time. Then he laughed — low, almost shy for a man who could bend time if he felt like it.
"Tell me something, Shakti," he murmured, fingers brushing over her knuckles. "How does a girl like you, who could tear mountains apart if she felt like it, who could snap her fingers and watch stars dance — how does she let her fool of a future husband share his heart with someone else?"
Shakti's answer came not in words at first but in the gentle squeeze of her fingers closing around his. She shifted until she was half-turned toward him, the folds of her soft sari whispering against the stone. When she looked at him, there was no grandeur of cosmic power in her eyes — only that warm, stubborn love she'd always carried for him.
"Aryan," she said, her voice a calm hush under the garden's quiet. "Do you really think I'd ever feel replaced? You and I… we're not just bound by vows or rings or some ancient words. We're tied together. Soul to soul. I chose you — not just as my love but as my anchor."
She lifted their joined hands, pressing them to her chest so he could feel the steady pulse beneath. "This… is you, too. My power needs you to stay whole. I need you to stay whole. Nalini doesn't change that — she's my best friend, my sister in all but blood. She's loved you for longer than she'll ever admit, you know. Proper royal girls like us… we're taught not to say it first."
A playful spark flitted through her eyes then. She nudged him lightly with her shoulder. "So you — our mighty Samrat — maybe it's time you stop waiting for her to confess. Be a man for once, Aryan Rajvanshi. Go propose to her properly, before she explodes from holding it in."
Aryan couldn't help the soft sigh that broke through his grin. He tugged her closer until she was half in his lap, half balanced against his chest. The scent of lotus and fresh grass mingled with the faint trace of her hair oil — simple, human things that somehow meant more than any throne or title.
"You know," he said quietly, brushing his lips against her hairline, "sometimes I wonder if you're the true ruler here. Telling your emperor what to do."
She tilted her chin up, meeting his eyes with a mock-serious frown. "Of course I am. And don't forget it."
He laughed, then kissed her — a soft press that deepened when her hand slid up to cup his cheek. A promise unspoken, yet older than any crown they wore.
When they pulled apart, Aryan kept his forehead against hers, eyes half-closed. "I'll love you forever, Shakti. Nalini too — if she'll have me. But you — you are my breath, my soul, my first and last."
Shakti's smile bloomed slow and bright. "I know."
Reluctantly, Aryan glanced over her shoulder at the palace that never really slept — the world of urgent petitions, endless papers, and distant ministers who'd surely come knocking any moment. He exhaled once, resigned but amused.
"Hold on," he said. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat — and somewhere deep inside him, reality shifted. Threads of his own existence spun apart, weaving another him — perfect down to the faint scar on his wrist, the same heartbeat, the same mind. The second Aryan rose unseen and slipped into the palace halls — ready to nod solemnly at councilors, sign decrees, answer questions no one else could.
The real Aryan cracked one eye open, grin crooked, a boy again in a god's skin. "There. One emperor here, one emperor there. Both terribly busy."
Shakti only arched a brow. "And what about us?"
He didn't answer with words. He caught her hand, tugged her to her feet. Before the garden breeze could finish carrying away the last petal that fell from the lotus trees, Aryan stepped forward — and the world folded in on itself.
One heartbeat they stood in the moonlit quiet of Kamal Asthaan. The next, the garden was gone, replaced by a cliffside in Santorini where the Aegean glittered silver under starlight. His Void Step left nothing behind but a swirl of displaced air and the faint echo of laughter.
In the hush of a foreign sky, Aryan turned to his Shakti — his anchor, his equal, his first queen — and pressed his forehead to hers again.
"Tonight," he whispered, voice warm against her lips, "we belong to only us."
And far behind them, Bharat's heart kept beating — steady, unshaken, watched over by a ghost emperor in marble halls, while the real one wandered the world with his soul wrapped safe in another's hands.
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