"One pestle. One woman. A hundred shadows."
Chapter One: The Whispering Wall
The wind howled like a beast caged within the ramparts of Chitradurga Fort. The towering granite bastions loomed against a bleeding dusk, their stones worn smooth by time and war. Shadows stretched long across the corridors, and somewhere in the echoing silence, the earth seemed to breathe.
Obavva stood barefoot on the threshold of her stone hut, the pestle in her hand slick from pounding millet. Her husband, Kalanayak—one of the guards stationed near the watch tower—was late. Again.
But that wasn't what bothered her.
The wind. It carried something tonight. Not sound. Not scent. Something deeper.
A whisper.
She turned slowly toward the bastion wall, the one nearest the Akkakindi—an ancient crevice nestled between two boulders, said to be sealed long ago. A forgotten slit, narrow enough for a child to squeeze through, now half-hidden by creeping vines and silence.
But tonight… the silence had teeth.
Obavva placed the pestle down quietly and moved toward the wall, her feet brushing against scattered dry leaves. The fort behind her lay still—soldiers laughing over cheap liquor, royal messengers carrying scrolls of panic to Maharaja Madakari Nayaka, and the distant throb of war drums from Hyder Ali's encampment, now perilously close.
As Obavva approached the overgrown fissure, she paused. The air around it was… wrong.
Still.
And then she heard it.
A faint scrape—stone against metal.
Her body tensed.
She crept closer, eyes narrowing. Through the leaves, something shimmered in the failing light. Metal. A helmet.
Obavva's heart slammed against her ribs.
There, wedged half inside the crevice, was a man—an enemy soldier—crawling silently, eyes fixed ahead, a dagger clutched between his teeth.
Another whisper.
More shadows shifting behind him.
More coming.
It wasn't just a breach. It was an invasion.
And no one knew.
Obavva stepped back slowly, pulse thundering in her ears. She looked around—no guards, no patrols, nothing but the crows circling overhead and the enemy emerging like rats from the earth.
Her breath caught. If she screamed, they'd hear. If she ran, they'd vanish back into the tunnel and return when the fort slept deeper.
There was no time to fetch a sword.
There was no time to think.
She turned back to her hut. Her eyes fell on the pestle—onake, thick and iron-bound, a mundane weapon of grain and toil.
Her hand gripped it before her mind did.
She returned like a shadow, bare feet gliding over stone, hair unbound in the wind. She pressed herself flat against the wall, just inches from the tunnel's mouth.
And waited.
The first soldier emerged fully, turning to signal the next one in the dark. In that moment, Obavva struck. The pestle came down in a clean arc, cracking his skull with a sickening crunch. Blood sprayed the vines. His body collapsed in silence.
The next man slithered forward, confused by the delay.
He never saw her.
Obavva moved like a ghost, her face blank, her eyes burning. Again. And again. The pestle rose and fell, swift, brutal, merciless. She became rhythm. Death. A one-woman war.
They never made a sound.
Within minutes, a dozen corpses lay limp at her feet, half in the tunnel, half out—throats slit, skulls shattered, eyes wide with silent shock. The narrow passage choked with blood and betrayal.
But it wasn't over.
She could hear them whispering from within the tunnel. Unsure. Hesitant. They sensed something had gone wrong.
Obavva stepped back, breathing hard.
A boot scraped against stone behind her.
She turned sharply—pestle raised—and froze.
Kalanayak.
He stared at her, eyes wide in horror, then at the bodies piled beside the crevice.
"Obavva… what… what in God's name—"
She didn't blink. "They were coming. Through here."
Kalanayak rushed forward, examining the tunnel, his face drained of color.
"By the gods… they found the Akkakindi."
"I found them," she said, voice flat.
He swallowed hard. "I need to alert the commander. The Maharaja—he must know—"
He turned to run, but she caught his wrist. "Wait."
"What?"
Obavva looked into the tunnel. "There's more."
Kalanayak hesitated. "Then we collapse it. Seal it. Set fire to it."
"No." Her eyes narrowed. "We follow it."
He blinked. "What?"
"They didn't dig this themselves. Someone showed them. Someone inside helped them."
Kalanayak's expression darkened.
"There's a traitor in the fort," she whispered. "And this tunnel may lead straight to them."
They returned with two lanterns and swords. Obavva kept her pestle. The tunnel yawned like a throat waiting to swallow them whole.
They crawled through viscous dark, past blood-streaked stone, past bodies cooling under moss. The air grew damp, the walls tight. Faint voices echoed up from ahead.
Obavva pressed a finger to her lips.
They moved slower.
Torches flickered in a chamber up ahead—far below the fort's foundations. Here, between earth and bone, stood three men. One wore Mysore armor. The other two—one of them shockingly—wore the insignia of the Chitradurga palace.
Obavva's grip tightened.
"...We open the gate from within tonight," said one voice.
"Obavva must not know," muttered another. "She's dangerous."
"She's nobody," hissed the third. "A woman pounding millet in the shadows."
Obavva smiled grimly. So they did know her.
Now, they'd know her fury.
She turned to Kalanayak. "Go. Tell the commander. Tell him there's a rat beneath the stone. I'll hold them here."
"Alone?"
She nodded. "One pestle. Three skulls. I like those odds."
End of Chapter One