Narrator 's Pov.
Arav lay on the cold marble, blood pooling beneath him, eyes locked on his wife. "Please... don't do this," he managed, desperation drying his throat, hand reaching, trembling, for Niya.
The masked man gripped Niya's neck tighter, his tone almost mocking. "Niya, hadh mein rehna chahiye tha. Tumne apni line cross ki hai, and look where it's brought you."
(Niya, you should have stayed within your limits. You crossed the line, and look where it has brought you.)
A knife flashed—fabric and skin tearing in one ruthless motion. Niya let out a strangled cry, but her eyes—fierce and unbroken—never left her attacker's. Even as poison stung her veins, the fire within only grew sharper.
He sneered, as if searching for weakness. "Look at you. Even broken, you're dangerous. You could've lived like a queen. But nai, stubbornness ka nuksan ab hai."
(Look at you. Even broken, you are dangerous. You could have lived like a queen. But no, stubbornness is your loss now.)
A crooked smile flickered across Niya's lips as she shot back, her voice steady and biting:
"Nahi, raani banne ke liye sirf taqat nahi—zakhmon par muskurane ka junoon chahiye, jo tere bas ki baat nahi. Raj chhin sakta hai tu, magar main voh shikar hoon jo shikanjey mein hoke bhi shikari bana reh jaata hai. Tu mujhe haara samjhe, par meri haar se teri haar shuru hoti hai."
(No, becoming a queen needs more than just power — it requires the passion to smile through wounds, which you cannot possess. You may snatch my throne, but I am the prey who becomes a hunter even when trapped. You may consider me defeated, but your defeat begins with my fall.)
He paused, a flicker of anger in his eyes. "Sab kuch haar gayi ho, and still so much attitude?"
(You've lost everything, and yet you still have so much attitude?)
Her smirk sharpened. "Attitude nahi, ye toh meri fitrat hai. Tootna toh seekha hi nahi—main voh aag hoon jo hawaon ko bhi sulga de. Chhoo ke toh dekho, aaj tapoge; kal apni hi raakh ko sametoge."
(It's not attitude; it's my nature. I've never learned to break — I am the fire that burns even the winds. Just try to touch me, today you'll burn; tomorrow you'll gather your own ashes.)
He pressed the blade to her throat. "You think you're tough?"
Niya's eyes flashed like steel—a warning, deadly and clear. "Jitna soch sakta hai, main usse zyada khatarnaak hoon. Mera gussa teri barbadi likhega—aur teri maut, bas shuruaat hogi."
(I am more dangerous than you can imagine. My anger will write your destruction—and your death is only the beginning.)
Arav, gathering the last of his strength, shouted, "Get your filthy hands off her, bastard! I swear I'll—" The words froze as the masked man aimed the gun. A single, echoing shot silenced him forever.
Everything froze. Time itself seemed to splinter apart as Niya's strength finally gave way; her knees crashed against the marble, the cold biting through her skin. For a moment, she was suspended in a nightmare—the lifeless body of her husband beside her, the echo of gunfire lingering like poison in the air. She drew in a breath jagged with agony, and from the pit of her soul, a scream tore free—a sound so raw, so grief-stricken, it felt as if it could shatter glass.
Her vision blurred with tears and blood, but the horror before her stayed sharp. She reached, hands shaking, towards Arav's unmoving form—desperate, helpless, broken. Her voice, splintered and hoarse, barely found the words: "Why? Why us?" Each syllable was soaked in disbelief and pain, as if her whole life was unraveling in front of her eyes. "What did we ever do to deserve this?" Her world—her love, her hope, her future—had been ripped away while she watched, utterly powerless.
In that agony, Niya's scream was more than pain; it was a soul's lament for everything lost—a mother, a wife, a woman watching every piece of her world crumble in a moment she could never undo.
The masked man knelt, shadow looming. "Game over, Niya." His hand hovered, menacing—but his eyes seemed to hesitate.
(Game over, Niya.)
Niya's gaze blazed, defiance undimmed. "You think this is the end? Mera darr sirf tum jaise logon ke liye hai jo andheron mein rehte hain. You'll never break me." Her words carved the air—low, trembling, but unstoppable.
(You think this is the end? I only fear people like you who live in shadows. You will never break me.)
For a breath, his hand faltered. Something about her, some secret beneath the pain, unsettled even him.
Niya's thoughts flashed back to her daughter, now alone. Grief and regret tangled in her chest; she mouthed, "Sorry," as tears fell. And then, softly but fiercely, she bit her tongue, letting blood fill her mouth—a last, wordless act of battle.
Niya's strength faded with each breath. Her eyes held that fierce glimmer as they slid shut. The world slipped away—the pain, the loss, the villain's creeping shadow—everything dissolving as she collapsed onto the marble.
A sacred silence lingered. Yet behind a cracked mirror, a fifteen-year-old girl battered her fists against the glass—blood and tears streaking, her "Mom! Dad!" ricocheting unheard. Avayanna's final, desperate scream tipped into blackness, her world swallowed whole.
Suddenly—darkness shifted.
Avayanna jolted awake. Her heart pounded against her chest, sweat trailing down her neck. Her body lay frozen; breath came in ragged pulls as the nightmare's talons loosened but refused to leave. The familiar shadows of her room were still there, but for now nothing, nowhere, felt safe.
She sat in the gray light, paralyzed, as memory and nightmare blurred together. For most, nightmares faded with morning. For her, night was simply when truth stopped pretending to be a story.
The horror replayed: her mother's blazing eyes, the mask's cruel smirk, the staccato bark of the gun. The coppery tang of blood always seemed fresh in her nose. Sometimes she still felt pain shot through her fists from pounding the mirror, could still taste the empty, helpless screams that never pierced the glass. Powerless, invisible—a fifteen-year-old girl who hadn't saved anyone.
The guilt clung to her; every morning she wore it like a second skin. She relived her father's plea, her mother's unflinching defiance—saw, over and over, "Sorry" on her mother's lips, the final gift of a woman who'd always been more fire than flesh. There were days she believed maybe if she had fought harder, tried more desperately—somehow, things could have been different.
She learned to let those doubts simmer beneath the mask she wore for the world. She learned to answer cruel taunts with silence, to survive each day by hiding every sharp edge, to walk through the house trailing meekness and shadow. But at night, when everything else faded, she met her ghosts—her mother's fury and her father's desperate courage—over and over again. Sometimes she wondered if the curse was not only that she survived, but that she could never stop reliving that night.
Yet beneath all the pain, deep inside the hollowed-out ache, something ancient and fierce kept burning. For her parents, for herself, for every lost promise, she clung to the belief that she would not let them go forgotten or unavenged. Each nightmare was both a wound and a warning—a scar, a resistance.
Only she knew what storms she survived in silence.
A faint light filtered through her curtains, barely easing the ache inside. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the pain held fast. The wound time refused to heal burned inside her, as relentless as the slow crawl of dawn.
Downstairs, reality returned in her aunt's grating summons, "Avyanna! niche aa, abhi!"
(Avyanna! Get down, now!)
Only her grandfather's gentle voice wrapped her in warmth: "Arey, kya hua? Itni subah kyun chilla rahi ho?"
(Hey, what happened? Why are you shouting so early in the morning?)
Drifting between night terrors and morning routine, Avayanna remembered the look in her mother's eyes—never break, never beg, never forgive. The truth—her truth—would blaze back through the shadows. For now, she moved quietly, invisible among them, her heart a secret flame. She would watch, endure, and remember everything.
The legacy of fire, after all, was hers alone to carry.