When my eyes fluttered open, it felt as if I had surfaced from a lifetime of dreams. But they were not mere dreams—they were memories. Memories that did not belong to me, yet they somehow did.
I recalled being Amogh Ashanra, the son of Samanta Prathiraj and Samanti Yamvitha of the janapada of Aranyavarta.
The people sang praises of his valor. 'The man who cheated death a dozen times,' they'd say.
But even a man of legends cannot barter forever with the wheel of karma.
Samanta Prathiraj, though an accomplished warrior, was unversed in the intrigues of court. Had the janapada been left to his dispensation, it would have collapsed a decade ago.
It was his wife, Samanti Yamvitha Ashanra, originally from the janapada of Matsyanagara, who managed to keep Aranyavarta afloat.
Samanti Yamvitha was the thread that bound the janapada together. Using her sharp wits and alluring charm, she managed the royal court in Father's stead.
Despite their indifference to the deeply ingrained corruption within the janapada, the sabha remained cautious of Samanti Yamvitha, circling her like vultures, wary of a woman who saw too much.
This winter, the janapada of Simhagiri called upon my father to aid them in their resistance against the rajya of Indramaya.
They were victorious, but what victory comes without sacrifice?
This time, a tryst with destiny demanded the blood of a man who could tip the scales of karma in their favor.
This time, it was Samanta Prathiraj Ashanra.
The slayer of men, finally put to rest on a bed of arrows. That was his cruel fate.
Left behind was a legacy of four children and a widow.
A month had passed since his bones turned to ash, and silence had smothered the manor ever since.
****
I stirred. A gentle hand was brushing my hair. When my eyes opened, I found my mother, Samanti Yamvitha.
"Oh, thank the gods. What would I have done without you, my son?" She whispered, voice breaking.
Her hand pressed against my chest, trembling as though to reassure herself that my heart still beat.
When I glanced at her, I noticed that her once wavy hair was messy, her kohl was smudged, and her face was streaked with tears. However, there was something different about her...she had a smile on her face.
She had been hollow for days, lost to sorrow, and yet now, beside my bed, she clung to me as though I was the last tether keeping her from the abyss.
"Your mother abandoned you. Forgive me, Amogh. For I failed you. Forgive your mother for leaving you and your siblings when you most needed me."
She spoke in fragments, broken by sobs that spilled between her words. One of her hands was trailing up and down my chest, and the other was stroking my hair.
That is when I noticed that we were on my bed and my head was in her lap. Tears rolled from her cheeks—warm and steady, falling onto my face like rain.
Her words made the memory resurface—the bitterness in my throat, the agony in my chest, and the darkness closing in.
'Those memories were definitely not mine, but then why did they seem so real?' I wondered.
"What happened to me...Mother?" I whispered. The word came so naturally to me whenever I looked at her.
Finally starting to calm down a little, she wiped away her tears, and with her kohl still smudged, she said with a hardened face, "Poison. Someone wished to take you away from me, my son. The gods favored us. For Jayak stood outside your door when he heard your pleas for help. He administered a concoction at once, which saved your life."
The words froze me.
'Had the nobles known that Mother would ask me to succeed Father? Are they willing to commit treason to secure their positions?' My mind was rattled.
"But why?" My voice cracked. "Why poison a child of sixteen summers?"
She looked into me then, her gaze sharper than any blade. "Because you are no child. You are the heir of Ashanra."
The weight of it pressed down on me, suffocating.
'Heir? Me? I am nothing but a shadow to Pranvi's persistence and Varanth's valor. Wait...what prompted that thought? Are there two sets of memories residing in my head?' My thoughts were running in circles.
"But Varanth and Pranvi..."
Then the memories returned to haunt me again.
****
Pranvi, my sister. I still remembered her, sitting by her window, watching the duels in the courtyard with longing in her eyes; not for the men but for their swords and shields. She had once sparred among them, her blade quick, her stance sure.
But when she came of age, the whispers began.
A girl with a sword unsettled the sabhasad. Father, pressed by their sneers, forbade her training.
She withdrew into silence after that, her laughter fading into shadows.
Varanth, her twin and my brother, was the opposite. A warrior by blood, he had marched beside Father since fourteen, Dragonwrath sword in hand. He carried himself like the battlefield already belonged to him.
Where Pranvi's spirit had been caged, Varanth's blazed untamed.
And then there was me, Amogh Ashanra. Neither scholar nor warrior, neither admired nor envied. Mother had tutored me herself in the art of diplomacy, strategy, battlefield, and the endless intricacies of court. I had absorbed them, yes, but never with the fire my siblings held in their pursuits.
To Father, I had been the quiet one, the weak one. I had seen it in his pitying gaze.
And yet here was Mother, telling me the impossible—the poisoned cup had found me because I, not they, was next in line.
****
Snapping me out of my thought, Mother said, "Pranvi longs for her sword, not the seat, and Varanth had expressed his ambition for the battlefield ages ago. He is a martial man like your father. His seat is among the generals on the battlefield and not the conniving sycophants of court."
As she spoke, I remembered the patriarchal nature of the janapada and Varanth's passion for the battlefield. It all started to make sense then.
With her hand steadying me, I rose slowly.
"Mother, how am I to replace Father? I stand incapable of executing such a demanding endeavor."
Her palm cupped my cheek, and her voice grew hard with something dangerous. "You will not fill his place. You shall carve your own. But know this: those who tried to take your life are the same vultures that circle us now. Those wretched sabhasad smile at our grief as they scheme for power. They think us broken. They think us prey."
Her eyes burned with a newfound resolve. "They shall witness the wrath of the kula of Ashanra!"
For the first time since Father's death, I saw it—the steel behind her sorrow and the fire behind her grief. My mother, who had held the janpada together with charm and wit, now spoke with the fury of a goddess.
In that moment, I believed her capable of conquering the world.
I reached for her hand, wiping away her tears.
"Fret not, Mother. I shall do what you ask of me, but I am not certain I can meet your or our people's expectations."
The words came to me so naturally. I wanted to refuse outright but the thought of losing her stripped me of my convictions.
She looked at me with eyes full of admiration, but they quickly turned bare.
"You need not tread this path alone, son. Your siblings and I shall walk alongside you." She said while caressing my face and kissing my cheeks for what seemed like the hundredth time.
Her words wrapped around me like armor. For the first time since the pyre, I let myself breathe without worry.
"First, we cast down those defiled by greed. They tried to harm my family, and now they shall face the judgement of the gods, administered by a mother." She said it with a face devoid of all emotions but hatred.
'If this woman were to become a warrior someday, I think we could conquer the world.' I thought with a wry smile.
Upon witnessing that, her face finally lit up, her eyes returned to their usual glinty and dreamy expression, and a smile spread across her face. After what felt like an eternity of agony, she finally laughed.
The laugh that could light up my whole world, the laugh that was only reserved for her children, and the laugh that I could die for.
I instinctively hugged her, and she reciprocated, hugging me even tighter.
I was happy.
We sat in silence for a moment, her arms around me. Her laughter, faint but real, and I wondered how long had it been since I heard it.
I clung to it, vowing never to let it vanish again.
"Mother, what about her? Is she coming?" I asked without realizing.
Her smile deepened. "Yes, son. Ira is coming home."
'Iri, it has been too long, sister.'