The British ruled India with paper and powder.But India ruled itself through thrones — three hundred and more — scattered like stubborn islands in a rising colonial sea.
Each with a crest.Each with a court.Each clinging to names older than the empire itself.
Some were petty.Some were proud.All were afraid.
Not just of the British.
But of irrelevance.
The letters arrived in red wax.
Short. Elegant. Anonymous in name, clear in tone.
"You've kept your flag high. But the ocean is rising. Let us talk before it swallows all."
Seventeen such letters were delivered across six weeks — to carefully selected representatives of princely states:
Mewar
Baroda
Rewa
Bikaner
Travancore
Mysore
Kashmir
Not the largest. Not the loudest.
But the most strategically nervous.
Men who had watched Delhi stir. Who heard rumors of missing British files, a new salt consortium in Rajputana, judges who answered quicker than they used to.
Men who understood a shift was coming, even if they didn't know its name yet.
They came one by one.
Never in official robes.
Always through side paths.
Their names were never written down. Their guards were always left outside.
The meetings happened in a room beneath the temple ruins near Kotla — a chamber rebuilt with hidden brick corridors, silent doorways, and seats for those who still called themselves kings.
Vikram didn't greet them as a soldier or priest.
He greeted them like a man who understood what it meant to hold a fragile kingdom with both hands.
The envoy from Mewar was the first to speak.
"If you're raising a rebellion, don't bring us into it. We have too much to lose."
Vikram only nodded.
Then passed him a dossier.
It listed:
The British trade agent's secret revenue ledgers
The real grain tariffs being funneled away from Udaipur
The tax evasion permitted to a Muslim land baron favored by London
And letters signed by the Political Agent, authorizing all of it
The envoy read in silence.
When he looked up, his hands were shaking.
Vikram spoke plainly.
"I am not asking you to revolt. I'm offering you a seat in a future where you are not an ornament."
"A place where your throne governs, not just entertains."
The man from Rewa came next.
He asked for evidence of Vikram's reach.
Vikram handed him a coin — minted from the same silver the Rewa treasury had lost three years ago in an "inventory error." The king had never recovered it.
The envoy stared.
The inscription on the coin read:"Bharat does not forget."
He left without saying a word.
From Travancore came a scholar-prince.
He wanted to understand Magicnet.
Vikram didn't explain it.
He just touched the prince's wrist for three seconds.
Then whispered: "Recite the poem you forgot as a child."
The prince blinked.
Then whispered, in Sanskrit, a verse he hadn't heard in thirty years.
He fell to his knees.
They all returned to their courts changed.
No flags lowered. No declarations made.
But by month's end:
The Bikaner grain reserve redirected its overflow to a Delhi depot controlled by Vikram.
Mysore's iron shipments quietly bypassed British checkpoints.
Travancore's naval outpost began training new recruits — under a revised curriculum.
Rewa removed its British advisor citing "medical leave" — the man was never found.
Vikram didn't ask them to betray the British.
He simply showed them the leash they were on.
And offered them scissors.
Not all responded.
Some laughed.
Some sent polite refusals.
One raja even forwarded the letter to his Political Agent.
That man disappeared before dawn.
His last known memory — modified through a Magicnet contact in the typing pool — was of falling into the Yamuna.
No body was recovered.
No questions were raised.
But the shift had begun.
Not with fire.
But with trust.
Old rulers — used to isolation, suspicion, ceremonial parades — had finally seen a man who didn't want their throne, but wanted their land to survive.
And in him, they saw a king without a crown.
One who ruled through action.
And so, they began to send tributes.
Not gold.
But people.
Princes for training. Land agents. Engineers. Temple scholars. Even spies.
Each one touched by Magicnet.
Each one re-threaded into the growing web.
And from these threads, a new idea began to form in their hearts.
Not a federation.
Not a resistance.
But a civilization reborn — Akhand Bharat, not as slogan, but as inheritance.
The British still ruled in the daylight.
But by night, the old kingdoms had already begun reporting to Vikramaditya.