The shrill ring of the phone cut through the stillness like a blade across silk, sharp and unforgiving, shattering the delicate silence of midnight. The chamber where Myra stood had always been her sanctuary, a place untouched by the chaos of the world outside. But tonight, it thrummed with an electricity that seemed to seep from her very skin.
She rose from the pool's glassy surface with unhurried grace, droplets of water cascading from her body like liquid diamonds under the dim amber glow of the candles. Her long, raven-black hair clung to her pale skin, trailing down her back like a mourning veil. She moved like a predator emerging from the depths, her steps deliberate, soundless. Myra never rushed—rushing was for the desperate. And she was not desperate. She was inevitable.
The phone's glow cast a cold halo across her features, sculpting her cheekbones into marble, turning her eyes into dark, fathomless pits of command. When she spoke, her voice was sharp, precise, edged with authority that brooked no defiance.
"Speak."
On the other end, Siddharth's voice quivered, though he tried to disguise it beneath his usual quiet efficiency. "Ma'am, everything is ready in Delhi. The stage is set."
Even through the sterile line of technology, he felt her power coil around him like smoke, a presence so heavy it was as if she were standing behind him, watching, calculating.
"Good," Myra replied, her tone detached, stripped of warmth. Her gaze had already drifted from the phone to the far wall—the altar of her existence, the reason her heart still beat.
Twenty photographs pinned with surgical precision stared back at her, a gallery of sins and sinners. The first row displayed the faces of five men—wealthy, arrogant, untouchable in the eyes of society, but not in hers. They were the architects of her ruin, the demons who had dragged her into the fire years ago. Beneath them, ten more faces—accomplices, pawns, the shadows who laughed, who stayed silent, who turned away. Their smiles mocked her still, preserved in glossy stillness. To any outsider, it was a collection of photographs. To Myra, it was scripture.
She set the phone down on a velvet-draped table where her tools lay waiting. The centerpiece was a silver dagger, its hilt adorned with intricate etchings of serpents entwined—symbols of patience, venom, and death. The blade caught the candlelight with a wicked gleam. She wrapped her slender fingers around it, the cold metal a perfect fit against her palm, as if it belonged to her, or she to it.
She stepped closer to the wall, her movements fluid, almost ritualistic.
Thwack.
The dagger flew from her hand in one swift motion, embedding itself into the forehead of the first man's photograph. The arrogant grin of the politician's son was split open, ruined by steel. A thin crack spread across the glossy paper, bleeding darkness. Myra tilted her head, studying the desecrated image like a predator savoring its first strike. A slow smile curved her lips—not of joy, but of satisfaction, of hunger sharpened into purpose.
She withdrew the dagger, the paper tearing further, the man's printed face collapsing. Her voice, calm as ever, cut through the silence.
"Siddharth."
"Yes, Ma'am?"
"Send flowers to his mother tomorrow. White lilies." She paused, her tone softening into something far more dangerous than rage—cold calculation. "With a note: Every sin is repaid in silence."
There was no hesitation, no question. Siddharth knew better. He knew that Myra's vengeance was never blunt, never simple. She carved her justice slowly, elegantly, so that her victims did not merely fall—they crumbled, piece by piece, until they longed for death as mercy.
She dragged the dagger's tip across the second photograph, slicing it down the center. The man's face split into two halves, mocking smile severed.
"Do you know, Siddharth," she whispered, though the words were meant only for herself, "people believe death is punishment. No." Her voice was silk threaded with venom. "Death is mercy. My game… is suffering."
The blade turned in her hand, and she pressed its edge against her palm. A single drop of blood welled up, bright crimson against the silver. She did not flinch. The sting was grounding, a reminder that she was both creator and destroyer, the hand that wrote destiny and the hand that ended it.
The candles flickered, their flames bowing as if acknowledging her presence. Her shadow stretched long and grotesque across the wall of faces, merging with them, haunting them. This room was no longer just a chamber. It was a sanctum. A temple consecrated in rage and patience, where each photograph was an offering, and she—the priestess, the goddess—was both worshipper and deity.
Her eyes softened only once that night, the mask of steel giving way to something raw, unguarded. She raised her gaze to the ceiling, to the silence that wrapped her like a shroud.
"For you, Baba…" The whisper trembled against her lips, carried into the still air as if her father, Yuvraj Singh Rajawat, lingered in every shadow, in every breath of this sacred space. "…I will rise higher than their thrones. And when they kneel, it will not be to God, nor to their power, but to me."
The glass panel of the chamber door caught her reflection—wet hair clinging to her skin, the dagger gleaming in her grip, eyes lit with fire and shadows. Myra, the orphan. Myra, the victim. Myra, the survivor. No longer prey. Now, the hunter.
As the clock struck midnight, the sound reverberated through the chamber like a war drum. Myra closed her eyes and recited the Sanskrit shloka her Baba had once taught her, words that now twined with her vengeance, sanctifying her cause:
"धर्मो रक्षति रक्षितः।"
One who protects righteousness, is protected by it.
But her righteousness was vengeance, sharp and unrelenting.
And vengeance had only just begun.
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