Shankar Baghel ran through the courtyard, his voice cracking like river ice in spring. "Seal the eastern gate!" he roared, blood freezing mid-air where it splattered against frost-rimed stones. "Forty guards on the women and children—move!"
A veteran guard stumbled, his spear clattering. "My lord, the eastern gate is already—"
"Already what?" Shankar grabbed the man's collar, pulling him close. "Speak clearly, soldier."
"Already frozen, my lord. The inferno breach is too wide. We can't hold it."
Shankar's jaw tightened. "Then hold the inner sanctum. The scrolls in the Vidyagriha library—if those burn, we lose everything."
"Which scrolls, my lord? The Sapta-Diaries? The Prana-Manuals?"
"All of them." Shankar's voice dropped to a deadly whisper. "Every forbidden text. Every blood ritual. Every loyalty engineering spell. We die, but the knowledge lives."
The guard saluted, frost forming on his eyelashes. "For the Baghel name."
"For the name," Shankar echoed, releasing him. "Now go."
The inferno tribe's war horns howled beyond the walls, a sound like wildfire through dry neem forests. But here, in the heart of Vidyagriha, the cold was alive. It crawled up marble pillars, turned sacred banyan trees to crystal, made every breath a conscious, agonizing effort.
"Papa!" a voice cut through the chaos. Clear. Calm. Deadly.
Shankar spun. His daughter stood behind him, her frame wrapped in a bloodied training dhoti, a frost-blade in each hand. At eighteen, she already moved like a weapon honed by a thousand battles. Her eyes—one ice-blue, one silver from a childhood Prana accident—held no fear. Only calculation.
"Let me handle the front gate."
Shankar looked at her. Really looked. At the frost crystals forming in her hair. At the way the battlefield itself seemed to lean away from her presence. At the chilling, unnatural calm in a face that had seen too much too soon.
"Don't come here," he commanded. "Not until I command."
Shruti's jaw tightened. "I'm not a child anymore, Papa. I can—"
"You're my heir." Shankar's voice cracked, not from cold, but from something rawer. "That means you survive. Now go."
Her mother's voice—ingrained through a decade of Prana meditation—struck like a whip: "Believe in your king."
Shruti Baghel ran. Not away, but through. Her frost-blades carved paths through inferno soldiers, each strike clinical, each death a number in her mental ledger. Thirty-seven left in courtyard. Sixty-three at east gate. One hundred seventeen total hostiles.
"Watch the left flank!" a guard shouted as she passed. "They've got Prana-bombs!"
"I know," Shruti called back, not breaking stride. "I counted them."
She ran toward the inner sanctum, the library, the screaming children.
I have to protect. I have to protect. I have to protect.
She was already injured—a gash across her ribs where an inferno lance had kissed her skin, now frozen shut by her own will. Everywhere was blood and battle: fire meeting ice in screams of agony, commanders shouting orders that dissolved into static, the smell of charred flesh and frozen urine.
"Princess!" a librarian's assistant stumbled from the burning scroll archive, arms full of half-charred texts. "The Sapta-Diaries—some are still intact!"
"Drop them," Shruti ordered, not slowing. "Save the children first. Books can be rewritten. Lives can't."
"But the forbidden knowledge—"
"Is worthless without people to read it."
She ran. A blast came from her front—blindingly hot, the color of molten gold. A thousand voices screamed as one. The sound of Vidyagriha's outer wall vaporizing.
"NOOOOO!"
Her whole body moved at her will, not her command. The battlefield frosted in an instant. A hundred inferno soldiers turned to statues mid-roar, their flames crystallized into permanent orange sculptures of agony.
She ran while killing guards. "STEP OUT MY WAY!" Her sword froze a path, her whip cracked through spines. "Just die, you bastard."
When she reached the inner sanctum, it was already too late.
Her mother—Sarika Baghel, the Frost Matriarch—lay in a circle of ashes, her body a shield over three children. She'd used her last Prana to freeze herself around them, turning her own blood into a coffin that preserved their flesh from the inferno.
Her mother's face was a mockery in ice. Her pride was ashes.
Shruti fell to her knees. The frost blade clattered away. She held her mother's frozen hand, whole and crying.
"Mumma, wait wait wait, I-I-I will take care of it. Please don't leave don't leave me..."
Her mother smiled. Even in death, her eyes were an ocean of unshed tears. Her last act—prickling Shruti's nose with frost-touched affection—stopped midway. The hand fell.
"MUMMA, YOU CAN'T GO AWAY LIKE... WHY WHY WHY. YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME ALONE."
"Mumma..." Shruti's voice cracked, the ice in it melting to raw grief. "You said Baghels don't die in ditches. You said I'd be queen. You said—"
She choked on the words. The frozen hand was already crumbling, Prana-depleted flesh turning to snow.
"—you said you'd teach me the seventh Sapta-Diary. The one about loyalty engineering. You said I wasn't ready."
A small, charred book fell from her mother's frozen grip. The cover read: "Sapta-Diary VII: The Beggar's Frost."
Shruti's fingers closed around it. Her inner thought, even through the grief, was calculating: Mother wanted me to survive. This diary is her last command. I will obey.
Other soldiers came. Not Baghel. Not anymore.
The leader—an Inferno commander with a mask of charred bone—looked at Shruti's wretched form and felt mesmerized. "Cage her. This instant."
He stepped closer, voice a low crackling mockery. "So... the icy Queen submitted?"
Shruti looked up. Her eyes—one ice, one silver—held no tears now. Only a calculation so cold it made the commander flinch. Nobody noticed what is coming .
Inner thought, spoken like a melody: "Submission is a tactical retreat. Your cage is my headquarters."
She smiled. A beggar's smile. A strategist's promise.
Next Chapter: The Beggar's Audit