---
Secret Cellar Beneath Rajgarh Palace
The old keys Bhavya had “accidentally” slipped into Aarohi’s hand were shaking in her grasp.
Midnight. The guards had changed. Rajmata was in her prayer room. Aviraj had been gone since dusk—to "settle a matter" at the border of Rajgarh.
Aarohi walked barefoot, her anklets removed, steps silent. The path led her to a side staircase—one no one ever used. Bhavya had said, “No one goes there since the night of fire. Since the night the queen screamed.”
A heavy stone door stood at the end. She inserted the key.
Click.
Dust rushed out like a breath that had been held for years.
She stepped in.
Paintings, torches, scrolls. Burned furniture. A shattered mirror.
At the center: a rusted metal cage.
Inside it, a scorched diary, half burnt.
She knelt, opened it.
---
“Diary of Anaya Raghuvanshi – 2005”
Entry: The Day Before My Death.
“They think I am mad. But I know the truth. Veerendra Maheshwari and Devyani plotted it together. They want the vault sealed. But my son will return one day. He’ll find her. The girl in red. The one I saw in my dream. She is the key to the throne. The curse will end with her. If only she remembers...”
Aarohi gasped. Veerendra Maheshwari—her grandfather.
She looked around.
And then—a cold hand clutched her neck.
---
“Found you.”
Rajmata Devyani.
Her eyes burned with a rage older than time.
“You think you’re clever, little bride? Anaya said the same things. Dreamed the same dreams. I burned her in this very room. Would you like the same ending?”
Aarohi couldn’t speak. Her mouth went dry.
“But lucky you,” Devyani smiled. “I don’t kill anymore. I make others do it.”
---
Suddenly, footsteps.
Aviraj.
His gun drawn. “Let her go.”
Rajmata didn’t flinch. “She knows, Aviraj. She read the diary. She saw the cage.”
“I know.”
“What?”
“I let her find it.”
He pointed the gun at Devyani.
“You lied to me all my life.”
“Aviraj,” she warned. “You owe me your crown.”
He stepped forward. “And you owe me the truth.”
---
Aarohi stood behind him, whispering, “This isn’t over. There’s something in that diary I haven’t read yet.”
Aviraj’s voice was cold. “Then we both go deeper. Together.”
Devyani laughed. “Careful, Aviraj. You fall too deep into her eyes, you might find a king who bows.”
He fired a shot—not at her, but at the lock of the rusted cage.
It clanged open.
Inside, beneath the diary—
was a ruby-studded pendant… in the shape of a lotus.
Aarohi touched it.
And screamed.
---
Flames. A coronation. Betrayal. A shadow stabbing her. A twin. Blood. So much blood.
---
She collapsed in his arms, whispering, “I know who I am now.”
---
End of Chapter Five
---
"A Royal Decree of the Quill: The Noble Pursuit of Fan Allegiance" In the hallowed halls of the Written Realm, where ink flows like the lifeblood of kingdoms long forgotten, and parchments whisper secrets beneath candlelight, there resides a sovereign—neither garbed in gold nor armored in steel—but cloaked in words, crowned by imagination, and armed with the pen. This sovereign is none other than the Writer, the eternal monarch of stories. To this noble Ruler of Realms, the greatest treasure is not the weight of gold or the praise of kings—it is the loyal allegiance of the realm’s people: the Readers, the Admirers, the Followers, and most esteemed of all, the Fans. And so, beneath moonlit scrolls and beside ancient inkstones, the Writer crafts a charter—a manifesto carved in prose and passion—setting forth the grand ambitions for fan support. These ambitions are not born from vanity but from a sacred bond between creator and beholder, a covenant of hearts bound by story.
Write a comment ...