Armeet landed on the cracked grounds of Parina, the once-breathing heart of the Malwai Empire. His boots scraped against stone that was still smoldering. The city that had once shimmered with light, song, and ambition was now nothing but a graveyard cloaked in black hazard smoke.
For a moment, he couldn't breathe—not because of the poison in the air, but because the sight itself clawed at his chest. The ruins pulled him backward through time.
The Second Holy War
He was six when war shattered his world. His home was gone—obliterated by an air strike that lit the horizon like a second sun. His mother, only thirty-four, had tried to reach him, but the fire consumed her first. Her voice—her last scream—was drowned by the roar of collapsing walls.
He survived only because of his father, Manmit Surya, a ranked Malwai soldier. Together they lived in a military camp—an endless cycle of drills, fear, and the scent of iron. Armeet remembered his father's strong hands gripping his shoulders, telling him, "Stand tall, son. Don't let the world see you break." But he also remembered the silences—the exhaustion etched into his father's face, the grief he buried under discipline.
For four years, the camp was Armeet's home. He played with no toys, only rifles too heavy for his arms. He learned to read maps before he learned to write letters. And every night, the memory of his mother's absence burned like a fresh wound.
When the war ended, he was sent far away—to a boarding school in Dravida. He was told that his father had remarried, started a new life, and forgotten him. For years, that belief hardened inside him, transforming into bitterness.
The Fifteenth Birthday
By fifteen, Armeet had learned to hide his pain behind a sharp smile. On his birthday, he sat in the school canteen, laughing with friends, pretending the hollow inside him was gone. For one fleeting hour, he felt normal.
Then the black limousine arrived.
Whispers spread. "It must be his father—finally acknowledging him." Armeet's blood boiled at the thought. The man who abandoned him now wanted to appear? He stormed into the car, only to find it empty.
The world blurred. A sharp sting at his neck. Darkness.
When he awoke, his wrists were bound, his head pounding. An abandoned building loomed around him, smelling of rust and mildew. A white curtain stretched across one wall. A projector hummed. A film began.
The title screen flickered: The Death of a Croak.
At first, Armeet thought it was a prank, some cruel birthday jest. But then came the images—grainy, distorted footage that felt too real.
The first half showed his father, Manmit Surya, standing proud in uniform, taking his oath as a senior officer of the Malwai Military. Armeet leaned forward, heart tightening. The memories came back—the camp, the drills, the weight of his father's hand on his shoulder.
And then the music changed.
A white SUV appeared on screen, Manmit's SUV. It was surrounded by motorbikes. Men in masks hurled petrol bombs. Flames swallowed the car. Inside, his father burned. The glass cracked, the steel twisted, and yet… Manmit survived. He crawled from the inferno, skin seared, gasping for air.
"Why are you doing this to me? What have I done?" he choked.
One of the bikers sneered. "Nothing. But terror must spread, and who better than a soldier the people admire?"
Manmit's voice broke, raw, desperate. "Curse you… I was just going to meet my so—"
"Shoot him."
The screen exploded with gunfire. Manmit's body convulsed under the storm of bullets until it was nothing but a mangled husk. They dragged him out, nailed a flag to his chest: "Fear the Terror of Ajikage."
Then, as if cruelty had no limit, they burned his corpse until even ashes would not remain.
The footage cut to black. Then a final slide:
"Monmit Surya, a man of honour, died a death of a dog. His family—his dead wife and son in exile—are irrelevant. The most brutal death in modern history, delivered by George Halling."The End.
Armeet's blood froze. His throat was dry, his nails dug into his palms until they bled. He wanted to scream, but the sound died in his chest.
Then, a voice came from the shadows. Familiar. Weighted.
"He never remarried, Armeet. Monmit was loyal to your mother to the very end. But you believed the lies. You let strangers fill your head with filth. I am disappointed."
Armeet whipped his head around, eyes blazing. "Who is this? Show yourself, coward!"
A pause. Then the sobbing voice whispered:
"This is your uncle. Your beloved uncle."
A figure stepped from the darkness. His face blurred by grief, his words trembling.
"It was necessary. To make you strong. To shape you into the man Monmit wanted you to be."
Armeet's fury erupted. His breath came ragged, his fists trembling. His whole body shook with rage, sorrow, and betrayal. His voice cracked with a scream that tore at the walls:
"You call this strength?! You broke me! You destroyed the only thing I had left of him!"
The film reel spun to an end, leaving only the hollow clicking of an empty projector. But inside Armeet, the reel of grief would never stop.
Armeet's blood boiled. The curtains of the film still glowed faintly in the abandoned building, casting long, wavering shadows on the cracked walls. His fists trembled as though they were begging to tear through the truth.
And then—his uncle stepped forward from the darkness. An older man, scarred and weathered, his eyes heavy with guilt rather than malice.
Armeet lunged at him. His first punch flew wild, a strike charged with years of betrayal, abandonment, and hatred. The uncle didn't retaliate. He merely shifted, a slow pivot of his body, letting the strike brush past his cheek. Armeet roared again, striking harder, his fists hammering against a man who refused to fight.
"Fight back!" Armeet screamed, landing blows against his uncle's chest, shoulders, jaw—each one sloppy with rage but enough to draw blood. His uncle raised his arms in soft defense, never countering, never aiming to hurt. Only redirecting. Only absorbing.
"You wanted this, didn't you?!" Armeet shouted, his knuckles burning, "You wanted me to break! To suffer like him! To carry the curse of Surya!"
His uncle staggered but never fell. He spat blood, his eyes meeting Armeet's with a hollow calm.
"Hit me harder, Armeet," he rasped. "If this is the weight of your grief, then let it fall. If this is the weight of your hatred, then let it crush me. But do not mistake me for your enemy. I am your wall—here to take your rage until it makes you strong."
Armeet froze for a moment, sweat and tears stinging his eyes. His fists still pressed against his uncle's chest, trembling.
The older man finally spoke, his voice breaking into a monologue heavy with sorrow.
"Your father… Monmit Surya… he was no fool. He knew the world would not show you mercy, Armeet. He knew war would eat at your soul, like it did his. On the battlefield, he told me once, his voice quieter than the storm of gunfire around us: 'Make my son strong. Make his heart fierce enough to bear the truth of this world, this universe.'"
His uncle's eyes glistened under the dim flicker of the screen.
"I wanted you to hate me. I wanted you to see me as a villain, to strike me, to break yourself upon me until you became unshakable. That was his wish, his last request—not to shield you, but to prepare you." He coughed blood and smiled faintly, as if relieved to finally say the words.
Armeet's breathing slowed, his rage hollowing into something colder, heavier.
"But there is something more," his uncle whispered, leaning closer, his lips cracked and trembling. "Something your father left behind. Something that will change the very meaning of your bloodline. He told me… he told me…"
The words lingered in the air, swallowed by silence. His uncle's voice broke into a cough, leaving Armeet hanging on the edge of revelation.
Present Day
Tears carved hot rivers down Armeet's face, blurring the ruins of Parina before his eyes. His chest rose and fell heavily, as though his very soul was struggling to breathe. Amid the storm of memories—his mother's lifeless form, the endless drills in the camp, the laughter of school days tainted by betrayal, and the flames of his father's brutal death—one thought burned through the haze: his aim, the vow he had carried all these years.
"Armeet."
The voice cut through his sorrow like a blade through silence.
He turned sharply, his hand instinctively reaching for his weapon. A shadowed figure stood before him, calm, unreadable.
"Long time no see," the stranger greeted, his tone carrying neither threat nor warmth.
Armeet narrowed his eyes. "Who are you? Who dares to appear at such a moment?"
"I am a nobody," the man said evenly. "A messenger. Nothing more."
Armeet clenched his fists. "Then speak. What message do you bring?"
The figure's words fell like stones in the pit of Armeet's heart.
"Your mother's death. Your childhood in the camp. Your lonely days at the boarding school. Your father's bloody end. Even the rumors of his second marriage—all of it was orchestrated. All of it, part of your father's plan."
Armeet's breath caught. "What…?"
The man stepped closer, his gaze unblinking. "Monmit Surya—the last king of the Surya Dynasty—was not only your father. He was the leader of Ajikage. You carry his lineage. His blood runs in you. His throne now calls to you. From your father, to your uncle, and now to you—the Ajikage awaits its true head. Dormant for years, waiting. Armeet, Ajikage is no ordinary faction. It is the largest paramilitary force in the world, powerful enough to twist the shape of global politics at its whim."
The words crashed into Armeet like thunder. His knees weakened, his mind spiraling. "Ajikage? My… father? This doesn't make sense… I don't understand…"
"You will," the messenger said, his tone final. "In time, the truth will reveal itself. Until then, I shall wait for you, in your hometown."
With that, his form dissolved into the air, vanishing like a phantom, leaving only the echo of his revelation.
Armeet fell to his knees, his tears soaking into the scarred soil beneath him. His fists pounded the ground, trembling under the unbearable weight of trauma and destiny entwined.
Armeet fell to his knees, his body trembling under the weight of revelations too cruel to bear. The ruins of Parina seemed to close in around him, black smoke curling like the fingers of memory that refused to let go. He pressed his palms to his eyes, but the tears did not stop.
"Why?" he whispered, his voice raw and broken. "Why me? Why this blood… this curse?"
The wind howled over the ruined city, as if echoing the anguish of every life lost, every injustice he had ever witnessed. The ruins of Parina, the flames of his father's death, the absence of his mother—all of it pressed down on him like a mountain.
For the first time, Armeet felt the weight of destiny not as a challenge, but as a punishment. His lineage, his father's plan, Ajikage itself—all were chains around his soul. He wanted to scream, to rage, to defy the universe—but the anger drained into a hollow ache, leaving him numb.
He sank lower, his forehead pressed to the cold ground. "I am… nothing. Nothing but a shadow of what they wanted me to be. A son, a soldier, a survivor… but not myself."
For a long moment, there was only silence. The wind whispered across the rubble, indifferent. And in that silence, Armeet felt the crushing truth: power and blood meant nothing without choice. Without the right to mourn, to rage, to simply be a boy who had lost everything.
He raised his head slightly, eyes wet and hollow. A faint resolve flickered—fragile, uncertain—but it was buried beneath grief too deep to conquer.
The city around him was dying, the world above uncaring, and Armeet Surya remained alone—bearing the truth of his blood, the legacy of his father, and the unbearable weight of the destiny he had never asked for.
The wind carried his cries across the empty field, the ruins of Parina bearing witness to his torment. Yet beneath his grief, beneath the shattered pieces of his heart, a spark flickered. Anger. Resolve. The same fire that had once burned in Monmit's eyes.
Armeet wiped his face, though his tears still fell. His voice, though cracked, carried a sharpness that cut through the silence.
"If this is the truth of my blood… then I will carve my own fate with it. Ajikage, curse or crown, it will not break me. I will rise—and the world will answer."
And with that vow, Armeet stood again, the weight of his lineage pressing upon his shoulders, but his eyes—his eyes were fierce, no longer only haunted by the past, but burning toward the future.
[To be Continued in Chapter 44]