Night falls differently over Mahishmati when the palace lights awaken. The oil lamps along the parapets bloom one by one like rows of captive stars, and the great domes glow the color of liquid honey. Courtyards hush; even the peacocks, that proud and noisy royalty of feathers, fold their tails and settle like forgotten brushstrokes of blue in the dim gardens.
But there is one wing where night does not hush.
The Palace of Mirrors.
It was not called that in the beginning. Long before the current king, before the Pink Queen's prayers and before the regency councils, before the battles and treaties, this structure had been a simple pleasure pavilion built for a queen who loved nothing more than light. She had demanded walls that captured the sun at noon and the moon at midnight; artisans had answered her wish by filling ceilings, pillars, arches, and alcoves with mirrorwork so fine a single lamp could multiply into a thousand flames.
Now, those walls reflected more than light.
They reflected truths people wished not to see.
And illusions they desperately longed to believe.
Tonight, the palace women whispered that the Palace of Mirrors was awake again. When a wing stirs, it is not in stone or in doors—it is in memory. Old corridors remember footsteps that should no longer echo. Forgotten vows crawl back through narrow lattice windows with the wind.
Everyone sensed it:
Something was about to happen beneath all that shimmering glass.
The Queen Mother walks again
The Queen Mother seldom left her private shrine now. Grief had carved lines beneath her eyes long before illness claimed the king's strength. Yet tonight she asked to be carried to the Palace of Mirrors.
This alone made the attendants exchange glances.
"She wants to see the reflections," whispered one maid.
"She wants to see the past," murmured another.
She dismissed all palanquin bearers at the entrance. With slow dignity, she walked herself — as if this building demanded legs, not litters, as tribute. Torches flared along the walls, caught by the mirrored arches, shattering into petals of fire.
Every step she took multiplied a hundredfold.
One woman — and a hundred queens walking beside her.
She paused before the central gallery, the great Hall of a Thousand Reflections.
Here, the mirrors were not uniform. Some shone bright; some were dull with age; others were dusted with faint cracks spreading like frozen lightning beneath the surface. They did not simply reflect faces. They seemed to choose which truths to reveal.
Whispers long buried coiled in the corners like silk.
"Your Majesty," said the chief attendant cautiously. "Shall I bring the Pink Queen? She has not left the temple since dawn."
"No," the Queen Mother replied softly. "Let her pray tonight. Every queen serves the kingdom in her own way. Some with swords. Some with silence. And some with mirrors."
Her gaze traveled across the hall, not to her own reflection but to one that no longer existed.
The king, young, strong, eyes aflame with reckless courage.
How mirrors betray time. They keep youth long after the face has changed.
Her throat tightened.
"He thinks he hides it from us," she whispered—to the glass, to herself, to the palace that had known too many secrets. "Kings forget that palaces are made of ears."
She laid a trembling palm against the wall of cold tile.
"And of eyes."
Tonight was not simply about nostalgia.
She had come to choose.
The Palace of Mirrors was where regents were once tested. Not with swords or armies—but with their own reflections.
And soon, the kingdom would need one.
The Prince of the Sun Banner enters
The guards parted with ceremonial stiffness as Rajkumar Aditya Pratap Singh entered the pavilion. His steps were sure, yet his heart struggled beneath them. He had spent the day training, trying to drown whispers about the king's failing health in steel and sweat.
But steel could not silence mirrors.
The moment he stepped inside, light swallowed him. A thousand copies of Aditya stood shoulder to shoulder, each reflecting something slightly different: one sterner, one uncertain, one strangely older, one almost boyish still.
He hated this place.
It did not lie.
His mother—Green Queen Aishvarya Devi—had once brought him here as a boy.
"Look," she had said, kneeling behind him, her hands warm on his shoulders. "A future king must learn to face not his enemies, but himself."
He had laughed then. Now the memory burned.
"Rajkumar," the Queen Mother greeted, her voice echoing softly among crystal arches. "Come."
He bowed deeply.
"Daadi-sa."
"You know why I have asked you here."
The words hung like a suspended sword.
Aditya swallowed. "Because Father's council grows restless."
"Because the throne grows hungry," she corrected quietly.
His jaw tightened. "He will recover."
"You are your father's son," she said. "And like him, you think that if you do not speak a fear aloud, it will vanish." Her eyes softened. "But silence does not cure illnesses, child. It only gives them more room to grow."
He was silent.
He had seen the trembling hands. The darkening shadows beneath regal eyes. The labored breath at night.
He had also seen the court poets still write verses about his father as if he were mountain iron.
Mirrors do not read poetry. They read truth.
"What do you see?" the Queen Mother asked gently.
Aditya looked up.
In the mirror before him stood not simply himself.
He saw the Sun Banner unfurled behind his reflection, fluttering violently. The sky above it was neither day nor night—an in-between hour that glowed gold and bruised violet.
He saw himself crowned.
He saw swords drawn toward him—some raised in protection, others in betrayal.
"I see…" His voice faltered. "Responsibility."
"And fear?"
He nodded once.
"Good," she whispered. "A ruler without fear is the most dangerous creature alive."
There were footsteps at the entrance again.
The mirrors rippled with movement.
Mrinalini's reflection
Princess Mrinalini had not been summoned—but knowledge has its own gravity. She had been reading in the library when she felt the strange pull of the Mirror Palace. Scholars would scoff at such language; but scholars had not lived their whole lives in palaces that breathed like beasts and remembered more than people did.
Her soft slippers made no sound.
Where Aditya brought heat into a room, Mrinalini brought quiet. Calm intelligence radiated from her like invisible light. She paused at the threshold, her eyes widening slightly at the labyrinth of reflections.
Aditya turned.
"You came."
"Books were loud today," she said simply.
He understood. Words sometimes shout sharper than people.
The Queen Mother smiled faintly. "Approach, Mrinalini."
She did, crossing into the hall where every whisper became infinite. Her reflection appeared beside Aditya's, then behind him, then above, blooming like a constellation of thoughtful faces.
"What do you see?" the Queen Mother asked.
Mrinalini tilted her head, eyes searching.
"I see… paths."
Aditya blinked. "Paths?"
"Yes." She lifted a hand slightly toward the mirrored horizon unfolding before her. "Branching roads. Futures. Each begins at the same point and ends differently. Some with fire. Some with peace. Some with crowns. Some with ruins."
The Queen Mother's breath caught.
"Which one is yours?"
Mrinalini lowered her gaze.
"I see many versions of myself. But the clearest image is the one where I am not at the center."
Aditya stared at her reflection, then at the real woman, then back again, unsure which held more truth.
"You mean," he said slowly, "you see yourself serving the kingdom through others?"
She nodded.
"I am a thinker, not a wielder of swords. My strength lies in guiding flames, not becoming one."
The Queen Mother closed her eyes for a moment.
A scholar princess who did not hunger for a throne. A warrior prince terrified of wearing one. And a kingdom hanging upon both.
The mirrors hummed silently with complicity.
Aarav crashes the ceremony of destiny
There are rituals in palaces for every event — births and deaths, war and weddings, treaties and betrayals. There is, however, no ritual for the unannounced arrival of Rajkumar Aarav.
Which is exactly how he preferred it.
He slipped past the bewildered guards with the effortless grace of someone who had made trouble into an art form. His hair was slightly untamed; his eyes sparkled with mischief and something deeper, half-hidden—like a half-written poem he refused to show anyone.
"Ah!" he exclaimed the moment he walked in, clapping once just to hear the sound multiply through a thousand reflective halls. "So this is where everyone goes when they disappear mysteriously."
Aditya groaned softly. "Aarav. Not now."
"Exactly now," Aarav replied cheerfully. "Whenever the palace starts gathering all the serious faces in one place, I know something interesting is happening. Or something tragic. Either way, I hate missing the first act."
The Queen Mother looked at him long and hard.
Mirrors loved Aarav. They seemed to lean toward him, catching his grin and stretching it into endless mischievous variations. But when he turned unexpectedly serious, even his reflections sobered.
She spoke quietly.
"Look, child."
He rolled his eyes at the gravitas of it all—but then he turned toward the central mirror.
And froze.
Because he did not see mischief.
He saw loneliness.
His reflection stood surrounded not by playmates or conspirators, but by empty corridors. He saw laughter—but it echoed back hollowly. He saw himself smiling—and the smile cracked when no one looked.
He took a step back.
"That mirror is broken," he muttered.
"No," the Queen Mother said gently. "It is honest."
Silence fell among them like fine falling dust.
Aarav shrugged too quickly. "Well. Mirrors are overrated anyway."
But something in his face had changed. A hairline fracture, invisible unless you knew where to look.
Charumati's soft arrival
Charumati did not like the Palace of Mirrors.
It overwhelmed her—too many faces, too many lights, too many versions of herself. She preferred gardens, where reflections existed only in water and could be disturbed with a fingertip.
Yet she came.
Because she always came when someone she loved was in pain.
Her steps were light. Bells at her ankles chimed like tiny silver arguments. She did not announce herself; she simply appeared, her presence like cool shade after hard sun.
The Queen Mother turned with visible relief.
"Ah, Charumati."
Aditya straightened unconsciously. So did Aarav, though his expression softened into something like apology. Mrinalini's eyes warmed.
Charumati belonged to none of their worlds completely and yet stitched all of them together with gentle thread. She knelt briefly to the elder queen, then rose, gaze slowly traveling the hall.
"What do you see?" the Queen Mother asked.
Charumati didn't look at a single dominant mirror like the others had. Instead, her eyes drifted from reflection to reflection, lingering on each face she loved.
"I see all of you," she said quietly.
The Queen Mother blinked. "And yourself?"
She smiled faintly, almost shyly.
"I see myself reflected in your eyes. I don't need the glass for that."
The mirrors, insulted or charmed, offered no response.
But something subtle shifted in the air — like a knot in the palace's breath loosening. Some rooms need warriors; others need scholars. The Palace of Mirrors needed someone who could look past it.
The Queen Mother felt, for the first time in weeks, the faint sting of tears.
The Whisper begins
Wind sneaks into palaces the way rumors do: unseen but everywhere.
A sudden gust swept through lattice windows, setting lamps flickering. The mirrors trembled with light and shadow. For a heartbeat, reflections distorted—Aditya's crown flickered, Aarav's laughter deepened into something sharp, Mrinalini's paths branched wider, Charumati's face blurred softly like a watercolor kissed by rain.
Then—
A voice.
Not loud. Not spoken.
A whisper inside the glass itself.
It slid along the walls, brushing across shoulders, curling beneath ribs.
The king is fading.
No one had said it aloud.
Yet everyone heard it.
The Queen Mother gripped her cane. Aditya's jaw locked. Mrinalini's hands folded tightly around her shawl. Aarav swallowed. Charumati's eyelashes fluttered as if struck by invisible wind.
And then the whisper changed.
Not warning.
Choice.
Who will bear the weight?
The mirrors bloomed with possible futures:
Cities burning.
Foreign flags.
Brother against brother.
Sister between them.
Councils scheming.
Queens praying.
Blood on marble floors.
Children learning new anthems.
Silence fell again suddenly as if the palace itself held its breath.
The Queen Mother's voice broke it.
"The Palace has spoken."
Aarav scoffed faintly. "Palaces don't speak."
"Yes, they do," Mrinalini said softly. "We are simply unused to listening."
Aditya turned to the Queen Mother, every muscle drawn taut with the awareness that childhood had just ended.
"What must we do?"
She looked at each of them in turn.
"You must remember who you are," she said. "But more importantly—you must remember who each other is. Because mirrors do not just show individuals. They reveal bonds. Break one, and many shatter."
Her gaze lingered on Aarav.
"Especially the bonds people take for granted."
He looked away.
The King's hidden presence
None of them noticed the shadow behind the final archway.
The king had come unnoticed, wrapped not in royal robes but in a plain shawl that did little to hide the weight loss in his face. His guards had begged him to rest. Physicians had begged more firmly. But kings, like storms, obey no one—not even the bodies that contain them.
He leaned against the pillar, watching the children who believed themselves grown.
His breath came shallow, pain threading through it like wire.
He saw Aditya's burden.
Mrinalini's quiet vision.
Aarav's masked loneliness.
Charumati's soft strength.
And he understood something the mirrors alone could not show:
The kingdom would not be saved by the strongest sword, nor the sharpest mind, nor the bravest heart standing alone.
It would be saved — if at all — by all of them together.
He turned away before they could see him, before worry could be added to their already heavy plates.
For a moment, his reflection remained in the mirror though he had already gone.
Then it faded like breath on cold glass.
Night deepens — and resolves are forged
The Queen Mother dismissed them one by one.
Not like a council adjourned.
Like a blessing given.
Aditya left first, shoulders squared, fire brewing beneath his ribs. He did not yet know what the future demanded—but for the first time, he did not run from the knowing that it would demand something.
Mrinalini lingered, fingertips brushing the mosaic walls with scholar's tenderness, as if promising silently to remember every lesson carved in stone and glass. Then she too departed into lamplit corridors.
Aarav stood alone for a moment after the others left.
He turned deliberately toward the mirror that had shown him his solitude.
He stared back at the lonely boy inside it.
Then he whispered, almost angrily, "We'll see about that."
And walked out.
Charumati was last.
She did not look in any mirror at all. She turned back to the Queen Mother and simply embraced her—breaking all protocol, all courtesies, all boundaries polished into royal children from birth.
For a heartbeat, the elder woman rested her forehead on the girl's shoulder, eyes closing.
Then she smiled.
"Go, child."
Charumati obeyed.
But her warmth stayed, gentle as lingering incense after prayer.
The Palace keeps its secrets
Silence finally reclaimed the mirrored hall.
Lamps burned low.
Reflections dimmed into softer ghosts.
But the palace did not sleep.
It remembered.
It remembered that the king's step had been weaker tonight than ever before. It remembered that the envoy from across the seas measured corridors not in paces, but in profit. It remembered whispers between courtiers like knives being sharpened against stones. It remembered prayers rising from the Pink Queen's chamber and plans rising in the Green Queen's.
And it remembered the faces of the four young souls who would soon discover that mirrors do not simply show futures—
They create them.
Outside, the first pale edge of dawn touched the sky like a cut blooming light.
The Palace of Mirrors exhaled.
Act I was still unfolding.
And somewhere deep in its foundations, beneath glass and stone and history,
something shifted.
Something that sounded very much
like destiny waking.