The weight on Shruti's chest was crushing. Not cold—never cold—but a suffocating, dense heat that felt like a heated stone pressed against her ribs. It seeped into her bones, a foreign warmth that whispered of surrender. Of giving up. Of accepting an embrace she had never asked for.
She couldn't move. Couldn't scream. Couldn't even open her eyes.
The warmth pulsed, almost curious, as if testing her resolve.
No. Not this. Not now.
She raged against the paralysis, but her body was a cage of lead. Only her voice—trapped in her own skull—could move.
"Kill me already, you bastard! If you're going to do it, just do it! Don't you dare—"
The warmth vanished.
Everything vanished.
Not darkness. Not the cold void she was learning to navigate. This was nothing. A total unmaking of sensation where she had no body, no breath, no heartbeat. She was a single point of consciousness floating in a blankness so absolute it made her want to scream.
What is this? Where am I?
The questions had no voice. No sound. They were only thought, trembling in the emptiness.
Is this the debt? The ledger collecting? Let me out. Let me OUT!
She couldn't fight nothing. Couldn't strike at emptiness. This was worse than fire. Worse than ice. This was dissolution.
"You learned well these few days."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It was the same voice from the jungle—the old, knowing presence that had first spoken of ledgers and debts. But here, it wasn't a whisper on the wind. It was the very fabric of the void itself, speaking directly into the core of her being.
Shruti's awareness flailed, trying to orient toward the sound. "Who are you? What do you want from me? Show yourself!"
The voice continued, ignoring her demand. "Everyone thinks beggars have no direction... but they are wrong."
A pause stretched, infinite and maddening.
"See yourself," the voice commanded. "How are you going to take revenge? Watching from here? Or is your pride still too high to watch like a beggar?"
The words struck like needles. Shruti felt the phantom heat of shame flare through her nonexistent form. "I'm not hiding! I'm preparing. I'm learning. There's a difference."
"Is there?" The voice hummed, considering. "You plan to watch from the shadows at the Conflagration. You plan to observe your enemy. Like a beggar peering through a window, hoping for scraps."
"I need to know his strength!"
"You need to know his absence."
The words contradicted themselves, and frustration surged through her. "Why are you following me? What is your interest? What connection do we have that you plague me with these riddles?"
The hum paused. The answer, when it came, was infuriatingly calm. "It is not a good time for you to know."
She wanted to tear at the nothingness, to claw her way out. "Then why? What do you want from me?"
Silence. Then a question so simple it felt like a mockery. "In a situation like this, think patiently. If a beggar did not get food at one door, what did he do?"
The shift stunned her. One moment, cosmic mysteries. The next, street-level practicality. Her strategic mind engaged despite the surreal terror.
"He... he goes elsewhere," she answered, confused. "To another door."
"And if he did not get food there, then?"
"He goes elsewhere. He keeps moving."
"After that?"
"He goes—" She stopped. The pattern clicked, but the meaning slithered away. "What? Are you saying Agnihotri won't attend his own competition? That the Maharaj won't be at the Conflagration?"
Cold realization poured through her awareness. If Jwala Agnihotri wasn't there—if the architect of her clan's destruction wasn't present—then her entire plan was useless. She would learn nothing of his power, his routines, his vulnerabilities. All her careful preparation would be for nothing.
"What should I do?" The question left her as a plea. "Tell me what to do."
The voice was firm, final. "Find it elsewhere."
The void collapsed.
Shruti gasped, a raw, sucking breath of humid cave air filling her starved lungs. She sat bolt upright, hand clawing at her chest where the phantom weight had been. Sweat drenched her brow, but her skin was ice-cold.
Surya was already there, his massive head pressed against her shoulder. "Princess! Princess, what happened? Your heart—it's racing like a hunted rabbit! Were you in pain? A dream?"
Chandra appeared at the cave entrance, a leaf-bundle of herbs already in her jaws. She dropped them and padded over, her emerald eyes scanning Shruti with maternal intensity. "Your breathing stopped. I felt it. One moment you were there, the next you were... gone." She pressed a cool nose to Shruti's temple. "Where does it hurt?"
Shruti shook her head, dragging in another steadying breath. The remnants of the void clung to her mind like cobwebs. "It's fine. It wasn't pain. It was..." She searched for words. "A lesson."
Both panthers stared, uncomprehending.
"A lesson?" Surya's ears flattened. "That felt like your soul was being squeezed out! What kind of teacher uses torture?"
"The kind that doesn't use words the way we do." Shruti pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. Her mind was still spinning, but the core message was crystallizing. "Beggars have nowhere to go," she whispered.
The panthers exchanged a glance.
"What do you mean?" Chandra asked, settling on her haunches. "Everyone has somewhere to go."
"That's what I thought," Shruti said, looking up at them. Her mismatched eyes gleamed in the faint cave light. "But I was wrong. A beggar has no home. No clan. No fixed path. So they can go everywhere."
Surya tilted his head, his tail-tip twitching. "That sounds... terrible. Not free. Just lost."
"No." Shruti's voice gained strength. "It's not just that. It's a principle. The voice wasn't talking about actual beggars. It was talking about me. About us."
She stood, pacing the cave's small space. The panthers tracked her movement, their eyes twin points of luminous concern.
"We have nowhere to go because Vidyagriha is gone. No home because our clan is ash. No fixed path because every road we thought was ours has been burned away." She stopped, turning to face them. "And that means we're free to walk any road. To try every door."
Chandra's tail swished thoughtfully. "You mean... we don't have to watch the Conflagration?"
"We can," Shruti said, excitement flickering in her chest. "But we don't have to only watch it. If Agnihotri isn't there, we find out where he is. If the competition is a hollow show, we look elsewhere for real intelligence. If one path is blocked, we take another."
Surya bounded to his feet, his ember-flecked fur rippling with sudden understanding. "So we stop worrying about the one big door! We start checking all the windows! All the back entrances!"
"Exactly." Shruti knelt, placing a hand on each panther's neck. "Beggars don't sit at one door and starve. They move. They adapt. They keep trying until something works."
Chandra pressed closer, her mental voice serious. "This is dangerous, little one. A beggar moving through the streets is noticed. A beggar poking at the wrong window gets a beating. Or worse."
"But a beggar who knows when to be invisible..." Shruti's smile was sharp. "We learned that already, didn't we? In the jungle. How to be nothing. How to be a shadow."
Surya chuffed, his breath warm against her cheek. "We did! We were so good at it, the snakes didn't even see us!"
"The voice wants me to stop thinking like a princess," Shruti continued, her mind racing now. "A princess has a throne to reclaim. A princess has a single, righteous path. But a beggar..." She paused, the word no longer tasting like ash. "A beggar just has a need. And they'll satisfy that need by any means necessary."
Chandra's eyes narrowed. "So our need is vengeance. And we can pursue it from any angle. Not just the obvious one."
"Not just the obvious one," Shruti agreed. "If Jwala Agnihotri doesn't show himself at the Conflagration, we find where he does show. His supply lines. His personal guard. His favorite hunting grounds. His weaknesses don't have to be on display at a festival. They could be anywhere."
"So we become ghosts," Surya suggested, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Ghosts that haunt everywhere, not just one place."
"Ghosts," Chandra murmured. "Or shadows that stretch across the entire kingdom."
The three of them fell silent, the new paradigm settling over them like a second skin. For weeks, they had been operating under the assumption that their path was straight: learn, train, watch, strike. Now that path had fractured into a thousand possibilities, each one a thread they could pull.
"Do you think the voice is trying to help?" Surya asked, breaking the quiet. "Or is it just... messing with you?"
Shruti considered. "I don't know. But I think it's teaching me lessons I need to survive. First the ledger—every debt accounted for. Now the beggar—every path is possible." She looked down at her hands, at the faint scars circling her wrists. "Maybe it's preparing me for what's coming."
"What's coming is the Conflagration," Chandra reminded her. "In six nights now. We still need to be there."
"Yes," Shruti agreed. "But not as observers waiting for the main event. As beggars testing a door." She straightened, her posture shifting. The rigid bearing of a princess-in-exile softened into something more fluid, more adaptable. "We'll go. And watch. But we'll also watch everything around it. Who arrives late? Who leaves early? Who looks disappointed? Who looks relieved?"
Surya's tail lashed with excitement. "And if Agnihotri's not there, we find out why. And where."
"And then we go there," Shruti finished. "Door by door. Window by window. Until we find what we need."
Chandra stepped back, her gaze appraising. "This changes things. We need to prepare differently."
"How so?" Shruti asked.
"A beggar doesn't carry a princess's sword," Chandra said simply. "Not openly. And beggars don't travel as a pack of three. Not when they want to be invisible."
The words struck true. Shruti looked at her sword, the blade she'd repaired with such care. It was too distinctive. Too noble. And the panthers—mythical creatures of shadow and ember—were hardly discreet.
"I can hide," Surya offered quickly. "I'm good at hiding! I can be smoke in the trees!"
"And I can be a jungle cat," Chandra added. "Not a guardian beast. Just... a panther. The jungle is full of them."
Shruti nodded slowly. "And I can be..." She looked down at her clothes. The fine silk under-tunic, even torn and stained, still bore the weave of Vidyagriha. "I can be a refugee. A survivor of some minor clan displaced by the bandits. Someone nobody looks at twice."
"You'll need a story," Chandra said.
"A story we can all stick to," Surya added.
Shruti's mind was already working, the strategic gears turning smoothly now that the paralysis of a single path had been lifted. "The Frost Clan's lands are in chaos. Raiders from the Tundra Steppes. Bandits." She looked at her mismatched eyes in the small pool that served as their mirror. "I was a ward of a minor family in the northern passes. When the Frost Clan fell, everything collapsed. I'm looking for... what do beggars look for?"
"Safety," Chandra supplied. "Work. A place to belong."
"A purpose," Surya added, his voice soft.
"Safety, then," Shruti decided. "I'm traveling south, hoping the Agnihotri strength can protect what's left of my family." She paused. "But my family is dead. And I'm not looking for safety. I'm looking for opportunity."
"Opportunity to slip a knife between the ribs," Surya said, a dark grin in his mental voice.
"Opportunity to learn," Chandra corrected, though her tone held the same edge. "A beggar at the door is just a beggar. A beggar inside the house... is a thief waiting to happen."
Shruti laughed again, the sound bright in the damp cave. It was the laugh of someone who had just discovered a hidden door in a prison wall. "Then let's get inside the house."
She moved to her small pack, pulling out the simplest, most nondescript clothing she had. A rough-spun tunic, travel-worn breeches. She'd kept them for training, for times when royal silks would be a liability. Now they would be her disguise.
"The sword stays here," she decided, though the words pained her. "I'll carry a knife. Something plain. Common."
"And we stay close," Surya insisted. "But not too close. We can hunt in the jungle around the stronghold. Watch from the trees."
"And if you need us," Chandra added, her mental voice fierce, "you call. Beggar or princess, you are still our Shruti."
She met their gaze, her mismatched eyes bright with a fierce, new clarity. The terror of the void was gone, replaced by a restless energy that hummed through her veins. The voice had been right. She had been thinking like a princess with a throne to reclaim, a single path to walk. But that path had been burned to ash along with her home.
Now she had nowhere to go.
Which meant she could go anywhere.
"Six nights," she said, her voice quiet but steady. "We watch the Conflagration. But we don't wait for Agnihotri to appear. We look for all the places he isn't. And then we go there."
"Door by door," Surya echoed.
"Window by window," Chandra finished.
The waterfall outside seemed to whisper agreement, its constant voice a reminder that even stone could be worn away by persistence. Shruti looked at her reflection in the pool—not the princess of Vidyagriha, not the last survivor of the Frost Clan, but a stranger with mismatched eyes and a beggar's flexibility.
The countdown in her heart was still ticking. But now it wasn't counting down to a single moment of confrontation. It was counting down to the first of many attempts. The first of many doors.
And if that door was locked?
She would simply go elsewhere.
The game wasn't just moving to its next stage.
It was multiplying into a thousand games, and she was finally free to play them all.