The Night the Crown Drowned in Blood

Some stories begin with love.

Some begin with destiny.

This one begins with the wet, gurgling gasp of a King's Last Breath.

And a curse given Million of Years Ago.

---

The Night the Crown Fell.

The palace wasn't just dying; it was being butchered. Flames, fat and greasy with human oil, devoured the golden domes, painting the sky in shades of hellish orange and black. The screams weren't just echoes; they were a symphony of agony, bouncing off the marble halls, each one a knife in the heart of the kingdom.

Soldiers, not men but mindless instruments of slaughter, waded through the carnage. The courtyard was no longer stone, but a slick, crimson lake. Bodies lay tangled in heaps—guards with surprised, empty eyes, courtesans in silks now heavy with blood, children no bigger than the palace dogs. The air was thick with the iron stench of gore and the sweet, sickly smell of burning flesh.

The kingdom had been gutted before the moon reached its zenith.

No one knew who had opened the gates. But everyone knew the ritual that followed.

The royal bloodline had to be erased. Every drop. Every last, screaming ember of it.

Near the shattered throne hall, a small figure stood frozen in the shadows.

A child.

Barefoot. His tiny feet left wet, red prints on the cold stone.

Silent. His mind had shattered behind his eyes, leaving only a hollow, watching thing behind.

Too shocked to scream. Too terrified to exist.

The crown of the dead ruler, a band of gold and jewels now just a bloody trinket, rolled across the floor with a soft, lonely clink and stopped near the child's foot.

A soldier, his face splattered with the viscera of his last kill, noticed.

"There! The whelp!" he roared, his voice raw from shouting orders over the screams.

Five armored men, their blades dripping, circled the child. They were not men, but butchers, their souls as black as the smoke billowing above them.

One of them, a hulking brute with a piggy face, raised his sword slowly. It was not a mercy, but a ceremony.

"Orders were clear," he grunted, his breath a foul cloud in the burning air. "No survivors. Not even the little rats."

The blade lifted high, catching the firelight. The child stared up at it. No flinch. No tears. No blink. His mind had simply stopped. It had become a vast, empty room, waiting for the lights to go out forever.

The sword began its descent—

THUD.

A body slammed into the brute from the side, a missile of fury wrapped in tattered cloth. A dagger, driven with the force of a dying man, plunged straight into the soldier's thick neck, just below the jaw. The brute's eyes went wide with shock as a fountain of arterial blood, black in the firelight, sprayed across the floor, painting the child's face in hot, sticky gore.

For one eternal second, everyone froze.

The stranger ripped the blade free, a wet, sucking sound accompanying the act. He rose from the crumpling body. Tall. Covered in dust and the grey ash of the dead. His eyes, however, were not grey. They burned with a fury so pure it was holy.

Around his wrist, stark against the filth and blood, was a Red Sacred Thread, blessed in the terrifying temple of Maa Kali—the goddess of destruction.

One of the soldiers, a younger man with a twitch, tried to laugh. It came out as a croak. "It's... it's just a fucking priest."

The priest didn't answer. He moved.

The next few seconds were not a fight. They were a sacrifice.

Steel flashed. A soldier screamed as the priest's dagger opened his throat from ear to ear, the sound cut short by a flood of crimson. Another lunged, his sword finding the priest's side. The priest grunted, the pain a distant fire, and used his own momentum to drive his skull into the soldier's face, cartilage crunching. As the man stumbled back, blinded by blood, the priest drove the dagger up under his ribs, twisting it in the heart.

He took a third soldier's sword through his shoulder, the blade scraping bone, but used the moment of closeness to shove his thumb into the man's eye, then brought the dagger across his throat in a savage, backhanded arc.

He collapsed against the throne steps, the soldier's body falling on top of him before rolling off. Blood soaked the marble, a fresh torrent joining the lake. It was his own blood, pumping from the wound in his shoulder, from the gash in his side, from a dozen smaller cuts.

The last soldier, the one who had laughed, stepped forward slowly, his sword trembling.

"You're dying, you mad fool," he sneered, trying to muster courage.

The priest, slumped against the cold stone, smiled faintly. It was a terrible smile, peaceful and knowing.

"Yes."

With a final, convulsive surge of will, he grabbed the soldier's ankle and drove his dagger upward, deep into the man's groin, severing the femoral artery. The soldier shrieked, a high, awful sound, and collapsed, his life geysering out onto the priest.

Both bodies lay still. One dead. One dying.

Silence, heavy and absolute, returned to the ruined hall. Only the crackle of flames and the distant, dying screams from outside remained.

The priest struggled to breathe. Each inhalation was a bubble of blood in his lungs. His hands, slick with his own life, trembled violently as he turned his head toward the child.

The boy was still there. Still silent. His small face was a mask of gore. But his eyes?... his eyes were no longer hollow. They were wide, burning, staring at the man who had saved him, memorizing every detail.

The priest crawled. Not a crawl, but a drag. A trail of viscera, of blood, of finality, marked his path. When he finally reached the child, his strength was gone. He could only lift a shaking hand and press the Sacred RED THREAD into the boy's tiny, cold fingers. He curled the child's fist around it.

His voice was a ghastly whisper, a rasp of torn flesh. "Live."

It was not a wish. It was a command. An order from a dying man to the last ember of a kingdom.

Outside, the clang of armor and the shouted commands of more butchers grew closer, entering the palace grounds.

The priest found a reservoir of strength he did not know he had. He forced himself to his feet, swaying, one arm hanging useless, the other clutching the child to his chest. He was already dead. He was just a corpse that hadn't stopped moving yet.

He walked into the burning night, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

Behind them, the Shariwan kingdom didn't just disappear in fire. It was unmade. Its soul ripped out. Its name became a curse, whispered in the dark.

That man was none other than Nath Ji.

---

Somewhere, Years Later—

A name began spreading across continents. Not like a whisper, but like the thunder of hooves.

From the scorching deserts to the snow-capped kingdoms. From blood-soaked battlefields to the hushed, fearful courts of kings.

A ruler who didn't just conquer. He unmade. He didn't just defeat armies. He erased them. Cities that resisted were left as smoldering pits of ash and bone. A king who never removed the dark cloth covering the lower half of his face. Only his eyes were ever seen.

They were the color of a deep, starless OCEAN.

Cold.

Empty.

Absolute.

His enemies didn't just call him a Monster. They called him the Scourge Of God, the Black Sultan, the Shadow That Walks.

His soldiers didn't just call him a God Of War. They worshipped him. They would walk into certain death for a single glance from those empty eyes.

No-one knows his real name.

And the world eventually learned his name as—

The Sultan of SHARIWAN.

---

Far Away...

In another land, under a different sky...

Someone unknowingly carried a piece of a forgotten nightmare.

A memory from childhood that felt more like a fever dream. It was the only memory that felt unreal, because every other memory was a waking nightmare of pain, cold, and hunger.

No name. No face. Just a fleeting moment of warmth in an inferno, of a guttural whisper that had never fully faded.

Something small was kept hidden all these years, tied with a fraying piece of old string and a Locket in the bottom of a worn leather trunk, and some time, under the neckline of cloth. A strange habit no one understood. Even its owner could not explain why it was never thrown away.

It was a, RED THREAD with a Locket of Maa Kali's Face print. Stained with something dark and ancient.

Fate does not forget.

Even when people do.

---

Soon...

Paths, soaked in blood and separated by oceans of time, would COLLIDE.

A Spy, carrying secrets in her heart and a talisman (moli) with a Locket, would enter a dangerous empire.

A king who trusted no one, whose heart was a frozen wasteland, would finally meet someone who did not flinch from his eyes.

Wars would rise from the ashes of old ones.

Again, Crowns would fall, shattering on floors slick with fresh blood.
And somewhere inside the chaos, in the clash of steel and the roar of flames...

A story, written in blood on a palace floor long ago, would begin again.

"Ek daastan, jo salon pehle mehal ke farsh par lahoo se likhi gayi thi... kaatil ki nigahon mein dubara janam legi"

A story of OBSESSION. Of VENGEANCE. Of BLOOD.

And a crown that would cost far more than a kingdom. It would cost a SOUL.

🖤-----🖤

ROHI: HIS OBSESSION, HIS WAR

🖤-----🖤