The cellar beneath Vora Heights stank of fear, blood, and wet stone. The prisoner's head lolled forward, ropes cutting red lines into his wrists. His left eye was swollen shut; his breath came in wet, ragged gasps.
Jai stood three paces away, hands and forearms still flecked with the man's blood. Shadow sat beside him, motionless, amber eyes fixed on the broken guard.
Maya wiped a thin blade on a black cloth. Nishil cracked his knuckles once, the sound like splitting wood.
Jai's voice was quiet, almost gentle.
"Speak the rest. All of it."
The guard coughed crimson onto the floor.
"They… they knew someone was hitting their warehouses. Fires. Missing ledgers. Caravans vanishing between Broach and Surat. The English panicked. Said a ghost walked the city. So they gave Chaudhary-sahib rivers of silver—English coin, Portuguese coin, anything that spends. Told him to hire the best blades money could buy."
He swallowed, choking.
"Twenty-five house guards. Good men. But the real teeth… five of them. Came from somewhere in the far north. A guild the English only call **'Kala Pathar'**—Black Stone. No banners, no names. They move like wind, smell danger before it breathes. Their captain is a woman with a white streak in her hair. They say she can kill a man at fifty paces with a thrown needle."
Jai's eyes narrowed. "Their orders?"
"Clean. Fast. No war cries. First, buy every plot of land you need for expansion. Block your docks, your roads, your suppliers. Then… start removing pieces from the board."
He looked up, tears cutting channels through the blood on his cheeks.
"Key people. Your quartermaster Kali. Your blacksmith Kofi. Your mother Leela. Your father Anil. One by one. Quiet accidents. Poisoned wells. Falling scaffolding. A knife in the bazaar crowd. Until the Vora name is just a memory and Alok Chaudhary sits on the throne of Surat."
Silence fell, heavy as a coffin lid.
The guard's voice cracked. "That's all I know. Please… I have a wife in Nadiad… two daughters…"
Jai stepped forward until the lamp lit his face—sixteen years old, but the eyes were ancient.
"I believe you," he said softly. "And that is why you cannot leave this room."
The man's sob turned into a scream that never finished.
Jai drew the thin karambit from his waist. One clean motion—across the throat, deep enough to silence, shallow enough to be quick. Blood sheeted over the stone. The body slumped against the ropes.
Jai did not look away until the twitching stopped.
He wiped the blade on the dead man's kurta, then spoke to the shadows without turning.
"Burn the body in the glass furnace. Bones to powder. No trace."
Maya bowed. Nishil simply nodded, already moving.
Two hours later the war-room was packed.
Every core follower stood or sat around the long teak table: Ram, Shashi, Kali, Kofi, Amir, Sarita, Ravi, Manoj, Annu, Maya, Arjun, Rahil, Sanjay, Dhruv, Nishil.
Jai stood at the head, still in the same blood-speckled black kurta.
His voice carried no heat—only winter.
"Alok Chaudhary is not a rival merchant. He is the East India Company's dagger aimed at our heart. They have bought him land, silver, and five northern assassins whose guild even the Mughals whisper about. Their plan is simple: starve us of space, then murder us one by one until nothing remains."
Kofi's fist dented the table. "Let me walk into that haveli with fifty men and turn it to ash."
Amir snarled agreement. "Or I lead the night blades. Twenty minutes, thirty corpses."
Ram raised a calm hand. "And give the Emperor perfect excuse to Suspect us for our intensions No. We do this cleaner."
Shashi leaned forward, eyes calculating. "We bleed him first. Buy every plot he wants—through proxies. Drive the price so high his English silver runs dry."
Sarita's abacus clicked like falling bones. "Already started. We can outbid him three to one for the next six months—if we pause the northern road for one season."
Kali rumbled, "Meanwhile we move our most vital people—your parents, Kofi, myself—into the inner compound. Triple the shadow patrols."
Maya spoke last, voice like a drawn blade.
"The five northern killers are the real danger. I felt their presence tonight. If we wait, they choose the ground. We must choose it for them."
Jai listened to every voice, then raised his hand. Silence fell instantly.
No, I want the message to be heard loud and clear this time, but i do not want anyone to know what actually happened.
He turned to Maya and Nishil.
"Prepare the new rifles. Ten silent, ten thunder-makers.
Let the British learn what it costs to send an Indian to do murder for them."
Amir's grin was all teeth. "And the twenty-five guards?"
Jai's gaze swept the table, cold and absolute.
"Roots, my friends. We do not cut the grass.
We pull the roots."
He placed the blood-cleaned karambit in the centre of the table.
"prepare. soon, Surat learns a new law:
Touch the Vora family, and the earth itself forgets your name."
No one spoke.
No one needed to.
The war had begun in earnest.