Vikram stopped walking, the flickering torchlight throwing restless shadows across the ancient portraits. Kiara waited, her breath hitching as she sensed there was more—something far heavier than the history he'd already laid out.
He finally turned to her.
"Kiara… there's one last truth you must know about Yuvaan."
Her heart clenched. "What truth?"
Vikram's jaw tightened. "Why he married you."
Kiara swallowed hard, her fingers twisting together. She already knew the story from Yuvaan's own lips… but hearing it from her father felt different.
Sharper.
Real.
"He married you," Vikram said slowly, "because he needed a bond with someone from the Reeva bloodline to access the Dark Stronghold."
His eyes held hers, unflinching.
"Your bloodline. Our family. You."
The words hit like cold steel. Kiara felt her breath stutter, the basement seeming to tilt for a moment.
Varun shifted uncomfortably beside her, his expression apologetic yet helpless.
Vikram continued, gentler now but equally firm. "Yuvaan needed you, Kiara… not out of love. Not at first. Not out of choice. But for access. For power."
Kiara blinked rapidly, trying to steady the sting in her eyes.
"I know… he told me himself," she whispered.
Vikram stepped closer. "Then you also know what he is."
Kiara flinched. "Dad—"
"No," Vikram said, soft but resolute. "You must hear this with a clear mind. Yuvaan may stand with us now. He may show remorse. He may even want redemption. But he is still the reincarnation of Kaal—the greatest dark force our world has ever known."
A beat of silence. Heavy. Suffocating.
"You cannot ignore that, Kiara," Vikram said. "Not when deciding the future of your life."
Varun added quietly, "We're not telling you to hate him. We're not telling you to leave him. We're telling you… to think."
Vikram nodded. "Exactly. You must decide for yourself whether you want to give Yuvaan a second chance. Whether you can trust him… or whether his past and destiny place you in danger."
Kiara's throat tightened painfully.
Wind howled faintly through the cracks of the ancient room, as if the walls themselves waited for her answer.
Her voice trembled when she finally spoke.
"I don't know what I want," she confessed. "I don't know what's right anymore. Everything is just… too much."
Vikram's expression softened with fatherly ache.
"That is why I brought you here. Not to frighten you. But so you have the truth. All of it. You deserve nothing less."
Kiara's eyes fell to the ground, shimmering with unshed tears.
Yuvaan.
Her husband.
Kaal.
Her enemy… and the man who protected her with his life.
The man who set her free today.
And yet—
He married her for power.
Her heart twisted in a million directions at once.
Vikram rested a comforting hand on her head.
"Kiara… think carefully before you choose. You're tied to a man who carries darkness in his very soul. Only you can decide whether that darkness can be overcome."
Kiara closed her eyes, a tear slipping free.
"I just… need time."
"And you'll have it," Vikram said quietly. "We're with you. Always."
Meanwhile
The throne of Kaal Vansh crouched at the heart of the grove like a wound in the world — black roots braided into seats, lanterns that burned with a cold, inner light, and the whisper of a thousand hungry things between the trees. Yuvaan moved through it as if the night itself parted for him. The dark silk of his kurta clung to him; the chest beneath it rose and fell like a promise. Around him, daayans bowed with voices that sounded like dead leaves.
"Return, my lord," one intoned. Another pressed a forehead to the floor. Their devotion was a tide and he let it lap at his ankles with an amused tilt to his mouth. He strolled to the base of a colossal, gnarled tree that smelt of old wars and older magics, and made a small, careless show of checking the hem of his sleeve.
"I require the shadow witch," he called, voice smooth as oil. "Tell Taamsi to come down. I have a schedule — eight hours of scheming, two hours of sleep, and I simply cannot afford dark circles."
A ripple of low chuckles rustled through the ranks. The tree above answered not with footsteps but a breath of air that smelled of bone. From a forked branch, margining the gloom like some living canopy, a figure unfurled — slender, regal, and utterly wrong. Taamsi landed in the hollow with the grace of a thing that had practiced the shape of malice for centuries. She wore a sari like midnight spilled in silk; her smile was a slow knife.
"You keep your hours like a mortal," she said, voice a velvet rasp. "How admirable. How quaint." Her eyes, two cold coins, slid over him and found the promise on his face. "You came back. To remind me of my place? How sweet."
Yuvaan stepped forward until the light caught the hard line of his jaw. He did not lower his eyes; he did not bow. "You killed my father, Taamsi," he said, every syllable a small, bright thing. "You broke my mother. You turned my world into a slow, delicious cruelty. You sent blades and shadows after Kiara. You lived in my home pretending to be someone's wife. I remember every scrap."
Taamsi's smile widened into a patient, dangerous thing. "You remember everything, yes. You remember pain better than most." She turned, as if showing him the roots themselves. "But remember this also — I set the stage that made you. I raised the hunger in you when the world offered milk. Had I not, you might have lived a smaller, softer life. You would not have been worth my attention."
He heard the barb for what it was and let it bruise him. He let it fuel him instead. "If any harm comes to what I care for," he said, and the words dropped like stones, "if one strand of Kiara's life is burned because of you or your—" he flicked his hand at the daayans, "—because of anything that calls itself ally to your throne, then I will burn Kaal Vansh to ash. Every root. Every shadow. I will make your name nothing but smoke."
Taamsi laughed then, a sound without warmth. "Such drama." She took two steps closer until the space between them thrummed. "You threaten me, child king? You forget who your blood answers to. You were born of dark things; you drank from their wells. The Stronghold will not be yours without sacrifice."
"Then take what you want," Yuvaan replied, the word a blade wrapped in velvet. "But do not mistake me for the puppet you think you made. If the Great Eclipse asks me to be a king of ruin, I will be it — on my own terms. Harm the ones I love and you will learn the price of creating a god-sized fury."
Taamsi's shadowed face tilted. For a heartbeat the grove was held between two wills: his hunger for strength and control, hers for strategy and dominion. Around them the daayans shifted like a dark sea.
"Very well," she said at last, slow as a closing trap. "Prove me. Choose, king. Choose the throne and the stronghold, or choose the woman. Choose poorly, and everything you hold dear will feed the darkness you claim to rule."
She turned, a wave of black skirts, and melted into the branches. The grove inhaled. Yuvaan stood alone in the clearing for a long, terrible pulse of time, the air humming with the promise of the eclipse and the question that had settled like a stone in his chest: what would he choose?