Author's POV(Safe House, Chhayika's room)
The air inside the safehouse had changed. Not all at once, not with noise or announcement, but in the quiet way certain places hold their breath when something important is about to arrive. It was no longer a shelter. It had become a waiting room between silence and consequence, between planning and inevitability. The walls had begun to remember every whisper, every breath laced with fear or certainty, every decision that had been made without speaking. Chhayika could feel it building beneath her skin, the shift in the temperature of the room, the way time had started to harden into purpose. Something was coming and every instinct she had was awake to it now.
Giriraj walked in without knocking. She had heard him approach before the door moved, his presence familiar but not soft. He never knocked because whatever needed to be said was always bigger than politeness. His footsteps were steady, deliberate, his hands closing around a thick leather folder that looked like it had been fed scraps of war for years. He placed it between them on the table with a sound that barely registered, but in that room, at that moment, it might as well have been the breaking of silence itself. She met his eyes and neither of them smiled.
"We have him", he said, the words carrying the weight of something final. "Raghav Mehra, the one who named you Eagle, you know how he moves. Cold and calculated, he always preferred the dark, and currently he is in his comfort zone, shadows. If we do not move now, we lose the sky. We are already behind, and this may be our last chance, Chhayika."
She did not ask anything, she already knew. Her fingers moved to the folder, skimming the surface of the first page, letting her eyes drink what her mind was already bracing for. Photos that had never been meant to exist, messages pulled from private networks and blackmail rings, satellite captures that told stories in the language of shadows. The threat was not new. But this time, the cost of delay would be. "How many", she asked, her voice more breath than sound, her eyes still reading.
"Three from our side. Two local assets. But that is not what worries me." The tension in Giriraj's words made her lift her gaze then, slow and sharp, the way one raises a weapon only when absolutely certain. "What does?"
He paused, just for a breath, but she saw it. What amused her is that this is the same hesitation he hated in others, the same kind he feared in her. "He is moving. Every forty-eight hours. Never the same place twice. We will only get one chance and it must be clean."
Her voice came low, not questioning, but confirming something she already understood. "No bodies left behind."
"Exactly, no noise, no stains, and no failure. If you hesitate again, if you let Ariz into your mind when we breach that room, if anything about yesterday returns in your eyes, we lose."
Her face did not shift. She did not blink. The sting of his words did not reach her features but it curled somewhere beneath the surface where guilt and resolve lived in the same breath. "I do not freeze."
He held her gaze. "No. But you bleed."
There was nothing theatrical in that sentence, no cruelty, just facts. The wound on her side had not fully closed. The pain still taught her something each morning when she dressed without help. But it was not her blood that had Giriraj haunted. It was the reason it spilled. It was the man she had not killed. The look in her eyes before she pulled back.
She turned another page, the sharp edge of the paper grazing her skin but not her focus. "Then let us make sure the blood serves something greater than regret."
He tapped a spot near the bottom corner of the page. "Coordinates. A single mark on a map that now held their fate. Tomorrow. At dawn."
Their eyes met for a moment longer. Not with sentiment. Not with doubt. There was nothing left to say. She would go. He would command. And the rest would be written in the language they both understood.
He left without waiting for a reply.
She remained at the table, staring at the place where the ink had stained the paper like a promise waiting to be fulfilled.
The final hunt had already begun.
The Next Day
The air was cold, dry, and unforgiving, the kind that lingered on skin. It was a reminder of what was to come. Dawn had not claimed the sky fully, yet, but the part of the world that moved in shadows was already awake, about to hunt in the quiet spaces where light dared not venture. Yes, the mission is about to start.
Chhayika adjusted the strap of her Kevlar vest with the kind of precision that came from years of repetition. Sleep had been a foreign thought, but she'd expected that. You didn't rest when the final hunt loomed just hours away. You prepared: body, mind, and instinct. Her wound still throbbed beneath the fabric of her gear, but she didn't acknowledge it. Pain had long ceased to be something to avoid. It was just another reminder of what she hadn't yet finished.
Across the room, Giriraj was already in motion, his figure a study in quiet efficiency as he double-checked logistics with their local contact. His voice was sharp, precise, and his body taut with the kind of tension only he knew how to hide beneath a calm exterior.
She moved past him to grab the tablet with the latest drone visuals. He, ever aware, decided that would be the moment.
"You limped less today," he said, his voice casual, his gaze focused elsewhere.
"Noticed that, did you?" she replied, voice cool, not lifting her eyes from the screen.
"I notice everything," he said, the words almost a challenge, before adding, as if it were an afterthought, "Especially when someone is dragging ghosts along with their gear." Chhayika received it as a scoff by Giriraj. She paused, the tablet still in her hands, and turned slowly to face him. "This isn't the time." He met her gaze then, his eyes unreadable but unmistakably sharp. "It never is. But ghosts don't care about timing."
She stood there for a moment, the weight of his words settling between them, before responding softly, almost too quietly for him to hear, "Neither do your taunts."
For a brief moment, something flickered in his expression, amusement? Guilt? A recognition of something deeper? It was gone before it could be named, leaving only the stark edges of their shared history. Then he straightened and handed her the comms chip, his voice shifting back to business. "We're fifteen minutes out. Bird's circling. The vulture is roosting in an old tannery outside the southern ridge." Vulture is his code name, code name of Raghav, Raghav Mehra. Back to the mission. Of course.
She took the chip and inserted it into her earpiece without another word. "And our shadows?" Giriraj replied almost instantly, "Already in position. The rest depends on how fast we move... and whether your ghosts behave." She gave him a look, dry and sharp, her eyes never leaving his. "If mine don't, yours will." A beat passed, then, almost imperceptibly, the tension on his face broke into the smallest of smirks. "Touché."
Static crackled through the comms before a voice came through, clear and steady: "Team Alpha, we are green. I repeat, green. Final window is confirmed." Giriraj's gaze shifted, shifted into something subtle in his eyes now, he was no more the manipulator, but the comrade. "Let's end this."
Chhayika nodded once, her expression hardening into the resolve that had always been there. "Let's hunt the scavenger."
Rudra's POV | 48 Hours Earlier
They thought they buried her when they buried Fatima, as if a name and a mission could erase everything she was, as if a quiet grave could swallow the silence that still clung to her. They gave her a label that never fit, a purpose that never truly ended, and they thought they sealed it all away with the press of a button, a neatly wrapped bow of success, of sacrifice, of finality. But I don't believe in finality. I've seen too many stories left unfinished, too many details swept under rugs where no one bothered to look. I've read files where the margins were more telling than the body of the text. And I've seen ghosts who wear the wrong names, trying to live lives that don't belong to them.
I watched her disappear, not off maps, not off systems, but from meaning. From memory. They erased her presence the way people erase inconvenient truths, they stopped asking, stopped wondering, stopped caring. And I watched her fade into that quiet oblivion. But I knew, somewhere beneath all that silence, she would return. Not to the duty, not to the mission. No, she would return because of something far greater than duty, because of something already written in the design. The design that only I understood.
She was never just a soldier to me. She was never a tool, a weapon, or a cog in a machine. I don't see people like that. I don't see them through the lens of utility or rank. I see the deeper currents. I see the patterns that run through them, the functions they serve without knowing it, the pressure points where everything might break wide open. And she? She is the perfect pressure point.
They think she broke protocol. They think she made a mistake. I know better. She didn't break anything. She answered a prophecy. I saw it the moment they sent the woman posing as Fatima after her, not by my hand, not directly. Azhar was the one who moved the pieces there. His was the blunt force, the crude attempt to restart a game long forgotten. But brilliance doesn't need chaos. It doesn't need noise. It just needs to understand the right moment, to read the current, to let things unfold without interference.
So I didn't stop the lie. I let it grow. I watched it burn in her, watched her wrestle with that name every time it was whispered, watched her breathe it in like a secret she couldn't escape. I didn't create the bomb. I only shaped the blast, built it slowly, carefully, with every word I fed into her world. I watched, I waited, and I let it become her burden.
Giriraj? He was always going to interfere. That's in his nature. He's loyal, sharp, disciplined. He doesn't make mistakes. Except when it comes to her. He thinks he's protecting her. He thinks he's the one standing between her and whatever hell comes next. But love, whatever name he refuses to admit to it, makes men blind in the places they think they understand most clearly. He won't see Aariz correctly, and that is the crack in his armor. That's all I needed. Not to destroy them. Not yet. Just to reveal to them what they refuse to face.
You don't defeat someone like Chhayika. You don't break her, you don't break her spirit, her resolve. You just make her see the truth of who she's become. You show her the woman standing there in the rubble, staring back at herself, and then you step aside. You let her make the choice. But that's not what will happen, is it? I didn't just predict this mission. I knew she wouldn't stop at intel. She never does, she'll take it all, the entire base. That's who she is, she can't help herself. The task was never meant to be anything more than intel, but for her, it will always be more. She will take the whole base if that's what it takes to claim her victory. I warned my men to prepare, I knew this moment, knew her better than they ever could. Better than she even knows herself.
But they came faster than I thought. She came faster than I thought. Faster than Giriraj's usual responses, compared to them, this was real quick. This shouldn't be perfect due to lack of time, but it will be, because that is the way they are. They're here, and now, I have to adjust. I have to work with the situation, let them believe they're ahead, let them think they still control the play. But they've already lost. It's too late to stop them now.
Chhayika's POV
You don't understand the weight of silence until it wraps itself around you tighter than breath tighter than skin until it moves with you and inside you and becomes the only sound you know. In the safehouse before we shifted position that silence was luxury, it was trust, it was the one thing I didn't have to question, but now it is absolute danger, now it is liability.
We moved within forty-eight hours. Five on field: three trained men, and two local contacts... And me. But they all knew what I was, I was not a point, I was not the shadow, I wasn't even any cover. I was the blade, the hand, and the storm before the strike.
The terrain had changed. The sand was too loose to hold a stance without slipping and the wind had teeth it bit through fabric and memory and breath but none of that mattered because my mind was quieter than it had been in days not calm, actually never calm, but quiet with a purpose that burned clearer than any rage.
Giriraj took the backseat. We had agreed. He knew this wasn't his war to shape, it was mine to finish and he had the discipline to let me try. He watched and waited, and I? I moved.
"Briefing was at 0430." I didn't speak more than I had to. My teammates didn't need fire, they had my silence. They didn't need speeches, they had my presence. And I didn't need anyone, I never did, because I had vengeance.
The initial objective was simple. Extract intel. Eliminate four HVTs. No civilian casualties. No unnecessary exposure. In and out. But what we walked into wasn't a target, but a trap. A web made of teeth and wires and death waiting with open arms.
The compound wasn't large but it was deep and multi-layered, with mines across the perimeter. Surveillance wired with kill-switches that triggered if the heartbeat of the central captain dropped. Over two hundred men inside. Biochemical dispersals. Tactical drones. Rifles enhanced with AI. Good. I didn't want it easy.
I moved first, not a strategy, just the fact that I always do. My entry wasn't a step, it was a breath. One hand on the stone, the other on the dagger at my thigh. The men followed, quiet, angled, eyes sharp, protocol in place, no bullet fired. Not yet.
Inside everything narrowed. The air was thick, and the darkness familiar. I counted each breath, and each kill, no noise, no mess, two moves, two drops. Each one hit the ground before they knew they were dead. That's how I work.
I don't use noise when silence obeys. The old weapons serve better in my hands than any new ones do. The vajra split bone with quiet finality. The claws shredded fabric and flesh like nothing was there. The belam sliced between ribs in one fluid motion. The katar moved up through the jaw into the brain, quick, efficient, and... gone.
I used six drops of the hemorrhage drug. Slipped it into the kettle they passed around like a ritual. The central unit's commander drank it with a smile. He bled out three hours later in the middle of a shootout screaming until his lungs collapsed. They panicked. I didn't.
I didn't eat, I didn't sleep. I gave my rations to the youngest asset, a boy who looked at me like I was more than human, and far less than safe. My water went to the comms handler. They worked because I moved, I moved because I had to.
By the thirtieth hour I stopped bleeding not because the wounds were gone but because my body had no more to give. My stomach twisted itself dry. My legs should've collapsed. But this wasn't breaking. I've been broken before, but this was a little beyond that.
This was a conquest.
The final stretch wasn't battle, it was slaughter. They came wave after wave and I moved through them like the end of a sentence long denied.
I emptied my guns with precision. I made each shot count. My urumi coiled in my hand like it had its own memory. It wrapped around necks and cut through cloth and skin and men. It danced with me and I with it. It became my language. My answer. My law.
Their grenades broke the walls, but my smoke made them see monsters in each other. They fired blindly, they turned on themselves. I let them.
Then came the one I had waited for, the betrayer. He begged, Of course he did.
I didn't shoot him. I didn't stab him. I tied him to the comms pole and I looked him in the eyes as I injected six drops of the untraceable compound into his veins. Not to kill, but to make him watch. To make him live long enough to see everything burn.
And I made sure he knew who did it.
My name. My war. My voice.
I stood on top of the compound soaked in blood soaked in silence soaked in something only I could carry. The sky was breaking. The sun found me through torn clouds. And I screamed from the core of everything I was—
अहं योधाऽस्मि (ahaṁ yodhā'smi)
(I am a warrior.)
Giriraj's POV
People talk about hell like it is something they have seen, something they have walked through and come out scarred but still breathing. They have not. Not until they have seen the silence Chhayika leaves behind. The warrior's silence.
I arrived late, not an error but an intention. This was hers, her ground, her fury, her unfinished sentence written in blood. I was only there to witness the full stop.
The compound was not taken. It was claimed. It was not a battlefield, it was a memory carved into the earth. Blood had not spilled, it had settled. The dead did not fall, they had surrendered. And none of them were ours. I stepped past a rifle still hot from its final scream. Next to it a man's jaw twitched like his body was still begging not to be forgotten.She did not fight here, she became the fight.
And then I saw her. High platform. Shoulders soaked in sweat and blood and neither of them hers anymore. Head tilted like she was still listening for a sound only she could hear. Her breath was steady but not calm. Her eyes. Her eyes were the storm and the aftermath. They were cold, they were lit, they were the reason no one else was left standing. And when she screamed it:
अहं योधाऽस्मि (ahaṁ yodhā'smi)
The earth did not echo. It surrendered.
I should have been angry. I should have said her name like a warning. I should have reminded her of every rule she had broken. But in that moment there was only one truth. She is not mine. She is not anyone's. She is war dressed as a name. And I was there when that name was born. I will not let anyone else decide how her story ends.
Rudra's POV
I don't believe in mistakes, not the real kind, not the kind that changes the current. I remember the coffee cup, now... Late, I am already out.
I had made it mindlessly, as the laptop booted up. It had been an impulse, a momentary indulgence while I waited for the file to open. I hadn't planned on it, not in my original scheme. But the plan had shifted.
The file for which I took the risk? Gone. Destroyed. I did. I made sure of that before the cleaner was executed. It was the only thing that tied back to me. But there was something more I needed to do, a subtle nudge, a calculated move to make sure they would come after the wrong target. I needed them to make the mistake that they couldn't afford to make. So I made sure they would find the laptop, the laptop which was already exploited with my deeds, enough that they would find nothing except details of Azhar, which I really don't care about, good that they find it. She would inevitably come to it. But, along with the laptop, I left that damn coffee cup, that cup screams imperfection, imperfection of my plan. It doesn't have my finger prints, but my tongue prints. The tongue leaves a softer mark than the hand, but it tells more.
I stood there for a moment, sipping the coffee slowly, letting it warm my throat as the laptop hummed softly in the background. I tasted the bitterness, not unlike my work. But I wasn't focused on that, I wasn't focused on the coffee. I was focused on the fact that I had only one moment, only one chance left. When I heard the sound of boots in the distance, I knew it was time, time to go.
I slipped out the back door without a second thought. The cup remained there, empty, forgotten. But I know they would be too focused on what they had found to pay attention to it. And Giriraj who can pay attention to this minute detail would be too distorted to think about it, yet. Giriraj would freak out seeing Chhayika bloodied, that would be the cover of my mistakes.
He most probably won't reach me through that tongue print, even if he gets that. But, if he doesn't lose his wits, he would doubt me. The line between certainty and doubt is thinner than you think. I always knew they'd get more than they expected.
But the question remains, was I leading them, was I being led... or I would be led?
❀✧✸✩✺✧❀✩✸✧✺❀
Author's note
If you enjoyed the story, a vote would mean a lot.
If something felt off, feel free to comment , I'm always trying to improve.
Compliments and honest criticism are equally welcomed here.
Love you all.💖