THE UNSUNG WARRIORS OF INDIA

Scene: The Ashes of Ullal – Three Days Later

Ullal did not sleep anymore.

The winds brought not whispers, but screams. The river turned red. Birds flew in reverse. The kingdom held its breath, as if the soil knew something darker had arrived.

Abbakka stood in the ruins of what was once the temple courtyard—now a crucible of charred bones and cracked idols. Her face was stone, her armor blackened with soot, hair tied tight behind her head like a noose.

Asha approached her quietly.

"They've breached the northern edge. Two nights ago. Left no survivors."

Abbakka didn't flinch.

"Then we'll stop waiting."

She turned toward the mountain pass.

"It's time to awaken the Exiled."

Scene: The Order of the Falling Blade

High in the western Ghats, shrouded in mist and venomous silence, lived an order known only in whispers—the Order of the Falling Blade. Jain monks turned assassins. Once philosophers, now shadows. Exiled decades ago by Abbakka's grandfather for rejecting peace and embracing the blade.

Abbakka and her Night Guard climbed the jagged cliffs barefoot, shedding all metal, as tradition demanded. Only silence passed among them.

At the summit, a bell made of bone rang once.

A monk stepped from the mist, face tattooed in sacred syllables, eyes hollow.

"The Flame Queen returns to the blood she banished."

Abbakka lowered her head.

"I come not for forgiveness. I come for vengeance."

The monk grinned.

"Then step into the Bleeding Crucible. Alone."

Scene: The Trial of Knives

The crucible was a circle of fire and glass—centered by a pedestal holding a crimson dagger.

Abbakka stripped her armor, entered barefoot, eyes sharp.

Three monks emerged, blades drawn.

The rule was simple: bleed, but do not fall.

The first monk lunged, blade slashing her forearm. Blood spilled.

The second struck her thigh. She gritted her teeth.

The third whispered as he cut her shoulder:

"This is not pain. This is history reclaiming its heir."

Abbakka stood, bleeding, fire at her back.

Then, she grabbed the crimson dagger and stabbed it into the ground.

The flames recoiled. The monks bowed.

"You are now Death's sister."

Scene: The Blood-Forged Pact

That night, in a chamber lit only by black wax, Abbakka swore the blood pact:

"I vow no mercy. No retreat. Only flame, blade, and silence."

The monks, now her shadows, began sharpening the ritual blades.

The leader of the Order, an enigmatic figure known only as Ashkara, stepped forward.

He was unlike the others—taller, veiled in crimson, his right hand covered in burn scars. His voice was deep, slow, surgical.

"I've studied your enemy, Queen of Fire. He believes in absolutes. In crosses and crowns. That's his weakness."

Abbakka looked him in the eye.

"And what do you believe in?"

Ashkara tilted his head.

"Balance. Through annihilation."

Scene: Lobo's Revelation

Back in the Ullal dungeons, Lobo scribbled feverishly on the walls with bits of bone. Equations. Symbols. Latin chants. Eyes wild.

Asha visited him, food in hand.

He stared at her with something between madness and prophecy.

"He's not human, you know."

She frowned.

"The Inquisitor?"

He laughed, then whispered:

"No. He's a construct. A living sermon made flesh. Pain and purpose twisted by the Vatican's darkest alchemists. I've seen them. Children turned into scripture. He's the last."

Asha backed away.

"Then we need to kill a god."

Lobo smiled.

"You'll need more than knives. You'll need to unwrite him."

Scene: Smoke Across the Spires

At dawn, the first wave came.

Not soldiers.

But blind nuns in armor, carrying cages of hornets drugged with opiates and curses.

They marched toward the city gates, chanting psalms backwards.

Abbakka's army watched in horror as the insects were released—mad with hunger, they tore into flesh indiscriminately.

Abbakka signaled Ashkara.

"Now."

The Order moved like ink in water.

Silent.

Lethal.

One monk slid under a nun's robe and slit her from within. Another used a shard of bone dipped in cobra venom to fell a priest before his scream reached air.

But Ashkara? He walked calmly into the swarm, eyes closed, arms open.

The hornets parted around him.

He reached the center—and set the cages ablaze.

The fire sang.

Scene: The Whisper Tomb

A week later, as the war escalated, a hidden chamber was discovered beneath Ullal's temple—sealed in ancient times.

It was called the Whisper Tomb—a chamber of forbidden scripts, memories etched on metal sheets, cursed hymns banned even by Hindu priests.

Abbakka entered with Ashkara.

One script pulsed when she touched it.

It read:

"When gods break, their pieces become people. And when people rebel, their pieces become fire."

Ashkara studied the hymn.

"This is not myth. This is a weapon."

Abbakka looked up.

"Then let's rewrite the world."

Scene: The Return of the Living Flame

Using the scripts, Vasudev, Asha, and Ashkara combined forbidden texts with alchemical formulas. They created something unthinkable:

A living flame—a sentient fire that fed on fear, moving like a beast, burning only those with guilt in their soul.

They caged it in a brass lantern etched in ancient glyphs.

Abbakka held it above the palace gate.

"This is no longer defense. This is reckoning."

When the Inquisitor's next wave of soldiers came, the flame was unleashed.

It roared like a demon.

Men screamed not from fire, but from seeing their sins devoured by it.

The Inquisitor watched from afar.

And for the first time, he knelt.

Scene: The Knife and the Crown

In the war council, Abbakka drew a line in blood on the map.

"We strike their floating fortress. The Flagship: Santa Madre. We end this in their heart."

Ashkara stepped forward.

"Allow me to be the dagger."

She hesitated.

"Why you?"

He pulled off his crimson veil.

Beneath, a half-burnt face.

Tattooed on his neck: the brand of the Inquisition.

"Because I was made in their fire. Now I return as their extinction."

Abbakka nodded.

"Then we carve history in screams."

Final Scene: Prelude to the Storm

As thunder echoed across the western sky, Ullal's soldiers painted their bodies in ash, sang to the sea, and marched toward their fate.

Abbakka stood above them, lantern in one hand, sword in the other.

Her voice boomed:

"Tonight, we stop asking gods for mercy.Tonight, we become gods of fire."

The earth trembled.

The sky burned red.

And war—true war—finally began.

✨ End of Chapter Six