Manikarnika’s eyes fluttered open as the cool, crisp morning air swept through her bedchamber, temporarily rekindling her weary senses.
She sat upright on the mattress, extending her limbs with a long, deliberate stretch until the joints in her back popped softly.
For a fleeting second, it felt so normal, a simple, grounding routine that offered an immense sense of relief.
Then, the phantom peace evaporated.
An icy wave of dread cascaded down her spine as the reality of the siege crashed back into her mind.
Every searing detail replayed in relentless, tormenting succession: the sudden, hollow loss of her husband; the agony of her firstborn child; the mutinous rebel soldiers forcing their way into her presence, brandishing steel and demanding weapons and treasury gold; and her desperate, ignored petitions sent to the British Company.
Despite her pleas of innocence, the East India Company had encircled Jhansi with cold, bureaucratic hatred, treating her not as a sovereign ruler, but as a condemned criminal to be systematically purged.
Her breath hitched in her throat.
A tear of white-hot rage, betrayal, and utter isolation traced a burning line down her cheek.
Grieving was a luxury she could not afford.
Snapping back to reality, she violently wiped the tear away and stood up, arming her spirit to face the fire and ruin of her life alone.
Her steps moved involuntarily toward the stone balcony.
Standing on the very spot where she had watched the British pickets erect their encampments, laying siege to her fortress like patient hunters surrounding a lioness’s den, she scanned the horizon.
Her eyes darted frantically from camp to camp, searching for a single strategic flaw.
This single miracle might extract her and her adopted child from the East India Company’s suffocating net.
That was when her gaze locked onto the tall banyan tree standing near the Khanderao Gate of Jhansi Fort.
Her eyes narrowed in vague recognition before widening in sheer, unadulterated horror.
Hanging from a thick branch near the gate was a body, cold, lifeless, utterly shattered, and grotesquely mutilated.
A visceral reaction tore through her frame; she jerked backward, her hand flying to her mouth to stifle a scream of disbelief.
She had known the man as a brilliant commander and a ruthless, formidable foe.
But seeing Sir Hugh Rose’s corpse swinging gently in the wind destroyed her perception of reality.
Her knees buckled, trembling violently.
Her mind spiraled back into the darkness she thought she had conquered.
“This?
What is this?!”
Her thoughts screamed in a frantic loop.
“He is Sir Hugh Rose!
On that tree!
But how?!
When the British see their Commander-in-Chief hanging like a slaughtered beast outside Jhansi, they won’t negotiate…
they will incinerate this city!
They will come for me…
and my son!
How is this even possible?!”
She collapsed against the stone sill, her frame shuddering under the weight of brutal shock.
Yesterday, she had achieved an impossible victory against this very man using advanced, terrifying firepower.
Now, the grand general of the British forces was hanging like a broken black doll outside her gates.
Her breathing turned shallow and ragged, heavy gasps tearing through her throat as tears of suffocating terror blurred her vision.
Before her frantic mind could deduce who was capable of such atrocity, a sharp, urgent knocking shattered the silence of her room.
“Good morning, Rani Sahiba!” a voice echoed through the thick timber door, breathless and frantic.
“It is an urgent report!
I heard it directly from the people in the bazaar. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Forgive the early intrusion, but we are in catastrophic trouble!”
Rani Lakshmibai forced her regal composure back into place.
She washed the sheer panic from her features, buried her nightgown beneath a heavy, gold-embroidered silk shawl, and marched toward the entrance.
Unbolting the heavy wooden door just a fraction, she looked out to find her mysterious ally standing in the corridor.
He was fully dressed, clutching a parchment tightly, his face a mask of sweating, wide-eyed terror.
His chest heaved as though he had sprinted across the entire fortress complex.
In a panicked, panting voice, he stammered, “Rani Sahiba!
The- the report!
We are doomed!”
Her eyes widened further in shock.
“I am extremely sorry, Rani Sahiba!” he pleaded, his voice cracking with urgency.
“But we must discuss this immediately!
Please!
It is about General Rose!
I don’t want to ignite a panic in the corridors—it would be far better if we spoke in private.
Please, my Queen!
Just five minutes!”
Seeing the raw flicker of doom in his eyes, she let her instinct for secrecy take over.
“Inside.
Now.”
She yanked the door open wide enough for him to slip past, checking the empty hallway before bolting the heavy iron latch securely behind him.
He held the parchment with trembling hands, his shirt soaked through with sweat.
“Rani Sahiba, forgive the intrusion…
but I received a direct report from my intelligence sources!
General Hugh Rose has been—”
He stopped mid-sentence.
His eyes drifted past her shoulder toward the open window overlooking Khanderao Gate.
The moment his gaze hit the silhouette hanging from the tree, his body froze.
The color drained completely from his face, his voice died in his throat, and his knees gave out entirely, crashing onto the hard floor.
“So…
so it’s true!” he whispered in a pathetic, broken murmur.
“He has been killed!”
Lifting her gaze, Lakshmibai saw the terrifying combination of panic and profound helplessness in his demeanor.
Instantly, her instincts as a monarch surged.
Stepping directly into his line of sight, her posture straightened into an impenetrable wall, completely blocking the gruesome view of the window.
She locked her hands tightly together, asserting her authority even as uncertainty gnawed at her soul.
One hand drifted down, resting tightly on the hilt of her jewel-encrusted dagger.
Radiating the fierce aura of a threatened war goddess, she loomed over him, her voice laced with lethal suspicion.
“Did your weapons do this?!”
She waited for a confession, but only a faint, broken stammer came from his lips.
“Rebels…” he gasped, staring up at her with hollow eyes.
“Those…
those wretched rebel soldiers.
They did this. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
They committed this crime!
Only savages could do such a thing!
Yes…
it has to be them!”
Then, the shift occurred.
As if a switch had been flipped inside his mind, the trembling stopped.
He wiped the tears and terror from his face in a single, deliberate stroke.
Taking a long, measured breath, his panicked posture dissolved into a terrifying, icy calm.
He rose to his feet with fluid, terrifying precision, containing himself so perfectly that even Lakshmibai was caught off guard by the abrupt transformation.
“A soldier kills to remove an enemy; a beast kills to send a message,” he spoke, his voice entirely steady, smooth, and devoid of the terror he had exhibited seconds prior.
“Look at the display, Rani Sahiba!
This isn’t military strategy—it is unbridled savagery.
There is a high probability that mutinous rebel factions stormed General Rose’s quarters yesterday and committed this hideous act.”
“How can you possibly say that?!” she demanded, her mind struggling to bridge the gap between his sudden composure and his horrific claim.
“Rani Sahiba, look at the sheer barbarity of the execution!” he argued, his tone now reflecting clinical, calculated concern.
“There is no way a disciplined military regiment would ever pull off such a grotesque spectacle.
Even if I were to execute an enemy commander with my advanced weaponry, I would simply eliminate the target cleanly—not mount a hideous theater production.
This can only be explained by the unhinged bloodlust of mutinous rebels.”
The psychological trap sprung.
By framing the act as senseless rebel savagery, he deliberately struck her deepest, most raw emotional scar.
Lakshmibai’s past trauma flooded her consciousness.
She vividly remembered the mutinous sepoys who had threatened her life, forced her to hand over her wealth and family weapons at gunpoint, and then abandoned Jhansi to burn while they went on a wild, chaotic rampage—leaving her to face the East India Company’s wrath alone.
It made sense.
It appealed to her worst memories of the rebel forces.
Yet, as she drifted deeper into thought, the brilliant strategist within her resisted the comfortable lie.
Suspicion lingered like a cold blade in her gut.
How could undisciplined, rowdy mutineers slip past the heavily guarded perimeter of a British High Command camp undetected?
How could they transport a top General out of his own headquarters without raising a single alarm or firing a shot?
And how did this man standing before her discard complete, sweat-inducing terror in a fraction of a second?
Before her tactical mind could dissect the inconsistency further, his voice broke her trance, dragging her back to the immediate crisis.
“Rani Sahiba, we must act immediately,” he urged, forcing her focus back onto survival.
“If the British believe Jhansi executed their General for revenge, their retaliation will be swift and absolute.”
Outside the fort, far beyond the smoke of yesterday’s battlefield, the morning calm of the British encampment was shattered.
A lone Indian sepoy on border patrol paused, his eyes straining against the morning glare near the Jhansi line.
His gaze landed on the tall banyan tree at Khanderao Gate.
His breath caught; his vision blurred in pure horror as he recognized the mangled, uniform-clad corpse dangling from the bough.
Gulping down his terror, the sepoy turned and ran frantically toward the Aide-de-Camp’s command tent to deliver the apocalyptic news.
Inside the bedchamber, standing silently behind the Queen of Jhansi, the protagonist watched her process the threat, a cold, invisible smile forming behind his eyes.
The stage is set.
The props are incorporated.
The act is flawless.
Let the Epilogue begin.