“Why?” Junei said.
The old man looked at the door.
At the darkness outside where the bell had stopped ringing.
Then back at them.
“This area is not ruled by Hasti.”
Fio kept his eyes on him.
“Who rules it?”
“Others.”
The man sat down on his stool not relaxed, but with the careful movement of someone who needed to be closer to the ground.
“We who live here follow their orders.
We have no choice.”
“Who are they ?” Fio said.
“Say the name.”
The old man looked at him for a long moment.
“Thuggee.”
One of the officers near the back of the shop made a sound not a word, just a sound.
Another said quietly,
“There are more of them here.
In the village right now.”
The old man nodded once.
The shop suddenly felt smaller than it had a moment ago.
Fio turned toward the officers behind him.
Some were tense.
Some were trying not to show it.
The youngest ones weren’t quite succeeding.
“Listen to me,” Fio said.
Not loudly.
Clearly.
“We have faced worse than this.
All of you know what this work is.
You chose it.”
He looked at each face.
“Is your fear bigger than your duty to your motherland?”
Nobody answered.
Then, one by one, they straightened.
Junei spoke.
“Sir.
How did the Thuggee even get here?
How does a village inside Hasti’s borders end up under their control?”
The old man wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
“That,” he said, “is a story.”
Fan took a long breath.
For a moment he didn’t speak.
The sounds of the market drifted in through the shop doorway.
A distant argument.
Someone selling vegetables.
The creak of an old cart wheel.
Normal sounds.
The kind of sounds that made what he was about to say feel even heavier.
“When the war started,” Fan said quietly, “my father left with the others.”
He looked down at his hands.
“I was twelve.”
“The village gathered in the square to see them off.”
His eyes unfocused slightly.
“Everyone was smiling.”
“Everyone was lying.”
Junei frowned.
Fan continued.
“They told us they would return before winter.”
“That the war would be short.”
“That Hasti was strong.”
He laughed once.
A dry sound.
“Maybe Hasti was strong.”
“But strength doesn’t stop people from dying.”
Silence.
“My father never returned.”
“Neither did my uncle.”
“Neither did half the men who left with them.”
The old man looked toward the doorway.
“When news finally arrived, it didn’t arrive as names.”
“It arrived as numbers.”
“Two hundred dead.”
“Three hundred dead.”
“A thousand dead.”
His voice hardened.
“Numbers are easier to bury than people.”
No one spoke.
Fan swallowed.
“Then the fighting reached us.”
“The soldiers passed through.”
“Then the wounded.”
“Then the fires.”
He looked directly at Fio.
“You see those old camp buildings outside?”
Fio nodded.
“They weren’t homes back then.”
“They were hospitals.”
His expression darkened.
“The wounded filled them.”
“Men without arms.”
“Men without legs.”
“Men who cried for mothers who were already dead.”
“The buildings stayed full for months.”
A long pause.
“After the war ended, Hasti left.”
His voice became very quiet.
“They promised supplies.”
“They promised rebuilding.”
“They promised officials.”
“We waited.”
“We waited another year.”
“Then another.”
His eyes drifted toward the market.
“No one came.”
The shop remained silent.
Even the officers weren’t moving now.
Fan looked at Junei.
“You asked how the Thuggee got here.”
A bitter smile appeared.
“They arrived before Hasti ever did.”
“Tell us,” Fio said.
The old man took a long breath.
“Twenty years ago,” he began, “when the war started, we were a village of Hasti.”
“Our fathers.
Our grandfathers.
They fought for this kingdom with bravery with everything they had.”
“When a man left for the front in those days, the village already held his funeral.”
He looked down. This story is hosted at g.com.
“Because most of the time, that was the last they ever saw of him.”
Silence settled over the shop.
“Hasti and its allies won the war.”
“But we lost.”
“Our village sat near the border.
Wooden buildings.
No walls.
Nothing between us and the fighting.”
“By the time it ended, half our people were gone.”
“The ones who died at the front.”
“The ones who died here.”
“The ones buried where their houses used to stand.”
He was quiet for a moment.
Then continued.
“Hasti won.
But Hasti had taken losses it didn’t want the other kingdoms to see.”
“A strong kingdom does not show its wounds.”
“So the failures…”
“The dead who couldn’t be accounted for.”
“The villages damaged beyond repair.”
“The people too broken to return to normal life.”
“They were left.”
He laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“Quietly.”
“No maps.”
“No records.”
“No acknowledgment.”
Fio stared at him.
“That’s why,” he murmured.
The old man looked up.
Fio continued,
“In Hasti, even old men work harder than young people.”
“The capable ones never came back.”
The old man nodded.
“Slowly, this place became a dumping ground.”
“Everything Hasti wanted to forget came here.”
“And then the Thuggee found it.”
He spread his hands.
“A village of forgotten people.”
“People with no protection.”
“No papers.”
“No one looking for them.”
He looked directly at Fio.
“What do you think the Thuggee offered them?”
Nobody answered.
Because the answer was obvious.
“Come,” Fan said.
“Let me show you.”
Outside, the night market moved around them.
Quieter now.
The later hour thinning the crowds.
Fio, Junei, and Bala walked beside the old man.
The rest of the officers split into smaller groups, drifting through the market like merchants, gathering information without gathering attention.
Fio looked around.
Old military uniforms.
Hasti issue.
Twenty years out of date.
Worn through at the elbows and knees.
Patched with scraps of whatever cloth people could find.
Children wore clothes that had clearly been cut down from adult sizes.
A food stall sold rice.
Dirty rice.
Broken rice.
The kind that sat at the bottom of sacks after everyone else had taken the good grain.
“How do you live?” Fio asked.
The old man glanced at him.
“My name is Fan.”
“Fan, then.
How do you live?”
“We hunt.”
“We fish.”
“We trade with passing merchants.”
“Sometimes we leave and work as laborers.”
He shrugged.
“Then we come back.”
Junei frowned.
“If you can leave, why not stay somewhere else?”
“Why not start over?”
Fan stopped walking.
He slowly opened his left hand.
A scar sat in the center of his palm.
Burned into the flesh.
Old.
Permanent.
Deliberate.
“The Thuggee’s mark.”
He closed his hand again.
“Everyone here carries one.”
“If we leave and someone sees it, they know where we came from.”
“We cannot use official money.”
“We have no legal standing.”
“We cannot appeal to any official.”
His eyes moved across the village.
“We do not officially exist.”
“We are not citizens of Hasti.”
“We are not members of the Thuggee.”
“We are simply here.”
Junei kept staring at the scar even after Fan lowered his hand.
His jaw tightened.
They continued walking.
The houses farther from the market were worse.
Ropes tied between trees.
Cloth stretched overhead for shelter.
Old military buildings converted into homes.
Broken brick.
Rotting timber.
Fan confirmed they had once been army camps.
Children ran between them laughing.
Chasing one another.
Laughing the way children laugh before they understand what they should be afraid of.
Then a group of men came around a corner.
Carrying a body.
Wrapped in cloth.
Moving carefully.
Practiced.
Routine.
Fio stopped.
Junei stopped beside him. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
The men carrying the body moved past them slowly.
No prayers.
No crying.
No words at all.
Just four men carrying another dead villager toward the edge of the settlement.
A small child followed behind them.
Barefoot.
Silent.
The child couldn’t have been older than eight.
Junei watched him.
The boy wasn’t crying.
That disturbed him more than tears would have.
The boy looked bored.
Like this wasn’t unusual.
Like this happened often enough that grief had become routine.
The body disappeared around the corner.
The child followed.
Then they were gone.
Junei felt something settle heavily in his chest.
Not pity.
Not exactly.
Anger.
The quiet kind.
The kind that takes time to cool.
He thought about the festival.
About the lanterns.
About the thousands of people preparing to celebrate.
Then he looked around Abinash.
At the broken homes.
The old soldiers.
The forgotten families.
Two worlds.
One kingdom.
And somehow neither knew the other existed.
The men carrying the body did not cry.
They did not speak.
They carried him with the quiet certainty of people who had done this too many times before.
Fan lowered his head briefly.
“Another one.”
“What happened?” Fio asked.
“Cold, probably.”
“He was old.”
“He fought for Hasti in his youth.”
The men disappeared around a corner.
Fan looked after them.
“People forgot him a long time ago.”
Junei watched until the body vanished from sight.
He didn’t say a word.
Fan led them deeper into the village.
This section felt different.
The people here looked healthier.
Stronger.
Their buildings were maintained.
Tools sat outside in neat rows.
Roofs were repaired.
The villagers looked directly at newcomers instead of avoiding eye contact.
Fio noticed immediately.
“Something’s different here.”
Junei nodded.
His hand had already drifted toward his jacket.
They entered a small clearing.
Fan stopped.
“We have visitors today.”
The people turned.
Several approached with smiles.
One offered water.
Another offered dried fruit.
A child in a cap appeared from nowhere and tugged Fio’s sleeve.
“Big Brother.”
The child pointed toward a cooking pot.
“Have some food.”
Fio smiled at the child and crouched to same level of the child.
“Thank—”
Then he felt it.
At first it was only pressure.
A small pressure against his side.
Easy to mistake for someone bumping into him.
Then came the cold.
Metal.
Sharp.
Very sharp.
His smile disappeared.
Slowly, carefully, he looked down.
The child was still smiling.
Still pointing toward the food.
Still looking harmless.
The knife remained pressed against Fio’s ribs.
Perfectly positioned.
Not shaking.
Not uncertain.
The hand holding it was steady.
Practiced.
Fio’s eyes narrowed slightly.
The child couldn’t have been older than ten.
And yet there was nothing childish in the way he held the blade.
That frightened Fio more than if the knife had been held by a grown man.
Because children were not supposed to learn this.
Not here.
Not anywhere.
Fan’s voice came from behind him.
Warm.
Friendly.
Almost amused.
“We have dogs of Arnav.”
The clearing changed.
Not suddenly.
Not dramatically.
The smiles simply vanished.
One after another.
Like lamps being extinguished.
The woman who had offered water stepped back.
The old man holding fruit shifted his stance.
Three men near the fire moved toward the exits.
Nobody rushed.
Nobody panicked.
Because everyone already knew where they were supposed to be.
The trap had been prepared long before the Nirakh arrived.
Junei saw it all happen.
And something inside him became very, very cold.