Chapter 1 — "The Last Life, and the Next"
🔥 Then — Her Final Death
The world was burning, but she no longer cared.
Blood pooled at her feet, not all of it hers. The temple was shattered, sacred stone split like paper under the weight of betrayal. The gods she had worshipped stood silent — not with grief, but approval.
Around her, former allies turned their backs.
Mortals feared what they couldn't control.
And the divine… they feared nothing at all.
She fell to her knees — not in surrender, but from the weight of a blade through her back. Her hands trembled as they pushed against the blood-slick floor. Her voice was a rasp, but her eyes were alive with something ancient.
"Seventeen lives," she muttered. "Seventeen times I was used… lied to… broken."
No one listened. But the wind paused.
"I was your blade. Your prophet. Your sacrifice. And what did it earn me?"
Lightning lit the sky above the cracked ceiling. A statue of a smiling god loomed over her, untouched by the chaos.
She glared at it — and it cracked.
"You betrayed me the most."
Her final breath was not a prayer. It was a vow.
> "I will never kneel again. Not to kings. Not to gods. Next time… you bow to me."
Then came silence.
Then… darkness.
---
☀️ Now — A Perfectly Normal Morning
The alarm shrieked. Isha Sharma slapped it into silence.
The sunlight painted a golden blur across her wall of posters — anime heroes mid-pose, band flyers, a dreamcatcher tilted sideways. Her room smelled of last night's instant noodles and slightly burnt jasmine incense.
"Isha! Utho! You're late!" her mother's voice sang from downstairs.
"I'm alive, maa…" she groaned, dragging herself upright.
Alive, but tired. Again.
---
👧🏽 Meet Isha Sharma
Age: 17
Location: Pune, India
School: Vidya Global Senior Secondary
Current Concerns: College entrance exams, broken earbuds, Riya's endless gossip, and that nightmare that keeps coming back…
She came from a happy, noisy, middle-class home — the kind where love was loud, messes were shared, and the fridge was always one snack short of happiness.
Her father, Anil, was a government clerk who still thought mobile games were sorcery.
Her mother, Kavita, ruled the household with a ladle in one hand and a WhatsApp group in the other.
Her little brother, Aarav, was eleven, annoyingly curious, and very invested in whether aliens existed.
---
🚍 At School
"Explain to me why you look like you haven't slept since 2019?" Riya asked, skipping beside her through the school gates.
"Nightmare again," Isha muttered, adjusting her schoolbag.
"Was it the one with the fire? You really need to lay off those myth shows."
"I don't even watch them, Riya."
"Well, someone's imagination is clearly cursed."
Their friend group formed quickly near the canteen:
Aniket, who doodled during math but somehow always passed
Nina, who carried a science Olympiad trophy like it was just another lunchbox
Riya, who'd die for drama, memes, or strawberry Frooti
Classes passed in a swirl of banter, lectures, and barely suppressed yawns. Isha mostly listened, smiled, spoke when needed — but often stared out the window longer than she realized.
---
🌘 The Night Again
That evening, after homework and arguments over TV remote rights, Isha lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
Sleep came… slowly.
Then fire.
Stone walls.
A throne.
Blood.
And her voice — raw and vengeful — shouting from some part of her soul:
> "I will never kneel again!"
She woke up gasping, heart thudding like a war drum.
Her mother stirred in the next room.
Her brother snored like a small bulldozer.
But Isha stared into the d
ark, hands clenched in her sheets.
She didn't know who the woman in the dream was.
But every night, she felt more like her.