The ring of metal on marble echoed under chandeliers fashioned of desert crystal and ashglass.
To Ashwan's rich nobles, the palace was a gastronomic legend—Rasmika Bhujraj's Diamond Table, an icon of excess suspended over the city's core. Its ivory feasts and fire-grilled delicacies masked more than taste. Beneath its lacquered floors, behind false wine cellars and mirror-lined corridors, another heart beat. One not of pleasure—but pain.
A space of agony.
Here, sandstone was raw and unfinished. The air was thick with the smell of charred marrow, burnt salt, and aged copper. Torches flickered with purple flame—mantras imprisoned in crystal sconces, humming ominously. At the center stood a gaunt, ill man draped in creased white robes, yellowed by sweat and years. His body was all bones and shakes; fingers long and spidery, twitching with unspoken cravings. Skin clung to a skull too eager to escape the confines of flesh. His breathing rasped in and out, each exhale stinking faintly of rotroot elixir and fever.
Two children danced around him.
Twins. Not more than twelve.
Their limbs were little more than sticks, bones sharp beneath skin like rice paper. The girl's eyes gleamed with obsession, cheeks hollowed, lips cracked. Her hair was tangled into ropes, crawling with grit. She clutched a tray of curved, barbed tools, her fingers trembling with ecstasy. Her brother, thinner still, bore patchy baldness and a grin full of shattered, rotting teeth. His ribs jutted out beneath a tunic faded to grey, and he whispered mantra lines like lullabies as he moved.
On the slab, a woman lay bound.
Veins dark against her pallid skin. Ankles wrapped in thorn-chain. Her hair had been shaven to stubble, her body scarred with sigils etched in blood and something blacker. Her chest rose with shallow, trembling breaths—alive, but barely.
The man stepped forward, mantra plate in hand.
It was a bronze disk, inscribed with spirals that seemed to squirm when looked at too long. Runes in glowing red ink writhed like flame trapped under glass. With a click of bone-thin fingers, he placed it carefully on the woman's abdomen.
"Begin," he whispered, voice as dry as parchment.
The twins complied instantly.
One turned a brass valve on a wheezing device that hissed like a dying serpent. The other scattered salt and iron dust into sigil-lined grooves on the floor. The mantra plate flared like a wound torn open to the world.
The woman's eyes burst open.
A shriek ripped from her throat—raw, unearthly. Her back arched so hard her spine cracked. Tendons pulled like cables, her limbs convulsing violently. Her lips foamed, her eyes bled. The mantra plate seared into her, melting into her skin, fusing with her soul.
Her flesh roiled and split. Blood vessels blackened and danced like vines under the skin. She gasped once more—a broken, strangled sound.
"Yes," the man breathed, shuddering in delight. "Yes. Record this—record every twitch."
The girl giggled, sketching rapidly with a blackened quill on a cracked slate. The boy hummed a melody that had no rhythm or sanity. The woman began to smolder.
Her spirit fought.
The chamber screamed with her.
She tried to escape, tried to flee her body, but the mantra plate pinned her essence to the slab like an insect under glass. Her final scream was not from the lungs, but from the soul.
Then came the smell.
Hair. Fat. Bone. Spirit itself burning. Organs folded inward, sizzling into black liquid. Her form ruptured like bark under lightning, and in a flash of blinding light—she was gone.
Ashes. Fluids. Smoke.
The girl clapped.
The boy bowed to the darkened slab.
And the man… smiled.
In the Slums of Ashwan
The acrid odor of smoke, sweat, and charred cloth clung to Ashwan's lower wards like a disease. Shaurya knelt behind a collapsed wall, running soot-stained fingers across a scorched fragment of jade—a spirit amulet, cracked beyond repair. The streets still whispered of fire and fear.
"Here," rasped a voice behind him.
Shaurya turned.
A man hobbled forward, his frame skeletal beneath a torn shawl. His skin was blistered, face gaunt, and he leaned on a crutch wrapped in torn rope. Beside him stood a girl, wide-eyed, her bare feet blackened with ash. A survivor.
"You said you saw something," Shaurya said quietly. "Below the palace. Repeat it. Every word counts."
The man looked left, then right, voice low. "It wasn't a kitchen, not really. Not even close. They brought us down... lower than the cellars. Beneath even the wine storage."
"The Diamond Table," Shaurya muttered. "Rasmika Bhujraj's palace."
The man nodded frantically. "Yes! But she wasn't there. It wasn't her doing. We never saw her—only the black-robed ones. And the thin man. The one with the gloves. His skin looked like it had never seen sunlight."
"And the children?"
"Twins. Starved but smiling. Always smiling. They helped him. Chanted with him. Held the trays. One drew symbols in blood, the other wrote notes."
Shaurya's eyes darkened. "What else?"
The man shuddered. "There was a… plate. A mantra plate. They put it on a woman's chest. She screamed like her soul was being flayed."
The girl finally spoke. Her voice was barely a whisper. "She burned from inside."
Shaurya clenched his fists.
"I only escaped," the man added, "because during the fire, part of the wall gave way. I fled through the drainage shaft."
"You heard a name?" Shaurya asked.
"They called it the Lower Meal Room… Neech Bhojan Kaksha. But just before I left, the thin one used another name."
The girl looked up. "Paatal Rasoi," she said. "He said it with a smile."
Shaurya stood slowly, shadows gathering in his eyes. "You've given me enough."
The man clutched his arm. "What are you going to do?"
Shaurya's reply was like iron. "End it."
At the Diamond Table
The corridors of the Bhujraj estate glittered like frozen rivers in the evening sun. Glass mosaics shimmered across the colonnades, casting fractured reflections along marble floors. Rasmika Bhujraj moved like ice in motion—controlled, sharp, regal.
The steward bowed. "My lady, a guest. He brings an invitation."
The man who entered was thin, sly-faced, his robes cut from night silk and stitched with silver. Chirag Mithra. His smile was too still to be sincere.
"Lady Bhujraj," he bowed, "the Samrajya shines colder without you."
Rasmika did not return the courtesy. "State your business."
"A simple invitation. Tonight, a gathering. The Diamond Table will host minds of merit—alchemists, poets, generals… and yourself."
"I dine with allies. Not snakes."
Chirag smirked. "Even snakes have their uses. And knowledge, my lady, is never poisoned when served raw."
She did not answer immediately. Then: "I'll consider it. But know this—Bhujraj bows to no man."
Chirag's eyes glittered. "I wouldn't dare ask it."
He bowed once more and turned, disappearing into shadowed halls like fog.
Beneath the Palace
Later that night, Chirag descended a hidden stair behind the wine racks. Purple flames leapt to life as he passed, illuminating doors of engraved obsidian and blood-stained basalt.
He entered the chamber.
"So, still calling it Neech Bhojan Kaksha?" he sneered.
The thin man looked up, shaking slightly. The twins giggled in the shadows.
"We've renamed it," the man said. "Paatal Rasoi. It suits the work."
Chirag's eyes swept to the center.
Only embers and a pool of molten residue remained.
"What did you do?" he hissed.
The man silently extended the mantra plate. Its core glowed faintly red, cracked like an egg of fire.
"She sang when she died," the twins said in unison.
Chirag held the plate.
And for the first time… he took a step back.
"What have you created?" he whispered.
The laughter that followed was not human.
The Paatal Rasoi was no longer an experiment.
It was becoming a god.