Long before Ashoka lit the skies of Aryavrat with a plasma spear, he was just a boy chasing ghosts in empty palace corridors.
The citadel had once been alive with laughter, ministers in silk robes, warriors in gleaming armor, and the music of ancient Indian string-harps echoing through the marble halls. But when Ashoka was ten, those echoes faded—along with the warmth of his father's presence.
What remained was her—the Iron Regent. Queen Samyukta.
She ruled not from a throne, but from a war table. Her silk saris were layered with combat gear. Her eyes never looked down—only forward. And when the court whispered of decline, she taught Ashoka how to listen for treason in silence.
"Do you know what it means to wear this blood?" she once asked him, voice as sharp as a blade.
Ashoka, then barely thirteen, shook his head.
Samyukta dragged her fingertips across the family crest—an eight-pointed sun bound by the ancient glyph of Dharma.
"It means everything you love will be taken from you," she said. "So make sure you can take it back."
Training under her was brutal.
No simulation pods. No soft lessons from AI tutors. She believed in pain.
At sunrise, she had him sprint across the ravines of the southern barrens with a grav-pack on his back—its weight growing heavier with every mile. By noon, he was in the blade hall, facing retired royal guards two at a time. By dusk, she tested his mind with history, diplomacy, and cryptology drills.
Every time he failed, she said nothing. She simply recorded the mistake and gave him a harder challenge.
"Victory isn't strength," she said one night, as they stood beneath the stars, bruised and silent. "Victory is memory. Learn from it, or die like your ancestors."
Once, he snuck away from the palace.
Curious, rebellious, he drifted down into the lower districts—places the nobles called the Rusted Veins of Aryavrat. There, the streets were lit not by clean fusion lines, but by burning trash barrels. Children chased shadows with sticks. Vendors hawked scraps salvaged from ancient drone carcasses.
And for the first time, Ashoka saw his people.
He spent hours talking to them, listening to their stories—miners who once fought during the AI siege of Mars, refugees from the fallen Venus colonies, elders who still worshipped the stars like gods.
When he returned, dirtied and exhausted, Samyukta was waiting in the throne hall.
"You think this world needs another prince pretending to be kind?" she asked, voice bitter.
"No," Ashoka replied, standing tall. "It needs a ruler who remembers."
She said nothing at first. Then, for the first time, she smiled.
"You might survive after all," she whispered.
Years passed.
His body hardened. His mind sharpened. And when word came of pirate fleets encroaching on Aryavrat's outer moons, she did not call generals.
She sent Ashoka.
He returned with a scar above his eye—and a shredded enemy flag.
That was the last campaign she ever saw.
The day her illness consumed her lungs, and her body began to collapse beneath the weight of decades of war and sacrifice, she called Ashoka to her bedside.
The chambers were quiet. No guards. No aides. Just her and her son.
"I wanted more time," she whispered, eyes cloudy but still burning. "But maybe this world needs you more than it ever needed me."
Ashoka didn't cry.
He simply took her hand and pressed it to his brow.
"You taught me to endure," he said.
"No," she replied. "I taught you to build. The crown is not a relic. It is a hammer. Use it."
Then she slipped into sleep… and never awoke again.
Now, standing before the war table in the present day, Ashoka stared at her final gift: a small pendant, etched with their family glyph and coded with her last will—tactical blueprints, secret networks, and a message recorded in her voice.
He played it.
"Ashoka… if you're hearing this, then the sky has broken and you still live. Good. That means there's a future left to fight for. You are my vengeance… and my hope. Lead with strength. Rule with fire. And when they fear your name, remind them—you carry the sun itself."
He closed his eyes.
And for a moment, the silence of her absence wrapped around him like armor.
Then he turned to the command table and activated the planetary assembly beacon.
"Prepare the Grand Council," he ordered. "The houses will gather. We begin unification. And no one leaves until they swear fealty."
Ashoka, son of Samyukta, heir of House Suryaansh…
…was ready to forge a dynasty from the ashes.