Location: Varanasi Ashram – Pre-dawn Hours
The black journal lay heavy in Samruddhi's lap.
Dust still clung to its leather, and blood—Rina's or Devraj's—had smeared one edge.
Arpan sat across from her in silence.
Neither dared to break it.
Karishma stood watch by the door, pistol drawn, heart louder than the distant temple bells.
Samruddhi opened the journal.
The first page was a letter.
To my daughter, if you're reading this,
Then truth survived what I did not.
I did not become a hero. I became a pawn. But before they buried my corpse, they attempted to bury a code.
Your lineage is not mere rebellion—it's design. You were not born randomly. You were selected.
Rina and I designed you as the ultimate key to destroy everything the Mores constructed. The truth resides within you.
In your voice. In your pain. In your past. And someday, in your vengeance.
Don't save Arpan More. Burn him clean.
– Jai Jadhav
Samruddhi's fingers trembled.
Her breath hitched like a girl discovering her own face in a stranger's mirror.
She looked up at Arpan.
His eyes darkened.
"You were… created to kill me?"
"No," she whispered.
Then louder: "I was created to end you."
Flashback – Rina's Lab in Kashi, 1995
Two embryos.
One dosed with hormonal suppressors, one boosted with memory retention inhibitors.
A woman in a white lab coat bends over the samples.
"Not soldiers," she tells Jai. "Messiahs."
He nods.
"They will not wear crowns. They will crush them."
Present – Ashram Underground Chamber
Karishma spread out the remaining files.
Images of a secret genetic program in Devraj's care. Crossed wires of child indoctrination, mental rewiring, selective parenting.
"You weren't born to this," Karishma whispered, eyes brimming. "You are this."
Samruddhi laughed harshly.
"So what? I'm a conscience-having time-bomb?"
"You're the detonator," Rina whispered weakly from the cot, now awake.
"But the explosion is yours to decide."
Arpan took a step forward.
His voice husky.
"You knew this? All this while?"
Rina nodded. "I didn't tell you because if I did, you'd never love her. And if she knew, she'd never love you."
He faced Samruddhi.
"This isn't you."
"But it is," she replied. "Every instinct. Every headline. Every lie I saw through—it wasn't training. It was… coded in me."
He stepped closer.
"What you do next… that's the only thing they couldn't program."
She closed her eyes.
And kissed him.
Not with love.
With grief.
Scene Shift – Intelligence Bureau HQ, Delhi
Anvaya watched the footage.
Samruddhi kissing Arpan.
He smiled.
To his men: "Good. Let her feel human."
"Why?" one asked.
"So she remembers what she gave up when she presses the trigger."
Back in Varanasi
Samruddhi stood at the edge of the temple cliff.
River Ganga roared below like memory in flood.
She opened Jai's journal again.
Inside: a hand-drawn map. A bunker beneath an old printing press in Kalbadevi.
Marked in red:
"Initiate Sequence: YUGANTA."
(The End of an Era.)
Rina sat behind her, wheezing softly.
"You never were my daughter the way a mother should be," she told him.
Samruddhi did not turn.
"You never were a mother. Just a blueprint."
Last Sequence
Karishma packed guns.
Arpan placed calls to what was left of his loyal crew.
Dying and finally revealed, Rina More delivered her final warning:
"Anvaya doesn't want to kill you both. He wants to convert one of you."
"And the one who makes it through… gets hell."
As night descended once more, Samruddhi braided her hair, stuffed Jai's diary into her jacket, and whispered:
"I am not your legacy. I'm the reckoning you feared too long."
To be continued…