Gourav Mohanty

Some ballads are inked in blood. Bled dry by violent confrontations with the Magadhan Empire, the Mathuran Republic simmers on the brink of oblivion. Krishna and Satyabhama have put their plans in motion within and beyond the Republic's blood-soaked borders to protect it from annihilation. But they will soon discover that neither gold nor alliances last forever. They are however not alone in this game. Mati, Pirate-Princess of Kalinga, has decided to mend her ways to be a good wife. But old habits die hard, especially when one habitually uses murder to settle old scores. Brooding but beautiful Karna hopes to bury his brutal past but finds that destiny is a miser when it comes to giving second chances. The crippled hero-turned-torturer Shakuni limps through the path of daggers that is politics only to find his foes multiply, leaving little time for vengeance. Their lives are about to become very difficult for a cast of sinister queens, naive kings, pious assassins and ravenous priests are converging where the Son of Darkness is prophesied to rise, even as forgotten Gods prepare to play their hand.

A season of peace is the finest time to plant the seeds of war. A pirate-queen discovers the only gold around is in the bars of her cage. A temple-courtesan's heart dances for the archer she was tasked to destroy. A librarian learns how to steal to save the world from an ancient plague. As the Conclave of Peace dawns in the Tree Cities of the East to decide the future of the realm, deaf swordswomen and exiled snakelings, spoilt heroes and lovesick princes, immortal assassins and their apprentices will find no sun to light their path. For the Son of Darkness rises, boiling over with a wrath that all the oracles in the world cannot hope to stop. After all, seeing the future is one thing, changing it is quite another…Unless it is through a heist.