The rain hadn't slowed down, not even a little.  The sky had changed from a gloomy shade of yellow to obsidian black.
The carriage hurtled as Mami kept on praying. After all, if anything were to happen to me, she wouldn't get her pay.
Even though thousands and thousands of girls and boys all over the country were coming, The Service will know something has befallen on a acolyte. The Service always knows.

Mami wasn't her birth mother but Adira was indebted to her for taken an orphan of war, even if she did it for the extra rations. She was the only home I knew, for the Capitol had wiped out any proof of the how the world was before the Aryana was established. Mami had said, the old kingdoms were sadistic and violent. A nightmare  that no child should have to remember.
They said, now was better. The tribes had been put into their place, they would never rise for their spirit had been broken. Even touching a weapon out of curiosity was forbidden. It was even forbidden to mention the Old Empire. Those who were found to be following the pagan ways were put to death. You couldn't hide for The Service always knew.

Ah! The Service. The legends of it were almost fantastic. They say, the Rajya leader Kandahar had received a vision from Kali, the only Goddess the worshipped, saying that his pregnant wife would give birth to twins, one cursed and the other blessed.

Mami had told her the story every night. A prince born with eyes like pools of liquid gold and the heart of the lion. He was said to bleed fire instead of blood. They called him the 'Aegis'. Another was the name Mami had never dared to utter. He was the face of nightmares, though no one had ever seen him. Said to born of the shadows, the Dark One always wore a hood, even in the company of his disciples. The only one who ever seen him is the Light one. Even his mother could not bear his darkness for she died just after she held him in her arms. Even his own people the Aryas were terrified of uttering his name.

They were the twins— the Ceator and the Destroyer — who had brought the Old Empire o it's knees with one blow only.
The Service was their cohort, carefully handpicked from thousands of marked acolytes. Each decision was taken by the will of Kali, their true mother.
Kali the Goddess of creation, vengeance, honour and death guarded her sons. Thus, not even the foolish or the arrogant even thought of looking the princes in the eye much less touch the hair on their head.

The thought alone of this outwardly experience made Adira begin chanting softly. After long hours the tip-tap of the rain punctuated by Mami's soft snores lulled her into an uneasy sleep of the same dream she had had since childhood 'a tale of rivers of fire and blood followed by bellows of fury and purple eyes who looked at her as if they could read the truth buried in her heart.

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