They erased a goddess. Not with fire. With paperwork.

Nine hundred years ago, nine kings wanted quiet, and the one being who refused their bargain was the goddess whose seat every kingdom kept and whose name every household sang. So they removed her name from the records, from the prayers, from the world. In her place they signed with a patient darkness called the door, and promised to pay it in pieces of the world, on a schedule. Every flood and famine that people mourn as history was a payment.

Then, on a festival night, a great river stops flowing between one breath and the next, and the bill arrives at Prince Arimjaya's door. His father goes down with his people. A dying priest presses the original copper deed into the prince's hands. And the monks who keep the accounts come hunting.

He is saved by Dhanika, once the finest auditor on the coast, sacrificed years ago by her own family in a false fraud case. Inside the deed's entries she finds the truth of her father's death, and a reason to start collecting.

Across four kingdoms, a proud king feeds a silent valley for forty years because the woman he loved is inside it. Grandmothers keep an empty seat and a daily song for nine centuries without knowing who it is for. And when the darkness itself finally stands at the gates, no rescue comes down from the sky. It rises. Her people build her, out of every lamp ever lit with love.

Some things cannot be erased. They can only be kept.

An Indian epic fantasy of grief, ledgers, lamps, and the goddess the world forgot. Book One of the Shakti Trilogy. Complete story in this volume.