Volume 1: The Beggar's Audit
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Chapter One: Truck-Kun Is Late As Usual
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Shankar Baghel ran through the courtyard, his voice cracking like river ice in spring. "Seal the eastern gate!" he roared, blood freezing mid-air where it splattered against frost-rimed stones. "Forty guards on the women and children—move!"
A veteran guard stumbled, his spear clattering. "My lord, the eastern gate is already—"
"Already what?" Shankar grabbed the man's collar, pulling him close. "Speak clearly, soldier."
"Already frozen, my lord. The inferno breach is too wide. We can't hold it."
Shankar's jaw tightened. "Then hold the inner sanctum. The scrolls in the Vidyagriha library—if those burn, we lose everything."
"Which scrolls, my lord? The Sapta-Diaries? The Prana-Manuals?"
"All of them." Shankar's voice dropped to a deadly whisper. "Every forbidden text. Every blood ritual. Every loyalty engineering spell. We die, but the knowledge lives."
The guard saluted, frost forming on his eyelashes. "For the Baghel name."
"For the name," Shankar echoed, releasing him. "Now go."
The inferno tribe's war horns howled beyond the walls, a sound like wildfire through dry neem forests. But here, in the heart of Vidyagriha, the cold was alive. It crawled up marble pillars, turned sacred banyan trees to crystal, made every breath a conscious, agonizing effort.
"Papa!" a voice cut through the chaos. Clear. Calm. Deadly.
Shankar spun. His daughter stood behind him, her frame wrapped in a bloodied training dhoti, a frost-blade in each hand. At eighteen, she already moved like a weapon honed by a thousand battles. Her eyes—one ice-blue, one silver from a childhood Prana accident—held no fear. Only calculation.
"Let me handle the front gate."
Shankar looked at her. Really looked. At the frost crystals forming in her hair. At the way the battlefield itself seemed to lean away from her presence. At the chilling, unnatural calm in a face that had seen too much too soon.
"Don't come here," he commanded. "Not until I command."
Shruti's jaw tightened. "I'm not a child anymore, Papa. I can—"
"You're my heir." Shankar's voice cracked, not from cold, but from something rawer. "That means you survive. Now go."
Her mother's voice—ingrained through a decade of Prana meditation—struck like a whip: "Believe in your king."
Shruti Baghel ran. Not away, but through. Her frost-blades carved paths through inferno soldiers, each strike clinical, each death a number in her mental ledger. Thirty-seven left in courtyard. Sixty-three at east gate. One hundred seventeen total hostiles.
"Watch the left flank!" a guard shouted as she passed. "They've got Prana-bombs!"
"I know," Shruti called back, not breaking stride. "I counted them."
She ran toward the inner sanctum, the library, the screaming children.
I have to protect. I have to protect. I have to protect.
She was already injured—a gash across her ribs where an inferno lance had kissed her skin, now frozen shut by her own will. Everywhere was blood and battle: fire meeting ice in screams of agony, commanders shouting orders that dissolved into static, the smell of charred flesh and frozen urine.
"Princess!" a librarian's assistant stumbled from the burning scroll archive, arms full of half-charred texts. "The Sapta-Diaries—some are still intact!"
"Drop them," Shruti ordered, not slowing. "Save the children first. Books can be rewritten. Lives can't."
"But the forbidden knowledge—"
"Is worthless without people to read it."
She ran. A blast came from her front—blindingly hot, the color of molten gold. A thousand voices screamed as one. The sound of Vidyagriha's outer wall vaporizing.
"NOOOOO!"
Her whole body moved at her will, not her command. The battlefield frosted in an instant. A hundred inferno soldiers turned to statues mid-roar, their flames crystallized into permanent orange sculptures of agony.
She ran while killing guards. "STEP OUT MY WAY!" Her sword froze a path, her whip cracked through spines. "Just die, you bastard."
When she reached the inner sanctum, it was already too late.
Her mother—Sarika Baghel, the Frost Matriarch—lay in a circle of ashes, her body a shield over three children. She'd used her last Prana to freeze herself around them, turning her own blood into a coffin that preserved their flesh from the inferno.
Her mother's face was a mockery in ice. Her pride was ashes.
Shruti fell to her knees. The frost blade clattered away. She held her mother's frozen hand, whole and crying.
"Mumma, wait wait wait, I-I-I will take care of it. Please don't leave don't leave me..."
Her mother smiled. Even in death, her eyes were an ocean of unshed tears. Her last act—prickling Shruti's nose with frost-touched affection—stopped midway. The hand fell.
"MUMMA, YOU CAN'T GO AWAY LIKE... WHY WHY WHY. YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME ALONE."
"Mumma..." Shruti's voice cracked, the ice in it melting to raw grief. "You said Baghels don't die in ditches. You said I'd be queen. You said—"
She choked on the words. The frozen hand was already crumbling, Prana-depleted flesh turning to snow.
"—you said you'd teach me the seventh Sapta-Diary. The one about loyalty engineering. You said I wasn't ready."
A small, charred book fell from her mother's frozen grip. The cover read: "Sapta-Diary VII: The Beggar's Frost."
Shruti's fingers closed around it. Her inner thought, even through the grief, was calculating: Mother wanted me to survive. This diary is her last command. I will obey.
Other soldiers came. Not Baghel. Not anymore.
The leader—an Inferno commander with a mask of charred bone—looked at Shruti's wretched form and felt mesmerized. "Cage her. This instant."
He stepped closer, voice a low crackling mockery. "So... the icy Queen submitted?"
Shruti looked up. Her eyes—one ice, one silver—held no tears now. Only a calculation so cold it made the commander flinch.
Nobody noticed what is coming.
Inner thought, spoken like a melody: "Submission is a tactical retreat. Your cage is my headquarters."
She smiled. A beggar's smile. A strategist's promise.
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THE HELL WITH "NEXT CHAPTER"!
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"THE HELL WITH 'NEXT CHAPTER'!" I screamed at my screen, my voice cracking like river ice in spring—wait, no, that's plagiarism. My voice cracked like a teenager going through puberty. Which I am. Unfortunately.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The monitor glowed with that cursed text: Next Chapter: The Beggar's Audit
The Beggar's Audit. What kind of title is that? Is she going to audit the inferno tribe's tax returns? Calculate their military expenditure with forensic accounting? Slay them with GST filings?
I stared at the frozen image of Shruti Baghel, her silver-and-blue eyes burning through the pixels, and felt something die inside me. The same something that dies every time I finish a good chapter at 2 AM and realize I have class at 8.
"Oh shit, bro," I whispered, glancing at the bottom-right corner of my screen. 3:00 AM.
Not 2 AM. Not 2:30. 3 AM. The witching hour. The time when decent people are asleep and degenerates like me are questioning every life choice that led them to this moment.
Life is...
I sighed. I didn't wanna say it out loud, huh.
But my brain said it anyway, in that annoying inner voice that sounds suspiciously like my mother: Life is what you make of it, Rudra. And you've made it into a dumpster fire.
Thanks, brain. Very helpful.
I leaned back in my chair—a creaky wooden thing that had survived three hostel shifts, two landlords, and one near-death experience when the leg snapped during an intense gaming session. The cushion had long ago surrendered its stuffing, leaving me to negotiate directly with plywood.
Outside my window, the world was dark. Peaceful. Normal people were having normal dreams about normal things. Meanwhile, I was emotionally invested in the fictional trauma of a fictional ice princess whose mother just died.
Priorities, I thought. I have them. They're just... alternative priorities.
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THE TRUCK-KUN THEOREM
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I want fun.
Let me repeat that: I want fun.
Not the kind of fun that comes with effort. Not the kind that requires waking up before noon or talking to people or moving from this chair. Just... fun. Delivered to my doorstep. Intravenously, if possible.
I want fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun—
nope.
My internal monologue hit a wall. Even my brain got tired of listing the word "fun." That's how lazy we're talking here. My thoughts file for overtime.
I looked at the ceiling. The ceiling looked back. It had a water stain that vaguely resembled the map of India, if India was attacked by a giant coffee cup.
"If anime-style OP characters can take help from Truck-kun," I murmured to the stain, "can't I be teleported into one too?"
The thought spread through me like warmth. Like possibility. Like the last shred of hope in a hopelessly hopeless hope-lesson.
I grinned.
Not a nice grin. Not a "please pass the salt" grin. This was the grin of a man who has calculated the odds and decided that getting isekai'd by a truck is statistically more likely than passing his upcoming exams.
If anyone saw my teeth right now, they'd pee their pants. I know this because I saw my reflection in the dark monitor. My shadow stretched to eternity behind me—okay, it stretched to the wall, which is technically eternity if you're an ant—and the hunger in my eyes reached the door.
Truck-kun, I thought, projecting my consciousness into the universe, I am coming. Find me. Hit me. Send me to a world where my only job is to be overpowered and nap.
I waited.
The ceiling stain stared back.
A dog barked somewhere. A motorcycle revved. The universe, as always, remained aggressively indifferent to my suffering.
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MORNING: THE SEQUEL
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"Shit. Rudra. What. The. Hell. Truck-kun?"
I woke up face-down on my keyboard. The keys had imprinted themselves on my cheek like a very specific, very painful tattoo. ASDFGHJKL; — the story of my life, now literally written on my face.
My watch said 7:45 AM.
Class started at 8:00 AM.
The college was forty-five minutes away.
Math, I thought groggily. Let's do math. If I run at the speed of regret, I'll only miss the first two hours. Tops.
I cursed myself all the way to the bathroom, where I discovered that my hair had achieved a new level of entropy. It pointed in seventeen directions simultaneously, each one a protest against combs and basic hygiene.
"Born to be a hero," I muttered, splashing water on my face. "Born to be a hero, they said. You're special, they said."
Who said that? my brain asked.
...I said that. To myself. This morning.
Right. Carry on.
It's funny, really. How lazy I am. How every morning I manufacture a new excuse, a fresh coat of motivational paint over the crumbling walls of my ambition. It's not a big deal. You're born to be a hero. Heroes don't need alarm clocks. Heroes arrive precisely when they mean to.
But ohhh... I am not that OP.
"I will become God," I announced to my reflection, striking a pose. "Hahahahaha!"
My reflection stared back with the dead-eyed patience of someone who's heard this before.
Then I noticed the old woman outside my window.
She was staring at me through the gap in my curtains. A grandmother, probably on her morning walk, now witnessing a half-dressed teenager laughing maniacally at himself in the mirror.
Our eyes met.
For a moment, time stopped.
Then she crossed herself—which, in this predominantly Hindu neighborhood, was a bold choice—and power-walked out of existence.
I am not a main character yet, I reminded myself. Main characters have privacy. Main characters don't get witnessed by grandmothers.
I grabbed my bag—a dusty rectangle that hadn't seen a book since 2022—and fled the scene.
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THE MARKET: A STUDY IN SUFFERING
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The market at 8 AM is a special kind of hell.
Not the fun hell, with fire and demons and heavy metal music. The boring hell, with vegetable vendors and screaming children and that one guy who's been trying to sell the same batch of onions since Diwali.
I moved through the crowd like a ghost—or rather, like someone trying very hard not to make eye contact with anyone. My introvert senses were tingling. Too many people. Too much noise. Too much morning happening at once.
"Fresh coriander! Fresh coriander!"
"Bhaiya, fifteen rupees for tomatoes? Are you insane?"
"Maa, I want chowmein!"
"Beta, it's 8 AM. Have some respect for your digestive system."
I weaved between bicycles and auto-rickshaws, my bag thumping against my back like a disapproving parent. The smell of samosas warred with the smell of exhaust fumes. Both were losing to the smell of that one drain that's been broken since 2019.
A boy on a bicycle nearly ran me over. "Sorry, bhaiya!" he yelled, already gone.
At least someone's apologizing, I thought. The trucks don't even slow down.
A group of college girls passed me, their laughter bright as fireworks. I instinctively looked away, studied a nearby newspaper stand with the intensity of a scholar decoding ancient texts.
The headline: "Local Man Discovers New Mango Variety, Names It 'Aam-zing'."
Journalism is dead, I concluded. Good. Join the club.
One of the girls—the one with the red bindi and the "Girlboss" tote bag—glanced in my direction. Her eyes traveled from my untucked shirt to my uncombed hair to my expression, which I'm told resembles a startled owl who just realized he forgot to file taxes.
She leaned toward her friend. I'm not a lip-reader, but the universe translated for me anyway:
"Does he even bathe?"
Her friend shrugged. "Maybe he's an art student?"
"Art students at least look intentional. He looks... accidental."
They walked on, their laughter trailing behind them like a cruel ribbon.
Note to self, I thought, filing the moment away in the "Reasons to Never Leave Home" folder. Invest in soap. Or a paper bag. Or a time machine.
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THE CLASSROOM: PRISON, BUT WITH MORE CHALK
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I reached the classroom at 8:23 AM.
The door was closed. Always a bad sign. Closed doors in academic settings contain one of two things: (a) a lecture, or (b) a test. Both are forms of psychological warfare.
I opened the door slowly, silently, like a burglar who's really bad at burglary.
Twenty-three heads turned.
Twenty-three pairs of eyes tracked my journey from the doorway to the back bench.
Twenty-three silent judgments: Late again. Of course. Look at his hair. Look at his shirt. Look at his—
"Mr. Sharma."
The voice of God. Or rather, the voice of Professor Meera Nambiar, which is functionally the same thing. She taught something called "Business Ethics and Corporate Governance," which I'm pretty sure is an oxymoron, but nobody pays me to have opinions.
"Yes, ma'am?" I said, still moving toward my seat. The back bench. The holy land. The only place in this room where I could theoretically fall asleep without immediate detection.
"Did I say you could sit?"
I stopped. Turned. Attempted a smile. It came out wrong—too much teeth, not enough sincerity. Like a hostage trying to signal for help.
"No, ma'am. But my legs—"
"Your legs," she repeated, adjusting her glasses. The glasses were large. Round. They caught the fluorescent light and reflected it back at me like twin accusations. "Your legs are tired from sleeping all night?"
Actually, I wanted to say, my legs are tired from carrying the weight of my existential dread. Also, I was awake until 3 AM reading about a fictional ice princess whose mother died. So technically, I was emotionally laboring.
"Something like that, ma'am."
A snicker from somewhere. Probably Karthik. That guy lived for my suffering.
Professor Nambiar sighed—the sigh of a woman who has seen too many Rudras and will see too many more. "Sit down, Sharma. And next time, bring a note from your mother. Or a doctor. Or a priest. I'm not picky."
I sat.
The back bench welcomed me like an old friend. The wood was warm from previous occupants. The view—thirty degrees of the blackboard, seventy degrees of window—was optimal. Through the glass, I could see the sky. Blue. Cloudless. Full of birds who had absolutely no concept of "Business Ethics and Corporate Governance."
Lucky birds.
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THE INHABITANTS OF BENCH 7
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The back bench is an ecosystem. A society. A fragile coalition of mutual disinterest held together by proximity and shared hatred of early mornings.
To my right: Rohan Yadav. Six feet of pure unbothered energy. He was already asleep, his head pillowed on a copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad that he'd definitely never opened. Rohan's theory of education was simple: attendance is optional, grades are negotiable, and the only thing worth waking up for is lunch.
To my left: Priya Mehta. The exception. The anomaly. A bright student who sat on the back bench by choice, not circumstance. She claimed it was because the front bench gave her "main character energy" and she preferred "observer status." I think she just liked watching the rest of us fail in real-time. Her notebook was open. Her pen moved. Her eyes, occasionally, would flick toward me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
In front of me: Karthik Srinivasan. My nemesis. My foil. The guy who laughed at my suffering. He had the kind of face that looked permanently amused, like he knew a joke you didn't and the joke was you. Which, to be fair, it often was.
"Nice entrance," he whispered, not turning around. "Very dramatic. Very 'protagonist arriving late to save the day.' Except there's no day. And nothing to save. And you're not a protagonist."
"Thanks, Karthik. Your feedback is noted and will be discarded."
"Make sure to discard it quietly. Some of us are trying to listen."
To demonstrate his commitment to listening, he immediately pulled out his phone and started scrolling.
The prison, I thought, looking around at my fellow inmates. This is the prison. Not the building. Not the system. The repetition. The same faces. The same voices. The same jokes. The same slow crawl toward a future we're not sure we want.
I murmured the word aloud, just loud enough for Priya to hear: "Prison."
She glanced at me, one eyebrow raised. "Dramatic much?"
"Accurate much?"
She considered this. "Fair."
Through the window, the world continued. A dog slept in a patch of sunlight. A chai wallah pushed his cart, steam rising from his kettle. A toddler chased a pigeon, and the pigeon, in a stunning act of restraint, did not immediately flee.
How lovely, I thought. How simple. How far away.
I turned back to the classroom. Professor Nambiar was explaining something about "stakeholder theory." Her voice had become a kind of white noise, a gentle hum beneath which my thoughts could roam free.
Shruti Baghel, I thought. I wonder what she's doing now. Is she still in the cage? Did she start her audit? Is "audit" a metaphor for murder, or is she literally going to—
"Sharma."
I blinked. Professor Nambiar was looking at me. The whole class was looking at me.
"Yes, ma'am?"
"What is stakeholder theory?"
A test, I realized. A trap. A moment.
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
And then, from somewhere deep inside—the part of me that stayed up until 3 AM reading fiction, the part that calculated odds and weighed options and decided that sleep was less important than stories—an answer came.
"It's the idea that businesses should consider everyone affected by their decisions," I said. "Not just shareholders. Employees. Customers.
Communities. The environment. The people who have to live with the consequences of choices they didn't make."
Professor Nambiar blinked. So did everyone else.
"That's... correct," she said slowly. "Expand."
I could have stopped there. Should have stopped there. But something was loose in my brain, some gear that had slipped its track.
"It's also a lie," I said.
Silence.
Silence.
"A lie?"
"Mostly." I shrugged. "Companies talk about stakeholders when it's convenient. When it's time for annual reports and CSR photos. But when push comes to shove, shareholders win. Profits win. The people who get hurt—the ones who lose their jobs, their homes, their mothers—they're just... numbers. Footnotes. Acknowledged and then ignored."
The silence deepened. I could feel Karthik staring at me. Rohan had actually woken up. Even the window dog seemed to be paying attention.
Professor Nambiar removed her glasses. Cleaned them. Put them back on.
"That's... one perspective, Sharma. A cynical one."
"Is it cynical if it's true?"
A long moment passed. Then, unexpectedly, she smiled. It was a small smile. A tired smile. The smile of someone who has seen too much to be surprised, but not so much that she's forgotten how to hope.
"Stakeholder theory," she said, turning back to the board, "is aspirational. It describes what business could be, not always what it is. That's why we study it. To understand the gap. To maybe, someday, close it."
She kept teaching. The class moved on. But for the rest of the period, I caught people glancing at me. Priya, curious. Karthik, suspicious. Rohan, confused, like a dog who'd just seen a cat do calculus.
And me?
I was thinking about Shruti Baghel. About her mother's frozen hand. About the diary titled "The Beggar's Frost."
Some gaps, I thought, can't be closed. Some losses can't be fixed. Some prisons don't have windows.
But then I looked outside again. The dog was still sleeping. The chai wallah was still pushing his cart. The toddler had given up on the pigeon and was now chasing his own shadow.
Maybe that's enough, I thought. Maybe the point isn't escape. Maybe the point is finding sunlight where you can.
The bell rang.
I gathered my bag—still empty, still dusty—and walked toward the door.
"Hey, Rudra."
I turned. Priya stood there, her notebook tucked under her arm.
"That thing you said. About stakeholders. About... footnotes."
"Yeah?"
She hesitated. Then: "You're not as dumb as you look."
"Thanks. You're not as judgmental as you seem."
She laughed—a real laugh, not the polite kind—and walked away.
I stood there for a moment, processing.
Did I just... make a friend? At 9 AM? On a Wednesday?
The universe, as if in response, sent a notification ping from my phone.
Next Chapter: The Beggar's Audit is now available.
I grinned.
Some things, at least, still made sense.
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End of Chapter One
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Author's Notes:
· Regular updates whenever I feel like it (which is rarely, but Shruti's story demands to be told)
· No schedule, no promises, no refunds
· Shoutout to Truck-kun for never showing up. I'm still waiting, buddy. I'm still waiting.
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Next Chapter: The Beggar's Audit — In which Shruti Baghel discovers that prisons, like corporations, have stakeholders. And some stakeholders are about to be very, very audited.
