Prologue

Prologue: The Unspoken War

In the gilded halls of South Mumbai’s elite circles, two names carried the weight of an empire: Singhania and Deewan.

To the public eye, they were titan business conglomerates—two high-rise towers staring each other down across the skyline, competing for market shares, corporate dominance, and prestige. Their boards sat in cold, marble boardrooms, quietly maneuvering chess pieces behind closed doors while maintaining pristine public smiles.

Neither family ever spoke of hatred aloud. They didn't need to. The hostility was in the air they breathed, passed down like heirloom china.

And yet, inside the grand gates of St. Jude’s Academy, that generational war took a completely different form.

It wasn't fought over billion-dollar stocks or board seats. It was fought in ink, over quarter-mark deductions, exam ranks, student council chairs, and stolen glances across crowded auditoriums.

Agastya Singhania and Naina Deewan had no idea that their petty academic hostility was merely the echo of a much darker feud. They thought they were just two people who couldn't stand losing to each other.

They thought they were in control.

They didn't know that long before they ever picked up a pen to write their first exam, their fate had already been sealed by the bloodline they carried.

They were enemies by birth. They just hadn't learned the cost of it yet.