There are some men who survive war, but never recover from what they lost at home.

Ishviq was one of them.

He married young — too young, some said — but it never felt wrong. Ruhi had been more than just a wife. She was a softness he never knew he needed, a quiet presence in the chaos of swords and orders.

Their marriage was not perfect, but it was real. Sacred. His.

And then, one night, it ended.

She died giving birth. Their child didn’t survive either.

What remained wasn’t a man mourning — it was a man erased.

Marriage had made him whole. And her death tore that wholeness apart, leaving him with a silence no one dared step into.

Since then, Ishviq had worn many things — a soldier’s armor, a commander’s pride, a right hand’s loyalty — but never again a husband’s heart.

He became the kind of man who didn’t just avoid love. He avoided anything that resembled marriage — the vows, the dreams, the soft foolishness of believing anything lasted.

Years passed. People stopped asking. Until one day, his mother — the only soul still brave enough to knock on that sealed door — insisted.

Marriage, again.

A second time.

With someone new.

A girl named Meera.

He didn’t want a second marriage. Didn’t want the guilt, the fear, the ghosts clawing at his throat whenever he closed his eyes.

But fate, as always, does not knock. It enters — quietly, uninvited, unannounced.

Meera was not meant to mean anything. A palace maid with soft footsteps and downcast eyes. But she was kind.

Unafraid.

And somehow, she saw him — not the soldier, not the shadow beside the prince, but the man still bleeding beneath memory.

And that terrified him.

Because marriage, to Ishviq, was not just a word.

It was a tombstone.

A battlefield.

A memory soaked in blood and lullabies that never came to be.

But Meera… She wasn't asking him for love. She wasn’t asking for promises or romance.

She was only asking him to exist again.

To come back from the place where his heart had once been buried with a woman named Ruhi.

And maybe — just maybe — marriage wasn’t the end this time.

Maybe… It was the beginning.