ARSHI FF : A SKY OF MY OWN
Prologue 2 : The Weight of What He Took
Arnav Singh Raizada stood alone in the cold stillness of his penthouse, the city sprawling beneath him like a world he no longer belonged to. Success loomed around him in towers of steel and glass. Power had long bowed at his feet. But none of it mattered.
Not anymore.
It was all meaningless now, because she was gone.
Khushi.
The name echoed in his mind like both a prayer and a curse. He hadn’t just lost her, he had driven her away. And in doing so, he had shattered something already fragile.
He told himself it was to protect. That the decisions he made were necessary. That marrying her in anger, forcing her into his world of shadows and secrets, was for the greater good, to save his sister. To save his family.
But who had saved her?
She had trusted him. Looked at him with eyes that held no judgment, only hope. And he had crushed that hope beneath suspicion, silence, and pride. Piece by piece, he had stripped her of everything - her joy, her voice, her belief in love.
He hadn’t seen it then. He’d been too focused on the storm outside to notice the one he was creating within her. But in his blindness, he had destroyed something sacred - the love, the trust, everything she had once been willing to offer.
But he saw it now. In every quiet moment. In every breath that hurt more than the last. In the deafening silence where her laughter used to live.
He had never truly recognized what was growing inside him, not then. It had been easier to justify his actions, to cling to pride. But now, with her absence echoing in every corner, he saw the truth for what it was: simple, bitter, and irrevocable.
He had loved her. And he had destroyed her in the process.
There was no undoing it. No redemption he could script with power or penance. All that remained was the weight of what he had broken and the crushing question of how to move forward when the only person who could heal him was the one he had broken.
He hadn’t just broken her heart. He had broken her spirit.
And no apology could ever undo that.
She had walked away carrying wounds he never bothered to see. And now, he stood here surrounded by everything he once believed mattered, weighed down by the one thing he could never reclaim: what he had done to her.
He had taken her freedom, her peace, and left her in torment. And in doing so, he had stolen a part of himself too, something he couldn’t name. Something he hadn’t even known he’d lost until she was gone.
And all it left him with was the suffocating sky above and the unbearable truth below.
He had taken too much. And now, she had taken the only thing he truly wanted - Herself.
He remembered her words - fierce, unwavering:
“Only Devi Maiya writes destiny. The day you realize that… I won’t be here.”
Now, in the stillness of this empty space, her absence wasn’t just something he noticed. It rang in his ears, louder than anything else. Even the air felt heavier , pressing down on him, dragging guilt through his every breath.
He had dismissed her beliefs, her god, her light. But the irony clawed at him now, her Devi Maiya hadn’t just written his destiny. She had written his reckoning.
And by the time he understood it.. She was already gone.
