Cradling the Eclipse

Shy but stubbornly defiant Nalhari is publicly stripped of her noble title during the Sun Festival. Desperate to avoid the execution block, she claims a forgotten right: adopting the royal family’s cursed slave, a boy named Darshav. Her plan is simple: pretend to be his devoted mother until the novel's real heroine appears, then quietly vanish. Told in alternating third-person perspectives between Nalhari and her loyal best friend Javeda, the story follows Nalhari's quiet struggle to raise the abused boy. But after a decade-long time skip, the sweet child returns from the border wars as a towering, blood-soaked warlord. And he refuses to let his mother go. As Nalhari's political rivals begin dying in gruesome, inexplicable accidents, she realizes Darshav is secretly slaughtering anyone who insults her. Meanwhile, a reincarnated heroine is frantically searching for the prophesied 'Shadow Core' to prevent the apocalypse. What will Nalhari do when she realizes the heroine's apocalyptic quest and her own desperate struggle to escape her obsessed adopted son are actually the exact same plot line?