Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The Beginning of Chains**
Avni was fourteen when the world stopped listening.
She lived in Block D of the Seva Home, a government-run "rehabilitation center" for troubled girls—though most hadn't done anything wrong. She had no family left. No visitors ever came. Just a steel bed, routine pills, and hollow stares from girls who'd already given up.
One day, the staff called her to the infirmary alone. The nurse barely looked her in the eye. The doctor, a man with a clean coat and cruel silence, examined her. Cold hands. No explanations. A week later, she was told she was pregnant.
Avni hadn’t understood how it happened—not fully. But she remembered the night shifts. The door that didn’t lock. The eyes that watched too long. She said his name. They didn’t write it down. Instead, they put her in a separate room, labeled her "high risk," and increased her injection schedule.
She wasn’t allowed outside anymore.
When her belly grew, the whispers grew louder. Other girls avoided her. The staff told her she was irresponsible, that it was her punishment. She was ordered to journal her mistakes every night. “Write it down,” they’d say, “So you won’t do it again.”
Her body ached. Her back burned. The food made her sick. She vomited often and cried quietly afterward, afraid someone would punish her for weakness. Once, she fainted during injection lineup. The staff didn't ask if she was okay—only scolded her for breaking formation.
When labor began, she was dragged to the infirmary. No one held her hand. The doctor wasn’t gentle. She screamed for help, but only machines answered. After hours of pain, the baby arrived—small, frail, quiet.
"Prisha," Avni whispered, the name rising unbidden from a place of love she didn’t know she still had.
They let her hold the child once. Then took her away for testing. For days, Avni wasn’t told where her baby was. Only when she agreed to comply with every rule—every injection, every schedule, every silence—did they return her child.
They told her: “This is your child now. Your responsibility. You failed once. Don’t fail again.”
From then on, she was no longer just Avni.
She was Mother. A title wrapped in punishment.
And the injections? Now doubled. One for her. One for Prisha. Twice a day. No exceptions.
