ONC 2022 Longlist / Top 25 The Historical Award 2022 & 2023 hosted by @HistoricalFiction / Featured by multiple profiles In the tyrannical kingdom of Aratta, a young widowed mother returns alive from the den of a mysterious king where women go only to return as corpses. ***** The kingdom of Aratta passes from one tyranny to another, being won over by a king who demands all royal women and servants to use a veil in his presence. Rules dictate that each new moon night he must take a woman, bed her in passion, only for her to become a corpse by the dawn. No one except the ministers and the Kandake know who he really is. One night, a young widow is summoned by him, that too when it isn't a new moon. She puts her son to sleep and takes a dagger, dresses in red, ready to please the king. One night, when his identity is revealed to her. And she returns alive. **** Aratta finds mention in both the vedic texts and Sumerian texts. In the Sumerian texts it is said to be the original home of Inanna and a land of immense luxury and richness, filled with gold and lapis lazuli, while the vedas classify it as a kingless nation (coming from the world Arashtra) and its people probably fought the Mahabharata war from the Kauravas side. This story builds an imaginary world around the kingdom of Aratta.