Punam Sharma
1
The night over Varanasi shimmered with an eerie luminescence as the blood moon climbed steadily above the Ganga, bathing the ancient ghats in a copper-red glow. The river, usually alive with chants, bells, and the flicker of oil lamps, seemed to hold its breath, its surface glinting like molten brass. Amid this uneasy stillness, a young boatman named Ravi rowed silently across the slow-moving waters, his oar slicing through the moonlit current. He had ferried pilgrims across these sacred waters countless times, but tonight felt different—thicker, heavier. As he neared Dashashwamedh Ghat, a dark silhouette caught the corner of his eye. At first, it seemed like a discarded bundle, but the way it drifted against the tide tugged at his instincts. When his lantern’s faint glow revealed pale flesh beneath wet robes, Ravi’s breath hitched. The lifeless body of a temple priest floated face down, the holy markings of sandalwood paste now smeared by the Ganga’s embrace. Fear and duty wrestled within him, but he rowed closer, the oar trembling in his grasp, until the moon revealed something more chilling—a pattern of deep, deliberate carvings etched into the priest’s back, glistening like fresh ink against the blood-tinted night.
By the time forensic expert Ananya Sen arrived at the scene, the ghats were swarming with murmuring onlookers and the sharp scent of incense mixed with the metallic tang of the river. Fresh from Kolkata and unaccustomed to Varanasi’s layered mysticism, Ananya felt an unsettling pull as she stepped off the stone steps, the ancient chants of late-night rituals echoing faintly in the air. Her boots splashed against the damp stone as she approached the body, now laid carefully on a tarpaulin by the river’s edge. The sight froze her for a heartbeat. The priest’s skin bore an intricate lattice of Vedic verses, each character carved with such precision that the lines seemed almost printed rather than cut. The gashes were too exact to be the work of a frenzied killer; they were ceremonial, deliberate, and maddeningly meticulous. Bending closer, Ananya traced the edges of a verse near the spine, noting the absence of defensive wounds, the careful avoidance of vital organs—this was no ordinary murder. Whoever had done this wanted to send a message, one cloaked in the language of ancient rituals. The copper glow of the blood moon fell directly across the corpse, deepening the crimson of the wounds until they almost shimmered, as if the night itself conspired to highlight the killer’s art.
Behind her, the soft hum of the river carried whispers of fear from the gathering crowd, their voices rising in fragments of speculation—omens, curses, gods displeased. Ananya straightened, brushing a strand of windblown hair from her face, her mind already cataloging the scene: the clean, deliberate incisions, the absence of struggle, the eerie timing with the lunar eclipse. Somewhere in the darkness beyond the ghats, temple bells tolled a slow, deliberate rhythm, each chime sinking into her chest like a warning. Varanasi, the city of death and salvation, seemed to tighten around her, its labyrinthine alleys and timeless rituals concealing a killer who understood the weight of symbolism. As she ordered the body to be transported for autopsy, Ananya could not shake the sense that the crimson tide of this night was only the beginning. The blood moon loomed high and unyielding above the Ganga, a silent witness to a crime that whispered of ancient secrets and a darkness as old as the city itself.
2
The morning after the blood moon murder, Varanasi awoke beneath a shroud of dread. Dawn’s first light struggled to pierce the smoky haze of incense and river mist, while the Ganga flowed with an almost deliberate slowness, as if carrying the weight of whispered fears. From the narrow lanes of Godowlia to the wide stone steps of Assi Ghat, the story of the slain priest spread like wildfire. Boatmen lowered their voices as they ferried pilgrims across the river, sadhus exchanged guarded glances over smoldering chillums, and temple bells rang with a strangely hollow echo. Everywhere, rumors bloomed: that an ancient curse had reawakened, that the blood moon had opened a doorway between worlds, that the city of moksha was now a hunting ground for forgotten gods. Ananya Sen moved through this fevered atmosphere with a measured stride, notebook in hand, her keen eyes absorbing every murmur, every flicker of fear. She had spent the night reviewing forensic reports, but science felt strangely fragile against the dense mythology that clung to the ghats like a second skin. Even the police officers at Dashashwamedh spoke in half-beliefs, their clipped Hindi threaded with unease as they recounted how the corpse’s carved verses matched no standard Vedic chants.
It was Inspector Singh who first mentioned Professor Rudra Chaturvedi, a name spoken with the reverence reserved for those who lived more in the past than the present. A retired Sanskrit scholar known for his work on rare Rigvedic manuscripts, Chaturvedi had withdrawn from public life years ago, choosing the solitude of an old riverside haveli over the applause of academia. Curious and desperate for insight, Ananya followed a labyrinth of alleys to his residence, the scent of marigold and river mud guiding her steps. The haveli loomed like a relic from another century, its carved wooden doors creaking open to reveal a tall, silver-haired man whose eyes gleamed with quiet intellect and a hint of wariness. Inside, books towered like silent sentinels, their spines etched with scripts older than empires. As Ananya laid out photographs of the carved verses, Chaturvedi leaned forward, his long fingers tracing the air above the images without touching them. His brows knitted in recognition, the furrows deepening as he whispered a single word: Chandra Yajna—the lunar sacrifice. He explained in a voice rich with age and gravity that the markings belonged to a hymn so rare it barely existed in recorded texts, a Rigvedic chant once recited during secret rites meant to appease the moon and bend the tides of fate. “This is not random,” he murmured, eyes narrowing. “Someone has resurrected a hymn that was buried for a reason.”
Ananya felt a chill ripple through her despite the humid afternoon heat. Chaturvedi’s explanation reframed the murder as more than an act of violence—it was a ritual, an invocation of cosmic forces that blurred the line between faith and fanaticism. As the professor spoke of ancient kings who offered blood to the moon to avert celestial disasters, the creak of the haveli’s wooden beams sounded almost like the sighs of restless spirits. Outside, the city buzzed with anxious energy: the clang of temple bells, the cry of boatmen, the low chants of evening prayers all blending into a single, uneasy rhythm. Ananya closed her notebook, her mind alive with new questions. Who would know of such an obscure hymn? Why now, and why here, in a city where death was supposed to bring liberation? As she stepped back onto the narrow ghat-side lane, the sun dipped toward the horizon, staining the river in shades of copper and crimson. The Ganga whispered against the stone steps, carrying with it an ancient secret, and Ananya felt the weight of the blood moon’s echo in every shadow.
3
The night deepened over Varanasi, and Manikarnika Ghat roared with its eternal flames, the fires of countless cremations licking the sky in restless orange tongues. Smoke and ash swirled through the humid air, cloaking the sacred steps in a haze that blurred the line between life and death. Here, where bodies burned to grant liberation and the Ganga swallowed mortal remains, the killer had found perfect cover. Ananya Sen arrived shortly after midnight, the smell of charred wood and ghee clinging to her skin as she stepped carefully across the soot-darkened stones. Her flashlight cut a narrow path through the fog, illuminating a scatter of footprints that dissolved into blackened ash. Amid the hiss of burning pyres and the low chants of priests, she crouched beside a spot where the river lapped against the ghat, her gloved fingers sifting through damp residue. Tiny flecks of crimson glistened beneath the ash—a faint but undeniable trace of blood. More intriguing was the faint aroma rising from a pale, powdery fragment that clung to her glove. It was sweeter than the ordinary sandalwood used for cremation, richer, sharper. Ananya labeled the sample, her instincts prickling. This was no accident of ritual; someone had mingled their own rites with the sacred fires of the dead.
Back at the forensic lab, the samples told a story older than science. Under the lens, the sandalwood particles revealed an unusually high concentration of rare resins imported centuries ago from southern India—materials reserved for esoteric tantric ceremonies that demanded both wealth and secrecy. The blood traces matched neither the murdered priest nor any of the cremated bodies recorded that night, leaving only the possibility of a hidden participant. When Ananya shared her findings with Professor Rudra Chaturvedi the next morning, the scholar’s usually calm eyes flickered with something darker than surprise. In the quiet of his candlelit study, Rudra spread out brittle palm-leaf manuscripts, their faded Sanskrit verses alive with ominous meaning. He spoke of the Chandra Vratyas, a 9th-century sect obsessed with the purifying power of lunar eclipses, whose followers believed that spilling human blood during the moon’s shadow could cleanse karmic debts and draw down cosmic energy. Their rituals combined Vedic hymns with forbidden tantric practices, demanding both sacrifice and secrecy. “The verses carved into the priest,” Rudra said, his voice low, “were once sung at the height of their ceremonies. To see them now, during a blood moon…” He let the sentence trail into silence, but the weight of his unfinished thought pressed heavily against the room.
As dusk bled into another restless night, Ananya stood once more at the ghats, her mind churning with Rudra’s revelations. The cremation fires still burned, their smoke coiling upward like the city’s collective breath, carrying prayers, curses, and perhaps the killer’s intent into the heavens. Pilgrims whispered of omens and restless spirits, their faces half-lit by the wavering glow of pyres that never died. Somewhere among the mourners and priests, the murderer might be watching, shielded by the chaos of endless death. The rare sandalwood powder lingered in her thoughts, its sweetness now a symbol of corruption, its sacredness twisted into an instrument of murder. The Ganga lapped gently at the steps, indifferent to the blood and ashes it carried away. Ananya felt the pulse of the city in her veins—ancient, unyielding, and infinitely patient. The killer was not merely taking lives; they were performing an old play written in the language of the moon and fire, and the next act was already waiting beneath the crimson shadow of the night.
4
The city of Varanasi held its breath once again as the moon began to darken, slipping behind Earth’s shadow in a slow, coppery veil. Pilgrims crowded the Assi Ghat to witness the partial lunar eclipse, their chants and prayers rising like a trembling tide against the hush of the river. Lanterns swayed in the humid night breeze, their flames bending toward the Ganga as if drawn by some unseen force. Ananya Sen moved carefully through the restless crowd, her senses sharpened by the memory of the last blood moon. Somewhere within this sacred chaos, she felt the same unnerving stillness that had preceded the first killing—a silence buried beneath sound. Her unease deepened when a boatman’s frantic cry sliced through the chanting. People parted in alarm as he dragged a floating shape toward the steps. Under the harsh beams of flashlight and moonlight, the figure of a young man emerged, his lifeless body slick with river water. A veena pick still clung to his damp fingers, a cruel reminder of the music he would never play again. The murmurs swelled into a collective gasp as the body was laid on the stone platform, and the familiar horror revealed itself: Vedic verses carved into bare flesh, their precision as chilling as the first murder.
Ananya knelt beside the corpse, her gloves already streaked with river silt, her eyes scanning the carefully etched Sanskrit. The victim, later identified as Arvind Mehta, a promising music student from the Banaras Hindu University, bore the same ancient hymns she had studied after the priest’s death. But something was different. The lines across his chest broke off abruptly at the sternum, the final verse incomplete. The missing segment was not a careless omission; the cuts ended with almost ceremonial restraint, as if the killer had intentionally left the hymn unfinished. Ananya photographed the carvings, her pulse quickening as she traced the broken pattern with her mind. It was a puzzle, a sequence of hymns unfolding one murder at a time, each victim a verse in a deadly chant. Her thoughts flashed back to Professor Rudra Chaturvedi’s warning about the Chandra Vratyas, the ancient sect that sought cosmic purification through blood. If the killer was resurrecting their rites, this unfinished verse might be more than a signature—it might be a promise of what was yet to come. Around her, the ghat’s priests muttered prayers of protection, their voices trembling as they sprinkled holy water on the body, but even their rituals felt powerless against the precise cruelty of the carvings.
Later, in the dim glow of Rudra’s study, the professor leaned over the photographs with a grim intensity. His long fingers traced the breaks in the chant as he murmured translations under his breath. “This is the second of four hymns,” he finally said, his eyes shadowed with unease. “Each one calls upon a different phase of the moon. The omission here is deliberate—the killer is saving the final invocation for the last sacrifice.” Ananya felt a cold weight settle in her chest as she pieced the sequence together: the blood moon, the partial eclipse, the approaching cycles that would culminate in a rare celestial alignment weeks away. The murders were not random acts of violence; they were steps in a ritual designed to climax under the next full eclipse. Outside, the Ganga shimmered beneath the waning shadow of the moon, its surface reflecting a fractured light that seemed to ripple with hidden intent. Ananya stared out at the restless water, her mind racing against the slow turning of the heavens. Somewhere in the city’s maze of temples and burning ghats, the killer was already preparing the next verse, and the moon’s shadow was moving inexorably toward its final, crimson peak.
5
Beneath the towering spires of the Kashi Vishwanath temple, the air was thick with the scent of incense and the faint vibration of evening bells. Few outsiders knew of the hidden archives buried below the sanctum—a labyrinth of stone chambers where centuries of manuscripts and relics lay preserved in the damp hush of time. Guided by a wary temple priest and the flicker of oil lamps, Ananya and Professor Rudra Chaturvedi descended a spiral staircase worn smooth by generations of barefoot pilgrims. The deeper they went, the more the city above seemed to fade, replaced by the weight of secrets locked in copper and stone. At the end of a narrow passage, a carved door opened into a chamber lined with palm-leaf manuscripts and ancient copper plates, their inscriptions gleaming faintly in the lamp’s unsteady glow. Rudra’s eyes, usually calm and distant, sharpened with barely contained excitement as he brushed centuries of dust from a set of plates stacked beneath a faded silk cloth. The Sanskrit etchings were precise, their grooves filled with a dark patina that seemed almost like dried blood. “Rakta Chandra,” Rudra whispered, his voice echoing softly through the chamber. “The blood moon prophecy.”
As the professor translated the archaic script, the room seemed to pulse with an almost imperceptible rhythm, the words themselves carrying a gravity beyond their age. The plates spoke of a cycle known as the Rakta Chandra—an alignment of lunar eclipses that returned only once every few centuries. According to the prophecy, ten “offerings” were required to awaken a state of Shashvata Bodha, or eternal awakening, a mystical liberation that blurred the boundaries between life and death. Each offering had to coincide with a specific phase of the moon, beginning with the first blood moon and ending in a total eclipse when the shadow of the earth swallowed the moon in its deepest red. Rudra’s voice tightened as he deciphered a particularly ominous passage: Only through the cleansing of ten mortal vessels shall the moon’s shadow yield the eternal flame. Ananya’s mind raced, connecting the prophecy to the murders with a forensic clarity that left no room for superstition. Two bodies had already been claimed during the first and second eclipses. If the killer truly believed in this ritual, eight more murders were planned—each mapped meticulously onto the lunar calendar.
The realization struck Ananya like a cold blade. She stepped back from the copper plates, her breath quickening as she reviewed the timeline in her head. The next total eclipse, the final phase of the Rakta Chandra cycle, was only days away. If the killer continued to follow the sequence, the city stood on the brink of a calculated massacre hidden within the sanctity of celestial events. Rudra placed a steadying hand on her shoulder, his eyes reflecting the flicker of the oil lamp. “This is no mere imitation,” he said quietly. “Someone has revived a doctrine buried for centuries. They believe these killings are not murder but sacrifice.” Outside, the distant hum of temple bells and the low drone of evening mantras drifted through the stone corridors, a haunting counterpoint to the deadly mathematics unfolding in Ananya’s mind. As they ascended the stairway back into the night, the moon hung pale and expectant over the Ganga, its waxing curve a silent countdown. The city of liberation was now a clockwork of death, and the shadow it awaited would not merely darken the sky—it would complete a ritual older than memory itself.
6
Thunder rolled across Varanasi like a restless god, shaking the ancient ghats as rain swept in heavy sheets over the Ganga. The river, swollen and turbulent, churned beneath the storm’s fury, its waves slapping against stone steps slick with algae and lamp oil. Lanterns flickered in the wind, their flames bending and sputtering as the city huddled beneath tarps and temple awnings. Near Panchganga Ghat, a boatman braving the storm for a late-night fare glimpsed a pale shape bobbing in the black water. At first, the rain blurred it into the river’s foam, but the sharp silhouette of a human arm broke the illusion. His shout cut through the thunder as he hauled the body onto his skiff, the cold weight of death anchoring itself in the night. When Ananya Sen arrived, soaked to the bone despite her raincoat, the scene unfolded beneath the jagged flash of lightning: a foreign scholar, his lifeless eyes clouded with rain and moonlight, lay sprawled against the slick boards. His passport identified him as Dr. Edward Crane, an anthropologist from Oxford renowned for his research on tantric cults. Even in death, the same ritual precision marked his flesh—Vedic verses etched across his torso in neat, unhurried lines, their crimson grooves bright against the pale wash of stormlight.
Back at the forensic lab, Ananya examined the evidence with a growing sense of unease. The blood samples contained an unexpected contaminant: microscopic traces of a rare river algae that thrived only in the deepest, slowest pools of the Ganga, places where pilgrims traditionally performed secret ablutions. The mixture of human blood and algae suggested not only the killer’s movements but their intention—ritual cleansing in the sacred river immediately after each sacrifice. The discovery tightened the pattern like a noose. Each murder occurred near water, each body bore hymns of an ancient lunar rite, and now the Ganga itself had become a participant, its holy current absorbing both blood and prayer. Ananya traced the algae’s distribution on a digital map, marking secluded inlets and half-forgotten bathing steps where the killer might vanish after the deed. Outside, rain drummed steadily against the lab’s windows, the rhythmic sound echoing the relentless pace of the murders. The city’s police force remained baffled, their patrols stretched thin along miles of riverfront, but Ananya felt the killer’s presence tightening, as if the storm itself were a cloak for a predator who moved in step with the moon.
When surveillance footage finally arrived from a riverside camera near Raj Ghat, it offered both revelation and dread. Grainy and shrouded by mist, the video captured a single figure rowing silently across the moonlit Ganga at the height of the storm. The boat glided with uncanny smoothness despite the churning water, the oars slicing the river in a rhythm almost ceremonial. The person’s face remained hidden beneath a hooded shawl, but the deliberate movements betrayed a calm purpose—no panic, no haste, only the measured strokes of someone who belonged to the night. Ananya replayed the footage again and again, noting the timing: the passage aligned perfectly with the predicted midpoint of the lunar cycle, as if the killer had waited for both eclipse shadow and storm. Outside the lab, the storm finally began to break, leaving the river swollen and red-tinged in the first light of dawn. Ananya stared at the trembling reflection of the fading moon in the Ganga, a silent witness to sacrifice and cleansing. Somewhere beyond the reach of cameras and patrols, the killer was already preparing for the next phase, their path marked not by footprints but by verses carved in flesh and prayers dissolved in the endless river of red.
7
Morning broke over Varanasi with a deceptive calm, the Ganga glimmering like molten brass under a pale sun that hid the violence of the night before. Yet beneath the surface of the city’s rituals and routine, suspicion had begun to coil like a tightening serpent. Whispers spread through police corridors and temple courtyards, carried by priests who recalled old controversies and scholars who remembered forgotten debates. Professor Rudra Chaturvedi, once a celebrated Sanskritist, now found his name floating through these murmurs with a dangerous weight. Decades earlier, he had written a thesis on the mythos of lunar sacrifices—a work so provocative it had been denounced by orthodox priests and quietly shelved by his own university. What had begun as academic inquiry into the Chandra Vratyas and their shadowy rites was rumored to have drawn him too close to the forbidden. Ananya Sen, combing through archival records and brittle academic journals, unearthed the paper in a locked cabinet at Banaras Hindu University. The crisp Sanskrit verses within mirrored fragments carved into the victims’ flesh, and in the margins, Rudra’s precise annotations spoke of a man both fascinated and haunted by the intersection of moon, death, and transcendence.
The unease sharpened into alarm when Ananya uncovered an old black-and-white photograph tucked among Rudra’s manuscripts. Taken at a conference nearly twenty years ago, it showed a younger Rudra standing beside a smiling temple priest—the first victim of the blood moon killings. The priest’s hand rested casually on Rudra’s shoulder, the image of friendship captured in fading ink. When Ananya confronted him with the photograph in the quiet of his riverside haveli, the tension between them was immediate, heavy as the humid evening air. Rudra’s eyes lingered on the photo for a long, unreadable moment before he exhaled, the sound carrying both weariness and something like grief. “Yes,” he admitted, his voice low and measured. “I knew him. Pandit Harinarayan was once my colleague in a private circle of scholars. We met to study the unrecorded rites of the moon, to understand what history had buried. It was not a cult—it was research.” Ananya’s gaze did not waver. “And yet,” she replied, “someone from that circle now kills in the name of what you studied.” The professor’s hands tightened on the edge of his desk, knuckles whitening as the storm of accusation settled between them.
Rudra’s confession spilled forth like the slow current of the Ganga outside his window. He spoke of the secret study circle that gathered in dim libraries and riverfront courtyards, a handful of linguists, priests, and historians determined to decode fragments of Rigvedic hymns ignored by mainstream academia. Over time, he said, disagreements sharpened into schisms. A few members grew restless, seduced by the idea that ancient rituals were not merely symbolic but pathways to real power. Fearing where the discussions were heading, Rudra withdrew and buried his research, but not before enemies within the priestly hierarchy accused him of heresy and spiritual corruption. “I left before the circle splintered,” he said, his eyes glinting with a pain that felt older than the current murders. “But I cannot deny that someone may have taken our inquiries and turned them into something monstrous.” The admission hung in the air like the echo of a temple bell, both revelation and warning. Outside, the afternoon light dimmed under gathering clouds, the river darkening to a bruised gray as if the city itself absorbed the weight of his words. Ananya studied Rudra’s lined face, searching for deceit and finding only the weary shadow of a man whose past now threatened to devour the present.
8
The penumbral eclipse cast a muted shadow over Varanasi, turning the night into a strange half-light where nothing felt entirely real. Thousands of pilgrims crowded the riverfront, their chants rising in uneven waves as temple bells clanged in frantic counterpoint to the slow darkening of the moon. Oil lamps floated across the Ganga like drifting constellations, their golden trails shimmering against the silver-gray water. Amid the dense press of bodies, Ananya Sen wove through the throng with the sharp focus of a hunter. Her mind replayed every detail of the three murders—each location, each lunar phase—until a startling realization began to take shape. The killings were not merely timed to the eclipses; they were arranged across the city’s sacred geography. Overlaying the crime scenes on a map, she saw the pattern emerge: Dashashwamedh, Assi, Manikarnika, Raj Ghat—each site a point in an ancient yantra, the sacred geometry used in tantric rites. At its heart lay Panchganga Ghat, the legendary confluence of five rivers and one of the holiest sites in Varanasi. A chill spread through her despite the warm crush of pilgrims. The killer was not simply reenacting a forgotten ritual; they were drawing the city itself into the sacrifice.
Inside Rudra Chaturvedi’s candlelit study, the air smelled of sandalwood and damp parchment as the professor pored over the copper plates and palm-leaf manuscripts they had recovered from the temple archives. Ananya spread the crime-scene photographs across a low wooden table, aligning them with an old map of the ghats. The geometric pattern was undeniable—each murder marking a corner of a pentagram-like yantra whose center pointed directly to Panchganga. Rudra’s fingers trembled slightly as he traced the connecting lines with a piece of chalk. “This is not mere coincidence,” he said, his voice heavy with reluctant awe. “Panchganga is believed to be the axis of cosmic cleansing. If the killer completes the pattern during the next eclipse, the ritual will reach its full potency.” Together they turned to the next verse of the hymn carved into the victims, a passage Rudra had only partially translated before. Under the flickering lamp, the Sanskrit unfolded like a riddle of blood and shadow: Ten lights to pierce the moon’s dark veil, ten vessels to awaken the eternal tide. The words confirmed their worst fears. The upcoming total lunar eclipse was not just another date in the killer’s calendar—it was the intended culmination, a night when ten offerings would “unlock eternal awakening.”
As the temple bells outside signaled the end of the penumbral eclipse, Ananya felt the city shift beneath her feet, as though the very stones of the ghats were listening. The crowd’s devotional cries blended with the low surge of the river, masking the quiet terror rising within her. Panchganga Ghat, already a nexus of pilgrims and mystics, would become a perfect killing ground during the total eclipse only days away. The thought of a mass sacrifice—ten lives extinguished in one night beneath a blood-red moon—sent a jolt of urgency through her veins. Rudra’s lined face was grim as he closed the manuscript, his eyes reflecting the flicker of the dying lamp. “We have little time,” he said softly. “The killer believes the city itself must bear witness.” Outside, the moon began to brighten again, emerging from Earth’s shadow with a ghostly sheen. But to Ananya, the pale light felt less like relief and more like a warning: the shadow would return soon, and when it did, the Ganga might run redder than ever before.
9
The night of the total lunar eclipse descended upon Varanasi with a surreal weight, the air heavy with smoke, incense, and the hushed anticipation of thousands who had gathered along the ancient ghats. The Ganga shimmered a deep, unsettling crimson under the blood moon, its surface reflecting the eerie glow of the celestial event. Ananya and Rudra moved through the thick crowd like shadows, their eyes trained on every flicker of movement, every echo of a mantra carried by the wind. The sacred geometry they had painstakingly decoded from the ancient verses pointed unerringly to Panchganga Ghat, where five rivers were believed to converge, a place of both sanctity and unspeakable danger. Around them, the rhythmic beating of temple drums merged with the chant of pilgrims, creating a pulse that seemed to match the quickening thrum of their own hearts. Somewhere within this living labyrinth, a killer was preparing to fulfill a prophecy written in blood and moonlight.
The scent of sandalwood and iron—sweet and metallic, ancient and ominous—guided them like a phantom trail down narrow stone steps slick with river mist. Torches flickered against the timeworn walls, casting fleeting patterns of light that danced like restless spirits. As they reached the heart of the ghat, a lone figure emerged from the smoke: a masked priest clad in crimson robes, his silhouette framed by the shimmering river. In his hand glinted a ritual blade, its edge catching the moon’s crimson glow as he chanted the final hymn of Rakta Chandra, the hymn that promised eternal awakening through ten sacrifices. At his feet knelt a terrified child, bound and gagged, eyes wide with mute terror as the crowd remained unaware of the nightmare unfolding just beyond their chanting circles. Rudra whispered a verse of counter-ritual under his breath while Ananya stepped forward, every nerve burning with urgency. The priest’s chant rose in pitch, the ancient Sanskrit syllables vibrating with a resonance that felt as if it could split the very air.
Ananya lunged just as the priest raised the blade for the final offering. The two collided with a force that sent echoes across the water, the blade clattering against the stone steps before sliding toward the river’s edge. The priest, stronger than his wiry frame suggested, twisted violently, dragging Ananya toward the dark waters. Rudra sprang into action, reciting a sharp, cutting mantra that momentarily froze the killer’s movements, his scholar’s voice steady despite the chaos. Seizing the chance, Ananya wrested the blade from the priest’s grip and struck him across the mask, tearing it away to reveal a face warped by fanaticism and grief—a former member of Rudra’s long-dispersed study circle, consumed by the belief that sacrifice could cleanse the world. Sirens wailed in the distance as police boats closed in, their lights slicing through the blood-red haze. As the moon reached its deepest shadow, Ananya held the child close, her heartbeat matching the fading drums. The killer’s chants died on the wind, leaving only the eternal murmur of the Ganga, as if the river itself had swallowed the prophecy and the night’s terror into its timeless flow.
10
The crimson haze of the night before faded into a pale saffron dawn as the first rays of sunlight spilled across the ghats of Varanasi. The Ganga, so menacing under the blood moon, now glimmered with an almost deceptive serenity, its slow current carrying away the remnants of ritual fires and human fear. Police barricades still lined Panchganga Ghat, where curious onlookers whispered among themselves, their voices rising like the smoke from half-extinguished incense. Ananya stood at the edge of the water, the rescued child sleeping under a woolen shawl beside her, and watched the river’s rippling reflection of the awakening sky. The killer—unmasked, subdued, and finally stripped of his mystique—was led away in chains, his crimson robes stained darker by river spray and dried blood. He was no longer the faceless priest of nightmares but a man of flesh and frailty: Acharya Devnath, once a celebrated astrologer known for interpreting rare planetary alignments. His eyes, though weary, still glowed with a fevered conviction as he muttered fragments of the ancient Rakta Chandra hymns, his lips curling around prophecies that promised rebirth through blood. To the watching crowd, he was both a fallen sage and a dangerous lunatic, a reminder that madness often wears the mask of faith.
Inside the small riverside clinic where the rescued child was examined, Rudra Chaturvedi sat with a stack of recovered manuscripts spread across his lap, their copper plates and palm-leaf etchings glinting in the morning light. His scholar’s eyes, usually alive with the thrill of discovery, now carried a heavy caution. “The verses he used are not merely symbols,” Rudra said quietly, his voice a blend of fatigue and reverence. “They are sonic patterns, designed to resonate with the body and the cosmos. To someone unbalanced, they become more than words—they are keys to unlock power that should never be wielded.” Ananya listened, her forensic mind weighing his warning against the hard evidence of blood samples, chemical residues, and security footage. Science had helped stop the killings, but she could not deny that the chants had carried an unsettling energy, a rhythm that lingered in memory like the aftertaste of lightning. She thought of Devnath’s final gaze as he was taken away: not of defeat, but of unfinished purpose, as if the eclipse was only a prelude to a larger design. Rudra traced a finger over a faded hymn, pausing at a line that promised “eternal awakening when ten rivers meet.” His brow furrowed. “The hymns remain,” he said, almost to himself. “And there will always be those who seek to awaken what should remain asleep.”
As the day brightened and the city returned to its eternal routine of prayers, trade, and song, Ananya stepped outside the clinic and let the warm breeze wash over her. The temple bells rang in counterpoint to the splash of oars on the river, each sound grounding her in the fragile normalcy that follows catastrophe. She thought of the narrow line between devotion and obsession, of how belief—whether in the stars, in scripture, or in the precision of forensic science—could inspire both miracles and horrors. The blood moon had passed, but its shadow lingered in the questions it raised: about power, about knowledge, about the human hunger to touch the infinite. Looking out at the Ganga, she felt the river’s timeless presence as both witness and keeper of secrets. Its calm surface betrayed nothing of the night’s violence, carrying only the reflection of a brightening sky. Ananya exhaled, knowing the case was over yet not truly ended. Somewhere in the ancient alleys of Varanasi, the hymns still slept, waiting for the next restless soul to mistake their echo for destiny.
End
