• English - Suspense - Young Adult

    The Vanishing Filter

    June 26, 2025 - By 

    Vivek Awasthi Part 1: The Filter Nobody Posted It all began with a shimmer—not in the sky, not in the water, but on Rhea Malhotra’s face, caught mid-selfie. She was seated on her bed, hair loose, sunlight filtering through the window, giving her skin a natural glow she wished she could bottle. She’d clicked dozens of photos that morning for her Instagram story—nothing out of the ordinary. But the last photo she took shimmered in a strange way the moment she applied a filter. She didn’t recall selecting it. In fact, she didn’t even recognize it. “Etherea_03,” it read, in…

  • English - Young Adult

    The Forest Remembers

    June 25, 2025 - By 

    Pulak Goswami Chapter 1: The Storm That Spoke The day the storm came, the air in Pranoy’s village crackled with a kind of silence that wasn’t natural. Even the herons had stopped calling from the mangrove trees, and the fishermen had returned earlier than usual, hauling their nets as if fleeing from an unseen predator. Pranoy stood barefoot at the edge of the muddy path that led to the river, watching the clouds gather like ink spilled across the sky. The water in the canals had turned a darker green, and the mangrove leaves whispered secrets to one another in…

  • English - Young Adult

    The Library of Unwritten Dreams

    June 24, 2025 - By 

    Partho Dey Chapter 1: The Door That Shouldn’t Be There The mist rolled down the hills like spilled milk, wrapping the sleepy town of Dharagaon in a hush usually reserved for secrets. Rhea liked walking in the drizzle. It was one of the few times the world slowed down to her pace. School was closed that day, and the homestay her parents ran had no guests. She wandered up the slope behind the church, where old paths curled like forgotten thoughts through ferns and moss. It wasn’t a place people usually visited. Too damp, too wild, too ordinary. But Rhea…

  • English - Young Adult

    The Sky Beneath Jaisalmer

    June 24, 2025 - By 

    Sreeparna Bajpai Chapter One: The Desert Exile Inaaya Khan squinted through the dusty window of the jeep as the golden sprawl of Jaisalmer crept into view. It looked less like a city and more like a mirage—a honeycomb of sandstone rising from the endless dunes, its turrets and balconies blurred by waves of heat dancing above the ground. The driver, a leathery old man with a marigold behind his ear, had barely spoken since they left the railway station, except to complain about the temperature and how the summer came early this year. Inaaya didn’t mind the silence. She leaned…

  • English - Romance - Young Adult

    Bleeding Blue

    June 24, 2025 - By 

    Ayesha Rao Part 1: The First Dive The pool was colder than she had expected. Zoya Narang stood at the edge, staring into the shimmering blue, her toes curled against the tile. The whistle had already blown. Others had dived. But she hesitated. Not because she didn’t know how to swim—Zoya could glide like a whisper—but because this was the national camp, and those lanes held sharks in Speedos. A drop of water slid from her temple to her lips. Chlorine. Fear. And something more. “Jump, wild card.” The voice came from behind her—low, amused, and irritatingly familiar. Zoya didn’t…

  • English - Romance - Young Adult

    Red Ink on White Paper

    June 24, 2025 - By 

    Tara Deshpande Part 1: First Paper Cut The essay was titled “Love is a Knife with a Sugar Handle.” Rayan D’Souza read the first paragraph, then the last, then the whole thing again in silence. It wasn’t just good—it was surgical. Each line left a mark, a strange blend of emotional vulnerability and cold detachment. The author was Aranya Sen. Roll number 07B/LIT/019. He remembered her vaguely from the second row, a girl who didn’t take notes but always looked like she was memorising the whole room. Her photograph was stapled to the file, standard college protocol, a small passport-size…

  • English - Young Adult

    The Last Rickshaw Ride

    June 23, 2025 - By 

    Kamal Prasad Mishra Chapter 1: The Ride Begins The night air in Chandni Chowk clung to Amal like a memory he couldn’t shake. August’s monsoon rains had dried, leaving behind a warmth soaked in the scent of old spices, frying oil, and time. It was past midnight, yet the city didn’t sleep — it simply sighed in quieter breaths. The streets were damp with leftover life: a chaiwala still pouring from his kettle like it was a sacred act, a woman arranging wilted marigolds on a cart, and a cow that blinked slowly as if it knew secrets older than…

  • English - Young Adult

    The Summer of Disappearing Stars

    June 22, 2025 - By 

    Pankaj Desai Chapter 1: The Retreat Begins The hills looked the same, but Noor Rahmani knew better. The sky above them—wide and velvet blue—stretched out like memory itself: vast, layered, unknowable. The bus rumbled to a stop on the gravel slope, its brakes sighing like an old friend weary from another year’s journey. Noor stepped out, inhaling the sharp scent of pine and the faint tang of burnt diesel, and tried to shake off the strange weight that had been pressing against her chest since the previous night. The retreat grounds spread before her, a patchwork of stone cabins, wooden…

  • English - Young Adult

    BOUNDARY LINE

    June 21, 2025 - By 

    Manoj Ojha Chapter 1: The Girl with the Red Ball The dawn in Mangaldoi wasn’t the kind that arrived in silence; it came humming with birdcalls, the hiss of kettles from roadside stalls, and the occasional bark of restless stray dogs. Yet, amid this subtle chaos, a different rhythm echoed through the empty school playground—thud… thud… thwack—the steady beat of a red cricket ball hitting a battered concrete wall. Arohi Nath, seventeen and barely five feet tall, stood poised like a coiled spring, the ball returning to her palm with ghostlike familiarity. Her fingers were calloused, her sleeves rolled to…

  • English - Young Adult

    The Fourth Bench from the Left

    June 20, 2025 - By 

    Bipasa Roy Chowdhury Chapter 1: Assigned Seats and Accidental Fates On the first day of the new academic year, Oakridge High buzzed with the scent of freshly bound notebooks, sharp pencils, and the distinct nervous energy that only teenagers in half-creased uniforms could produce. In Class 10-B, the fans creaked overhead like tired old men, and sunlight streamed through dusty glass, illuminating years of chalk smudges and scraped graffiti. A printed seating chart stuck hastily on the blackboard, like a bureaucratic lottery ticket, dictated the year’s fate for every student. And it was here, in faded Arial font and alphabetical…