Nikita Kaul
1
The first time Tanvi Mehra heard about the chalk outline was during her third day at St. Augustine’s Residential Academy for Girls. It was whispered between two girls in the library, their voices low but their eyes flickering with unmistakable fear. The words “outline,” “disappears,” and “Ragini” caught Tanvi’s attention like hooks in water. She leaned further behind the old geography shelf, heart thudding—not from belief, but curiosity. She had transferred here from Delhi after a messy school suspension and an even messier stepfather situation. Her mother called this place a “fresh start.” Tanvi called it a prison with pine trees. Yet, there was something oddly alive about the rumors at this otherwise dead-serious boarding school, tucked into the fog-wrapped hills of Mussoorie.
Later that afternoon, during a free period, Tanvi wandered past the arts block and paused near Classroom 7C. The door was ajar, though it was supposed to remain locked outside teaching hours. Something drew her in—maybe the cold air that slithered out or maybe the memory of the word “outline.” As she stepped in, her shoes echoed against the floor’s quiet. That’s when she saw it. A chalk drawing, unnaturally precise, traced the shape of a human body—arms slightly raised, one foot tilted, like someone had been caught mid-stumble. It looked recent, impossibly white against the worn grey tiles. Tanvi crouched beside it, fingers trembling as they hovered just above the outline. Something about it felt wrong—like it wasn’t just a symbol but a warning. Behind her, a gust of wind slammed the door shut, and when she spun around, she thought—only for a second—she saw someone sitting in the back row, watching her.
By dinner, the whispers had spread wider. Someone had seen the outline too. A girl named Shalini had started crying in the dorm hallway, claiming it matched the exact pose of her best friend Ragini before she vanished last term. No teachers addressed the rumor. No one even spoke Ragini’s name out loud. But in the corner of the dining hall, near the windows that looked out over the sloping hillside, Tanvi caught the gaze of her roommate, Meher. Meher was quiet, bookish, and always polite—but tonight, she looked pale and serious. She mouthed only three words to Tanvi before turning away: “Don’t ignore it.” That night, as rain tapped against the tall glass panes of the dorm, Tanvi lay awake. And in the darkness, she swore she heard scratching—faint, rhythmic, and unmistakably chalk against tile.
2
The morning mist clung thick around the school’s stone corridors, as if the fog itself was trying to muffle whatever truth lingered in the air. Tanvi barely slept the night before, and when she dragged herself into the common room, she found Meher sitting by the fireplace, a book open but unread. “You heard it too, didn’t you?” Meher asked, eyes not leaving the page. Tanvi nodded slowly. Meher closed the book with a sigh. “They say it always starts with the scratching.” That day, in class, Tanvi couldn’t focus. Every time she looked down at her textbook, her mind conjured up the chalk outline’s precise angles. By recess, the rumor mill was in overdrive: someone claimed to have seen a shadow slip past the classroom window at midnight, another swore she saw her name scrawled faintly in chalk beside the outline before it vanished the next morning. But none of the teachers mentioned anything. In fact, their silence was almost rehearsed—intentional. As if they were guarding a secret.
After classes, Tanvi confronted Meher properly in the dorm. “Tell me everything you know,” she demanded. Meher hesitated, then slowly unzipped a worn notebook from the bottom of her trunk. “My sister went here,” she said. “Two years ago. She was… one of them.” The pages of the notebook were filled with frantic entries—dates, sketches of body outlines, lists of missing students. Meher flipped to a page near the middle and pointed at a name: Ragini Nair. “She was the last before my sister. Both of them disappeared within a day of the chalk drawing appearing. They said they were dreaming of things they hadn’t lived. Seeing classrooms with people they didn’t know. My sister wrote that the chalk outline doesn’t just appear—it remembers.” Tanvi read the passage, her skin crawling: The outline showed my face before I saw it. It knew I’d come. It marked me before I understood.
That evening, Tanvi broke curfew and returned to Classroom 7C. The door, this time, was locked. But she had stolen a spare key from the teacher’s lounge when no one was watching. Heart pounding, she stepped inside. The room was empty. The chalk outline was gone. But a thin layer of white dust still clung to the floor, faint but real. And near the blackboard, written in a childlike scrawl, were four chilling words: Next: Tanvi Mehra. She stumbled back, nearly tripping over a desk leg, her breath turning sharp in the cold air. No one knew her name before she arrived last week. No one should’ve known it then. As she fled down the corridor, her shadow stretched unnaturally long behind her, and for the first time since arriving at St. Augustine’s, Tanvi began to wonder if her past had followed her—and if the outline wasn’t just a warning. It might be a mirror.
3
The sun over Mussoorie that morning did little to lift the dread clamped around Tanvi’s chest. Her name—etched in chalk, in a locked room—was now a question mark burned into her mind. She didn’t tell anyone. Not Meher, not the teachers, not even Kabir, the senior from the boys’ school across the ridge whom she occasionally exchanged glances with during joint assemblies. But she did start looking for answers. She skipped morning PT, feigned stomach aches, and lingered around the staff corridor. That’s where she saw it—an old file cabinet with rusty handles in the disused storeroom next to the infirmary. It was barely used anymore, but inside were rows of dusty student registers, dating back to the 1970s. She flipped through them until her fingers stung from dust and age. Her eyes froze when she found it: a student log from 1985, with a name printed neatly in blue ink—Tanvi Mehra. The handwriting was old-fashioned, but the date of birth matched hers exactly. Yet there was no photo attached. The space was torn clean.
She showed the page to Meher that night under the weak glow of their shared bedside lamp. “It’s you,” Meher whispered, as if saying it louder might invite something listening. “No,” Tanvi replied, though her voice shook, “it’s someone who had my name.” But doubt began to crack her stubborn logic. How many Tanvi Mehras could have attended the same elite school, born on the same day? “What if the outline doesn’t just predict who’s next?” Meher murmured. “What if it remembers?” Tanvi couldn’t sleep. Her dreams were fractured—half-nightmare, half-memory. In one, she saw the classroom as it was decades ago—old wooden desks, blackboards without whiteboards, girls in colonial-style uniforms. One girl turned to look at her. She had Tanvi’s face but older, more tired. Her lips moved soundlessly. When Tanvi woke up, she had written something on the back of her own hand in her sleep: Downstairs. Behind the chapel.
The next evening, when the sky turned a sickly yellow before sunset, Tanvi followed the dream’s direction. The chapel had long been closed due to structural decay, but its back entrance was still accessible through a thicket of overgrown ivy. She used a stolen flashlight and crawled behind the altar through a low door that opened into a forgotten stairwell. The air grew colder with every step downward. It smelled of mold, chalk, and wet stone. At the bottom was a small underground archive room. Old documents lay stacked in iron lockers. And there, on a shelf, was a faded black-and-white photograph. It showed a classroom. In the middle row sat a girl, smiling faintly, in the exact spot Tanvi now used in 7C. On the back of the photo was a name scribbled in red ink: Subject: T. Mehra. Unresolved. Tanvi’s knees buckled. This wasn’t coincidence. This was recurrence. Something in this school was playing the same game again—and this time, she was the one being watched.
4
Tanvi couldn’t eat. She barely spoke during meals and avoided the other girls’ gossip about a new outline rumor floating through the junior wing. Her head throbbed with the weight of that photo—the girl who looked like her, sat like her, bore her name—and yet had been marked as Subject: T. Mehra. Unresolved. That word—unresolved—scratched at her like the chalk itself. What had remained unresolved? A death? A memory? A punishment? She began obsessively retracing her steps each evening, watching the classroom corridor from shadows, sketchbook in hand. Meher noticed her spiraling. “You’re not sleeping,” she said, placing a soft hand on Tanvi’s arm. “I’ve seen this before. My sister… she stopped sleeping too. Right before the chalk appeared for her.” But Tanvi wouldn’t listen. That night, she made her choice: she would break curfew and stay overnight in 7C. If the outline came to her, she wanted to see it happen—with her own eyes.
The hallway outside 7C was silent after midnight. The campus bell had rung at ten, and the older girls had all disappeared into their dorms. Tanvi had slipped a hairpin into the classroom door earlier in the day—an old trick from her Delhi days. It opened with a soft groan. The classroom was exactly as she’d last seen it. Moonlight filtered in weakly through the frosted windows, casting faint shadows on the grey tiled floor. She locked the door from the inside, sat at her desk, and waited. The hours dragged. Time felt elastic. Every small creak in the wood, every gust of mountain wind, made her heart pound louder. But nothing happened—until the clock ticked to 3:13 a.m. A scraping began. Very slow. Very deliberate. Her breath caught in her throat. On the far side of the room, right near the blackboard, chalk began to drag itself across the floor on its own. No hand, no body. Just the sound, and then the form taking shape—inch by inch. An outline. Her outline.
Tanvi froze, unable to scream. It was identical to the one she saw days ago—same tilt in the ankle, same raised right arm, like someone reaching for help. The chalk drew itself completely, then stopped. And just as suddenly as it began, the room was still again. Her hands were ice. She approached it slowly, her name caught in her throat. Her gaze flickered to the back row. Someone was sitting there. A shadow—not just darkness, but a shape. Feminine. Familiar. As if watching her across time. “What do you want from me?” Tanvi whispered. The shadow didn’t move, didn’t respond. But the temperature in the room dropped. The walls seemed to breathe, exhaling cold. Her body jerked backward when the outline suddenly shimmered and vanished. She stumbled, heart racing, and looked around in panic—but she was alone again. Or so she thought. The next morning, when she woke up slumped over the desk, her picture was missing from the dormitory hallway board. And when the teacher called out roll during homeroom, her name was skipped—as if Tanvi Mehra had already disappeared.
5
Tanvi’s absence from the roll call was not just an administrative glitch. It was deliberate. She watched in stunned silence as Mrs. Kripalani moved from “Tanya Verma” to “Tara Malhotra” without pausing, her voice steady, her eyes never once meeting Tanvi’s. She raised her hand instinctively. “Ma’am?” she called, but Mrs. Kripalani didn’t flinch. No one in the class turned toward her voice. It was like speaking from behind glass. When the bell rang, the chatter resumed, and girls filed out—except no one looked at her. Meher passed by without a word. Tanvi tried to touch her shoulder, but Meher brushed it off without even a glance, as if the contact had never happened. Panic sank sharp teeth into her chest. Was this what it meant? Was the chalk outline not a symbol of death, but of being erased—forgotten while still breathing?
Desperate to anchor herself, Tanvi ran to the mirror in the third-floor washroom. Her reflection stared back—but slightly off. Her movements lagged by a second, like a badly synced video. Her own eyes looked deeper set, more hollow. She reached out to touch the glass, and for a split second, the reflection didn’t follow. That’s when she saw it—etched faintly in the lower corner of the mirror: Erase the mark. Or become the mark. She staggered backward. Someone had been here before her. Someone who knew. She stormed back into the dorm, grabbed Meher’s notebook from the trunk, and flipped through the entries until she found one labeled “Final Day – Diya Meher (Sister).” The writing was jagged, desperate. Once the outline forms, you must not sleep alone. You must not look into mirrors. You must not answer if your name is called from the dark. The outline isn’t chasing you. It’s remembering you. Reclaiming you.
That night, Tanvi waited for Meher to fall asleep and slipped out again—this time to the old storeroom beneath the chapel, the one that had revealed the photo. She had a hunch there was more. She clawed through papers and ledgers until she found a different kind of file: faded medical charts, labeled “Cognitive Correction Program – Phase III.” Dozens of names were crossed out. But one page was intact. “Subject: T. Mehra. Status: Resistant. Memory removal failed. Relapse cycle estimated: 38 years.” Her blood ran cold. It wasn’t just a girl with her name. It was her. She had been here before. Wiped, recycled, and somehow returned. The chalk outline wasn’t a curse. It was a loop. And she was caught in it again. A scream rose in her throat—but it died when she turned to the door. There, in the darkness, stood the girl from her dreams—the same eyes, the same face—but older, more broken. She didn’t speak. She simply pointed to the floor, where a faint outline was beginning to form once more. This time, it was unfinished. Waiting for her choice.
6
The next day came like a bruise—slow, dull, and aching. Tanvi walked through the campus grounds as if submerged underwater. Girls chatted, played badminton near the field, and laughed in small groups. But none looked at her. Not one teacher acknowledged her. Even the security guard at the gate, who always asked for her ID, stared past her like she was air. She had become a ghost in her own body. Yet, something inside her refused to surrender. She had lived this once before—she was resistant, as the file said. That meant she could break the cycle. But first, she needed to understand why it existed. Why her? Why this place? And what the outline truly meant. That evening, she found Meher sitting near the abandoned greenhouse, her eyes puffy, hands shaking. “Tanvi…” she whispered, as if seeing her for the first time in days. “You’re still here?” Tanvi nodded. Meher clutched her wrist. “I think… I think I saw the outline last night. In my dream. But it wasn’t mine—it was yours. It was flickering.”
Tanvi led her to the edge of campus, where old stone steps descended into the forest behind the chapel. The path was overgrown, hidden under moss and fallen pine needles, but Tanvi knew it existed. She had seen it—first in the dream, then in the old photograph’s background. At the end of the trail was a ruined building: a crumbling two-story structure with shattered windows and a half-collapsed roof. The original school. Before the fire. Before the boarding campus expanded uphill. As they stepped inside, the air grew dense—thick with mold, soot, and the smell of damp paper. “This is where it started,” Tanvi whispered. Meher found a broken wooden sign on the floor: Cognitive Behavioral Correction – Wing B. The desks were bolted to the floor. The blackboards still bore faint scratches from nails or chalk, no one could tell which. In a corner closet, hidden beneath a torn curtain, they discovered a journal. It belonged to a teacher—Professor Anirban Mukherjee. Tanvi’s hands trembled as she turned the pages. His final entries mentioned a girl who couldn’t be erased. A subject who retained fragments from her former lives. “She hums old songs. Remembers rooms she’s never entered. Her dreams echo mine. Her name is T. Mehra. She is the cycle’s flaw.”
That night, back in the dorm, Tanvi sat by the window and stared out at the valley lights far below. Meher slept restlessly behind her, murmuring in her sleep. Tanvi pieced it together. She wasn’t just someone the outline chose. She was its defect—its rebel. Someone who had broken the memory cleanse decades ago and had somehow returned. The outline, then, wasn’t hunting her. It was trying to complete her erasure. A second chance for the system to fix its flaw. But now, she had something the system didn’t—awareness. She closed the journal, placed it under her pillow, and whispered to herself: “If I’ve been erased once, I can be remembered again.” But just as her eyes closed, a soft voice came from the door, unmistakably familiar. It was her father’s voice, saying: “Tanvi… come here.” Her eyes flew open. The room was still. Meher didn’t stir. But the door creaked open just an inch, and a shadow waited just beyond. She did not move. She knew the rules now. Never answer if your name is called from the dark. Never.
7
Tanvi didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. She sat upright in bed, the journal clutched to her chest like armor. Meher stirred now and then, muttering in sleep, sometimes crying softly. But Tanvi didn’t wake her. The shadow behind the door remained until dawn—never entering, never retreating—like a question she refused to answer. When the first rays of light poured into the dormitory, the shadow vanished. And in its place, something new had appeared on the wooden floor near the door: a single piece of white chalk, worn down, still warm to the touch. It wasn’t a threat—it was a challenge. The system was waiting for her to surrender. To pick up the chalk. To finish what had begun decades ago. But she wouldn’t. Not until she knew who or what had made the system in the first place.
Determined, Tanvi went back to the crumbling archives under the chapel where she and Meher had found the old records. She returned alone this time. The room smelled more pungent, as if disturbed recently. Someone else had been there. In a rusted cabinet labeled “Staff Clearance – Restricted Cases,” she found a leather-bound diary wrapped in muslin cloth. It belonged to Sister Agatha, the current headmistress—only this diary was from the year 1986. Flipping through its pages, Tanvi discovered chilling confessions written in small, deliberate handwriting. “Subject T. Mehra continues to destabilize cognitive cleansing. She exhibits dream recall, name memory, and reflection resistance. The outline ritual has failed. Must attempt ‘Reintegration by Proximity’ during next cycle.” On the final page: “Anirban Mukherjee interfered. The fire was necessary. We cannot allow broken minds to fracture the new ones.”
Tanvi staggered backward, bile rising in her throat. The fire that destroyed the old wing wasn’t an accident. It was a cover-up—to erase evidence, and perhaps, to eliminate people like her father who resisted. Sister Agatha had been there, orchestrating it all. And now, nearly forty years later, she was still here—still watching. Just then, Tanvi heard the creak of a floorboard behind her. She turned. Sister Agatha stood at the top of the stone stairwell, her face thin and bloodless, hands folded calmly over her black robe. “You’ve remembered too much,” she said softly. “That’s dangerous.” Tanvi tightened her grip on the diary. “Why me?” she asked. “Why again?” Sister Agatha’s eyes flickered. “Because you are the loose thread. The outline isn’t a punishment. It’s a repair. You were never meant to survive the first cycle. You glitched.” Then she smiled. “But glitches can be overwritten.”
Tanvi backed into the shadows as Sister Agatha descended slowly. Then, without warning, Tanvi hurled the diary up the stairwell and bolted through a hidden service door she’d spotted earlier. She ran, heart racing, through underground tunnels that hadn’t seen light in years. Finally, she emerged behind the old gardener’s shed. The sun had dipped, and the last orange glow bathed the valley. She looked at her hands—scraped, dirty, still hers. For now. The outline would come again. But now she knew the truth. She wasn’t being erased. She was being repeated. And if that was true, she could change the pattern. The cycle wanted completion. She would give it something else. Not erasure. Not surrender. But resistance. And that meant confronting the chalk head-on.
8
That night, St. Augustine’s was unnaturally silent. Even the usual sounds—the creaking of floorboards, the distant hoot of owls, the rustle of pine trees—seemed to have vanished. It was the kind of silence that screamed. Tanvi sat alone in Classroom 7C, a room that had become her battleground. She had locked the door from the inside again, but this time not out of fear—out of readiness. The white chalk still lay in her palm, its edges sharp. On the blackboard behind her, she had written three words: Break the loop. The truth was heavy in her chest. She had lived this before. The chalk outline wasn’t death—it was memory reclamation gone wrong. A failed ritual of cognitive cleansing. The system wasn’t trying to punish her. It was trying to erase an echo that wouldn’t fade. But Tanvi had seen it now—understood it. She wasn’t the victim. She was the glitch. The key.
At exactly 3:13 a.m., it began again. The scraping sound. The cold air. The invisible chalk moving across the floor. But this time, Tanvi didn’t tremble. She watched. The outline took shape, inch by inch, in the same pose. Her pose. But then, something changed. It flickered—just like Meher had described. The outline stuttered, split, and for a brief moment, two outlines appeared—one slightly larger than the other, overlapping imperfectly. One was Tanvi. The other… older. Not her. Not fully. Behind her, the door clicked open. She didn’t move. A figure entered slowly, barefoot, wearing an old student uniform that hadn’t been worn in decades. The girl looked like Tanvi—but not exactly. Her hair was longer. Her expression hollow. Her eyes filled with something ancient and exhausted. “You are me,” Tanvi whispered. The girl nodded. “The first you. The one they almost erased. I stayed behind, inside the outline. Waiting.” Her voice was like wet ash. “You weren’t supposed to come back.”
Tanvi stepped forward, heart pounding, but calm. “But I did. Again and again. And now, so will you.” She drew a second outline beside the one on the floor—this time deliberately incomplete. Then, using the chalk, she connected both outlines with a circle and sat in its center. The ghost-Tanvi hesitated. “What are you doing?” Tanvi looked up at her and said firmly, “Breaking the loop. If both of us exist—past and present—they can’t erase either without the system collapsing. They need a clean slate. But if we tangle it… they lose.” The floor began to tremble faintly. The air shimmered. Behind them, the blackboard cracked. A low, guttural sound echoed across the room—like a machine dying slowly. The chalk outlines began to blur, then glow. Sister Agatha’s voice screamed from somewhere unseen: “You don’t understand what you’re unraveling!”
But Tanvi did. And she didn’t stop. She reached out and took the ghost-girl’s hand. For the first time in decades, the outline didn’t finish. It faded. The loop didn’t reset—it collapsed. The classroom went still. The temperature rose. Outside, the school bell rang—not backward, but forward. 3:14 a.m. Time had moved on. The glitch had multiplied. And the outline was gone. For good. Or so Tanvi thought. Until she looked down at her palm. The chalk had left a mark. A faint one. In the shape of an eye. Watching. Always.
9
The next morning, sunlight spilled over St. Augustine’s like nothing had happened. Girls bustled through corridors, laughing, chattering, throwing on blazers and braiding each other’s hair. To them, the night had passed like any other. But for Tanvi, it was different. She sat alone in the central courtyard, her sleeves rolled down to hide the chalk-shaped eye on her palm. It didn’t hurt. But it tingled, as though it were awake—aware. Meher joined her quietly, holding a thermos of warm milk. “I dreamt of you,” she said, not meeting her eyes. “But it wasn’t you. It was… older. Sadder.” Tanvi smiled faintly. “She’s free now. Both of us are. I think.” But she wasn’t sure. Not yet. Because something still felt wrong. That evening, she returned to the ruins below the old chapel alone. Her father’s name still echoed in her mind—Anirban Mukherjee, the teacher who tried to stop the cycle. She needed to know what he had truly discovered.
In the deepest part of the ruins, past rooms with rusted beds and splintered furniture, Tanvi found a stone hatch she had never noticed before. It was sealed with thick chains, which she broke open using a crowbar from the shed. Inside was a chamber—not just a room, but a vault. And in the center, a chair bolted to the ground, with leather restraints and a cracked viewing mirror. Beside it, a cabinet labeled “Memory Projection Interface – Phase IV (Discontinued)”. Tanvi’s breath hitched. This wasn’t a school. This had once been a test facility. The Cognitive Correction Program hadn’t just erased memories—it had extracted them. And the chalk outlines weren’t mere ritual—they were the final imprint of minds forcibly removed. Her outline, drawn again and again, had been the after-image of her memory being pulled apart, like chalk dragged across slate. Her father’s journal had said “resistant.” But what if he hadn’t been talking about her mind… but her soul?
Suddenly, she heard footsteps. Soft, deliberate. Sister Agatha stood at the threshold, holding a black file. “I warned you,” she said calmly. “You were never meant to see this phase.” Tanvi stood firm. “You kept me here to watch me disappear. Again and again. But I remembered. I fought back.” Agatha’s eyes hardened. “You didn’t fight. You carried. All this time, you were the vessel. Every erased girl, every memory too twisted for us to retain—it attached to you. You’re not just Tanvi Mehra anymore. You’re what’s left of all of them.” She threw the file at Tanvi’s feet. Photos spilled out—every missing girl. Their faces blurred, chalk dust over their features. All of them had something in common. The same faint outline. The same hands.
Tanvi looked at her palm again. The eye blinked. Once. And Sister Agatha gasped. Her breath caught. “You’re not just remembering anymore,” she whispered. “You’re… returning them.” The chamber lights flickered. On the walls, shadows began to form—dozens of outlines. Girls with silent mouths and angry eyes. They stepped forward. One by one. Not ghosts. Not victims. Pieces. Tanvi stepped back. “What am I becoming?” she whispered. But no answer came. Only a soft voice behind her—her own, from another life—saying, “You were never one. You were always many.”
10
The room darkened, not from the loss of light but from the gathering presence of something ancient, collective, and unbearably quiet. The chamber’s stone walls rippled with movement—outlines of girls, each one slightly distorted, as though drawn in a different era, under a different kind of pain. Some wore pinafores, some salwar kameez, others unfamiliar uniforms from decades long gone. And yet, they all had Tanvi’s eyes. Her jaw. Fragments of her—or she, of them. Sister Agatha stepped backward, her composure unraveling. “This wasn’t meant to happen. The chalk… the system was supposed to contain them.” Her voice trembled. Tanvi’s fingers curled into a fist, the chalk-eye on her palm glowing dimly now. “You didn’t erase them,” she said quietly, “you just buried them inside me. Every time the outline was drawn, it wasn’t cleansing—it was compressing. Holding on. Until I couldn’t hold it anymore.”
Behind her, the outlines began to solidify. Not just figures—but voices. Whispers in multiple dialects, murmurs of lullabies, protest, diary entries, half-finished poems. One girl stepped forward—small, barely twelve, her arm marked by surgical tape. “I remembered the sound of my mother’s anklets,” she whispered, “even when they took my name away.” Another, tall and stoic, spoke next. “I was the first. I never slept. They tried to trap me in a chalk circle, but I walked right out of it. They couldn’t record me. So they drew you.” The shadows surged. Agatha backed against the far wall, her eyes wide. “This place is not real anymore. It belongs to them now.” She turned, desperate, fumbling with the old console by the wall—the last of the projection machines. But as her hand touched the lever, it burst into flames. Silent blue fire. It consumed the machine, the papers, the files. Agatha screamed, and the shadows rushed her—not in violence, but in absorption. Her form turned to dust, swept into the outlines that began to fade, soothed, finally complete.
Tanvi fell to her knees. The pressure in her head, her heart, her body—gone. The silence was no longer suffocating, but sacred. She felt the eye on her palm close. Not vanish. Just sleep. One voice remained behind—her own. The girl from the chalk, the first glitch. “You’ve ended it,” the voice said. “Now go. And remember us right.” The chamber pulsed once with warm light—and then collapsed into stillness. The hatch behind her opened slowly, leading up into morning.
In the weeks that followed, St. Augustine’s shifted subtly. A new headmistress arrived. Files went missing. The oldest wing was quietly sealed. Meher returned to normal, though sometimes she paused and looked at Tanvi with questions in her eyes that never made it to her lips. Tanvi stayed quiet. But at night, she began writing names in a black notebook—names of the forgotten girls she now carried, stories she’d seen in flashes. One page per outline. One memory per ghost. She no longer needed to sleep inside classrooms. She no longer feared the chalk. The chalk feared her. Because she was not an erasure. She was the archive. And sometimes, in her dreams, she sat with dozens of girls on a hillside, their shadows long and gentle, and she’d whisper back all the words they had once lost. The outline was broken. But the story had just begun.
End
