Nishant R. Ahuja
1
The screen flickers alive with the booming digital countdown: 00:01:58…00:01:57…. A flurry of live comments races down the chat—
“Let’s goooo!”
“Bet this is all fake again.”
“12 HOURS INSIDE BHANGARH?? THEY’LL DIE 💀💀💀”
At exactly 7:00 PM, the livestream begins. The scene opens on four figures standing outside the broken archway of Bhangarh Fort, silhouetted by the amber light of a sinking sun. A crisp boom mic catches the rustle of wind through overgrown grass and ruins. Aarav Malhotra steps into frame, flashing his signature grin at the camera.
“Yo what’s up, NightWatchers! Tonight is the night. The legends say no one survives after sundown inside this cursed place—but we’re here to prove otherwise. Twelve hours. One camera. No exits.*”
He turns dramatically toward the camera crew—Maya, adjusting the live rig on her laptop, Zaid with the drone remote in hand, and Kabir grinning behind a shoulder-mounted GoPro. Rhea stands quietly at the back, hugging her jacket tightly.
“You sure about this?” she mutters, half to Aarav, half to herself.
Maya rolls her eyes. “As sure as I am that half these viewers will be asleep by 10.”
The chat disagrees.
“We’re staying all night. This is about to get wild.”
“Rhea already sensing ghosts lol”
“This better not be another clickbait. I want demons.”
The group steps past the warning sign installed by the Archaeological Survey of India: “Entry After Sunset Strictly Prohibited.” Kabir gives it a sarcastic salute before turning the camera to his own face.
“First crime of the night. Documented.”
The pathway crunches underfoot as they walk past broken temples and tumbled walls, deep into the heart of the fort. Birds scatter. The light grows dimmer, swallowed by the stone corridors. Zaid launches the drone for an aerial sweep. The stream cuts briefly to the live drone feed, giving viewers a sweeping view of the desolate ruins and encroaching darkness.
Then—a sudden flicker.
The feed jerks. For a split second, a tall figure in tattered robes appears near the north tower. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. And then he’s gone.
“Drone glitch?” Maya mutters, adjusting the feed.
In the chat:
“Did anyone else see that at 00:03:26??”
“Play that back—someone was watching them.”
Aarav brushes it off. “Camera jitters. Wind, shadows, compression artifacts. You guys want a show, you’ll get it.”
Rhea hesitates at a stone platform near a sealed chamber. She kneels, fingers brushing the dusty carvings. “This symbol… it’s tantric. Black magic.”
Kabir snorts. “Perfect. Great for thumbnails.”
As the sun finally dips behind the hills, the ruins plunge into darkness. Night mode flickers on. Their flashlights cast long, jittery shadows on the ancient walls.
A notification pings. The viewer count jumps.
12,200… 17,900… 24,000.
“Alright, folks,” Aarav whispers into the camera, a grin still on his face. “Welcome to the real Bhangarh Fort. We’re locked in now.”
And far behind them, unseen by all except one viewer watching closely, a shadow quietly crosses the main archway.
2
The feed cuts to shaky handheld footage as the team moves deeper into the interior of Bhangarh Fort. Their voices are hushed now, bouncing off cracked sandstone walls. The flashlight beams slice through darkness, revealing narrow archways, moss-covered staircases, and rooms that seem to breathe with age.
“Drone battery’s dead already,” Zaid mutters, examining the remote. “Didn’t even get ten minutes out of it.”
“Batteries were full when we started,” Maya says, frowning at her screen. “I charged everything last night.”
The comment section lights up:
“Classic haunted tech interference.”
“They’re being drained. This is real.”
“Zaid should NOT split up.”
Aarav gestures dramatically toward an old stepwell. “Ladies and gents, this is the infamous Bawdi—the site of countless legends. Some say the tantric used to perform rituals right here.”
Kabir zooms in on the carved stone steps. “Or some say he dumped bodies in here,” he adds with a grin.
As if on cue, a wind gust whistles through the stone. The mic picks up a low, humming vibration. Rhea stiffens. “Something’s wrong here. This place… it remembers.”
Zaid chuckles nervously. “Rhea, you’ve been watching too many horror movies.”
But the viewers notice something odd—again.
“Pause at 00:14:03. What’s that hand on the wall?”
“Wait… who’s filming from the corner?”
In the background, a shape briefly leans out from behind a column and retreats silently. No one in the group notices. The livestream glitches slightly before stabilizing.
“I want to test audio pickup,” Kabir says. He walks a few feet ahead, turns off his flashlight, and hides behind a stone structure. “Let’s do a jump scare test. You count to three, I’ll scream.”
Aarav counts, “One… two…”
Kabir screams.
Everyone jumps. Rhea looks ready to slap him.
“Content, baby!” he laughs.
But Maya isn’t laughing. She’s frozen at the laptop screen. “Wait… there’s an echo. There was a second scream right after yours.”
The chat explodes:
“YESSS I HEARD IT TOO!”
“The second one sounded… wet.”
“Please don’t go deeper into the fort.”
Zaid points to a dark corridor. “That leads to the queen’s quarters. Super haunted. That’s where the old curse inscription is, right?”
They walk in slowly. The air grows colder. The camera feed picks up foggy distortion for a moment. Aarav taps the wall beside him. “No wind down here. Where’s the cold coming from?”
Rhea suddenly clutches her head. “It’s louder here.”
“What is?” Aarav asks.
“The crying,” she whispers. “Can’t you hear it?”
Silence.
The feed glitches for a full second. When it returns, Rhea is looking directly at the camera. Her eyes are wide, but her voice is steady. “We need to stop. He’s awake.”
Maya shivers. “Who’s he?”
No one answers.
Back in the comments:
“I just saw a face behind Aarav. Not human.”
“Pause at 00:19:46. Something is crawling on the ceiling.”
The group turns a corner—and the stream abruptly cuts to static for three seconds.
When it returns, Kabir is gone.
3
The stream returns with heavy distortion, momentarily displaying color-negative frames. Audio is garbled—like whispering underwater. Then it stabilizes on Maya’s trembling hand holding the camera, her voice cracking.
“He was just there. He was right there, Aarav.”
They stand in a wide stone chamber. Empty. Kabir is gone. No footsteps. No sound. Just air that feels wrong—too heavy, like it presses into their skin. Rhea sits near the ancient inscription, running her fingers across the symbols carved into the wall.
“It’s the original curse,” she murmurs. “This is what bound him here.”
Zaid shines his flashlight over it. “It’s Sanskrit, right?”
Maya zooms in on the carvings. “Parts of it, yeah. But this… this part isn’t any script I know. It looks—twisted. Like it’s burned into the rock.”
Rhea speaks slowly, translating the legible section:
“To the seeker who disturbs the silence after sundown, let the gates never open again. Let the sky swallow time. Let the soul remain chained.”
The comments explode.
“YO WHAT THE—THIS IS REAL!”
“They just triggered the curse.”
“Someone please call the authorities.”
Aarav, still trying to keep control, waves at the camera. “Look, Kabir’s probably pulling one of his stupid solo bits again. He’s hiding for drama. Classic NightWatcher twist. He’ll pop out, we’ll all scream, the views go up.”
But even he doesn’t sound convinced anymore.
Suddenly, Zaid’s voice echoes from the hallway. “Found something!”
The team rushes over to find Zaid standing near a narrow tunnel descending beneath the fort. Half-collapsed steps lead into darkness.
“This wasn’t on the map,” Maya says, frowning.
“It’s older,” Rhea says, her voice low. “It wasn’t built with the fort. It’s beneath it. This might’ve been the tantric’s meditation cave.”
“I say we check it out,” Aarav says, trying to mask the tremor in his voice.
Maya hesitates. “You say that, but look at this.” She turns her screen to him. “Viewer count just spiked to 83,000. But I set this stream to private.”
The camera zooms in on the viewer count climbing. 90,400. 102,300. The chat floods with panic, warnings, and repeating messages:
“You are not alone.”
“It’s watching through the feed.”
“DO NOT GO DOWN THE STAIRS.”
Suddenly, Rhea jerks up. Her pupils dilate. She whispers, “He’s under us. Not trapped. Waiting.”
Then static hits the stream again. When it clears, they’re already halfway into the tunnel, night vision on. The walls here are damp, covered with markings that look etched by fingernails.
Maya stops. “We’re live streaming this—right into the heart of a 400-year-old curse.”
A faint sound rises from the darkness. Breathing.
Then laughter.
Not Kabir’s. Not human.
The feed shakes violently as Zaid’s camera picks up a moving shape—crawling unnaturally fast across the far end of the tunnel.
Aarav shouts, “Go back! Go back!”
But the tunnel behind them has vanished into black stone. No exit.
Rhea begins chanting, her voice low and frantic, sweat pouring down her temple.
Maya grips the camera. “Something’s here with us.”
In the comments:
“I can’t watch this anymore.”
“It’s smiling at the camera.”
“Kabir’s face just flashed in the frame. He’s upside down.”
4
The stream flickers back to life with the grainy, disoriented footage from Zaid’s head-mounted GoPro. Night vision kicks in—colors are gone, replaced by shades of green and grey. He’s alone now, breathing heavily, crouching at the entrance of a narrow passage that splits off from the collapsed meditation chamber below the fort.
“Drone signal’s dead. Aarav’s still acting like this is all content. Idiots,” Zaid mutters. His voice echoes off the stone. “Fine. I’ll grab the drone from the well and climb back. Make this viral.”
He lowers himself into the chamber, camera shaking with every step. The viewers see his flashlight beam flicker across ancient carvings—some still glowing faintly with phosphorescent green. But it’s not his light.
“Wait… who’s holding the second light?”
“At 01:08:42 there’s another shadow. Zaid isn’t alone.”
As Zaid descends, faint chanting is heard in the distance—low, melodic, and reversed. He stops, panting. The camera captures a flickering glimpse of something behind him—a silhouette crawling along the upper wall.
He doesn’t notice.
“What is this place?” he whispers. “There’s no staircase back up. It’s all—”
The sentence is cut short. A sudden rush of static erupts in the feed.
Then silence.
From the main stream, Aarav’s voice cuts in. “Zaid? Do you read me?”
No answer.
Rhea’s face flashes on screen. Her breathing is shallow. “He’s not coming back,” she whispers.
Kabir tries the radio. “Zaid, you done milking this for drama?”
But the only reply is scraping. Not static. Like something dragging stone.
Then a burst of noise—Zaid’s GoPro comes back online for five seconds.
It shows his flashlight pointed at a corner. In that corner, crouched and facing away from the camera, is… himself.
But he’s not holding the flashlight.
“Guys?” his recorded voice says. “Something’s down here.”
Then the image begins to rotate. Slowly. The GoPro has fallen, and it now captures Zaid being pulled backward into the darkness, feet first, his body limp. He doesn’t scream.
Only his flashlight remains, rolling to a stop.
The screen goes black.
Chat explodes.
“HE’S GONE.”
“He didn’t fall. He was lifted. PLAY IT BACK.”
“This isn’t fake. You can’t fake that face.”
Kabir and Aarav run to the chamber, the live feed trailing them as they shout Zaid’s name. They reach the lower level and find the flashlight. But no drone. No blood. No signs of a struggle.
Just a symbol drawn on the wall—a triangle with three circles inside, all charred black.
Rhea’s voice trembles as she sees it. “It’s a sigil. The tantric’s. Each circle is for a soul. That was the first.”
Maya’s laptop screen flickers, showing Zaid’s subscriber count—decreasing rapidly.
His account goes offline.
The stream stutters. A new thumbnail flashes for a second: a frame from Zaid’s GoPro—but his face is upside down, eyes open, mouth grinning unnaturally wide.
“End the stream,” Rhea says coldly.
But Aarav shakes his head, staring into the darkness. “We’re already in it. You can’t turn off a door after it’s opened.”
5
A single, broken light flickers on Maya’s laptop screen. The team is seated in the main courtyard of the fort now—what’s left of them. Aarav paces in the background, swearing under his breath, while Rhea draws patterns in chalk on the dusty stone floor.
Only three remain.
Zaid was taken. One moment his bodycam showed him ahead, calling back—“I think I found another tunnel!”—and the next moment, silence. Then static. Then a low, guttural noise, like wet cloth being dragged across concrete. His stream never came back.
“We’re not leaving until sunrise,” Aarav mutters, trying to hide the trembling in his voice. “That was the challenge.”
“The challenge is over,” Maya snaps. “People are dying.”
“He’s not dead,” Aarav insists. “You know Zaid. It’s a prank.”
Rhea doesn’t speak. She’s focused on the circle she’s drawing—salt, chalk, and ash. Her voice is faint. “This was never about a prank. You invoked something that’s been asleep for centuries. You broadcasted it. You made it look into the lens.”
The comments continue, now less playful and more panicked:
“Why is the stream getting darker if their lights are on?”
“Go to 02:43:12 — you’ll see Rhea’s lips moving when she’s not talking.”
“Aarav… is glitching.”
The viewer count hits 340,000. Maya looks at the stream in disbelief. “This doesn’t make sense. It’s climbing by the thousands every minute. We’re trending. But I disabled monetization. This… this isn’t a platform thing anymore.”
Onscreen, a notification pops up:
> New Channel Subscriber: @TheWatcherBelow
Then another.
> New Comment: “We see you now.”
Suddenly, Aarav freezes in place, staring at something behind the camera. His voice turns flat. “Don’t break the circle, Maya.”
She frowns. “I haven’t.”
“You’re outside of it.”
Maya glances down. Somehow, in the last five minutes, the circle has shifted. Or she has. She’s now standing inches beyond the white boundary line.
A whisper hisses through the mic: “Out.”
Rhea screams and grabs Maya’s hand, pulling her inside just as the wind picks up sharply. The stream shakes. A loud, inhuman screech pierces the audio feed, loud enough that many viewers report in the chat that their speakers blew out.
Then, all goes silent.
The only light comes from Maya’s screen. She looks down at the open YouTube page—her face draining of color. “Aarav…”
She turns the camera to him.
He’s standing still, but his face is frozen in a rictus grin. His eyes are rolled back, and his voice is whispering something—not to the team, but directly to the viewers.
“You’re all watching. That’s how it spreads. From your eyes to your homes.”
The chat erupts.
“HE’S TALKING TO US.”
“I HEARD MY NAME IN THE WHISPER.”
“UNSUBSCRIBE! CLOSE IT! CLOSE IT!”
The screen flickers again.
A second stream appears—mirroring the first—but from an impossible angle. It’s a wide shot of the courtyard from high above, as if something is watching… from the sky.
The circle of salt blows away.
Rhea’s chanting breaks. The feed turns red.
6
It’s nearly 3:00 AM. The temperature inside the fort has dropped drastically, visible breath curling in the air. The main livestream camera now shows the group—Aarav, Maya, and Rhea—huddled inside the old queen’s chamber. Kabir has just gone missing. Again.
But this time, he left something behind.
Maya is hunched over her laptop, scrolling through raw footage. “These weren’t in the upload queue,” she says. “They weren’t recorded. They just appeared.”
She clicks play.
Kabir’s missing footage auto-launches—showing him walking into the tantric’s meditation cell with a selfie cam, joking: “Going solo, people. Gonna get that demon interview everyone wants.” He laughs. “If I die, hit like and subscribe.”
But there’s no laughter from the live chat now.
Onscreen, Kabir pans around. There’s no one in the room.
Then a second frame appears, split-screen.
The same room—same angle—but Kabir isn’t alone. A figure stands behind him, motionless, hooded, with hollowed-out eyes.
But only in the second feed.
The comments pour in:
“WHAT IS THAT??”
“He doesn’t see it.”
“The feed is splitting—reality is splitting.”
Kabir begins to cough. The frame stutters. He stares into his own camera, and something changes—his eyes widen unnaturally, his pupils dilate until his eyes are black. He starts whispering something in reverse.
Rhea recoils. “Stop the video.”
But the laptop won’t stop. Maya slams the keys, but the track continues playing. Aarav grabs the lid and forces it shut—yet the audio keeps playing through the speakers. A chant. Deep and ancient.
Suddenly, the camera glitches. The main livestream duplicates.
Now there are two livestream windows side by side. One shows the current feed—Rhea drawing protective symbols, Maya whispering frantically, Aarav pacing like a caged animal.
The other feed is… wrong. Same room. But different. The air is misty. All three of them are sitting, backs turned to the camera, completely still. No one breathes. The video’s quality is too clean—hyperreal, unnatural.
And then, in the wrong feed, Rhea slowly turns toward the camera. Her face is blank. Her mouth moves, silently at first—then the words leak into the main audio feed:
“You’re watching yourself from the end.”
Aarav gasps. “What the hell is that?”
Rhea clutches her temples. “This isn’t a haunting anymore. It’s a reflection. It’s recording us in advance. We’re being overwritten.”
The chat spirals:
“Both feeds are out of sync.”
“Maya blinks in one window—but not the other.”
“Aarav just disappeared from the second feed.”
Maya stands and slowly turns to the camera. “There’s a delay between who we are and what they’ve already turned us into.”
A beat.
Then the lights go out.
Total blackout.
For ten whole seconds, the screen is pitch dark. Then a faint glow returns—dim red, as if the night vision is struggling.
The camera now shows only Maya, sitting alone in the center of the room. Her voice is distorted.
“I am not Maya,” she says.
Behind her, the other two feeds merge into one—and all three NightWatchers are standing still, heads bowed, lips moving in unison.
The livestream flashes a message: NEW VIEWERS JOINED: 666,003
7
A thick, unnatural silence hung over the fort, broken only by the ragged breathing of Sonal and Aarav as they crouched in the temple’s shadow. Outside, the echo of Ankit’s final scream had faded into a heavy void. The livestream still ran, the comments section frozen in a cascade of “WTF,” “CALL THE COPS,” and “Is this real???” But the signal wavered, as though the air itself had grown too heavy for technology to pierce.
Aarav clutched the IR camera, its battery icon blinking red. The screen showed static lines bleeding into the image—occasional bursts of clarity revealing grotesque symbols smeared in ash along the floor. “He’s trying to complete the ritual,” Sonal whispered, pointing toward the inner sanctum where a dim, blood-orange glow pulsed like a heartbeat. “The tantric… he’s not a ghost. He’s something else now. Something older.”
They stepped inside, the air turning colder despite the desert night. The temple chamber was ancient, yet the altar at the center looked disturbingly recent. Fresh blood marked the stones. Incense burned from bowls carved with eyes. In the middle, facing away, knelt a figure in black—its back rippling unnaturally, as if muscles twisted over bones too fast to be human.
The comments exploded again as viewers caught a glimpse of the figure.
@SpecterSeekersFan: “That thing’s not Ankit… is it moving backwards??”
@MidnightHauntXx: “I swear I saw its head turn 180!!”
@RealRajGhostHunter: “That’s a rakshasa. LEAVE NOW.”
Aarav aimed the camera closer. The figure hissed. The lights on their gear flickered and went dead. In the dark, the glow from the altar intensified until it cast everything in sepia helllight. The tantric rose—slowly, mechanically—his head rotating first, then his body, still levitating inches above the ground.
“You awakened me with your arrogance,” he intoned, voice a sickening blend of whispers and thunder. “For four centuries I waited for the blood of the curious… now the veil is thin.”
From the stone walls, blackened hands emerged—spectral figures trapped in time, screaming in silence. The air warped. Sonal screamed as one hand gripped her ankle and tried to pull her through the floor. Aarav dropped the camera, diving to hold her back. The camera, lying sideways, streamed the chaotic struggle live. The audience watched helplessly, horror-struck.
Then, all sound cut. The stream turned black.
Only one line of text blinked across the screen for the remaining 6 hours of the “12-hour challenge”:
“Ritual complete. You brought the watchers.”
Back at the studio, where their intern Ravi had been monitoring the stream, the screen cracked on its own.
And the chanting began.
8
The next morning, sunlight bathed the crumbling stones of Bhangarh Fort, but no sign remained of Sonal, Aarav, or Ankit. Forest officers combed the ruins. No bodies, no gear, no blood—only the faint smell of burnt incense and the remains of a shattered DSLR were found near the temple steps. The authorities chalked it up to another case of “urban explorers getting lost,” but online, the truth had already spread like wildfire.
The GhostChasers’ final livestream had amassed over 9 million views overnight, but more terrifying than the viral reach was its ending. After the screen had gone dark and that cryptic message—“Ritual complete. You brought the watchers.”—had blinked on repeat for six hours, viewers began reporting strange occurrences.
Ravi, the studio intern in Delhi who had witnessed the stream’s final moments, hadn’t been seen since 4 AM. His chair at the editing suite was found turned backwards. The last studio security camera footage showed him staring at the monitor, unblinking, for over an hour—until his reflection in the screen moved on its own, smiled, and beckoned him in. After that, the camera glitched into static.
But the real horror began when the archived video of the stream went live again at midnight—without any admin intervention.
It wasn’t just a recording. It changed each time someone watched it.
For some, the video began with Sonal alone in the fort, whispering into the camera, “He’s inside me now.” For others, Aarav’s body twitched in reverse as he levitated. Some versions showed Ankit walking toward the viewer with black eyes and saying, “You’re watching. That’s enough.”
People across India—and then globally—began reporting nightmares after watching the replay. A boy in Nagpur gouged out his own eyes claiming “the tantric was trying to crawl through them.” A priest in Bengaluru tried to exorcise his smart TV after it began chanting in Sanskrit at 2:43 AM.
YouTubers who reacted to the stream were never seen again. Their channels posted strange videos in their absence—slow, looping clips of fire, bones, and backwards mantras.
Online forums exploded with speculation:
“It’s a cursed file.”
“This was never a prank—it was a summoning.”
“By watching, we all completed the ritual.”
Cyber experts tried to delete the video. But every time it was taken down, it re-uploaded itself from a new account—same title:
GhostChasers 12-Hour Bhangarh Challenge | FINAL STREAM | DO NOT WATCH AFTER MIDNIGHT
Even those who hadn’t clicked found frames embedded in unrelated videos.
The face of the tantric began appearing in the margins of their screens. In mirrors. In dreams.
And late that evening, Sonal’s voice returned for one final message, whispered through the studio’s broken speakers:
“You thought this was about us. But it was always about you. The ones watching. The ritual needed eyes.”
The power cut out.
The stream began again.
And this time, your name was in the title.
THE END
