Animesh Tarafder 1 The sun had barely begun to set, casting a soft golden glow over the winding streets of Kolkata, when Dr. Neelav Gupta received the call that would pull him back into a past he had long buried. A murder—gruesome, ritualistic—had occurred in the heart of the city. As a renowned criminal psychologist, Neelav was often called in for such cases, but there was something unsettling about this one. The victim, an elderly woman, had been found posed in an unnatural way, her body frozen in a grotesque contortion. Strange symbols, like the markings of a forgotten language,…
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Pratap MIshra 1 Arjun Desai stepped off the sleek black car and onto the dew-covered ground of the luxury resort, nestled in the misty hills of Mussoorie. The crisp mountain air filled his lungs, fresh and raw, as the early morning fog wrapped around the colonial-style buildings like a secret waiting to be uncovered. It was the perfect retreat, or at least, that’s what his manager had promised. After the public scandal—the rumors, the tabloid frenzy, the endless online mockery—Arjun needed peace. He needed to be far away from the chaos of Mumbai and its relentless pressure. The resort was…
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Swati Trivedi 1 The monsoon season had arrived in Shillong with an intensity that was both beautiful and foreboding. The clouds rolled over the hills like dark, heavy blankets, casting a shroud of mist that clung to everything. The town, famous for its relentless rains, seemed to hold its breath as the first wave of the downpour washed over the region. A body was found in one of the remote villages on the outskirts of the city, nestled deep in the mountains where few dared to go. Local authorities initially thought it was a landslide victim, a common occurrence during…
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Arpita Roy Chapter 1: Shreya Sengupta had always been a woman in motion, but now, after years of relentless hustle in Mumbai, she sought peace. The city had been exciting, demanding, and exhausting all at once, but the weight of it had worn her down. So, when the opportunity to move back to Kolkata presented itself, she seized it without a second thought. Her roots, her family, and the quieter rhythms of her childhood beckoned. She’d missed the sounds of the Howrah Bridge, the scent of street food wafting through narrow lanes, and the rhythm of the monsoon rains. Kolkata,…
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Vikram Rathore Part 1: The Inheritance The sun was beginning to set behind the rugged peaks of the Aravalli Range, casting long shadows over the winding roads that led to Kumbhalgarh Fort. Anirudh Deshmukh, a young archaeologist from Delhi, gazed out the window of his car as it meandered through the narrow, serpentine paths that led him to the fort. He had heard much about the place—the towering walls, the haunting beauty of the fort, and the endless stories of its troubled past. But he never imagined that it would be his own inheritance that would bring him here. It…
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Om Jindal Part 1 – The Transfer Order Ooty, 1895. The train hissed as it wound up the Nilgiri mountains, its wheels screeching around narrow curves, as though the very hills resisted intrusion. From his open window, Devendra Nath Rai watched thick clouds drape over eucalyptus trees and tea plantations like a shroud. The air had a peculiar chill—unlike the searing plains of Madras Presidency, where he’d spent most of his career. He was thirty-two, a quiet man with neat handwriting and a taste for facts. The British admired him for his efficiency; Indians called him “Sarkari Sahib” behind his…
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शिवांगी तिवारी 1 मुंबई से लगभग 40 किलोमीटर दूर, समंदर के किनारे एक छोटा-सा गांव है—रॉकविले। यह गांव शहर की चकाचौंध से दूर है, लेकिन वहां की सबसे खास और डरावनी चीज़ है—’काली चट्टान’। हर शाम समंदर के बीचोंबीच उस काली चट्टान पर एक अजीब-सा नीला उजाला दिखाई देता है। कोई नहीं जानता वो रोशनी आती कहाँ से है। इसी गांव में पत्रकार आरव मेहरा आया था, एक स्टोरी की तलाश में। वो क्राइम रिपोर्टर था लेकिन इस बार उसने खुद चुना था रॉकविले आना। उसे किसी ने एक अनाम ईमेल भेजा था— “If you want the story of your…
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Namrata Das Chapter 1: The Vanishing Act The early morning sun filtered through the glass windows of the high-rise building, casting long shadows over the boardroom table where Vikram Khandelwal, CEO of Khandelwal Technologies, had sat just days ago. The office now stood eerily silent, devoid of its usual buzz, as the city of Bangalore continued its relentless pace outside. Vikram’s sudden disappearance had left everyone in shock. The multi-billion-dollar merger between Khandelwal Technologies and Rathi Innovations, set to redefine the Indian tech landscape, had fallen apart without explanation. In a matter of hours, a corporate juggernaut had crumbled, and…
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Talia Verma Part 1: The Signal Beneath the Code Riya D’Souza had spent the last thirty-six hours in the analytics lab of Delphatech Systems with nothing but a lukewarm soy latte and a dozen lines of untraceable code for company. She blinked at the double-screen setup in front of her, the left monitor displaying her algorithm’s output logs, the right one scrolling endless rows of encrypted global banking transactions. Her job wasn’t supposed to be this intense. Data mining for anomalies was mundane, tedious—until it wasn’t. It had started with a flicker. A pattern buried deep within the monetary flow…
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Rohan Mehta Part 1 The rains had returned to Mumbai like an old enemy. Not with the promise of relief, but the murky stench of trouble. It was just past midnight when Inspector Alisha Ranade pulled up in her rain-splashed black Bolero outside the abandoned Crawford Mills compound. Her phone buzzed again—a message from headquarters: “Body found. Possibly political.” She hated those two words. In her experience, “possibly political” meant either someone too powerful was involved or someone too disposable had been silenced. The scene was taped off by a lone constable who looked more scared than soaked. “Inside,” he…