The First Bloom
The body was found just after dawn, lying sprawled in the middle of a crumbling courtyard in North Kolkata’s Ahiritola. A shriveled banyan tree stood sentinel over the scene, its roots crawling like veins across the red bricks. A milkman had stumbled upon it first, his cries waking the neighbors before the police could cordon off the area.
ACP Ishaan Roy crouched next to the corpse, his sharp eyes tracing the placement of the limbs, the faint smudge of red near the mouth, the cuts too clean to be spontaneous. A fresh lotus flower, blood-soaked but otherwise intact, had been delicately placed on the man’s chest — almost lovingly. It was a signature. A message.
Ishaan didn’t flinch. This was the third body in nine days.
The victim, later identified as Atul Mukherjee, fifty-two, had been a former art critic. Widowed, childless, and semi-retired. Nothing overtly controversial in his recent past, at least according to initial reports. But the lotus — that was no accident. That was the killer’s calling card.
“Sir, there’s no sign of forced entry into the house. Nothing missing either,” said Sub-Inspector Tapas Banik, barely concealing his unease.
Ishaan stood up, brushing dust from his trousers. “No struggle marks. No defensive wounds. The body’s been posed post-mortem.” He glanced around. “Get forensics here. I want the entire perimeter dusted. And find out who sold lotus flowers last night within a 5 km radius.”
Tapas looked skeptical. “Sir, hundreds of vendors sell flowers. It’s almost Durga Puja season.”
“Then start with the wholesale markets. Tell them it’s urgent.”
By 9 a.m., the news had broken on all local channels. Headlines screamed:
‘Crimson Artist Strikes Again’
‘Kolkata Killer Leaves Another Bloodied Lotus’
The media had named him before the police even formed a pattern. A poetic killer, a performance artist in death. Ishaan hated the name. It made the monster sound… creative.
At the Lalbazar headquarters, Ishaan sat across from a whiteboard cluttered with photographs of the three victims: an academic, a poet, and now a critic. All solitary men. All connected to the world of words and expression. The timing was equally chilling — each body discovered in the early hours, left in public yet intimate spaces.
He rubbed his temples. “It’s deliberate. Not random. He’s building something. Each kill is a verse. A painting.”
“That’s why I thought you’d want to meet her,” came a voice from the doorway.
Ishaan turned to find Deputy Commissioner Karuna Bose standing there with a woman in her mid-thirties, sharp-eyed and professionally calm. “Dr. Ananya Ghosh. Just back from the UK. Forensic psychologist. She’s with the CID’s behavioral profiling team now.”
Ishaan didn’t bother with a smile. “You think we need a profiler for this?”
Karuna replied, “We think we need someone who understands obsession. You said yourself—this killer thinks he’s an artist.”
Ananya sat down without invitation. “Three men. Three different professions. All with deep ties to subjective interpretation — art, poetry, criticism. He’s not just killing. He’s making a statement.”
Ishaan raised an eyebrow. “And what’s the message?”
She opened a small notebook and flipped to a page. “He’s recreating something. A theme, perhaps even a memory. Ritualistic killers often replicate something they feel was once pure, beautiful, and then ruined.”
Ishaan looked again at the lotus in the photo. Once a symbol of divinity and beauty, now soaked in blood.
“Doesn’t that strike you as ironic?” she asked softly. “A lotus grows in the mud. This killer is dragging beauty through filth to make a point.”
Before he could respond, Tapas knocked and entered hurriedly. “Sir, we found something odd. There’s a CCTV feed from a temple lane two blocks from the murder scene. We caught a glimpse — partial face, late thirties, wearing an artist’s satchel and carrying… wait for it… a lotus bouquet wrapped in brown cloth.”
Ishaan’s eyes narrowed. “Can you run facial rec?”
“Already sent to HQ. Should have a response within the hour.”
Ananya leaned in. “He’s escalating. If the pattern holds, he’ll kill again in two nights.”
“And where?” Ishaan muttered.
Tapas cleared his throat. “There’s more, sir. Atul Mukherjee had reviewed an underground art show ten years ago at a private gallery in Jorasanko. The exhibition was shut down abruptly after a fire broke out.”
Ishaan’s voice dropped an octave. “Name of the exhibition?”
“Bloom.”
Ananya and Ishaan exchanged a glance.
Ishaan muttered, “First bloom.”
Outside, a storm was brewing. Clouds gathered thick over the city. And somewhere in the crumbling lanes of north Kolkata, the Crimson Artist was already preparing his next masterpiece.
Portraits in Blood
The rain began as a whisper, barely a mist across the air, before it settled into a steady drizzle that blurred the windows of Lalbazar. Ishaan Roy stood in the conference room, fingers drumming against the old wooden table, eyes fixed on the grainy CCTV image displayed on the projector. A blurred face. Unshaven. Medium build. Long hair tucked under a beret. A satchel over the shoulder.
“He’s not hiding,” Ishaan said finally. “He’s performing.”
Ananya nodded from the other side of the room. “And performers want an audience. They don’t just want to kill. They want to be remembered.”
Tapas entered with two steaming cups of tea, offering one to each of them. “Sir, the face recognition database returned a possible match. Name: Rudra Sen. Former art student. Expelled from Government Art College in 2015 after an altercation with a professor. Disappeared soon after.”
Ananya leaned forward. “What kind of altercation?”
“Assault. Broke the professor’s jaw with a sculpture hammer,” Tapas said. “The professor had criticized his work. Called it ‘gratuitously violent’.”
“And what happened after that?” Ishaan asked.
“Rudra filed a counter complaint. Said the professor had humiliated him publicly and destroyed two of his installations. But nothing came of it. After he was expelled, he vanished.”
Ishaan’s eyes were sharp now. “What was the name of his last solo show?”
Tapas glanced at his notes. “Viscera. Held at a now-defunct studio called Rangbari in Salt Lake. A lot of experimental artists showed there back then.”
Ananya’s fingers tapped her notebook. “Viscera. Bloom. He has a fixation with internal beauty, perhaps? Things that are meant to stay inside—exposed. Torn open.”
Just then, a junior constable entered hurriedly. “Sir, you’ll want to see this. Another body’s been found.”
The address made Ishaan’s stomach tighten. Hedua Park. Public. Morning walkers would have already seen it. Media would follow in minutes.
By the time the team reached, the crime scene was already surrounded by a crowd pressed up against the police tape, whispering, filming, some praying, others gagging. The victim lay slumped against a bench under a rain-drenched tree. Eyes open. Mouth gagged with a paintbrush.
A single lotus rested in the victim’s lap. A faint splash of vermillion stained the petals.
“Female this time,” Tapas muttered. “First break from pattern.”
Ananya knelt beside the body. “Not a break. An evolution.”
The victim, later identified as Shonali Das, had been a performance artist known for staging wordless, movement-based installations. She was in her early forties, known for being reclusive in recent years. Neighbors said she had been ‘waiting for something’ — often seen sitting on her balcony for hours.
A folded piece of paper was found inside her coat pocket. It wasn’t a letter, but a poem — typed in Courier font on crisp white paper.
I gave you silence, and you mocked it with noise.
I gave you bloom, and you crushed the roots.
Now, I paint with blood.
Because red is the only truth.
Ananya read it aloud and then said quietly, “This is no longer just a pattern. This is personal. These victims… they were part of something.”
Ishaan stood still, rain slowly soaking into his coat. “A collective memory. Something broken. Something unfinished.”
“Exactly,” Ananya said. “And he’s fixing it. Through death.”
Back in the car, Ishaan stared out the window as they drove through the wet lanes of North Kolkata. “Tapas, I want a list of every student who participated in Bloom. Track them. Interview them. I don’t care if they’re in Singapore or Sodepur. We need to know what happened that year.”
Tapas nodded. “I’ve already spoken to the archives at the Academy of Fine Arts. They’re faxing over a partial list.”
Ishaan turned to Ananya. “You said he’s evolving. How?”
She looked tired, but clear-eyed. “He started with those who interpreted — a critic, a poet. Then the one who embodied art herself. Now he’ll move toward the creators. Those who painted, sculpted, expressed.”
“Is he trying to eliminate them?”
“No,” she said. “He’s trying to be understood.”
A strange silence fell between them. Rain clattered against the car roof like impatient fingers tapping glass.
Later that night, Ishaan couldn’t sleep. He poured himself a glass of whisky, stood by his apartment’s narrow window, and stared out at the hazy, flickering lights of the city.
He remembered being a young officer once, attending a now-forgotten art show at the insistence of an ex-girlfriend. There was a boy — pale, intense — who had displayed a sculpture made entirely of bird bones. Everyone had avoided it. The boy had sat alone, watching the crowd with eyes full of fury and heartbreak.
Could that have been Rudra?
Just then, his phone buzzed.
A single message. No sender. No number.
The lotus grows again, ACP Roy. You will find her near the river.
Ishaan’s blood ran cold.
The killer was now playing directly with him.
And somewhere along the dark banks of the Hooghly, the next bloom was waiting to be found.
Whispers from the Gallery
The abandoned gallery at Jorasanko smelled of mildew, rust, and something fainter beneath — a memory too old to name, but not quite dead. Ishaan stepped cautiously over cracked tiles and old easel frames, his flashlight slicing through the dust that hung in the air like old secrets.
This was Samantaral Art Collective, once the site of the Bloom exhibition — ten years ago, before it closed overnight after a fire and a scandal no one wanted to revisit. It had never reopened.
“This is where it began,” Ananya whispered beside him, fingers running lightly across a soot-stained wall. “Whatever broke Rudra, broke here.”
The place looked like it had been gutted from the inside. Blackened canvases still clung to some walls, their paint warped into abstract screams. A few sculptures stood like sentries, faceless, armless. Someone had spray-painted Art is a lie that tells the truth across the far end, half-covered by soot and moss.
Ishaan crouched beside a shattered glass frame. Beneath it was a scorched label:
“Untitled | Rudra Sen | Mixed Media”
He looked up. “He was the centerpiece here, wasn’t he?”
Ananya nodded. “The prodigy. Reviews at the time called him ‘disturbing but brilliant.’ Others called him dangerous. Apparently, his work blurred boundaries — flesh, decay, rebirth.”
“Why did the exhibition close?”
She hesitated. “There was a fire. Officially declared an accident. But I’ve read whispers in old forums and mailing lists. A scandal. Something about one of Rudra’s final pieces. It was removed before public viewing. The organizers refused to talk about it. The gallery owner disappeared soon after.”
“Do we have a name?”
Ananya checked her notes. “Riddhi Basu. She ran the collective. Married into an old zamindar family. Last known address was a crumbling rajbari in Cossipore. She went into reclusion.”
Ishaan rose. “Let’s go pay a visit.”
As they stepped out into the muggy afternoon, Tapas called with an update.
“Sir, there’s been another body. Found near Princep Ghat, like the message said. A woman. Late twenties. Hands bound. Eyes closed with petals.”
Ishaan clenched his jaw. “Name?”
“She was a painter. Name’s Ayesha Dutta. Her last solo show was titled Silent Garden. And get this, sir—she was one of the ten artists listed in the Bloom exhibition.”
Ananya whispered, “He’s not just recreating the past. He’s cleansing it.”
By the time they arrived at the scene, the sun was setting in a blaze of orange and smoke over the river. The body lay just behind the old stone columns of the ghat. She had been posed in a seated posture, back straight, like a yogi in meditation. A single lotus floated in a shallow bowl placed at her feet, its red center pulsing like a wound.
No message this time. No poem. Just silence.
Ananya crouched beside her. “Look at the cuts. Clean. Ritualistic. Not sadistic. It’s as if he believes he’s freeing them.”
“From what?” Ishaan asked, eyes dark.
She looked up at him. “From the sin of forgetting.”
That night, they drove to the northern edge of the city to find Riddhi Basu’s crumbling ancestral home. The rajbari was hidden behind layers of banyan and neglect. Its gate creaked open reluctantly, revealing a courtyard where time had long given up trying to pass.
An elderly caretaker let them in. “Madam hasn’t spoken to strangers in years,” he warned. “But she paints. All day. All night. She never stopped.”
They found Riddhi in a large hall, sitting in a room filled with unfinished canvases. A thin woman with long grey hair and haunted eyes, she looked up at them like someone trying to recognize a dream.
“You’re here about Rudra,” she said, voice brittle.
“Yes,” Ishaan replied. “We need to know what happened at Bloom. What broke him?”
She smiled, but it was the kind of smile that belonged to a painting, not a person. “He gave us a mirror, and we shattered it. His final piece — it was… unbearable. He called it Mother. A sculpture made of wax and bones and cloth soaked in something that smelled like blood. But it wasn’t the piece itself. It was what he said before unveiling it.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘This is not art. This is confession.’”
Ananya stepped forward. “Confession of what?”
Riddhi’s eyes filled with something ancient. “He claimed his mother killed herself because her art was mocked. That every artist at Bloom had failed to protect beauty. That we were all cowards pretending to be visionaries.”
Ishaan asked, “Did his mother really die?”
“Yes. A long time ago. She was a painter too. Brilliant. But broken.”
Silence hung in the room, heavy and real.
Ananya finally said, “He’s coming full circle. Recreating the exhibition in death. Every victim… a forgotten guest.”
Riddhi picked up a paintbrush, dipped it in black, and began to draw over a canvas already dark with color.
“When he finishes,” she said softly, “the last flower will bloom in fire.”
Outside, the city pulsed with indifference. And somewhere in the wet lanes of Kolk
ata, Rudra Sen — or whatever remained of him — was putting the final strokes on a masterpiece only he could see.
The Mother and the Mirror
The car ride back from the crumbling rajbari was silent. Ishaan drove while Ananya stared out the window, watching the city blur into streaks of orange and grey. The story Riddhi Basu had told kept playing in her head — a sculpture called Mother, unveiled not as art, but as confession. Wax, bone, cloth, and something that smelled like blood.
“What kind of grief turns into that?” she muttered.
Ishaan didn’t look at her. “The kind that festers when no one listens.”
They reached Lalbazar just past midnight. The precinct was quiet, apart from the dull tapping of a constable’s typewriter and the humming of tube lights that hadn’t been changed in years. Ishaan poured himself black coffee, bitter and burnt, and spread the files across the table again.
“Four bodies,” he said. “All linked to Bloom. All killed with precision. And now we know the central trauma — the death of Rudra’s mother. That’s the origin of all this.”
Ananya took out her notebook. “We need to find out more about her. Who she was. How she died. If he saw her death as a betrayal by the art world, then each kill is vengeance. But vengeance is never random — it’s surgical.”
Tapas entered with a thin file in his hand. “Got it, sir. Her name was Amrita Sen. Trained at Santiniketan. Exhibited sporadically. Last public appearance was in 2004. Died in 2006. Official cause: suicide by hanging. She was never widely recognized, though critics praised her technique.”
“Any sign of abuse? Family history?” Ananya asked.
Tapas nodded. “There were whispers. Her husband — Rudra’s father — was a local politician. They divorced before she died. He remarried. There were mentions of mental health issues, isolation. After her death, Rudra was sent to live with an uncle in Ballygunge. That’s when he joined art school.”
Ishaan exhaled slowly. “So his mother was a failed artist in the eyes of the world. He worshipped her. And now he’s killing everyone he thinks contributed to her downfall.”
Ananya tapped the photo of the latest victim — Ayesha Dutta. “But she wasn’t famous either. So why her?”
Tapas replied, “Because she was there. That’s enough for him.”
Just then, an alert came through on the internal crime grid. A call from the fire department — an abandoned studio in Salt Lake’s EC Block had caught fire. No casualties, but inside they found something strange.
Ishaan and Ananya reached the scene as the last embers died down. Smoke still curled from the broken windows. Firemen stood around in silence.
One of them said, “Sir, you should see this.”
He led them into the charred skeleton of the studio. At the center of the main hall was a large canvas, half-burnt, nailed to the wall. But what remained was unmistakable — a woman’s face, painted in a swirling storm of red, black, and ash.
Below it, scrawled in thick brushstrokes:
“She watched them laugh while I buried her alone.”
Ananya whispered, “That’s his mother.”
Ishaan walked slowly toward the painting. The eyes stared back — wide, hollow, accusing.
“This isn’t just murder,” he said. “This is resurrection.”
Back at headquarters, Tapas compiled the full list of artists who had participated in Bloom. “We’ve accounted for eight. Four are dead. Two live out of state. One changed her name and moved to Bhutan. And the last… is Kiran Sen, a muralist, now a professor at Rabindra Bharati.”
Ananya looked up sharply. “Sen? Is he related to Rudra?”
Tapas flipped the page. “Cousin. They exhibited together. But Kiran was older. Some articles even say he mentored Rudra.”
Ishaan stood. “We need to talk to him. Now.”
By morning, they were at the campus, weaving past students and rain-drenched murals. They found Kiran in a sunlit studio filled with unfinished wall pieces and large brushes soaking in buckets of water.
He looked older than his age, tired in the way only those who’ve seen genius unravel can look.
“I knew this day would come,” he said softly. “He’s completing what he started.”
“You knew what he was capable of?” Ishaan asked.
Kiran sighed. “No one wanted to see it. Rudra had a gift — and a wound that never healed. When Bloom was announced, he wanted it to be a tribute to his mother. But when critics dismissed her legacy, something snapped.”
Ananya asked, “And what happened at the end? Why was Mother never shown?”
Kiran looked away. “Because it wasn’t just a sculpture. It was her — her belongings, her diary pages, her hair woven into wax. He even used part of her ashes. I stopped the unveiling. I told Riddhi it would ruin him.”
“And in doing so,” Ishaan said quietly, “you became part of the betrayal.”
Kiran didn’t deny it. “He left that night. Said the world had erased her. That he’d bring her back. Not through art, but through justice.”
Ananya’s voice was firm. “You’re the final name on his list.”
Kiran’s lips quivered, but he nodded. “Let him come.”
Ishaan turned to leave. “We won’t wait for that.”
As they exited, Ananya said, “We need to find Rudra before he does. This won’t end with death. He wants a climax. Something unforgettable.”
“Where would he go?”
She thought for a moment. Then said, “Where she died. Where it all began.”
Ishaan stopped in his tracks. “Ballygunge. The house where Amrita Sen hanged herself. Do we have the address?”
Tapas radioed it in. Within minutes, they had it.
And twenty minutes later, the team was racing through the quiet morning lanes of Ballygunge, sirens cutting through the rain.
Because somewhere in that house, the final act of The Crimson Lotus was already being painted in blood.
House of Ash
The house stood hidden behind overgrown hedges and a rusting iron gate, its colonial bones collapsing under years of neglect. Once whitewashed, now the walls were a tired grey, streaked with black mildew and fern-like cracks. The rain had stopped, but the sky remained low, heavy with the weight of things left unsaid.
Ishaan pushed open the gate. It groaned like an old throat swallowing grief. The yard was littered with broken clay pots, rotting leaves, and remnants of a past that refused to leave. Ananya stepped carefully behind him, flashlight in hand, heart thudding like a drum against her chest.
“This was her house?” she asked softly.
Tapas nodded behind them. “Amrita Sen’s. She lived here alone in the final years. Neighbors said she stopped painting. Just stared out of windows.”
They reached the front door. It wasn’t locked.
“Either he’s still here,” Ishaan murmured, “or he wants us to come in.”
The inside was darker than they expected. No electricity. Just damp air and the smell of old turpentine, burnt wick, and something fainter—coppery, like dried blood. The walls were lined with cracked frames. Some held faded paintings. Others held only the ghosts of what once was.
A single candle burned on the floor of the living room, beside it—another lotus, this time blackened at the edges. And behind it, scrawled on the wall in thick red strokes:
She bloomed in silence. So must I.
Ishaan’s voice was barely a whisper. “He’s here.”
They moved cautiously, guns drawn now. Each room was colder than the last. In what had once been a bedroom, they found the broken remnants of a mirror, covered in red cloth. The walls had been turned into a canvas—layers of sketches and splashes. Repeated motifs: a woman’s eyes, a blooming lotus, a child watching from the dark.
Ananya stood frozen before a large charcoal drawing taped to the wall. It showed ten figures standing in a circle around a kneeling woman. Each figure wore a mask of indifference. The woman was faceless. Only her long hair was visible. Blood pooled at her feet.
“He sees the Bloom artists as murderers,” she murmured. “Witnesses to a crime of silence.”
Footsteps echoed from the floor above. Then a sound—metal dragging against stone.
Ishaan gestured silently. The three of them climbed the wooden staircase, each step creaking like a scream. At the top was a narrow hallway leading to a locked door at the end. It was bolted from the inside.
“Rudra!” Ishaan called out. “It’s over. Come out. We can talk.”
Silence.
Then a low voice, cracked and distant: “She asked them to remember her. They laughed. Even her ashes were forgotten.”
“Rudra,” Ananya said gently, “you don’t have to become what hurt you.”
He laughed bitterly. “Become? I was born from it.”
Suddenly, smoke began to curl from beneath the door.
“Shit!” Ishaan shouted. “He’s lighting the place!”
He kicked the door with all his force. Once. Twice. The third time it cracked open and smoke billowed out like breath from the underworld.
Inside, Rudra Sen stood in front of a massive canvas that filled the entire far wall. Flames danced along the edges of the room, licking the wooden floor. In his hand, he held a palette knife—blood already caking the edge. His other hand trembled as he pointed toward the painting.
“Do you see her now?” he asked. “Do you finally see what they erased?”
The painting was a grotesque masterpiece—a fusion of Amrita Sen’s face with the distorted features of all four victims. Around her, lotus petals swirled like a storm. And at the center of her chest, painted with thick red oil, was a gaping hole.
“She’s incomplete,” Rudra sobbed. “I kept trying to finish her. But the blood wouldn’t dry.”
“Put it down, Rudra,” Ishaan said firmly. “Come with us. You’ve made your statement. Let this be the end.”
But Rudra didn’t listen. He turned to the side, revealing Kiran Sen—bound and unconscious on a chair, a lotus stuffed into his mouth, a line of gasoline tracing a circle around him.
“No!” Ananya screamed.
Ishaan fired once—into the air.
Rudra flinched. And in that moment, Tapas lunged forward, tackling him to the ground. The palette knife skidded across the floor. Ishaan rushed to Kiran, yanked the gag from his mouth, and dragged the chair out of the fire’s reach. Flames licked at the walls now, hungry and fast.
“Get him out!” Ishaan shouted.
They dragged Kiran and Rudra both out through the stairs just as the upper floor gave a final groan and collapsed inward. Ash rained down like snow.
Outside, Rudra didn’t scream. He didn’t struggle. He just stared up at the smoke curling toward the sky.
“She’s in the bloom now,” he whispered. “Finally whole.”
Later, as paramedics took Kiran away and Rudra was placed in handcuffs, Ananya sat on the steps, covered in soot and silence.
“It wasn’t about killing,” she said. “It was about memory.”
Ishaan nodded. “And the cost of forgetting.”
In the days that followed, headlines raged. The Crimson Lotus killer unmasked. An unfinished artist’s grief. A son’s distorted tribute. But amid the noise, one image kept returning to Ishaan—Rudra’s final painting, burning slowly in that upper room, its eyes seeming to watch through the flames.
Somewhere deep in the city, another lotus bloomed in a muddy pond. This one untouched. Silent. And whole.
Six months later, winter returned to Kolkata. Not the shivering chill of snow, but the soft, smoky kind that carried the scent of roasted peanuts, old books, and fog-drenched memories. The city had moved on, as cities do. Crime headlines were replaced by election news, cinema scandals, and the next big thing.
But in one quiet corner of Jorasanko, behind a newly restored facade of the once-abandoned Samantaral Art Collective, something unusual stirred.
The gallery had reopened. Not with fanfare, but with intention. A small plaque at the entrance read:
“In Memory of Those Who Were Forgotten.”
Curated by Ananya Ghosh and ACP Ishaan Roy.
Inside, the walls bore no flamboyant installations. No grotesque forms. Just simplicity, restraint — and a story told in frames. There were charcoal sketches of Amrita Sen’s early works, salvaged from crumbling archives. Photographs of the original Bloom exhibition, unaltered, with the names of each artist respectfully restored. And in one corner, surrounded by glass, stood a single object:
A half-burned lotus, preserved in resin.
Visitors came slowly, in trickles. Some out of curiosity. Others in silence. An old woman wept before a sketch of Amrita’s called Still Water. A boy with paint-stained fingers asked if Rudra’s final canvas would ever be recreated. No one knew.
One evening, Ishaan stood in front of that glass-encased lotus, hands in his coat pockets. Behind him, Ananya arrived, holding two cups of tea.
“You know,” she said, “the media asked me yesterday why we didn’t hang Rudra’s final piece. Even a replica.”
Ishaan sipped the tea. “And what did you say?”
“That some things are meant to be remembered, not repeated.”
He nodded. “How is he?”
“In treatment. Not speaking. But he paints. Every day. Only lotuses. All white.”
They stood in silence for a while, watching a school group being led through the gallery. The guide spoke gently about memory, art, and grief, never once mentioning the word ‘murder’.
“Do you think we did the right thing?” Ananya asked.
“I think we stopped a fire,” Ishaan replied. “And lit a lamp instead.”
Outside, the evening fog curled around the city like an old shawl. Somewhere in a hidden courtyard,
a real lotus bloomed in muddy water — pale, quiet, untouched.
And perhaps, finally, at peace.
THE END
