Chapter 1: The Golden Arrival
The road to Harsinghpur was narrow and snaked like a forgotten scar through endless waves of wheat fields swaying under a late summer sun. Simran Kaur sat in the back of the dusty jeep, her duffel bag squeezed between her knees, eyes fixed on the undulating gold outside the window. The driver, a quiet man with a thick mustache and a radio playing crackly folk songs, hadn’t spoken since they’d passed the broken milestone that read: “Harsinghpur – 3 km.” As they entered the village, Simran’s first impression was of silence—not the peaceful, countryside kind, but a heavy, deliberate silence. The fields looked too still, the village too neat, the eyes that watched her from behind doors and cloth curtains too wary. Children peeked from behind fences and vanished when she looked. A row of scarecrows lined the field edges, some old and tattered, others freshly made—each with faces drawn in red, and arms outstretched as if in surrender.
The government quarters assigned to her were simple—one-room brick house near the unused school building. She thanked the driver, who left with only a nod, then set about unpacking. The room smelled of turmeric and old wood. That evening, she walked to the schoolyard where the playground equipment stood rusted, almost fossilized. A boy’s sandal lay half-buried near the see-saw, green with moss. She wandered through the village trying to make introductions, but conversations were brief, eyes averted. Most villagers seemed kind but oddly distracted—as if their minds were elsewhere. Only the local herbalist, an older woman named Biji with a milky eye and hands stained yellow from haldi, offered her a cup of warm tulsi tea and some advice: “Don’t go out after dark. The fields don’t like it.” Simran had smiled politely, assuming it was some local superstition. But that night, as she lay in her cot with the window open to let in the breeze, she heard it—soft singing. A chorus of young voices humming a tune that drifted through the fields. No drums, no words, just a melody too strange to forget. When she peered out, the fields were empty, lit only by the moon, but the singing continued, as if the wheat itself remembered how to hum.
The next morning, as she opened the school for the first time, only a handful of children appeared—shy, silent, and watchful. Among them was a girl named Meher, who didn’t speak but handed Simran a folded piece of paper. On it was a crayon drawing of a field with a giant figure rising from it—something with long claws and eyes like embers. Simran showed it to a nearby elder, who glanced at it, went pale, and muttered, “She remembers.” By afternoon, whispers had started. People looked at Simran differently now—curious, almost reverent, as if she had crossed a threshold unknowingly. That night, she heard the singing again, this time closer, louder. She followed the sound to the edge of the schoolyard and stood there barefoot in the dust, staring into the sea of gold under moonlight. A breeze passed. The stalks bent. And in that moment, she could swear she heard the voice of a child whispering her name.
Chapter 2: God’s Tithe
The village school settled into a strange rhythm. Simran taught by daylight, her small class growing slowly as a few more parents dared to send their children. Yet every lesson felt like teaching in a dream—children stared blankly at pages, drew strange symbols in the margins, and spoke in whispers too soft to catch. Meher remained the quietest, always doodling, always watchful. One day, Simran asked the children to draw their family trees. Most scribbled stick figures and names in Punjabi. Meher handed her a page that showed a lone child surrounded by wheat stalks, with tiny red circles—like drops of blood—above her head. “Where’s your family, Meher?” she asked gently. The girl stared back and said, in a voice that didn’t quite sound like hers, “They gave me back.” That night, troubled by the image, Simran wandered to the panchayat office in hopes of finding school records. A dusty ledger listed student names from the past fifteen years. She noticed something unsettling: every fifth year, there was a sudden drop in enrollment. Names vanished. No explanations. No transfers. Just blank spaces. Children who, on paper, never existed after a certain date.
Disturbed, she took the ledger to Rajbir Singh, the village sarpanch. He was a broad-shouldered man with a politician’s smile that flickered between charm and calculation. He examined the ledger without surprise, then closed it slowly. “It is not for us to question. Some things are old. Older than paper and city minds.” When Simran pressed further, he leaned forward and said softly, “It is God’s Tithe. Every five harvests, one must be taken. For balance.” He said it so plainly, so calmly, that she felt a coldness bloom in her chest. “Taken by whom?” she asked, her voice cracking. Rajbir only looked toward the window, where the wheat shimmered in the late sun, and replied, “By the one who grows what we eat. The one who sleeps beneath.” Simran laughed, hoping to dislodge the absurdity of what she was hearing. “You’re saying you sacrifice a child?” He looked at her, then away. “We don’t kill. We offer. There’s a difference. The earth chooses. And we obey.” It felt like a conversation from another time—ancient, brutal. She left without thanking him, her hands shaking.
That night, she dreamt of clawed hands reaching up through the soil, of children being swallowed by roots. She woke drenched in sweat, only to hear the humming again, closer this time—coming from directly beneath her floor. Heart racing, she pressed her ear to the wooden planks and heard it: a lullaby, the same tune from the fields, sung in many small voices, beneath her. The next morning, she confronted Biji. The old woman sat cross-legged near her herb garden, crushing neem leaves. “It is always the new ones who ask too many questions,” she muttered. When Simran demanded the truth, Biji sighed and told her of a story that wasn’t told aloud anymore. “There was famine. Long ago. The soil had turned black. No rains came. A wanderer arrived—an old sadhu with no shadow. He taught us a way to grow. But every gift has a cost. The bargain was made, sealed with grain and blood. One every five years. Or all shall starve.” Biji’s blind eye turned toward the fields as if it could still see them. “And we always choose our own. Outsiders… they spoil the balance.” Simran felt the earth tilt slightly beneath her feet. She stared at the endless horizon of golden wheat, suddenly aware that this was not just a village—it was a pact. A living, breathing secret. One that sang when no one listened and took when no one watched.
Chapter 3: The Unspeakable Festival
Harvest came with a burst of color and unsettling celebration. Bright marigold garlands were draped across doorways, drums echoed in the distance, and the entire village buzzed with anticipation. Simran watched from her schoolhouse as villagers carried baskets of wheat to the central square, chanting softly in a language older than Punjabi, older than anything she recognized. She was invited—formally, with a garland placed around her neck—to attend the “Rakh Utsav,” the binding festival, which they claimed celebrated the village’s gratitude to the land. Dressed in a plain blue salwar kameez, she joined the gathering near the old well. Children, all dressed in white, stood in a line—silent, eyes lowered—while the elders, including Baba Kartar, circled them with smoldering incense. The scent of turmeric, ash, and something metallic filled the air. Then came the dolls—handmade figures fashioned from wheat stalks, adorned with crimson tilaks on their foreheads. One by one, villagers stepped forward, whispering into the dolls before placing them into a massive earthen pot sealed with mud and herbs. Simran felt the hair on her arms rise. When the last doll was placed, the drumming stopped. Baba Kartar raised both arms and declared, “The choosing is complete.” And then, the hush descended—heavier than any silence she’d ever known.
The next morning, word spread that little Arjan, a six-year-old boy from the edge of the village, was gone. No one cried. His mother, pale and unmoving, sat beside a diya at her doorstep while neighbors laid food at her feet without a word. Simran burst into Rajbir’s home in disbelief. “He’s gone! A child is missing and no one is doing anything!” Rajbir remained seated, eyes heavy with something she couldn’t name—was it guilt? Or resignation? “It is done,” he said. “The tithe has been accepted. The fields will flourish again.” Simran’s voice shook as she yelled at him, accused him of complicity, madness, even murder. But Rajbir only said, “You don’t understand what this land was like before. You weren’t here when the earth cracked and the children died anyway, starving. We survived because we obeyed. That is how the pact works.” Furious, Simran stormed to the police outpost, only to find Inspector Yadav sipping tea, unsurprised. “They say the boy ran off,” he said lazily. “You know how children are.” His tone was disinterested, but his eyes flicked nervously toward the fields. Simran realized then that even the authorities had learned to look away.
That night, unable to sleep, she wandered near the school, desperate for answers, a plan, anything. Meher appeared beside her, barefoot, holding another one of her drawings. This time it showed the earthen pot from the ceremony, but cracked open—revealing not dolls, but children curled up like seeds, their eyes open, mouths sewn shut. Simran knelt beside her, trying not to show her fear. “Where is Arjan?” she whispered. Meher pointed toward the fields and said, “He went down. Like they all do.” Her voice was calm, matter-of-fact. “But he’s still singing.” Simran followed her gaze and saw nothing—just the wheat, gently swaying, lit silver under the moonlight. But then she felt it—a vibration in the soles of her feet, soft and rhythmic. She knelt and pressed her ear to the ground. There it was again: the tune from before, sung not in joy, but like a lullaby forced through tears. Dozens of voices. Children’s voices. Singing from beneath the earth.
Chapter 4: Beneath the Granary
The following morning, Simran returned to the village square, her steps urgent, her nerves stretched thin. The singing from beneath the earth still echoed in her bones. She needed to find where the children were taken—if they were alive. The old granary at the edge of Harsinghpur, long abandoned and leaning like a forgotten relic, had always caught her eye. It sat alone, half swallowed by overgrown grass and wheat stalks, its wooden door bound in rusted chains and faded red cloth. Something about it had always unsettled her, like it was a mouth that had been sewn shut. She went to Biji for answers, but the old woman simply said, “That place has teeth. It remembers.” Despite the warning, Simran returned to the granary near dusk with a borrowed sickle to hack away the vines. As the last chain fell with a loud clank, the heavy door creaked open, exhaling a cold, earthy breath from the darkness within. She stepped inside with a flashlight and gasped—claw marks gouged the stone walls, old and deep, as if something enormous had once tried to dig its way out.
The floor of the granary was uneven, the stone slabs cracked, and in one corner lay a pile of rusted farming tools, broken clay pots, and something that turned Simran’s stomach—a heap of tiny bracelets and anklets, dull with age but unmistakably child-sized. Her hand trembled as she picked one up, feeling the cold metal as if it still held a pulse. The air felt heavier the deeper she moved in, as if time had thickened around this place. Her flashlight flickered briefly, and in that momentary darkness, she heard something scrape behind the walls—slow, deliberate, like nails on stone. She spun, heart pounding, but the space remained empty. She backed away, trying not to panic, and noticed a faint trail of wheat grains leading to a hidden wooden hatch beneath a loose slab. With effort, she pried it open, revealing a narrow passage descending into the ground. The smell that wafted up was of damp earth, salt, and something metallic—old blood, perhaps. Though she didn’t dare go down that night, she knew now: this was where they disappeared. Not stolen. Not lost. Given.
When she returned to the village, her clothes dusty and face pale, no one asked where she had been. The villagers avoided her eyes. Even the children in class looked at her differently now—some with fear, others with a strange kind of reverence. Only Meher met her gaze and whispered, “You opened its mouth.” Simran asked what that meant, but the girl only drew another picture—this time of the granary, its door wide open, with wheat growing inside like hair sprouting from a skull. Simran took the drawing and walked toward the panchayat again. She found Rajbir waiting as if he already knew she would come. She threw the bracelet on his desk. “How long have you known?” she demanded. Rajbir looked at the tiny anklet and sighed, deep and tired. “Long enough to hate myself,” he replied. He told her of his younger brother, Jaskaran, taken during the last harvest. Rajbir had fought the tradition, tried to run with the boy, but the fields “called him back.” Jaskaran was gone by morning. “It doesn’t take them like a beast. It calls. And they go.” Simran didn’t want to believe it—this idea that a village, a whole people, could hand over their own out of fear and history. But now she knew: Harsinghpur’s soil wasn’t just rich with grain. It was seeded with something far older, far darker, and it sang with the voices of those it had swallowed.
Chapter 5: The Voice of the Fields
That night, the wind over Harsinghpur carried a strange sound—low, humming, like a lullaby sung through the stalks. Simran stood outside the granary, flashlight in one hand, Meher’s drawing in the other. Her heartbeat echoed louder than the crickets, and the dry rustle of wheat seemed to whisper secrets just out of reach. The hatch beneath the granary now seemed darker, deeper, almost breathing. But she wasn’t alone. Meher had followed her, barefoot and silent, her eyes reflecting moonlight like glass. “It sings louder now,” the girl said softly. “Because you’re listening.” Simran knelt beside the hatch, hesitant. “Has anyone ever come back?” she asked. Meher didn’t respond, only stepped closer to the edge and placed her small hand on the stone. “It knows your name now,” she whispered. The words chilled Simran to the core. Still, she lowered herself onto the first rung of the old iron ladder, each creak beneath her weight sounding like a scream in the silence. The air below was cold and wet, thick with the scent of rot and something older—molded grain and rusted memories.
The descent seemed endless. The light from her torch danced over rough-hewn walls, lined with crude carvings—children holding stalks, circles of figures dancing around something large and horned. At the bottom, the tunnel opened into a narrow corridor, and the singing grew clearer—faint voices, tuneless yet strangely coordinated, echoing all around. As she moved deeper, Simran saw child-sized handprints smeared in dry mud along the walls, some fresh, some ancient. She paused as her torch flicked across what looked like a shrine—a shallow alcove with rows of small shoes and toys placed neatly, offerings perhaps, or remnants of those taken. Her eyes stung. She pushed forward. Around a bend, she found a chamber with low stone walls where the sound of singing seemed to pulse like a heartbeat. There, she saw them—not ghosts, not illusions, but shadows of children, dozens of them, walking in slow circles, their mouths moving in harmony with the tune. Their eyes were open, blank. Their faces too still. At the center of their ring was a mound of wheat, rising from the stone floor like a grave mound, glowing faintly. As she stared in horror, the mound shifted—something beneath it exhaled, and the children paused mid-step.
Simran stepped back, her breath ragged. One of the children turned toward her—Arjan. His eyes met hers, and in that moment she knew he saw her, remembered her. He opened his mouth to speak, but only the melody came out, soft and sorrowful. The wheat mound pulsed again. Simran turned and fled, her boots slipping on the damp ground, heart hammering in her chest. She climbed out of the hatch, gasping for air, and found Meher waiting, quiet as ever. “It doesn’t keep them,” the girl said. “It grows them again.” Simran couldn’t understand. “You mean they’re alive?” she asked. Meher nodded. “They become part of the field. They forget the sky.” Simran realized then that this wasn’t just sacrifice—it was transformation. The Wheat God didn’t kill. It changed. It sowed children like seeds, and they grew beneath the earth in endless song. Simran fell to her knees, unable to comprehend the horror of what she had witnessed. In Harsinghpur, harvest was not about reaping what you sowed. It was about what the earth demanded in return—and the price it sang for, year after year.
Chapter 6: Meher’s Truth
The days after her descent into the granary passed in a haze. Simran could barely sleep, haunted by the echo of children’s voices and Arjan’s blank gaze. She stopped teaching. The villagers noticed, of course—but none questioned her silence. They seemed to already know what she had seen. Only Meher remained near, her presence like a fragile tether between nightmare and clarity. One afternoon, Simran found her sitting under the banyan tree behind the school, sketching again. This time, it wasn’t fields or gods—it was a staircase spiraling downward into a pit where children floated like seeds in water. Simran sat beside her and finally asked, “How do you know all this?” Meher didn’t answer at first. Instead, she reached into her satchel and pulled out an old cloth bundle. Inside was a tiny white cotton kurta, stained and moth-eaten. “This was mine,” she said. “They chose me five years ago.” Simran froze. “But you’re here.” Meher nodded, eyes distant. “Biji kept me hidden. Pretended I was gone. My parents agreed… but Biji said the land doesn’t own me. Not yet.”
Simran listened, heart thudding as Meher told her the truth—how, after the night of her supposed “offering,” Biji took her to an abandoned grain hut across the river and locked her in for three weeks with only lentils and rainwater. The villagers mourned her publicly. Her parents lit the ritual fire. And yet, Meher lived—forgotten by the fields, passed over by the god. “But sometimes,” Meher whispered, “I still hear it. It calls. In dreams. Under my bed. In the walls. It sings to me when I sleep.” She looked up, her expression unreadable. “It knows who it missed.” Simran’s stomach turned. The entity didn’t just consume those it took—it remembered the ones that escaped. Meher wasn’t safe. Not truly. Neither were the rest of the children. Something ancient had been roused when Simran opened that hatch. Now it stirred beneath the fields, humming louder, searching. “We have to end this,” Simran said, more to herself than to Meher. “We have to break the cycle.” Meher didn’t respond. She only looked at the horizon, where the wheat danced again—not with the breeze, but with breath.
That evening, Simran went to Biji. The old woman was in her hut, burning mustard seeds over a clay flame, eyes clouded in the smoke. “You’ve seen it now,” she said, before Simran could speak. “It won’t leave you alone.” Simran demanded to know how the cycle could be stopped. Biji took a long time to answer. “Long ago,” she said, “there were seven families who made the first pact during the famine. They fed it their youngest sons. In return, the fields bloomed, while neighboring villages withered. The pact was sealed in blood, buried beneath this land.” Biji pulled out a brittle scroll from a hidden cavity in the wall—ink faded but legible. It described the ritual of severance: a counter-rite, one that could break the pact, but only if the original site—the “Root Chamber”—was uncovered, and one of the marked returned to the surface. “Bring one back,” Biji whispered. “Alive. Remembered. Only then can the bond be broken.” Simran’s mind reeled. The Root Chamber. Arjan. A rescue was possible—but the cost would be unthinkable. Because what slept beneath Harsinghpur did not give up its harvest without a price. And the field had not yet finished singing.
Chapter 7: The Broken Covenant
Simran woke before dawn, heart pounding with resolve. The Root Chamber—that was where the pact had been made, and maybe, where it could be undone. The scroll Biji had given her lay beside her bed, the inked instructions etched into her mind now. “Return the taken. Bury the pact. Break the song.” The granary’s underground tunnel was the only entrance she knew, but it wasn’t safe to go alone. She needed someone who had reason to help—someone who had lost more than just faith. She found Rajbir Singh at the old gurudwara, sitting beneath the bell, eyes closed in silent prayer. When she told him about the Root Chamber, his face hardened, lips pressed into a tight line. “My brother,” he said finally. “He might still be in there. Or what’s left of him.” Simran showed him Meher’s drawing of the spiral staircase. He nodded. “I’ve seen this in my dreams.” They made a plan. Rajbir would bring rope, lanterns, and an old iron trishul from the temple. Simran would return to the granary with Meher after sundown. The rescue wasn’t just for Arjan anymore—it was for every child who had vanished across generations, their names scratched from ledgers but never from memory.
As night fell, the three of them stood at the granary door—Simran, Rajbir, and Meher—each holding a lantern. The hatch yawned open like a wound in the floor. “We only have till dawn,” Rajbir said. “It’s strongest before the sun rises.” They descended quickly, deeper this time, following a side tunnel Meher had drawn from memory. The singing returned—low, harmonic, but growing louder with each step. Simran felt it vibrate through her ribs. They reached a chamber unlike the one she’d seen before: a wide, circular room with stone pillars carved in spirals. The floor was littered with broken toys, dolls, and faded photos. And at the center, a pit filled with shifting wheat that pulsed like breath. “This is it,” Rajbir whispered. “The Root Chamber.” As they stepped forward, the wheat parted—and Arjan emerged. His face was pale, but his eyes flickered with recognition. Simran ran to him. He didn’t speak, only pointed behind her. She turned—and saw them. The others. Dozens of children rising from the soil, silent, eyes glowing faintly gold. But they weren’t alone. Behind them, the wheat swelled and split—revealing a shape. Tall. Limbed. Rooted. Its body made of tangled stalks, its face like a threshing mask of bone and ash. The Wheat God.
It didn’t speak. It hummed. A vibration that shook the walls. Simran dropped to her knees as the sound flooded her ears. Rajbir raised the trishul, eyes wild. “Now!” Simran took Arjan’s hand and pressed Biji’s scroll to his chest. The boy flinched, then gasped. Light surged from the scroll, cutting through the chamber. The god recoiled, its hum turning to a shriek—metallic and wind-like. The children wailed. Meher stepped forward and began to sing—not the god’s song, but a lullaby Biji had taught her. A human melody. Familiar. True. The children echoed it, slowly, their gold eyes dimming. The pit collapsed, wheat disintegrating to ash. The god shrank, folding into itself like a dying storm. The chamber cracked. Stones rained from the ceiling. “Run!” Simran screamed. They fled up the tunnel, carrying Arjan, Meher guiding the way. Behind them, the granary groaned and collapsed, sealing the hatch forever. When they emerged, the sky was pale with dawn. Simran fell to her knees in the field, clutching Arjan to her chest. The field was silent. The song had stopped. The covenant was broken. But the land… the land remembered. And it would wait.
Chapter 8: Rajbir’s Confession
The village awoke to the crumbled ruin of the old granary and a stunned silence hanging over the wheat fields. Arjan had been returned—pale, withdrawn, but alive. When Simran carried him through the streets with Rajbir and Meher at her side, the villagers froze. Mothers fell to their knees. Elders crossed themselves in silence. Baba Kartar stood at the edge of the square, eyes narrow, hands clutched tightly around his rudraksha beads. “You have disturbed the pact,” he hissed. “You have awakened hunger.” But no one dared touch Simran. That night, the wind didn’t sing. The fields didn’t rustle. For the first time in memory, the air in Harsinghpur was still. Simran and Rajbir sat beneath the banyan tree as Meher slept in Biji’s arms nearby. The weight of what they had done settled slowly between them. “We’ll need to tell the others,” Simran said. “Everything. The truth. What we saw.” Rajbir didn’t answer immediately. He stared at the moonlit field. “There’s something you should know,” he said at last, voice brittle. “The pact… it wasn’t just fear. It was choice. My family… we helped make it.”
He told her of the scroll Biji hadn’t shown—one buried in the foundation of the sarpanch’s home. A record of names: the seven founding families, and how each gave their youngest every fifth harvest to ensure protection. “Not everyone agreed,” Rajbir said. “Some resisted. They vanished.” His own grandfather had been one of the enforcers—those who ensured the ‘tithe’ was delivered. And years later, when Rajbir’s brother Jaskaran was chosen, his family did not resist. “But I did,” Rajbir said. “I tried to run. I failed. I became sarpanch to stop it, but by then, I was just part of the soil.” His eyes filled with a guilt that felt like centuries. “We tell ourselves we’re powerless,” he continued. “But it’s cowardice. We let the field decide, so we don’t have to.” Simran listened, stunned—not just by the weight of what he carried, but by how many others must have shared his silence. The truth wasn’t buried. It had been rooted in them all along. “We end it for good,” Simran said. “No more secrets. No more choosing. If they want gods, let them find ones who don’t eat their children.”
In the days that followed, Simran called a village gathering. She and Rajbir stood before the people and laid bare the truth—the pact, the chamber, the children, the thing beneath the wheat. There was outrage, grief, disbelief. Baba Kartar shouted of blasphemy, of divine wrath, but his voice trembled. “Then let it come,” Rajbir said. “We won’t feed it anymore.” Quietly, the villagers began to come forward—offering stories, memories, names of the taken. Biji brought out old records hidden under her cot. Meher spoke, for the first time in public, of what it felt like to be almost forgotten by the earth. And Arjan, though silent, clutched Simran’s hand, never letting go. They built a shrine—not to the Wheat God, but to the lost. Small shoes, faded dolls, and nameplates carved into wood were placed beneath the banyan tree. Simran painted the words herself: “No more tithes. No more forgetting.” And as dusk settled over Harsinghpur, the fields swayed gently—but without song. The earth was watching. Waiting. But it was quiet now. For the first time in generations, the village chose remembrance over fear.
Chapter 9: The Singing Below
The stillness in Harsinghpur didn’t last. For days after the shrine was built, the fields remained oddly subdued—no whispering winds, no rustling warnings, and most unsettling of all, no singing from beneath the soil. It was almost as though the land itself was holding its breath. Simran, Rajbir, and Biji continued working to uncover and document the village’s true history. They created written accounts from elders, marked the names of the missing, and sent letters to district authorities hoping to protect the village from what they called “cultural concealment.” But one week after the collapse of the granary, something returned. It started with Meher waking up screaming, her voice hoarse and cracking: “It’s not gone… it just moved.” She had dreamed of a chapel—an abandoned stone church that stood at the far edge of Harsinghpur’s old Christian settlement, where no one went anymore. Her dream showed her children walking in circles, not beneath fields—but beneath holy ground. “It’s singing again,” she whispered. “But not from the wheat. From under the cross.” Rajbir paled. “St. Agnes,” he said quietly. “That church hasn’t opened its doors in fifty years.”
Simran, Rajbir, and Meher traveled there at dawn. The chapel sat at the base of a dry canal, half buried by brambles, its iron bell tower twisted and rusted, the cross snapped. Moss covered the stained-glass windows, and inside, the pews had rotted into mulch. Yet the altar remained intact, and beneath it—barely visible—was a stone trapdoor. Meher pointed. “It’s under there.” Rajbir helped wrench the door open, revealing a spiral staircase descending into darkness. Simran felt the same chill she had known in the granary, but this was older, colder, more aware. Lanterns lit, they climbed down. The air grew damp, the walls narrower. Then came the sound—not humming, not singing—but children praying. A soft chorus of voices whispering “Deliver us…” again and again. As they reached the crypt below, the full horror came into view. Rows of tiny figures—children curled into pew-like stone benches—murmuring endlessly, their mouths moving as if compelled by an invisible will. In the center stood a baptismal font filled not with water, but with wheat. Simran approached one of the children. Their eyes were open. Vacant. One face stopped her cold. It was Jaskaran—Rajbir’s brother. He looked at her. Whispered, “We never left. He just grew larger.”
Rajbir fell to his knees, weeping. “It’s feeding even now,” he said. “We broke the pact, but we didn’t break the god.” Simran turned to Meher. “This isn’t about land anymore,” she said. “It’s in belief. In the roots of memory. The granary was only the seed. This… this is where it bloomed.” They began chanting the lullaby again—the same song that broke the trance before—but this time, the children didn’t respond. The crypt walls vibrated. The font began to spill over, wheat grains slithering like insects across the stone. A low moan echoed through the tunnels, and from the far end of the chamber, something began to rise—a shape not of wheat, but of pulsing vines and bone, draped in shrouds of children’s prayers. The entity hadn’t died. It had migrated—rooting itself deeper, feeding on new soil. As the voice of the Wheat God grew louder, even Rajbir faltered. Simran gripped Meher’s hand tightly. “We finish it here,” she said, “or it will never stop singing.”
Chapter 10: The Fall of Harvest
The crypt trembled as the Wheat God began to take form—not fully corporeal, but more real than shadow. It rose like a sapling of sorrow, its body made of gnarled roots, bone-like husks, and strands of braided children’s hair. Its face was a cracked harvest mask—half-human, half-field—and its voice was not a growl, but a sorrowful lullaby, sung in the voices of all those it had consumed. The children seated in the pew-like stone benches rocked gently in rhythm, murmuring phrases from forgotten prayers. Wheat spilled from the baptismal font in a steady stream, crawling across the floor like fingers seeking purchase. Rajbir knelt before his brother, shaking him, calling his name through tears, but Jaskaran did not flinch. Simran raised her lantern, its flickering flame fighting against the overwhelming darkness. She turned to Meher, who had gone pale, her mouth slightly open, her eyes wide and glassy. “It’s trying to pull her,” Simran shouted. “Meher, listen to me!” But Meher had begun to hum—not the lullaby—but the hymn of the god. The thing was claiming her mind.
Biji’s voice, cracking and sudden, echoed through the tunnel entrance as she appeared, clutching a scroll wrapped in red thread. “You must burn the font!” she cried. “Where it grows, it remembers! Ash breaks memory!” Simran ran toward the altar while Rajbir tried to hold the god back, swinging the iron trishul he had brought from the gurudwara. It sliced through stalk and bone, sending golden chaff spiraling into the air, but the god did not bleed. It merely howled—a deafening chorus of children’s laughter turned to screams. Simran poured lantern oil into the font, the wheat bubbling angrily as the liquid soaked through it. She struck a match. The second the flame touched the grain, a deep roar shook the foundations of the crypt. The fire raced outward, licking the pews, the vines, the roots, and the entity itself. The children shrieked in unison—some in pain, some in sudden clarity—and began collapsing like puppets with strings cut. Meher dropped to her knees, sobbing. “It’s leaving,” she said. “It’s forgetting me.” Rajbir caught his brother as Jaskaran blinked, just once, before going limp in his arms. The god, now aflame, wailed like wind through hollow skulls and then collapsed, turning into a storm of ashes and seeds that dissolved into the crypt air.
The fire spread too fast. Simran grabbed Meher’s hand, and Rajbir carried Jaskaran’s body as the four of them scrambled up the staircase. Behind them, the chapel groaned. As they emerged into the night, the church collapsed inward with a final thunderous sigh, taking with it the Root Chamber and everything it had ever grown. For hours, villagers gathered in silence around the ruins. No one spoke. Even Baba Kartar, cloaked in disbelief, fell to his knees. The following morning, the wheat fields of Harsinghpur turned gray—not dead, but bare, as though the land itself had shed its skin. No harvest came that year. But no child went missing either. The shrine under the banyan tree became a place of memory, not mourning. Simran did not leave the village. She stayed, reopening the school in full. Meher began to speak more often, no longer drawing monsters but birds, trees, and skies. Rajbir buried his brother beside the chapel ruins, a stone marker carved with the words: “He sang for us. We remember.” And the Wheat God? It was gone. Burned. Banished. But sometimes, on the windiest nights, a faint lullaby still echoes across the fields—not dark, not fearful—but a soft hum, like the earth itself whispering its relief. Harsinghpur, once cursed, had chosen to remember. And in remembering, it had finally been set free.
The End
