Soumyo Roy
Part 1: The Journal
The pages were yellowed, brittle at the corners, and the leather spine smelled of time — not the clean scent of old libraries, but of something older, heavier. Like soil packed over secrets.
Rehan Sen traced his fingers over the inscription on the first page:
“Meera K. Sharma, August 12, 1986. For those who never came back.”
He looked up at his colleague, Sana, who stood frozen in the dusty corner of the used bookstore they had stumbled into in Chawri Bazaar. “Didn’t she go missing at Bhangarh?”
“Not just her. Three of them. Only one survived. And he never spoke,” Sana whispered.
Rehan was a junior producer at India Unsilenced, a niche documentary channel on Indian urban legends and unsolved mysteries. Most of their stories ended in frustration, or sensationalism, or both. But this… this was different. The journal had been hidden behind a row of Hindi pulp thrillers. Wrapped in a brown newspaper dated 1991. Why would someone hide it, only to leave it in a secondhand shop?
He opened to the first full entry, the ink still bold:
“We leave for Bhangarh tonight. I can feel something already. Like the air knows our names.”
August 11, 1986. Delhi University.
They were four — loud, brilliant, curious, and a little arrogant in the way only college kids in their final year could be. Meera Sharma was the one who had the idea. She had been conducting séances in the old college hostel for months, claiming she could make candles flicker, summon whispers from the dead, and feel pressure on her skin when the veil between worlds thinned. No one quite believed her. But they loved watching her perform.
Karan, her boyfriend, called her “our desi witch queen,” half mocking, half proud. He was the rationalist. Anuj was the quiet one — thoughtful, already accepted to an MSc program abroad. And Tanaya, sharp-tongued and defiant, always carried a camcorder around, documenting everything like she was waiting for the world to become important someday.
That night, they sat in a rented blue Ambassador car and made their way to Rajasthan. “We’ll get there by 4 a.m.,” said Karan. “We sneak in. You do your magic. We get the hell out.”
Meera smiled, tying her long hair into a loose braid. “You think the spirits care about your timetable?”
Rehan shut the journal for a moment. “There’s a lot more,” he murmured. Sana was already nodding, her eyes scanning the old bookstore’s shadows. “We have to go to Bhangarh.”
“We need permission,” Rehan said.
“Do we care?”
They didn’t. A week later, their crew of three—Rehan, Sana, and their grizzled sound guy Sukhdev—stood outside the iron gate of Bhangarh Fort as the sun began to dip behind the Aravalli hills. The village nearby had already gone quiet. Even the dogs refused to follow them past the signboard that read:
“Entering the fort after sunset is strictly prohibited.” — Archaeological Survey of India
They waited until twilight. Then they slipped through the broken wire fence at the side. Rehan carried the journal. Sana had a digital camera. Sukhdev, for all his skepticism, had brought a recorder with brand-new batteries.
The air inside the fort was different. Not just cooler — heavier. It pressed against their ribs, slowing breath. The stones underfoot seemed to absorb sound. Rehan found himself whispering without knowing why.
The temple ruins loomed in the moonlight — jagged silhouettes of gods long abandoned. It was here that Meera’s journal had mentioned the séance.
“There’s a slab near the Hanuman shrine,” she had written. “Smooth, white, like it’s been used again and again. That’s where I’ll do it. I think they used to summon something there — not gods. Something else.”
Rehan stood near that very slab now. It looked oddly clean. As if dust refused to settle on it.
Sana set up a camera. “Let’s read it aloud.”
Rehan hesitated. “You think that’s safe?”
She raised an eyebrow. “We don’t believe in ghosts. Remember?”
But the moment he began to read the next entry — dated the morning of August 12, 1986 — the recorder clicked off.
“It was too real. I said the name three times — Ratnavati — and the wind began to circle. Tanaya’s camera jammed. Karan laughed, until he couldn’t. Something touched the back of my neck, like fingers made of breath. Anuj swore he saw someone standing near the stepwell. But we were alone. We were all alone.”
Rehan felt something brush against his ankle.
He froze.
Sana looked at him, her face pale now. “Did you hear that?”
“No.”
“I heard anklets. Like… someone running.”
They turned slowly. Nothing. But the temperature had dropped. Sukhdev, cursing under his breath, slapped the recorder. “Battery’s full. It shouldn’t have died.”
Suddenly, Rehan looked down at the journal — and gasped.
A new line had appeared.
In fresh black ink.
“Welcome back.”
Part 2: The Mark
They left the slab in a hurry, stumbling over loose stones and ancient cracks as if the ground wanted to keep them. Rehan gripped the journal tight, holding it like a talisman even though it had just betrayed him. A fresh line of ink — impossible, unexplained — had formed right before his eyes.
Sana didn’t speak until they were outside the temple ruins, gulping the stale, dry air as if it were pure oxygen. “You saw it too, right?” she asked.
Rehan nodded. “Same handwriting. Same pen stroke. It just… appeared.”
Sukhdev looked at them both like they were mad. “You two are letting this place get into your heads. Journals don’t write themselves.”
“Neither do cameras record anklet sounds when no one’s there,” Sana shot back. “Check the audio later. I swear I heard it.”
The trio walked deeper into the fort, flashlights flickering in nervous pulses. They passed collapsed walls, arched doorways that led nowhere, and strange engravings that hadn’t been documented by the ASI. Everything looked like it had been paused mid-decay — half-fallen pillars, steps that ended in voids, trees growing inside rooms.
The deeper they went, the less sure they felt about the direction. GPS had failed long ago. Compass apps spun aimlessly. It was as though the fort rearranged itself after every corner.
Rehan clutched the journal again, flipping to the next page. The ink seemed fresh here too.
“Karan disappeared first. One moment he was laughing, mocking the wind. The next moment, gone. No scream. No sound. Just… absence.”
He stopped reading aloud.
Sana glanced at him. “Why did you stop?”
He looked around, suddenly aware of how quiet it had become. “Where’s Sukhdev?”
Sana’s smile fell. She turned in a full circle.
Empty.
He had been there seconds ago. Carrying the sound recorder, grumbling.
Now — nothing.
No echo. No footprints. Not even static on the walkie-talkie.
Rehan felt cold in his stomach. He called out, voice cracking, “Sukhdev?”
Silence answered.
Then a sharp clink of metal against stone — faint, rhythmic. Anklets again.
Sana gripped his arm. “We need to get out. Now.”
They retraced their steps in panic, but the fort had shifted. The moonlight no longer fell where it did. The hallway seemed longer. An arch that had once framed the entrance was now just a wall.
And then, Rehan saw something on his arm.
A mark — faint, but growing clearer with every passing second. Black, like soot, in the shape of a circle surrounded by thirteen tiny dots.
“Look,” he whispered.
Sana leaned in, her face pale. “That’s the same symbol etched on the temple slab.”
“I don’t remember touching it.”
“You didn’t.”
The mark pulsed.
Rehan looked at the journal again, as if it were the only thing that could explain this. A new line had formed.
“You’ve been touched.”
August 12, 1986.
Meera’s handwriting was frantic now.
“Tanaya screamed. Not like I’d ever heard. She dropped the camcorder, and her mouth moved but no sound came out. We tried to run but couldn’t find the entrance. The fort was different at night. Like it breathed. Anuj held my hand so tight it bruised. He said he could see Karan… just his back… walking into the well. But there’s no water there. There hasn’t been for centuries.”
Rehan dropped to his knees.
“We’re repeating it,” he whispered. “Everything they wrote — it’s happening again. One by one.”
Sana stared at the journal. “You think if we leave it behind, it’ll stop?”
“It found us.”
They reached the stepwell. There was no mistaking it — dry, yawning, moss crawling up its stone walls. The moonlight barely reached the bottom.
A flash of movement caught Sana’s eye.
She pointed. “There. Down there. I swear I saw…”
Rehan peered over the edge.
A figure stood at the bottom. Too still. Dressed in pale fabric that fluttered without wind. Long black hair. No face.
Not blank.
Just gone.
Rehan stumbled back, pulling Sana with him.
The figure looked up.
It didn’t move.
It didn’t need to.
Because inside Rehan’s mind, a voice hissed.
“She wants the séance to finish.”
Rehan and Sana ran.
No path made sense. The fort had turned into a maze of haunting repetition — corridors they had walked through now had different walls, broken statues now stared in different directions, and doors appeared in places they hadn’t existed before.
Somewhere behind them, anklets rang again.
But this time, the steps were faster.
And they were gaining.
They finally burst into a wide-open courtyard.
The air was different here — charged, electric, like a thunderstorm waiting to break. In the center stood an old shivling, cracked, blackened with age. Offerings long rotted lay around it. The journal trembled in Rehan’s hands.
And a new passage appeared — the last one from 1986.
“Anuj whispered something as the sun began to rise. Just one line. Over and over. ‘It won’t let me go unless someone else takes my place.’ I don’t remember what happened after. Just waking up at the edge of the village. Alone.”
Sana stared at Rehan.
They didn’t say it, but they both understood.
Sukhdev was gone.
And one of them wasn’t meant to leave either.
Part 3: The Whisper in the Well
The morning never came.
At least, not in the way it should have.
Rehan checked his watch again. 6:43 a.m. But the sky was still steeped in bruised blue, the kind of pre-dawn gloom that clings to fog. The birds hadn’t stirred. No roosters crowed. Even the crickets had fallen silent.
“This isn’t normal,” Sana said, clutching her jacket tighter. “It’s like we’re stuck in the same hour.”
Rehan didn’t answer. He was staring at the journal.
Its pages had begun to turn on their own.
Faint wind, maybe. Or fingers they couldn’t see.
The journal stopped on a blank page, and slowly, new ink began to bleed through. Letter by letter.
“One must return to the place of first touch.”
Rehan looked down at the strange mark on his forearm — the circle with thirteen black dots. It was now raised, warm to the touch. Like a brand that hadn’t finished burning.
“We need to go back,” he said.
Sana shook her head. “To the slab? Are you insane?”
“I think that’s where this began. Maybe that’s where we’ll find a way out.”
“Or maybe that’s where it finishes us.”
But the air was closing in again. Thicker. Clingier. As if the fort was folding around them. The arches looked narrower. The stone steps groaned. They couldn’t stay here much longer.
Rehan turned back toward the ruins of the temple.
And something followed.
They walked fast, but the footsteps behind them never slowed.
Clink. Pause. Clink. Pause.
Anklets.
Sometimes just one.
Sometimes more — like a hundred silent dancers hiding just beyond the veil of light.
At the temple, the slab gleamed again. Polished. Clean. Despite the layers of decay around it. Rehan stepped forward cautiously, his breath fogging in the unnatural cold.
Then he noticed something new — a mirror fragment, triangular, embedded into the stone floor beside the slab.
It hadn’t been there before.
He crouched and picked it up, angling it toward the moonlight.
And saw himself.
But… not himself.
In the reflection, his face was older. Hollowed. His eyes sunken like a man who hadn’t slept in decades. Behind him, in the mirror’s shimmer, stood a woman in white — face obscured, her head tilted unnaturally sideways.
Then she moved.
Rehan dropped the mirror. It shattered.
The wind screamed through the temple, kicking up dust and ancient whispers.
And then the ground beneath the slab cracked open.
It was a shallow hole. Barely a few feet deep.
Inside lay four things.
- A rusted camcorder.
- A university ID card: Karan Sinha.
- A broken rosary.
- A set of anklets — blackened, but unmistakably real.
Sana knelt beside them. “These belonged to the 1986 group.”
Rehan picked up the ID card and felt a sharp jolt in his spine — a vision, not his own:
Karan, screaming without sound, sinking into a stone wall that closed over him like mud.
Meera reaching out with bleeding fingers.
A voice whispering from under the ground — ‘Call my name. Ratnavati. Thrice.’
A bell. Loud. Then louder. Then… gone.
Rehan snapped out of it, his hands shaking. “They were buried here.”
Sana’s voice trembled. “The séance was a trap. Not for the dead. For the living.”
The journal flipped again.
August 13, 1986
“Anuj never made it out. Not really. His body left. But something else stayed. I think he was made to carry the curse. Like a messenger. Or an infection. And now that I’ve written this, I know I’ve passed it on too. Maybe the journal is the bridge. Maybe that’s how it survives.”
Suddenly, Sana grabbed Rehan’s arm. “That’s why it was in the bookstore. It wasn’t hidden. It was placed there.”
“To be found,” Rehan whispered. “By someone who would come back.”
“By you.”
The ground trembled slightly. The anklets in the pit clinked softly, even though no wind moved.
Rehan looked up. Something was walking toward them through the temple door.
A silhouette.
Bent, dragging something behind it.
A shape wearing a human body like a costume. A man.
No. A memory of one.
He knew it instantly.
“Sukhdev?” Rehan stepped forward.
Sana screamed. “No—Rehan, don’t—!”
But it wasn’t Sukhdev anymore.
The figure’s head rose — the face contorted, mouth sewn shut with threads of smoke, and in its eyes swam thirteen tiny dots arranged in a circle. The same mark as Rehan’s arm.
It opened its stitched mouth.
No sound.
Just air.
Cold. Icy. Screaming inside the skull.
And then it pointed — not at Rehan. Not at Sana.
But at the journal.
It burst into flame.
No warning.
The fire was blue. Silent. No smoke. Just heat and curling edges of paper vanishing in thin air.
Rehan tried to smother it with his jacket, but it was useless. The journal was gone within seconds.
And as it disappeared, so did the figure.
As if it had never existed.
The silence afterward was worse.
Rehan and Sana stared at the burned patch on the ground, only the rusted camcorder remaining — the tape still inside.
Rehan picked it up, hands trembling.
“We have to watch it,” he said.
Sana nodded, numb. “Tonight.”
“No,” Rehan said, staring at the burned slab.
“Now.”
Part 4: The Tape
They found a portable battery-operated mini-DV player in Sukhdev’s bag, abandoned just beyond the temple threshold, as though he had dropped it mid-step. The bag was zipped up, untouched, no dust on it—odd, considering the centuries of grime that covered everything else in the fort. Rehan and Sana didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. The silence around them was too complete, as if sound had been sealed behind the ancient stonework.
Rehan loaded the rusted camcorder tape into the player and clicked it on. A distorted whir, a flicker of static, then the screen lit up with the grainy orange glow of a summer sunrise.
August 12, 1986. 5:13 a.m.
The time stamp jittered in the corner.
The footage was handheld, shakily zoomed in on Meera as she sat cross-legged on the smooth slab inside the temple. Her hair was loose. Candles circled her, their flames surprisingly steady. Karan’s voice came from behind the camera.
“Alright, Meera. Do your thing. Let’s wake up some dead kings, shall we?”
Meera didn’t respond. Her face was pale, focused. In her hand was a small brass bell, which she rang once, then twice, then stopped.
She inhaled deeply and whispered:
“Ratnavati… Ratnavati… Ratnavati…”
The screen flickered.
The audio warped.
And then the candle flames shot backward—unnaturally, like sucked by a reverse wind. The camcorder shook violently.
Tanaya’s voice came in suddenly, terrified:
“Did you feel that? Something touched my leg—”
Anuj moved into frame, mouth open in disbelief. “There’s a woman… there’s someone standing outside the arch!”
The camera spun to capture the temple door.
Empty.
But in the corner of the screen, for just a frame, something moved.
A blur. Long white garment. No visible face.
Rehan paused the tape and rewound it slowly, frame by frame. There. The blur again. Closer this time. Almost beside Anuj.
And something else. A bell — faint, but ringing. Not in the audio, but inside the tape itself. A ghostly resonance trapped in magnetic grain.
Sana whispered, “She came when they called her.”
Rehan pressed play again.
The camcorder caught a violent motion — Karan’s face rushing toward the lens as he shouted.
“She’s not stopping! Meera, stop! Don’t let it finish!”
But Meera was unresponsive. Her eyes had rolled back. Her mouth moved rapidly, whispering something indecipherable.
Suddenly, the candles blew out.
Total darkness.
Then static.
Then—one final image.
A slow pan across the slab.
Only Meera remained.
Alone.
Staring into the camera.
And smiling.
Not with joy.
With knowing.
The tape ended.
Rehan removed it, hand damp with sweat.
“Why did the tape survive?” Sana asked. “The journal burned, everything else decayed. But this—this is perfect.”
“Because someone wanted it found,” Rehan said. “This wasn’t just a haunting. It was a message.”
“A warning?”
“Or an invitation.”
They stepped outside the temple again. The sky was still that strange violet, as though dawn had been postponed indefinitely. Rehan felt dizzy. The mark on his forearm pulsed again — deeper now, like something inside his bones responding to an ancient rhythm.
A low hum filled the air.
Faint at first.
Then rising.
A bell. Not metallic — more like a vibration through air and stone. Like the fort itself was tolling.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
The sound seemed to come from below.
The well.
They followed it back to the stepwell, drawn like moths.
It looked deeper now. The air around it trembled slightly, like a mirage.
Rehan stepped to the edge.
This time, he saw her clearly.
Ratnavati.
Or what remained of her.
A figure in white, long hair floating weightlessly around her. Her face was a void — a shifting blur, as if memory itself refused to retain her image. But her eyes were real — two pinpoints of hunger in a sea of ash.
She was staring up at him.
And smiling.
Rehan felt himself swaying forward.
Sana grabbed his arm. “Don’t.”
“She wants me to finish what Meera started,” he said.
“Then don’t give her what she wants.”
“But what if that’s the only way to stop it?”
A voice rose from the well.
Not Meera’s.
Not Ratnavati’s.
Anuj’s.
Clear. Echoed.
“You can leave. But one must stay.”
Rehan turned to Sana.
“No,” she said immediately. “Don’t even say it.”
“She chose me. The journal, the vision, the mark. This was always meant for me.”
“And if that’s what it wants, why are we playing along? Let it rot with its secrets.”
“Secrets don’t rot,” Rehan said softly. “They wait.”
Another bell.
The fourth toll.
Suddenly, the ground cracked beneath Sana’s feet.
She screamed as one leg slipped through a fissure that hadn’t been there before. Rehan grabbed her arm and pulled hard, yanking her back just as the earth slammed shut behind her like a jaw.
They collapsed onto the stones, panting, shaking.
Then Sana’s phone buzzed.
A single notification.
[Message from Unknown Number]: The tape is yours. The silence is hers. You cannot take both.
Sana stared at the screen, then at Rehan.
“We’re being watched.”
“No,” Rehan said, rising to his feet, voice hollow.
“We’re being tested.”
Part 5: The Only Survivor
They didn’t sleep. There was no sunrise. Just that endless, hollow twilight—permanent dusk wrapping Bhangarh Fort in a layer of dread. It wasn’t just the unnatural stillness that gnawed at them; it was the fact that time had clearly stopped. Sana’s phone refused to update, stuck at 6:43 a.m., same as Rehan’s watch. The last normal thing they had was the rusted tape, now tucked inside Rehan’s jacket like a cursed relic. They knew they needed answers, and there was only one place left that might have them—Anuj Bhagat, the only known survivor of the 1986 séance. If he was still alive.
Rehan tried calling the research office where he had once found Meera’s archival notes. Nothing. Then Sana remembered an address scribbled inside the bookstore’s receipt folder—the journal’s wrapper had been lined with local classifieds from 1991, and one of them mentioned a Bhagat family in Ajmer. They had no GPS, no signal, but they had a map in the car. If they could find the main road, they could leave. If the fort would let them.
They packed in silence and made their way out, each step shadowed by the weight of unseen eyes. Anklet chimes followed them intermittently, just enough to remind them she was still there. Watching. Waiting. They crossed the broken fence by dawn’s ghostlight, Rehan holding Sana’s hand like a lifeline. The minute they stepped onto the highway, the fog lifted. Birds chirped. Time resumed. The curse, it seemed, respected boundaries.
They drove five hours to Ajmer without speaking of the fort. Every time Rehan tried to mention the bell, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Like the fort had followed them in pieces.
Anuj Bhagat lived in a small, crumbling apartment near the Dargah. The building was half-abandoned. No one answered when they buzzed, but the door creaked open slowly when Rehan knocked. Inside, the hall reeked of old incense and camphor. The walls were lined with yellowed newspaper clippings, some of them about Bhangarh Fort disappearances, others in languages Rehan couldn’t read. Sana froze when she saw one headline pinned in the center:
“The Last Séance — 3 Students Missing, 1 Returned in Silence”
And beneath it, a photo of a younger Anuj—eyes wide, haunted, mouth slightly open.
An old man appeared in the corridor.
“I knew you would come,” he said.
His voice was brittle, like pages about to tear. But his eyes were still sharp. Still afraid.
“Mr. Bhagat,” Rehan began, “we found Meera’s journal. And the tape.”
Anuj nodded. “I hoped it was destroyed.”
“It was. The journal burned itself. But the tape survived.”
Anuj turned away, walking slowly into a dark room filled with moth-eaten cushions and an altar of faded idols. They followed him inside.
“I was never supposed to speak of it,” he said, sitting cross-legged. “That’s how I was allowed to leave.”
“But you kept the clipping,” Sana whispered.
“To remember that silence has a price.”
Rehan placed the camcorder on the floor.
“She’s still in the fort,” he said. “Ratnavati.”
Anuj flinched. “Don’t say her name. Names are doors.”
Sana leaned forward. “We saw her. In the well. We saw what Meera did—how she summoned something that wasn’t supposed to come.”
“It wasn’t just Meera,” Anuj said, staring at the tape. “She was only the final voice. The fort had been feeding off attempts like hers for centuries—rituals, invocations, unfinished deaths. But she… she made a bridge that worked.”
“You said you weren’t supposed to speak,” Rehan said. “Then why are you telling us now?”
Anuj looked up.
“Because you brought it out,” he said softly. “The tape. It’s not just a record. It’s a container. A piece of her. And now you carry it.”
Rehan’s throat tightened. “What do we do?”
Anuj closed his eyes. “You must return it. But not alone. The curse requires balance. Someone must bear the silence, as I did. Another must speak her name. That is the only way to reseal the door.”
“And if we don’t?”
Anuj opened his eyes again.
“She won’t stay in the fort forever. She’ll find another place. Another town. Another night.”
Sana stood. “So one of us has to stay behind? Like you?”
He shook his head. “Worse. One of you has to become the silence. It’s not just staying. It’s surrendering your voice, your memories, your self.”
Rehan whispered, “And the other?”
Anuj smiled sadly.
“The one who speaks her name must do it without fear. Without hatred. With respect. Otherwise, she won’t leave. She’ll enter.”
Sana sat down again, hands cold. “How did you survive?”
Anuj looked at her, and for a moment, Rehan thought he wouldn’t answer.
Then he said, “Because I was a coward. I ran. I left them there. I bore the silence, but I never resealed the door. That’s why she’s still there. Waiting.”
A silence hung between them.
Then Anuj pointed at the tape. “Destroy it. Before she takes shape again.”
“We can’t,” Rehan said. “She won’t let us.”
As if summoned, a bell rang.
Once. Faintly.
Not in the room. Not in the fort.
Inside Rehan’s chest.
Part 6: Return to the Gate
The road back to Bhangarh felt longer.
Not in distance, but in weight. Sana drove in silence, her knuckles white against the steering wheel. Rehan sat beside her, holding the camcorder like a living thing, its surface pulsing faintly warm, as though it breathed. It had been nearly two days since their visit to Anuj Bhagat. Since the bell rang inside Rehan’s chest. Since the final truth had been spoken: someone must carry the silence, and someone must speak the name.
Neither had said which role they would take.
It hung between them, a decision waiting in the dark.
The sky was overcast by the time they reached the outskirts of the fort. It hadn’t rained, but the clouds pressed low, bloated with threat. There was no wildlife. Not even the usual thorny shrubs along the hills. Everything was stilled—as if the earth itself had exhaled, and forgotten how to breathe back in.
The ASI gate was locked. No guards in sight. But the side fence was still torn from before. Just wide enough for one body to pass.
Sana looked at Rehan. “You still have the mark?”
He rolled up his sleeve. The circle with thirteen dots had darkened. A single crack now ran through its center like a fault line on stone.
“She’s close,” he said.
They climbed through the fence. Their feet touched Bhangarh again.
The sky dimmed instantly.
The fort hadn’t changed. And yet, it had. The air was thicker, pressed close like wet wool. The corridors were darker than dusk allowed. The temple’s spire leaned a little more. Every shadow looked as if it had grown teeth.
And most disturbingly: the slab had been restored.
The broken stone, once cracked and scorched, now stood smooth again. A faint glow pulsed beneath it.
“She’s waiting,” Rehan said. “She rebuilt the altar.”
Sana touched the camcorder. “Then we give it back.”
They approached the slab. Rehan laid the camcorder down gently, his palms already trembling.
But the moment it touched the surface, the slab hissed—and a sound like glass screaming filled the temple.
Then: silence.
And then, a voice.
Soft. From behind.
“You came back.”
They turned.
Meera stood in the temple’s archway.
Not aged. Not a ghost. The same as in the tape.
Hair flowing. Eyes dark. Wearing the same kurta. Same bangles. Same blood at the edge of her sleeve.
Rehan’s breath caught. “That’s not possible.”
Meera smiled. “You brought the offering. The bridge is complete.”
Sana took a step back. “You’re not her.”
“No,” Meera said, stepping forward. “But she was me. For a time. And now, you’ll be her. For all time.”
Rehan stepped in front of Sana. “We know the rules. One speaks. One stays.”
Meera tilted her head. “Old truths. From a coward. But yes—if done correctly, the gate can be shut again.”
Sana said quietly, “I’ll stay.”
Rehan turned. “No.”
“I don’t fear silence,” she said. “But you’re the one who’s carried her voice. You’re the one she marked. You’re the speaker.”
Rehan’s throat clenched. He looked at Meera—at what wore her.
“Say it,” Meera whispered. “Say my name.”
He hesitated.
Then said it once: “Ratnavati.”
The walls seemed to ripple.
Twice: “Ratnavati.”
Wind curled into the chamber.
Thrice: “Ratnavati.”
The candle flames erupted.
And then everything collapsed inward.
The temple floor shattered. Rehan and Sana dropped to their knees. A column of ash rose from the slab, swirling, becoming a figure—limbs unfurling, hair uncoiling like vines.
Her face was clearer now.
She was no longer faceless.
She was everyone.
Meera. Tanaya. The nameless child who vanished in the famine. The Rajasthani bride buried alive. The devadasi silenced by her king. The refugee girl who never crossed the border.
She was every woman claimed and forgotten.
And now, she would not forget.
“You called me.” Her voice was fire. “You owe me.”
Rehan raised his hands. “Take the silence. Take the camcorder. Just—go.”
But Ratnavati looked at Sana.
“She offered herself. Not you.”
Sana didn’t flinch.
She stepped forward.
“I stay.”
The spirit smiled.
And vanished.
The wind died.
The slab cracked again.
The camcorder melted.
Rehan fell to his knees, lungs heaving.
The temple was empty.
Sana was gone.
Part 7: What Follows After Silence
Rehan stumbled out of the temple, his vision a blur of shapes and light. The sun had returned—or at least, the idea of it. Shadows still clung to the edges of the fort, but the sky above was no longer bruised. It was pale. Empty. As if washed out.
He didn’t remember climbing over the fence.
He didn’t remember starting the car.
But suddenly he was on the road again, driving with trembling hands, dust rising behind him like memory trying to keep pace.
He didn’t speak. There was no one to answer.
The passenger seat was vacant.
Sana was gone.
The silence inside the car was unnatural. Not peaceful—too silent. The kind of silence that feels like something watching. Like the world had decided not to make a sound until he understood what he’d done.
He reached Delhi by nightfall.
But something was wrong.
It began with small things.
His phone refused to unlock. His face ID didn’t work. When he entered his passcode manually, the screen flickered and went black. At home, the lights flickered each time he stepped near them. His mirror reflected him—but half a second behind. Like it had to remember who he was.
He tried calling his editor. The line wouldn’t connect. He went to the channel office. It was locked. Dark. A note pinned on the door read:
“Channel permanently closed. Inquiries not entertained.”
His heart pounded. He stepped back.
That’s when he noticed something in the window’s reflection.
A second figure standing behind him.
White dress. Long hair.
He spun around.
Empty street.
No one.
He ran.
That night, Rehan dreamt of the temple.
But it wasn’t ruined anymore. It stood tall, lit by thousands of oil lamps, music echoing from within. A great black bell hung in its center, swaying though no wind stirred.
Sana stood at the base of the slab, dressed in white, her eyes calm, her mouth shut.
He tried to speak to her, but no sound came out.
Then, in the dream, she raised her hand and pointed behind him.
Rehan turned—
And saw the mirror again.
Only it wasn’t cracked anymore.
It was whole.
And inside it, his reflection smiled.
But he didn’t.
He awoke drenched in sweat.
The mark on his arm was gone.
But something else had replaced it—a faint burn across his chest, like fingers had gripped him in sleep.
He opened his drawer and found the last working relic of the investigation: a small tape recorder. Not the camcorder—just a backup Sana used for ambient sound.
He pressed play.
At first, only static.
Then… her voice.
Sana’s voice.
“If you’re hearing this, I stayed. I chose it. You must not come back. Not ever. The silence is sealed—for now. But there’s something I didn’t tell you. Before the séance, I touched the mirror. I saw… her.”
A long pause.
Then:
“She wasn’t just looking for worship. She was looking for a new face.”
The recording ended.
Rehan sat in the dark for a long time.
And then, he looked into the mirror on the wall.
His reflection smiled again.
Too soon.
Too wide.
And didn’t stop.
Part 8: The Face in the Mirror
For two weeks, Rehan didn’t leave his apartment.
He kept the lights off. Curtains drawn. Mirrors covered with cloth, each one taped at the corners as if to hold something inside. He unplugged the TV after it flickered on by itself one night—just static, but he could have sworn he heard someone breathing through it. His laptop refused to power up. His phone only displayed a black screen. And each time he pressed it against his ear, it vibrated once and whispered:
“Say her name.”
He didn’t.
He wouldn’t.
He wasn’t sure what he was anymore.
On the fourteenth day, Rehan woke to the sound of anklets.
Inside his flat.
Click.
Clink.
Soft. Measured. Closer.
He rose slowly, heart clenched, and tiptoed into the hallway.
There were no footsteps.
Just the mirror.
Uncovered.
The cloth lay crumpled at its feet.
His reflection stood inside, perfectly still, arms by its side.
But Rehan’s own arms trembled.
He stepped forward.
The reflection didn’t move.
Closer.
Closer.
Then he saw it: the eyes were wrong.
Too black.
Too still.
And then—it blinked.
But he hadn’t.
He turned to run.
Behind him, the mirror shattered.
A scream pierced the room—not from outside, not from a throat. From inside his skull, like glass splintering through memory. He clutched his ears, fell to the floor, writhing. The sound stopped only when he said it aloud.
“Ratnavati.”
The mirror pieces began to pulse.
That night, Rehan received a package at his doorstep. No address. No courier.
Just a box.
Inside: a USB drive and a note in Sana’s handwriting.
“You are the archive now. If you erase it, she finds another. If you keep it, you keep her sleeping. Choose.”
Rehan plugged the drive into the only device that worked—his old recorder.
Inside was footage.
New footage.
Bhangarh.
From his own camcorder.
Only… he wasn’t in it.
Sana was.
Meera was.
Even Anuj.
And finally—a new figure.
Wearing his face.
But smiling with her eyes.
Rehan began uploading the footage that night.
Not to news outlets. Not to YouTube. Not to any traceable server.
To a deep, encrypted archive used by folklore researchers, haunted artifact cataloguers, paranormal protection networks.
It was called the Silent Registry.
He created a new entry:
Case #67: The Séance of Thirteen Echoes.
Status: Contained. Surveillance ongoing.
Custodian: R. Sen.
Instructions: Do not awaken unless the bell tolls again.
Then he shut the laptop.
And sat in the dark.
Waiting.
Listening.
Because he knew the truth now.
You don’t end a curse like this.
You become its librarian.
And somewhere, deep inside the abandoned walls of Bhangarh Fort, a slab began to pulse.
A girl in white whispered a name.
And the wind answered.
The End
