Isha Mirza
1
Rhea Sen stepped off the dusty evening train into the heart of Lucknow, her senses immediately overwhelmed by the city’s curious blend of melancholy grandeur and stubborn life. Rickshaws rattled past the faded gates of old nawabi havelis, and the air carried the scent of marigolds, incense, and the distant, lingering sweetness of attar. As an art historian specializing in forgotten women of the Awadh court, she had dreamed of this moment for years: to walk the same stone paths once graced by courtesans whose dances whispered through history only in half-remembered couplets and brittle letters. Rhea had read every archived fragment she could find in Delhi, but Lucknow itself, with its cracked domes and silent courtyards, promised a truth that could never be contained in paper and ink. Her rented room overlooked the distant silhouette of Kaiserbagh—a sprawling palace complex built by Wajid Ali Shah, now largely in ruins, its arches caught forever between shadow and moonlight. Even from afar, it seemed to watch her, daring her to come closer.
She met Zoya Siddiqui the next morning in a quiet, sunlit corner of the State Archives, where dust motes floated like golden spirits. Zoya, a local historian, wore a simple chikankari kurta and spoke with the soft authority of someone who had grown up breathing in Lucknow’s layered past. They talked of music halls now silent, gardens overtaken by weeds, and the artists whose names had faded with the paint on palace walls. It was Zoya who first spoke of Mehrunnisa—the dancer in the blood-red veil who had vanished during the siege of 1857. Her name was an echo Rhea had heard only once, buried in a footnote of a forgotten text. According to legend, Mehrunnisa’s dance was so haunting that soldiers paused mid-battle to watch, and when the city fell, she vanished into the smoke and ruin, leaving behind neither grave nor memory, only whispers. Something in the name, heavy with sorrow and seduction, caught at Rhea’s heart like an old melody half-remembered.
That evening, drawn by an impulse stronger than reason, Rhea made her way through the arched gateway of Kaiserbagh just as dusk bled into night. Vines curled around crumbling jharokhas, the marble floor cool beneath her sandals. She paused under a half-broken arch, where the breeze smelled faintly of jasmine and centuries-old dust. Shadows lengthened, and for a moment, she thought she heard the distant tinkle of anklets and a soft sigh of silk brushing stone. But when she turned, there was only silence and the ruined grandeur of the courtyard, where the last sunlight burned red against the walls before dying away. Standing there, breathing the air of history and ruin, Rhea felt something stir in the quiet: the pull of an untold story, something tragic and beautiful, waiting in the dark corners of Kaiserbagh to be found. And as night settled like a velvet curtain, she whispered Mehrunnisa’s name to the silent stones, unaware that the palace, in its slumbering decay, had begun to whisper back.
2
The next morning, sunlight filtered weakly through Rhea’s window, painting patterns on her notebook where she had scribbled fragments of conversation and half-formed questions. Determined to dig deeper, she returned to the archives with Zoya, whose quiet encouragement felt like a protective charm against the oppressive hush of the records room. Among brittle folios and fading ledgers, they uncovered a slim, fragile diary bound in cracked red leather, its pages stained and almost translucent with age. On the first page, in a graceful Persian hand, was a single name: Mehrunnisa. As Rhea traced the letters, a shiver ran down her spine, and for an instant, she thought she smelled jasmine, faint but unmistakable. Ignoring the sudden chill, she carefully turned the pages, eyes drinking in fragments of verse, sketches of anklets and veils, and words heavy with longing and ambition—hints of a woman determined not just to dance, but to be remembered forever.
That evening, notebook in hand and heart racing, Rhea returned alone to Kaiserbagh. The palace lay hushed under the blue-grey dusk, its arches carved like frozen music against the sky. She wandered through broken courtyards where moss grew thick on marble fountains, her footsteps echoing against cracked walls still bearing faint traces of muraled dancers. Deep in the ruins, she paused under an archway where the air felt inexplicably colder. Moonlight streamed through a broken jharokha, pooling on the floor like liquid silver. And there, in that shifting glow, Rhea saw her: a figure draped in a blood-red veil, standing utterly still among the shadows. The woman’s head turned slightly, though the face remained hidden, and the veil shimmered as though stirred by an unseen breeze. Rhea’s breath caught in her throat, her body frozen between fear and fascination. In the next blink, the figure dissolved into the darkness, leaving only the scent of jasmine hanging heavy in the air.
Shaken yet inexplicably drawn, Rhea stumbled back to her room, the vision replaying behind her eyes with feverish clarity. She couldn’t decide what unsettled her more: the impossible sight itself, or the deep, irrational pull she felt toward it—as though the ghost of Mehrunnisa had chosen her, whispering secrets only she could hear. That night, long after the city had quieted, Rhea pored over the diary by the light of a single lamp. Words leapt out at her: “I will not fade… my dance will remain, even if my body does not.” Her fingers trembled as she traced the ink, and when she finally closed her eyes, the veil between waking and dream seemed thinner than ever. She dreamt of cold marble under bare feet, the weight of silk swirling around her, and a silent audience watching in shadows as she danced in a red veil that felt both foreign and frighteningly familiar. And as dawn broke over Lucknow, Rhea awoke with a gasp, her pulse pounding, and a single thought spiraling through her mind: Mehrunnisa had danced not just to be seen—but to remain, forever.
3
Morning light seeped through the cracked windowpanes of Rhea’s room, revealing something that made her breath catch—a fine trail of scratches curling around her forearm, faint but fresh, as though left by unseen fingernails during the night. She touched them gingerly; they burned lightly under her fingertips, an inexplicable reminder that the previous evening’s vision was not just an illusion born of exhaustion or imagination. Rhea tried to dismiss the marks as accidental—perhaps from navigating thorny vines or brushing against the rough stone walls of Kaiserbagh—but a quiet dread settled beneath her curiosity, stubborn and cold. Shaking it off, she wrapped a scarf around her arm, gathered her notebook and camera, and stepped out into the dusty morning heat, telling herself that the scratches were nothing compared to what she might discover if she kept going.
Drawn by something stronger than reason, Rhea returned that afternoon to the archives with Zoya, sharing only parts of what she had seen. Zoya listened silently, her brow furrowed, before confessing that Mehrunnisa’s story had always carried darker whispers among older locals: that the dancer had vanished because she made a pact so her art would never die, binding her spirit to the red veil itself. Rhea’s pulse quickened at the idea, equal parts fear and fascination coiling inside her chest. Back in the quiet reading room, she traced more diary fragments, each stained with time but sharp with longing—Mehrunnisa writing of dancing beyond death, of shadows applauding when the living no longer could, of beauty so fierce it demanded a price. As Rhea read, she felt something cold and invisible slip around her thoughts, like a hand brushing her mind. For the first time, she wondered if her research was no longer just about understanding the past, but awakening something meant to remain silent.
That evening, unable to resist the pull, Rhea slipped once more into Kaiserbagh as dusk deepened to night. The palace lay in solemn ruin, arches silhouetted against a bruised sky. She wandered deeper than before, her camera hanging forgotten at her side. The air smelled faintly of jasmine again, richer this time, and each step echoed like a question in the crumbling courtyards. Then she saw her: the red-veiled figure swaying in slow, deliberate circles, as though dancing to music only she could hear. Rhea’s breath caught, her feet rooted to the marble floor. For a heartbeat that stretched into eternity, the dancer turned as if to face her, though the veil hid her face completely. Suddenly, an unseen force seemed to tug at Rhea’s arm, sharp enough to make her wince. When she looked down, fresh scratches were welling, beads of blood forming against her skin. Fear surged like cold water, yet curiosity kept her from fleeing. The figure faded once more into the broken shadows, leaving silence and jasmine in her wake. Shaken, Rhea pressed her palm to the new marks, the sting anchoring her to reality. Even as fear settled in her bones, another realization took root, darker and more dangerous: the dancer was not only haunting Kaiserbagh—but reaching across the centuries, and somehow, impossibly, reaching for her.
4
The next day, the scratches on Rhea’s arm had deepened into raw, red lines, each one burning like a whispered warning. She covered them with a scarf, telling herself she’d imagined the force that had drawn blood in the night’s ruins. Yet beneath her fear pulsed a strange compulsion—a need to return, to see the dancer again, to know what lay behind that red veil. As dusk approached, she walked back toward Kaiserbagh, the air heavy with the day’s fading heat and the scent of bougainvillea wilting along ancient walls. At the crumbling entrance arch, she paused, and that’s when she heard footsteps scraping the stone behind her. Turning, she saw an older man holding a flickering lantern, his face lined and grave, thick mustache casting a darker shadow under the trembling flame. He introduced himself in a low voice as Rizwan Ali—the night caretaker of this part of Kaiserbagh—and studied her with wary, tired eyes that had likely seen more than any history book could capture.
Rizwan’s voice was low, almost conspiratorial, as he asked why she kept coming at night, alone, into places best left to memory. At first, Rhea hesitated, but something about the weight in his stare made her confess: the sightings of the woman in the red veil, the scent of jasmine that haunted her, and the scratches she couldn’t explain. Rizwan listened without interruption, the lantern’s glow painting restless shadows on the cracked walls around them. When she finished, he let out a slow sigh that seemed to carry the sorrow of centuries. He spoke of Mehrunnisa not as a legend but as something alive—a dancer so consumed by her desire to remain eternal that, on the eve of the British siege, she had vanished into the shadows, taking her last dance beyond the living world. “Beta,” he rasped, voice cracking, “she dances still, but what she seeks now is not applause—it is blood, breath, and a body to dance in again.” His words wrapped around her like the night breeze—chilling, heavy with the weight of warning and inevitability.
Rhea’s heart pounded as Rizwan’s lantern light wavered against the stone, making the ruins seem to twist and breathe. He urged her to stop coming, to leave the past where it belonged, buried and silent beneath broken domes. But as he spoke, part of Rhea recoiled—not from fear, but from the idea of leaving the mystery unfinished, the story untold. Even now, the diary fragments seemed to hum faintly in her satchel, as if they too had waited for centuries to be remembered. She thanked Rizwan, promising caution, yet her promise felt thin, fraying even as she spoke it. When she finally turned to go, she caught a last glimpse of him standing in the archway, lantern raised, his face carved in sorrow and shadow. His warning echoed in her mind with every step back to her room: that what haunted Kaiserbagh did not want to be found by scholars or mourned by the curious—it wanted something far deeper, far darker. Yet despite the scratches burning on her arm and the tremor in her breath, Rhea felt the pull of the ruins growing stronger still, a siren song of moonlight and silk that would not let her rest.
5
The next morning dawned with restless heat and a sky streaked with pale clouds, but Rhea felt none of it. The words from Mehrunnisa’s diary had rooted deep in her mind, tangling with Rizwan’s warning like thorns under skin. She sat cross-legged on her narrow bed, the diary fragments spread before her like pieces of a shattered mirror. By the dim light of her table lamp, she read again the lines written in that graceful, desperate hand: “If beauty must die with breath, then let me trade my breath away. Let the veil hold my dance when flesh betrays me.” The words trembled with longing and something darker—an incantation, a surrender. Rhea traced the faded ink with shaking fingers, feeling a strange heat blooming in her chest, as though the words themselves were alive, whispering truths meant to stay hidden. The scratches on her arm throbbed, a silent reminder that discovery came at a price, that each revelation pulled her deeper into something that was no longer just history.
Later that day, driven by a compulsion that had become as constant as breath, she returned to the archives with Zoya. The quiet reading room smelled of old paper and dust, yet it felt alive, like it too listened. Together they pieced together a fuller picture of Mehrunnisa’s last days: a courtesan beloved and envied, dancing at the very edge of empire’s collapse. One fragment described how, on the eve of the siege, she had sought out a peerless fakir rumored to deal in forbidden arts. “My dance must not die when cannon and flame come,” the entry read, “let my spirit find a home in the veil, so that the steps never cease, even in ruin.” Zoya looked at Rhea with unease, the silence between them thick as dusk gathering outside the arched windows. Rhea felt a chill coil down her spine, yet beneath the fear burned fascination so fierce it almost tasted sweet. Mehrunnisa had not only wanted to be remembered—she had vowed never to be forgotten, even if it meant binding her spirit to something beyond death.
As night draped itself over Lucknow, Rhea stood once more at the threshold of Kaiserbagh, the diary pressed against her chest. The palace waited in shadows, arches black against the pale wash of moonlight. Stepping onto the cold marble, she felt the air tighten, scented thickly with jasmine, too strong to be natural. And then, in the ruined courtyard where weeds sprouted between cracked tiles, she saw her: the dancer in the red veil, swaying in slow, deliberate circles. The veil shimmered as though catching a breeze that did not exist, each turn precise and mournful. Rhea’s heart pounded so violently she could barely breathe, yet her feet moved closer, pulled by something ancient and hungry. In that moment, she understood: Mehrunnisa had kept her promise to herself—and now the veil was not just a relic of cloth and silk, but a prison for a spirit desperate to dance again, waiting for a vessel of flesh to step willingly into the rhythm. And with each breath Rhea took, she felt the space between them narrowing, as though the past itself reached out, eager to claim her in a dance that had never truly ended.
6
The moon hung low and heavy over Kaiserbagh that night, its pale light spilling across the broken marble like a silent invitation. Rhea moved through the ruins as though in a trance, the diary clutched tight against her chest, her breath shallow and quick. The air smelled thickly of jasmine, so overpowering it made her dizzy, blurring the boundary between memory and stone. The arches seemed to lean closer, the shadows lengthening into shapes that whispered secrets of silk and ghungroo bells. Rhea felt the pull more strongly than ever—a quiet insistence thrumming in her veins, drawing her through a corridor overgrown with weeds to a courtyard half-drowned in moonlight. And there she saw her again: the red-veiled figure, no longer flickering at the edge of sight but standing clear and solid, each fold of the veil catching the moon’s glow like dark fire. The dancer began to sway, and Rhea’s own body answered before thought could intervene, her arms rising, her feet moving in time to a rhythm she could neither hear nor resist.
It felt at first like dancing beside a mirror that moved ahead of her, guiding her steps with unseen hands. But as the silent dance deepened, something colder slipped into her breath, an alien grace flowing into her limbs. Her body turned with perfect balance, bending and spiraling in movements she had never learned yet performed with uncanny precision. Sweat chilled her skin, yet she could not stop. Rhea saw flashes of a grand court long dead: arches draped with brocade, oil lamps flickering, eyes watching her from velvet shadows. And at the center of it all, she glimpsed herself veiled in blood-red silk, her own reflection splitting into two—one half terrified, the other exultant. Panic clawed at the edge of her mind, but the dance was stronger, winding around her heartbeat until it seemed her will itself had become part of the rhythm. When at last her body slowed and stilled, the figure across from her did the same, and for a breathless instant, Rhea felt the veil not as something separate, but as something draped across her own face, pressing against her skin with the weight of centuries.
When the vision shattered, Rhea staggered back, breathless and trembling. The courtyard was silent once more, the dancer gone, the moonlight cold and indifferent. But the feeling lingered—a tingling numbness in her limbs, a disquieting sense that her movements were not entirely her own. Looking down, she saw fresh scratches traced over her wrists and forearms, deeper and more deliberate than before, as though a hand far older than hers had marked her skin from within. The jasmine scent faded, replaced by the damp smell of stone and earth. She clutched the diary, now warm to the touch, against her chest, as though it were both anchor and curse. Heart pounding, she turned away from the courtyard, every step feeling heavier, her body still echoing with phantom steps she could not remember choosing. And as she crossed the threshold back into the world of the living, Rhea knew with a clarity that chilled her blood: she was no longer merely watching Mehrunnisa’s dance—she had begun to dance it herself.
7
The next morning dawned harsh and colorless, the fever of the night clinging to Rhea like sweat that wouldn’t dry. Her limbs felt heavy, her reflection in the cracked mirror seemed subtly wrong—her eyes darker, the set of her mouth unfamiliar. Desperate for answers and fearing what she had begun to awaken within herself, she returned to the archives and begged Zoya for help. Zoya listened, pale-faced, as Rhea described the dance, the scratches that seemed to bloom without cause, and the suffocating scent of jasmine that haunted her even in daylight. Zoya hesitated, then spoke of an old rumor: a hidden chamber in Kaiserbagh where Mehrunnisa was said to have practiced alone, away from curious eyes—a place the older caretakers called the Red Room. According to legend, the room held traces of her last dance, her final moments before she vanished from history. The thought made Rhea’s heart clench with fear and compulsion alike, the need to see it burning hotter than reason could quench.
That evening, under a sky bruised purple by dusk, Rhea and Zoya entered Kaiserbagh together for the first time. The ruins felt more oppressive, the arches looming like silent sentinels, and the jasmine scent lay thick and close as a whispered secret. Guided by an old plan Zoya had found, they traced forgotten corridors choked with weeds and dust until they reached a narrow, almost hidden passage sealed by a rotting wooden door. It yielded with a protesting groan, revealing a small octagonal room lit only by moonlight seeping through a broken jaali. Inside, faded murals lined the walls—figures of dancers frozen mid-step, the paint peeling but their grace unmistakable. Silk scraps, moth-eaten and dulled by time, littered the corners, and in the center stood a cracked mirror framed in tarnished silver. Rhea’s breath caught as she stepped closer; the air felt alive, charged with something neither memory nor entirely spirit, as though the dancer had never truly left.
Standing before the mirror, Rhea raised her eyes—and what she saw made her blood run cold. For an instant, the glass did not reflect her face alone, but the veiled form of Mehrunnisa, the red silk shimmering over hollow, hungry eyes. The vision flickered, then steadied, as though the spirit within the veil was testing the boundary between them. A pulse of dizziness gripped Rhea, and her hand lifted without conscious thought, fingers brushing the cracked surface. In that touch, memory not her own surged: the crush of silk, the weight of bangles, the heat of desperate ambition to dance beyond death. She staggered back, breath ragged, heart slamming painfully in her chest. Zoya’s hand on her shoulder anchored her to the present, but her own reflection still felt somehow doubled—half her own, half belonging to something older, fierce, and unquiet. The room lay silent, but the air still seemed to vibrate with the ghost of unseen ghungroo bells. And as they backed out into the cool night, Rhea felt it deep in her bones: the veil that separated her from Mehrunnisa was fraying, and the Red Room had only hastened its unraveling.
8
That night, Rhea lay awake in her narrow bed, the diary open beside her like a restless companion. The jasmine scent clung stubbornly to the folds of her scarf, and the scratches on her arms throbbed in slow, burning pulses. When she closed her eyes, she saw not her own reflection but the hollow-eyed figure in the red veil, circling endlessly in the moonlit ruin. Each breath felt borrowed, each heartbeat echoed by another presence lurking just beyond her skin. At dawn, she caught sight of herself in the mirror: her eyes looked older, darker, and for a fleeting instant, her lips curved into a smile that felt entirely wrong—hungry, cold, and ancient. Panic rose in her chest, crashing like a monsoon tide, but beneath it coiled a fascination so deep it tasted almost like surrender. Mehrunnisa’s story had seeped into her blood, until Rhea could no longer tell where the dancer ended and she began.
Desperate for answers, Rhea returned to the archives, seeking Zoya’s steady voice to quiet the rising chaos. But Zoya recoiled when she saw the fresh scratches, deeper now, and the tremor in Rhea’s hands that would not stop. In hushed tones, Zoya begged her to stop—warned her that obsession had become possession, that the dancer’s spirit was no longer content to haunt the ruins but was reaching into flesh, into breath. Rhea tried to speak, but the words that slipped from her lips were not her own—snatches of Persian couplets and fragments of Mehrunnisa’s longing: “The dance must not die… even if breath must be traded.” The sound of her own voice, reshaped by a cadence centuries old, chilled her to the bone. Fear cracked through the fascination, but it was already too late: every night, the pull grew stronger, the veil thinning until the line between memory and marrow blurred into shadows and silk.
That evening, Rhea stood again before the broken arches of Kaiserbagh, moonlight spilling like cold water over the marble. The jasmine scent pressed against her lungs, sweet and suffocating, and the diary burned hot against her chest as though alive. As she stepped into the courtyard, the dancer appeared, red veil swirling in slow, deliberate circles, and the air itself seemed to bend around her. Rhea felt her own feet move without command, drawn by an invisible thread. Her pulse quickened, heart slamming painfully, yet her limbs moved with inhuman grace—turning, bowing, spiraling in rhythms etched deep in another woman’s soul. She felt her own self slipping, each step loosening the anchor of memory, of name. And somewhere in the whirling dark, she understood with terrible clarity: Mehrunnisa did not merely want to be seen—she wanted to live again, to dance again in blood and breath, even if it meant devouring the living vessel before her. The dance slowed, the moonlight paling, but the hunger in the air remained—a silent promise that the veil’s embrace would soon be complete. Rhea staggered back, gasping, terror clawing at her heart. Yet even in fear, part of her still longed to finish the dance. And as she fled the courtyard, the veil seemed to whisper against her ear, soft and unyielding: “Not yet… but soon.”
9
Thunder rolled low across the Lucknow sky that night, the monsoon clouds gathering heavy and black above Kaiserbagh like mourning drapes. Rhea walked through the ruin’s arched gateway, rain soaking her scarf and plastering her hair to her face, but she barely felt the cold. The diary lay pressed against her chest, each page burned into her mind until the words pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat. The jasmine scent rose through the wet air, impossibly strong, curling around her like invisible hands. Her limbs trembled, but her steps were steady, driven by a compulsion that had swallowed fear and replaced it with something darker—a need to see, to know, to belong. In the shattered courtyard, moonlight fractured by rain shimmered on marble, and there, waiting as though she had always been part of the night, stood Mehrunnisa: red veil drenched but still burning crimson against the storm’s pale rage.
Lightning split the sky, and in its brief blaze, Rhea saw the dancer’s face beneath the veil—empty, eyeless hollows burning with a hunger as old as the stones beneath their feet. Rain poured down in sheets, drumming on broken tiles, but the silence between them was louder still. Then the dancer began to move, her steps slow and deliberate, and Rhea felt her own body pulled forward by an invisible thread, limbs surrendering to a rhythm that throbbed not in the air, but inside her bones. She spun, bent, and rose in motions too perfect, too practiced to be her own. Memories that were not hers flooded her mind: silken corridors lit by oil lamps, the rustle of brocade, the gaze of an unseen audience, and above all, the suffocating ache of wanting to be remembered so fiercely that even death became a price willingly paid. Rhea’s breath caught, her chest burning, but the dance commanded her forward, each step blurring her name, her past, until she felt herself dissolving into the music of the rain.
For a heartbeat that felt like eternity, Rhea’s vision doubled. She saw herself from outside—dancing in the red veil, yet also trapped behind it, a prisoner in her own skin. Lightning flashed again, and in that raw moment of clarity, she glimpsed the truth Mehrunnisa had hidden in every whispered promise of eternity: the dance was not salvation, but sacrifice. To remain beyond death, she had to take the living as vessel and offering. Terror surged, clawing up through the fog of longing, and Rhea fought to hold her own thoughts, her own breath. The courtyard seemed to spin, marble gleaming wet and slick, and with a final desperate cry—half her voice, half a voice centuries old—she tore herself back, stumbling away from the dancer whose veil shimmered like blood in the rain. Chest heaving, soaked and shaking, Rhea backed out of the courtyard, her reflection in a broken mirror catching for an instant the hollow-eyed hunger she had nearly embraced. The dance slowed behind her, the dancer watching silently, and in that stare lay a promise as cold and inevitable as the monsoon winds: The dance is not done. And as thunder cracked overhead, Rhea realized that escape might not be enough—because part of the red veil’s darkness now lived inside her, waiting for the final surrender.
10
Dawn broke over Lucknow in a pale, reluctant light, painting the ruined arches of Kaiserbagh in shades of ghostly gold. Rhea stood at the threshold of the Red Room, her breath catching in the cool air heavy with silence and the faintest trace of jasmine that never truly left her. The diary trembled in her hand, its pages swollen from rain but the words still sharp, alive with longing and curse alike. Sleep had eluded her through the night; every time her eyes closed, she saw the dancer in the red veil circling closer, felt her own limbs answer that ancient rhythm. Now, standing where Mehrunnisa had whispered her final vow, Rhea understood the cost of remembering too deeply: the past did not always wish to be known, and some stories demanded blood as the price for their telling. The Red Room waited, its cracked mirror reflecting only fragments of a face that no longer felt entirely hers.
With trembling fingers slick with rainwater and sweat, Rhea struck a match and held it to the edge of the diary. The paper curled, blackening and smoking, the flames small yet relentless as they licked across Mehrunnisa’s words. For a heartbeat, the jasmine scent bloomed so powerfully that Rhea staggered, the air thick with longing, grief, and rage. The dancer’s presence surged in the room—unseen but felt in every drop of sweat chilling on Rhea’s skin, every flicker of shadow in the corners. The cracked mirror seemed to shimmer, and in its depths, Rhea caught the shape of the veiled figure reaching for her with empty, hungry hands. The smoke twisted, veiling the room in shifting silhouettes of dancers long dead, and Rhea felt a final pull so fierce it made her knees buckle—an offer to step across the veil forever, to become the dance itself, deathless and unseen.
But as the last page burned to ash in her palm, the pull snapped. The jasmine scent thinned to nothing, and the Red Room fell silent, as though even the past had paused to breathe. Rhea slumped to the cold floor, sweat and tears streaking her face, chest heaving with the raw ache of survival. The mirror reflected only herself now—trembling, bruised, eyes wide with horror and relief. Yet behind the relief lay a deeper knowing: some shadows never truly leave. When she stepped outside, dawn had softened the ruins; the marble arches glowed gently under the new sun, and the air smelled only of rain-soaked earth. Rhea turned once to look back at Kaiserbagh, the silence settling around its bones like a shroud. Mehrunnisa’s dance had ended that night—not with applause, but with ash and memory. And as Rhea walked away, scars still burning faintly on her arms, she understood she had carried part of the red veil back with her—not as a curse, but as a reminder that even the most beautiful stories can hunger to consume those who dare to listen too closely.
End
