Rudra Pratap Sharma
1
The dusty roads leading into Alwar shimmered beneath the late afternoon sun as Devendra “Dev” Singh leaned forward against the rattling seat of the hired jeep, his eyes fixed on the rugged Aravalli Hills in the distance. The heat pressed down, unforgiving, but for Dev, the oppressive weather was just another detail in the landscape of Rajasthan—a backdrop to history’s forgotten voices. A backpack filled with notebooks, excavation tools, and his trusty camera rested by his side, each item carefully chosen for the task ahead. He had come not as a tourist, but as a seeker of truths buried in stone and silence. His professors in Delhi had often called him a skeptic too stubborn for his own good, dismissing myths as exaggerations or half-truths meant to awe villagers. And now, as the jeep wound closer to the outskirts of Bhangarh, his skepticism had never been stronger. The villagers along the roadside, watching the vehicle pass, whispered among themselves, shaking their heads with a kind of weary pity. Their eyes seemed to say the same thing: You are going where you should not. But Dev simply noted the observation in his mind with academic curiosity rather than fear. For him, Bhangarh was not cursed—it was an archaeological site with stories waiting to be uncovered.
The jeep finally slowed to a halt at the edge of a crumbling stone archway that marked the approach to Bhangarh Fort. Here, the air shifted. Even Dev, who rarely gave in to anything resembling superstition, felt the sudden stillness that settled over the ruins. Birds that had filled the air with sound on the drive up were silent here, their absence as noticeable as the broken stones scattered across the ground. Standing there, with his boots crunching against the gravel path, Dev took in the silhouette of the fort against the dying light of dusk. Massive walls scarred by centuries of neglect loomed like hollow guardians, their shadows stretching unnaturally long. It was then that a voice, soft but firm, broke into his reverie. Priya Rathore, his assigned guide, stood nearby in a simple salwar suit, her dupatta pulled over her hair against the evening breeze. Her eyes, dark and steady, carried both knowledge and an unspoken warning. She introduced herself briskly, explaining that she was from Alwar and had worked as a local historian for years. When she noticed his gaze lingering on the silent walls, she added, “They say no one should remain here after sunset, Devendra ji. The fort doesn’t welcome those who stay too long.” There was no melodrama in her tone, only quiet conviction. Dev smiled politely, brushing aside her words with a reply that he was here to study the architecture, not ghost stories. Yet something in her unwavering stare unsettled him more than he cared to admit.
As they began walking up the uneven path toward the fort’s inner gates, the sense of isolation thickened. The ruins were undeniably majestic—arches carved with intricate motifs, stone temples leaning against the weight of centuries, palaces reduced to echo chambers of dust. But they were also strangely alive, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath, waiting. Priya spoke of legends as they moved—of Princess Ratnavati, the jewel of Bhangarh, and of the Tantrik Singhia who cursed the city after his desires were thwarted. Her words painted images that seemed to ripple through the ruins, weaving myth into the crumbling stones. Dev, ever the rationalist, nodded and jotted notes in his worn leather diary, more intrigued by her storytelling than by its content. Still, as the last streaks of sunlight surrendered to the horizon, a chill laced the air. The fort, bathed in twilight, seemed less like an abandoned ruin and more like a creature stirring awake. Dev stopped for a moment at the threshold of the gate, his hand brushing against the cold stone, and for the first time since arriving, he felt the weight of unseen eyes upon him. He shook it off quickly, straightened his shoulders, and muttered, “It’s just history.” Yet, deep in the silence, the ruins seemed to disagree.
2
The morning sun cast a golden sheen over the ruins of Bhangarh, illuminating the vast expanse of broken palaces, temples, and courtyards that sprawled like an ancient skeleton across the land. Devendra “Dev” Singh adjusted the strap of his backpack and stepped carefully onto the stone pathways, every sound of his boots echoing faintly in the emptiness. By daylight, the fort seemed less sinister, more like a forgotten relic, its silence belonging to time rather than to spirits. Dev moved with excitement, scribbling notes about the masonry techniques, measuring the height of arches, and photographing the weathered sculptures that still clung stubbornly to life. Each wall spoke of grandeur—red sandstone etched with motifs of flowers and deities, balconies that once overlooked bustling markets, and gateways that had long since surrendered their doors. Priya Rathore walked at his side, her calm gaze scanning the ruins not with wonder but with reverence. She knew these stones differently, not just as remnants of history but as vessels of memory. When Dev paused to admire a broken temple spire, she quietly began recounting the legend most associated with Bhangarh—the tale of the beautiful Princess Ratnavati, whose grace and intelligence had made her the desire of many. Dev smiled faintly, half-listening, his pen scratching notes as if her words were no more than another artifact to catalog.
Priya’s voice lingered as she spoke of Singhia, the Tantrik whose mastery of dark arts was matched only by his obsession with the princess. She described how Singhia, consumed by desire, tried to ensnare Ratnavati with a spell woven into oil meant to bind her heart to him. But the princess, wise and suspicious, saw through the trick and flung the enchanted oil against a stone, cursing Singhia to his death. With his dying breath, the sorcerer condemned Bhangarh itself, vowing it would never know peace again. As Priya’s words hung in the still air, Dev chuckled lightly and shook his head. “A sorcerer, curses, enchanted oil—it sounds like a fable for children,” he remarked, brushing off the story with his usual rationalism. Priya did not argue. Instead, she let the silence answer for her, her eyes resting on the temple ruins where shadows lingered longer than the morning should allow. Dev, oblivious to her discomfort, continued exploring, running his fingers over carvings and inspecting the angles of collapsed beams. “The real tragedy,” he added, “was probably political. Wars, betrayal, famine—those explain ruins far better than curses.” His voice was steady, almost smug, as though speaking it aloud reaffirmed his disbelief in the supernatural. Yet beneath his confidence, Priya’s tale had left a faint mark in his thoughts, a whisper at the back of his mind that refused to be dismissed entirely.
It was while examining a tall, cracked pillar near the palace courtyard that Dev experienced something he could not explain. The stone, warm under the rising sun, seemed ordinary at first, worn smooth by centuries of exposure. But as his palm lingered, a sudden chill spread from the stone into his hand, crawling up his arm with an unnatural iciness that made him recoil instinctively. The notebook slipped from his grasp and landed on the dust with a muffled thud. He stared at his palm, flexing his fingers as though to shake off the sensation, but the coldness clung stubbornly, defying the logic of the blazing Rajasthan heat. Priya, who had been watching quietly, stepped closer, her expression unreadable. “The stones remember, Devendra ji,” she said softly. “They remember pain, betrayal, and the curse that sealed this place. That’s why they are never truly silent.” Her words unsettled him more than he cared to admit. Dev forced a laugh, brushing it off as “perhaps the stone was damp from the morning dew.” But as he bent to retrieve his notebook, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the pillar had pulsed beneath his touch—like the heartbeat of something ancient and awake, waiting for him to listen.
3
The sun dipped behind the Aravalli Hills, leaving Bhangarh cloaked in a dim, coppery glow that bled quickly into shadow. Priya had warned Devendra not to remain in the fort after dusk, but his fascination had overpowered caution. Sitting cross-legged near the remnants of a broken archway, his sketchbook balanced on his knee, Dev traced the jagged outlines of the palace walls with precise strokes of his pencil. The ruins seemed transformed in the fading light—what had been dusty and sun-bleached by day now appeared sharper, more imposing, every shadow stretching like a silent sentinel. He told himself that he needed to capture these details while the mood of twilight lingered; the interplay of ruin and light was, after all, part of the site’s story. Priya had reluctantly left him, shaking her head, muttering that not all stories should be written down. Alone now, the silence pressed heavy, broken only by the rustle of leaves stirred by an unseen breeze. Dev paused for a moment, glancing around, and then chuckled under his breath. “All this fuss over a bedtime ghost story,” he muttered, and bent once more over his sketch.
It was then that he heard it: a faint, rhythmic murmur, drifting on the wind. At first, he dismissed it as the whisper of the air through the crumbling corridors or perhaps the echo of his own thoughts in the vast emptiness. The sound was low, deliberate, almost like a chant repeated over and over. Dev froze, pencil hovering above paper, straining his ears. The cadence was unmistakably Sanskrit—familiar syllables he had encountered in ancient texts, though warped by distance and time. His rational mind scrambled to explain: perhaps a group of villagers or wandering ascetics had come to perform prayers nearby? He stood, brushing the dust from his trousers, and scanned the surroundings, but there was no movement, no human shape in the darkening courtyards. The chant persisted, sometimes clear as though whispered at his ear, then retreating to a distant echo that seemed to emerge from the very stones themselves. The scholar in him was curious, intrigued even, but the man standing alone in the haunted ruins felt the stirrings of unease. He told himself again and again that it was nothing but wind, acoustics, imagination—but the syllables formed too perfectly to be coincidence.
Then the chant faltered, broke apart, and from the silence that followed, a single word slipped through, carrying with it a weight that froze the blood in his veins. “Devendra…” The sound was not shouted, not even spoken aloud—it was breathed, as if the stones themselves exhaled his name. His skin prickled, and he stumbled back, his sketchbook falling to the ground. His first instinct was to call out, to demand who was there, but the words caught in his throat. The logical part of his mind clung desperately to explanations: echoes, tricks of the ear, his own name shaped by the wind against jagged walls. Yet his pulse thundered, and his hands trembled as the truth pressed harder—the voice knew him. It wasn’t random, it wasn’t chance. It called him. Swallowing hard, he forced himself to pick up his sketchbook, his eyes darting nervously around the ruins, half-expecting to see a figure emerging from the darkness. Nothing moved, but the silence that followed was not the silence of emptiness; it was the silence of something watching, something waiting. Dev steadied his breath, muttering, “It’s just the mind playing tricks,” though even as he said it, the certainty of those words dissolved into the thickening night.
4
The morning after his unsettling experience in the ruins, Devendra awoke in the modest guesthouse in Alwar with his sketchbook still open beside him. His notes from the night before were jagged and incomplete, smudged by hurried hands, the words “Sanskrit? My name?” underlined several times. He rubbed his temples, telling himself that fatigue, darkness, and the fort’s eerie silence had played tricks on him. Yet the memory of that whisper—the chilling way it had curled around his name—refused to fade. At breakfast, Priya noticed his distracted air and pressed him for details. When he reluctantly recounted what had happened, her expression hardened into something between fear and inevitability. “I told you not to stay after sunset,” she said quietly, her voice sharp with concern. “You must speak with Pandit Raghunath. He knows what lingers in Bhangarh better than anyone.” Reluctantly, Dev agreed, though in truth he wanted answers not out of fear but out of curiosity, the same curiosity that had drawn him to archaeology in the first place. If there was a rational explanation buried in superstition, he intended to find it.
They walked together through the village until they reached a small shrine tucked under an ancient banyan tree. There, seated cross-legged on a faded mat, was Pandit Raghunath, a gaunt old man with skin weathered like parchment and eyes that seemed to pierce through shadows. He greeted Priya with a nod before letting his gaze rest on Dev, holding it for a long, uncomfortable moment. “You heard them,” the priest said at last, his voice gravelly but steady. It wasn’t a question—it was a certainty. Dev felt a chill, though he masked it with a faint smile. “I heard something,” he admitted. “But I don’t believe in curses or wandering spirits. Perhaps the wind, or echoes from the hills.” Raghunath leaned forward, his bony fingers clutching the wooden beads of his mala, and whispered: “The wind does not speak your name. Those who hear the whispers have already been chosen. And those who answer them—” He paused, his eyes narrowing, “—never return.” Dev stiffened, the words heavier than he had expected. The old man spoke in riddles after that, his voice rising and falling like the cadence of a prayer. He told of voices trapped between mantra and shraap—between prayer and curse—souls who could neither ascend nor vanish, forever echoing through the stones of Bhangarh. Priya listened with solemn respect, while Dev struggled to reconcile the weight of the words with his own skepticism.
As they left the shrine, the afternoon sun glinting off the dusty village road, Priya turned to him with urgency in her tone. “Dev, you must leave this research behind. There are some places where history cannot be studied like broken pottery. There are lives trapped there, and they do not forgive intrusions.” But Dev, though unsettled, felt a stronger pull than ever. His rational mind clung to the notion that what he had heard had an explanation waiting to be uncovered. The warnings, instead of deterring him, stirred something in him—a restless determination to probe deeper. “If there are voices,” he said at last, “then there must be a source. Stones don’t speak on their own.” Priya shook her head, her eyes flashing with both anger and sorrow. “You think like a scholar, not like a man standing at the edge of something that can consume him whole.” Dev offered her a faint, almost defiant smile, masking the gnawing unease that lingered beneath his skin. That evening, as the sun sank once more behind the fort, his mind was already plotting a return to the ruins. He told himself it was for research, for truth—but somewhere deep inside, he knew it was because the whispers had already taken hold.
5
That night, Dev drifted into a restless sleep, his mind still clouded by the unnerving tales he had heard about Singhia, the sorcerer whose power was said to linger in the desert’s silence. In his dream, he found himself standing before a roaring fire, its flames twisting unnaturally against the windless night. A hooded figure loomed on the other side, its face obscured, its hands raised toward the blaze. The chants that poured forth were guttural, rhythmic, and unsettling, filling Dev with a sense of dread that clung to his chest like a weight. He wanted to run, yet his feet refused to move, as though the sand beneath him had turned to stone. The figure’s voice grew louder, echoing as though spoken by many tongues at once, until suddenly the fire surged high enough to consume the stars. Dev gasped awake, heart pounding, his body drenched in sweat, but the terror did not end with the dream—because around his tent, etched in the moonlit sand, were strange Sanskrit symbols, glowing faintly as though alive with energy.
Priya rushed over at his frantic call, her eyes widening when she saw the markings. Kneeling down, she traced one of the characters lightly with her fingers, only to recoil as if struck by static. “These aren’t random,” she whispered, her voice trembling with a mixture of awe and fear. “These are invocations. The spirit of Singhia… he’s noticed you.” Dev, though shaken to the core, could not tear his gaze away from the inscriptions. He felt the echo of the dream pressing on his mind—the fire, the chants, the hooded figure—and he realized that the words had imprinted themselves within him, line by line, as if someone had carved them into his memory. He admitted to Priya, in a voice unsteady yet drawn by fascination, that he recognized fragments of the language. His years of study had introduced him to ancient Vedic texts, and though incomplete, he could sense the weight of the words. Priya tried to warn him against pursuing it further, reminding him of the danger in meddling with forces older than human understanding, but her warnings only seemed to fuel Dev’s resolve.
By the lantern’s glow, Dev sat cross-legged, scribbling the chants he remembered onto his journal, the symbols around the tent looming like sentinels. As he worked, he realized the verses were not merely invocations—they were commands, words designed to summon, bind, and perhaps even control. The thought chilled him, yet curiosity gnawed deeper, outweighing his fear. He spoke the phrases aloud under his breath, his voice faltering at first, but gradually growing steadier, as though the language itself welcomed his tongue. The desert night seemed to respond; a sudden gust of wind tore through the camp, extinguishing the lantern, and for a moment the shadows around him writhed as if alive. Priya clutched his shoulder, begging him to stop, but Dev’s eyes burned with a strange intensity. “It’s not just a haunting,” he murmured, almost to himself. “It’s a message… a call.” In that moment, he realized that Singhia’s spirit had chosen him, and whether it was a curse or a destiny, he could no longer walk away. The echoes of the sorcerer had taken root within him, and with each passing breath, Dev felt himself being pulled deeper into the ancient web of power that bound the desert’s soul.
6
The air inside the inner sanctum was thick and damp, as though centuries of grief had seeped into its very stones. Dev stepped forward, each echoing footfall swallowed by a low hum that grew steadily louder, until he realized it wasn’t just an echo—it was a chant. Countless voices, layered upon one another, rising and falling in unison, filled the hollow chamber like waves breaking against unseen walls. The sound was chillingly human yet impossibly vast; it carried the cries of men gasping their last breath, the sobs of mothers shielding children, the terrified pleas of warriors who knew death was inevitable. Dev felt the air vibrate with their sorrow, the timbre of the chant pressing against his chest like a weight he could not cast off. His pulse raced, not merely from fear but from the strange familiarity of it all, as though he had heard this mourning before, in forgotten dreams or whispered prayers. Priya, standing just behind him, clutched the stone pillar, her face pale but her eyes sharp with recognition. “They aren’t warning us,” she whispered, her voice nearly drowned out by the dirge. “They’re remembering. They want you to remember too.”
As the chorus swelled, the fragmented stories began to take shape. A soldier described his last stand at the gates, pierced by arrows until his voice faded into silence. A young girl recounted how she starved when the enemy blocked the fort’s supplies, her cries for food echoing unanswered. An old man spoke of betrayal from within, of how trust had been broken and death crept through the fort like a shadow. Each voice carried a piece of the past, overlapping, colliding, merging into a single truth—that this was not just a ruin, but a grave sealed with agony. Dev pressed his palms against his temples, overwhelmed as the voices forced themselves into his mind, making him live their memories as though he were there. The walls trembled with the force of their collective grief, and in that moment, he realized they were not recounting their fates for pity; they were demanding acknowledgment. Priya’s eyes widened with sudden dread as she sensed the true meaning. The ghosts were not asking for remembrance alone—they were seeking companionship. Their chants shifted, words bending, syllables sharpening until they formed a singular call: “Join us, Dev. Bear our pain. Become one of us.”
Dev staggered back, cold sweat running down his spine as the realization struck like a blade. The chorus of the dead wasn’t a lament—it was a summons. He could feel their pull like invisible hands clawing at his soul, tugging at the seams of his existence, as if his body was no more than a vessel waiting to be emptied. Priya stepped forward, gripping his arm firmly, grounding him against the spectral tide. Her voice trembled but carried resolve. “They want to take you,” she said, her gaze darting across the flickering shadows that now seemed to move with intention. “But you’re not theirs yet. You must resist, Dev. If you give in, you’ll never come back.” The chorus grew louder, a deafening crescendo that made the floor shudder, and for an instant, Dev saw translucent faces crowding the darkness—hollow-eyed men, weeping women, pale children reaching out with skeletal hands. The sanctum became suffocating, a chamber of endless sorrow demanding his surrender. Summoning every ounce of strength, Dev forced his gaze upward, toward a crack of faint moonlight filtering through the ceiling. That small sliver of light became his anchor, his only reminder of the world still waiting beyond this tomb. The voices howled in rage and despair as if denied their prey, and the sanctum trembled violently, but Priya tightened her grip, dragging him back toward the entrance. The chorus lingered, echoing in his mind even as they stumbled out—an eternal reminder that the dead were not at peace, and that they would not stop until their ranks grew by one more.
7
The night weighed heavy upon Bhangarh as Devendra walked deeper into the heart of the ruined citadel. The air was alive with whispers, no longer scattered murmurs but a singular cadence that pressed against his ears. The ruins themselves seemed to breathe with him, every broken arch and shattered wall pulsing with unseen energy. From that chorus of voices, one rose above all others—deep, resonant, commanding. It was the shadow of Singhia, the sorcerer whose curse had once sealed Bhangarh’s fate. The voice was neither entirely human nor entirely ghostly; it was like a vibration in his very bones, as though the stones beneath his feet were speaking through him. Devendra felt powerless to resist, yet his curiosity—his insatiable need to unearth what had remained hidden for centuries—kept him moving forward. The torch in his hand flickered erratically, as if protesting the force that now surrounded him, and his breath came heavier with each step.
The voice told him that history had chosen him—not as an intruder, not as a scholar, but as the next “keeper” of Bhangarh. The cursed fort, it whispered, was not a relic of the past but a living entity bound by an eternal cycle of guardianship. Singhia’s spirit had anchored itself to the place, feeding on its despair, waiting for the right soul to inherit the burden. Devendra stood trembling in the middle of what once might have been the royal courtyard, now a skeletal space overgrown with wild grass. He felt the cold fingers of something unseen curl around his resolve, pulling him into the bargain. The offer was simple yet terrifying: surrender his life, and in return, gain the wisdom and power to unlock every hidden truth of the fort. He would not merely study Bhangarh; he would become Bhangarh. The fort’s secrets—its curses, its forgotten rituals, its buried tragedies—would flow through his veins like blood. But the price was clear: his existence would be consumed, his body abandoned to dust, his soul bound eternally to the same chains that held Singhia captive.
A storm churned within Devendra’s mind. He remembered his scholarly ambitions, the countless nights he had spent poring over half-burnt manuscripts and forgotten chronicles, driven by the desire to uncover what others feared to touch. Yet here, in this moment, he realized knowledge was not merely to be read or recorded—it demanded sacrifice. The fort’s silence seemed to lean closer, listening, waiting for his answer. His heart hammered in his chest, torn between survival and the intoxicating lure of forbidden wisdom. Was he willing to dissolve into the very curse he had come to unravel? The shadows thickened, curling around his torchlight until it barely glowed, and the voice of Singhia grew sharper, more urgent, as though impatient for his surrender. Devendra closed his eyes, sweat rolling down his temple, knowing that his choice would not only decide his fate but perhaps the fate of Bhangarh itself. The bargain hung in the air like a blade, and the night awaited his answer.
8
Dev sat in the crumbling corridor of the ruined palace, head pressed into his palms, cigarette trembling between his fingers. The whispering had grown relentless, sliding like serpents through his ears, circling his thoughts until he could no longer tell whether they belonged to the cracks in the ancient walls or to the deeper cracks forming in his mind. Every shadow stretched too long, every gust of wind carried syllables that sounded like his name, and every grain of dust seemed to fall with deliberate rhythm. Priya found him like that—half-dazed, muttering fragments of words he himself could not understand. She stood in the threshold, eyes sharp but worried, and said softly yet firmly, “You came to study ruins, Dev, but the ruins are studying you.” Her voice pierced him more deeply than the whispers. For a moment, her words felt like the most terrifying truth. He looked up at her with hollow eyes, unable to answer, the cigarette’s ember glowing like a tiny red heartbeat in the dark.
Raghunath, the caretaker, entered then, carrying a lantern that shook slightly in his hands, its flame fluttering like a dying soul. He looked from Dev to Priya and sighed with the weight of someone who had seen this before. “You should know,” he said, his voice grave, “this is not the first time. Years ago, another archaeologist came—young, brilliant, full of curiosity. He worked where you now sit. One night, he vanished. No one saw him leave, no body was found. But the villagers still hear him wandering, whispering through these halls.” His words were a blade drawn across silence. Dev’s breath caught in his throat, his heart pounded with the sudden dread that he was not only hearing the whispers, but perhaps joining them—becoming one of them. The thought gnawed at him: what if he was not the observer of history but the next sacrifice to it? Priya, shaken yet resolute, clenched her fists, unwilling to let Dev slide into the same fate, but even she could not deny that something in these ruins gnawed at reason itself.
The night pressed heavier as the three sat in that half-lit corridor, the ruin’s silence broken only by the hiss of Dev’s cigarette and the uneven flame of the lantern. Dev wanted to scream, to silence the voices, to prove they were not real—but the more he resisted, the clearer they became. Whispers layered into chants, chants into fragments of language older than his memory. Priya touched his shoulder, grounding him, yet even her touch felt distant, as though he were slipping into another dimension where the ruins had claimed dominion. The question burned in him—had the ruins chosen him as they once chose the other archaeologist? Or was his mind the real ruin, collapsing under shadows he had carried all along? When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse, almost alien to his own ears: “If I disappear… don’t look for me.” Priya’s eyes welled with a mix of anger and fear, but before she could answer, a gust of wind extinguished Raghunath’s lantern, plunging them into a darkness where the whispers no longer sounded distant—they breathed right against their skin.
9
The storm broke over the ancient fort with a fury that seemed to echo the cries of the dead. Thunder rolled across the skies as if drums of war were being beaten, while lightning illuminated the crumbling battlements in violent flashes. Inside, the air was heavy with the acrid scent of burning oil lamps and incense that had been lit to ward off spirits but instead seemed to summon them closer. Dev sat cross-legged at the center of the chamber, his eyes distant, his lips trembling as ancient Sanskrit chants spilled unbidden from his mouth. His voice was not his own—it was deeper, rougher, carrying a resonance that belonged to another era, another soul. Priya stood at his side, clutching his arm desperately, shaking him, pleading for him to stop. Yet every time she tried to silence him, the shadows crawling along the stone walls seemed to shiver with fury, their forms twisting into grotesque shapes that mocked her helplessness. The fort itself seemed alive, its ancient stones groaning with the weight of centuries of curses, the storm outside amplifying the terror within.
Dev’s body began to sway with the rhythm of the incantations, his head snapping back as though an invisible hand jerked him upward. The temperature dropped so suddenly that Priya’s breath fogged in the air, and she felt her strength weaken under an oppressive force that pressed down on her chest like a vice. The shadows thickened, pooling around Dev as though forming a cocoon of darkness, wrapping him in layers of forgotten power. Priya cried out his name again and again, her voice cracking as she fought to pull him free from the invisible shackles binding him. She remembered the old woman’s warning—that the sorcerer who once ruled the fort had bound his soul to the chants, waiting for a vessel to continue his reign. In Dev, the perfect host had been found. His knowledge of Sanskrit, his fascination with history, his willingness to step into forgotten ruins—all of it had led him here, to this moment of terrible fate. The storm lashed harder against the walls, windows rattling as if the universe itself trembled at the ritual’s completion, and Priya felt the terrifying certainty that if Dev yielded completely, she would lose him forever.
In a surge of desperation, Priya closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against Dev’s, her tears soaking his skin as she whispered words not of power but of love. She reminded him of their shared laughter, of the nights spent under quiet skies, of promises they had made outside the grip of darkness. For a heartbeat, Dev’s chanting faltered, his lips trembling with a silence that seemed to crack the ritual’s hold. The shadows hissed, recoiling like serpents burned by flame, their shapes writhing as the sorcerer’s spirit fought to cling tighter. A scream tore through the chamber, not from Dev, but from the fort itself—an unearthly howl of fury that rattled the stones. Lightning flared one last time, so bright it blinded Priya, and when her vision cleared, Dev was slumped against her chest, silent and still. The chants had ceased, the shadows had scattered, and the storm outside began to die as though the night itself had been exorcised. But the silence that followed was not relief—it was heavy, uneasy, and Priya knew with a cold certainty that the battle for Dev’s soul was far from over.
10
At the breaking point of night, when the darkness of Bhangarh Fort was at its deepest, Dev stood between two worlds—one calling him back to life, the other luring him into its eternal embrace. The whispers that had haunted him for nights had now grown into voices—chants in Sanskrit, echoing through the broken courtyards and empty chambers. Priya clutched his hand desperately, her eyes brimming with tears, begging him to leave with her before dawn’s light pierced the ancient ruins. Yet, for Dev, each echo carried the weight of destiny. The fort seemed alive, its stones breathing, its walls pulsing with memories of centuries gone. A strange calm overcame him, a dangerous serenity that told him he belonged not outside, in the world of fleeting lives, but here—forever etched in Bhangarh’s memory. Priya shook him, pleading, reminding him of promises made, of love beyond ruins, but Dev’s gaze had already grown distant, his ears filled only with the chants that felt older than time itself.
As the first light of dawn bled across the horizon, the struggle between love and fate reached its peak. Priya, realizing the fort’s grip on Dev was too strong, made one final attempt to pull him away, but the air between them thickened as though the fort itself resisted her. Dev’s lips trembled with unspoken words—was it love, was it farewell? He pressed Priya’s hand once, a gesture heavy with all that could not be said, and then released it. The chants rose higher, as though welcoming him, and he stepped back into the crumbling temple-like chamber. Priya’s sobs broke the silence of dawn as she ran towards the broken archways, the only exit that could lead her out before the sun fully rose. Her footsteps echoed against the stone, desperate and hollow, while behind her the fort roared with voices, an unseen crowd that had claimed Dev as its own. The weight of the centuries pressed on her chest, but her will to live pulled her out into the cool morning air.
Once outside the cursed gates, Priya turned back. The fort lay in silence, its ruins glowing faintly under the first light, as if mocking her escape. For a moment, she thought it was all over—that Dev’s presence was gone forever, swallowed by the fortress of the dead. But then, in that fragile stillness, the air trembled. From deep within the ruins, voices began to chant again—low, rhythmic, eternal. Among them, unmistakable, was Devendra’s voice, woven into the Sanskrit hymn, no longer struggling but joining in harmony with the echoes of Bhangarh. Priya’s heart shattered, for she knew he had not escaped, but chosen to stay forever within those walls, part of a story that would never end. The fort had claimed him as its own, another memory added to its endless chorus. She fell to her knees on the sunlit ground outside, the warmth of the new day unable to erase the chill that clung to her soul. And as the chants faded into the morning air, Priya realized that Bhangarh’s curse was not in its crumbling stones, but in the way it could steal the living and make them eternal. Devendra was gone—but his voice would live in the ruins, forever.
End
