"What terrifies us most is not what we see,
but what insists on watching us back."
The night had been long, but the morning was crueler.
The ledger lay in the middle of the group, its thick cover dusted with their own nervous fingerprints.
No one dared touch it now without everyone else watching.
Its presence was no longer just a curiosity.
It was a weight.
Bending their conversations.
Bending their trust.
Bending their will.
The air inside the broken haveli was stifling.
Shafts of light pierced the cracks in the roof, illuminating the weary faces of the survivors.
Their skin had taken on a grayish pallor, as if the village was slowly draining the color from them.
The faint smell of mildew and ash clung to their clothes.
As though the village itself refused to let them forget what it was.
What it fed on.
Yashpal rubbed his eyes and spoke first.
His voice was hoarse from lack of sleep.
"We need to know if this thing is being… altered when we sleep, or if it's being shown to us differently."
"There's a difference."
"Big words," Rohit muttered, pacing by the doorway.
His boots crunched bits of shattered brick.
The sound was loud in the quiet.
"Call it what it is."
"It's cursed."
"We should burn it and be done."
Priya looked up sharply.
Her eyes were red-rimmed, her usual composure cracked.
"And if it's tied to the rest of this village?"
"If this book is the reason we can't leave?"
"You think burning it will free us—or trap us for good?"
The argument was a circle.
Looping endlessly since the first name had shifted on its yellowed pages.
Since the first spiral had appeared where words once were.
Diya, sitting a little apart from the rest, hugged her knees to her chest.
Her voice was soft but carried in the silence like a bell.
"Instead of fighting, why don't we test it?"
"If it's changing, let's catch it in the act."
Kabir turned toward her.
Relief flashing in his eyes at the rare moment of clarity.
At someone offering a path forward.
"Exactly what I was thinking."
"Cameras, watches, shifts."
"We control it."
For the first time in days, there was a plan.
Something that felt like action rather than reaction.
Something that felt like they had agency, like they weren't simply being moved around a board.
They divided the night into watches.
Each pair would guard the ledger for two hours.
One with the book, one with the camera.
At the end of each shift, Yashpal insisted with the authority of someone clinging to methodology, they would compare the pages to a series of photos he was cataloguing.
Documentation.
Proof.
Control.
The first watch was Abhay and Priya.
They sat opposite each other, silent, the ledger between them like a sleeping child or a sleeping god.
The only sound was the faint dripping of water somewhere in the courtyard.
Water that shouldn't be dripping in a place this dry.
Priya stole glances at Abhay.
He was unreadable.
His expression flat as though he were watching a blank wall instead of an object brimming with menace.
She thought of speaking.
Asking him why he never seemed shaken.
Why he never showed anger or fear like the others.
Why he moved through this nightmare with the ease of someone who had been through it before.
But the words refused to come.
They died in her throat, choked by the weight of his silence.
When the clock ticked down and Saanvi shook them awake for the handover, Abhay stood without protest.
As though he'd simply been waiting.
Waiting for his turn to end.
Waiting for his turn to begin again.
The second shift was Saanvi and Rohit.
They argued the entire time, their voices kept low but sharp, cutting.
"If this book adds names, maybe it's… feeding on us," Saanvi whispered.
Her voice trembled with the weight of the realization.
"Like it's consuming them."
"Like each name it swallows makes it stronger."
"You read too much fiction," Rohit's laugh was sharp, but his voice trembled beneath it, contradicting his words.
"It's some psycho's diary."
"Someone still alive."
"That's the real danger—we're not alone."
He said it as if alone would be better.
As if the alternative to a ghost was worse than any phantom.
Their bickering was cut short when the camera clicked on its own.
Saanvi nearly dropped it.
Her hands shook.
She checked the lens, the buttons—nothing was wrong.
Everything was exactly as she'd left it.
But the shutter had fired.
Without her pressing it.
Without anyone touching it.
The developed photo, when shaken out of the instant camera, showed not just the ledger.
But a blurred hand resting on it.
A hand that belonged to neither of them.
A hand that was small, almost child-sized, with fingers that seemed to curve around the book's spine with possession.
With ownership.
With love.
Rohit swore under his breath and nearly bolted.
His body tensed, ready to run.
But Saanvi gripped his wrist, forcing him to stay.
"Don't look away," she hissed.
"Don't break the watch."
"If we run, we break the chain."
Her grip was iron.
The name at the bottom of the last page was fainter now.
As though smudged by fingers unseen.
As though something had tried to erase it and then changed its mind.
By the time Kabir and Diya took over, the air in the haveli felt colder.
Every corner thick with shadows that clung too long.
Shadows that didn't match the light sources.
Shadows that seemed to breathe.
Kabir sat upright, hand on the knife he had salvaged earlier.
It was a small thing, barely sharp anymore, but it was something.
A physical object he could hold.
A symbol of control.
Diya rested the camera against her thigh, keeping her eyes wide despite exhaustion.
Sleep felt dangerous now.
Sleep felt like surrender.
"You did well back there," Kabir said after a long silence.
The silence had become so heavy that words felt like breaking through ice.
Diya blinked, pulled from her vigilance.
"What?"
"Suggesting the experiment."
"It's the first thing that made sense."
She smiled faintly.
But there was little warmth in it.
"I only said it because I can't stand watching everyone fight."
"If we fall apart now, this village wins."
Kabir nodded.
Respect softening his expression.
He wanted to say more.
To tell her she was the strongest among them.
To tell her he'd noticed how she'd changed, how she'd adapted.
But a sudden creak silenced him.
The old wooden door to the courtyard had shifted inward.
Though no one had touched it.
Though no wind moved it.
Both of them turned back to the ledger instantly.
It was open one page further than before.
Neither had seen it move.
Neither had heard the pages turn.
And scrawled across the bottom margin in uneven letters was a fresh line:
"The watchers will follow."
The handwriting was different from before.
Not looping and careful like the earlier entries.
But jagged.
Hurried.
Desperate.
As though written by someone in pain.
Or someone trying very hard to communicate across a distance that shouldn't exist.
Diya's breath hitched.
The ink looked wet, still glistening under their light.
Still warm to the touch.
Kabir reached for it but stopped himself.
"Don't," he whispered.
"Don't touch it."
By dawn, all eight of them had seen enough.
The ledger was not only recording.
It was responding.
It was having a conversation with them.
And they were the only ones who could read its part of the dialogue.
Yashpal set the photographs side by side.
His rational mind trembling against the evidence in his hands.
The proof that made no sense.
"It's… impossible."
His voice cracked.
"We didn't miss anything."
"These words weren't here."
"The angles, the dates, they're consistent."
He looked up at the group, and his face was the face of someone whose entire worldview had just been overturned.
"This means someone is inside the book."
"Or the book is inside someone."
Meghna backed away, covering her mouth.
Her fingers pressed against her lips as if holding back a scream.
"Then someone, or something, is writing while we sleep."
"Right under our noses."
"In the dark."
"While we're helpless."
Rohit's patience snapped like a branch.
He shoved the ledger toward the dying embers of their fire.
"We end it now."
His voice was wild, desperate.
"We burn it."
"We burn it to ash and scatter the ash to the wind."
Kabir stopped him.
Steel in his voice.
The tone of someone who had made a decision and would not be moved from it.
"And if this is the only clue we have?"
"You burn it, we blind ourselves."
"We lose our only connection to understanding what this place is."
Arguments erupted again.
Voices overlapping, accusations flying, theories colliding.
Amid the noise, Diya pressed her palm to her temple.
Feeling the echo of the words written in the book.
The watchers will follow.
Who were the watchers?
The villagers long gone?
The ones in the photographs with their faces spiraled away?
Or something worse?
Something waiting for them to acknowledge it fully?
Something that grew stronger with each moment they denied its existence?
Her gaze flicked to Abhay.
He had not joined the shouting.
He stared at the ledger like it was an old acquaintance he was tired of pretending not to recognize.
Like it was someone he'd known in another life.
Another time.
Another version of events that had already unfolded.
When his eyes briefly met hers, Diya looked away quickly.
Unsettled by the strange calm in his silence.
By the knowledge in his gaze.
By the way he seemed to know things he shouldn't know.
They agreed reluctantly to one last test.
One final experiment before the group fractured completely.
Splitting into smaller groups to search the village for any place that matched the handwriting in the ledger.
Any mark that could tie the book to a physical hand.
Any proof that this was still, somehow, within the realm of the explainable.
Saanvi and Meghna would take the northern lane.
Rohit and Yashpal, the temple ruins.
Kabir and Priya, the broken market square.
That left Diya with Abhay.
She hadn't asked for it.
But no one else had volunteered.
No one wanted to pair with him.
Or perhaps, they understood that she needed to.
They stepped into the southern quarter together.
The air thick with silence.
Abhay carried the ledger in his satchel.
Though he hadn't been asked to.
As if it belonged to him.
As if it had always belonged to him.
Diya kept stealing glances at him.
Wanting to speak but unable to frame her thoughts.
Unable to ask the questions that needed asking.
Finally, she whispered:
"Why don't you ever look scared?"
Abhay's answer was delayed.
As though he had to summon it from a far-off place.
From somewhere very deep inside himself.
"Because I've already lived through worse than this."
The words hung in the dead street like smoke.
Like a confession.
Like a revelation.
And Diya felt, for the first time, that the mystery of Bhairavpur might not be confined to the village at all.
But walking beside her.
Breathing her air.
Wearing Abhay's face.
She wanted to ask what he meant.
But something in his expression suggested that some questions shouldn't be asked.
Some truths shouldn't be spoken aloud.
Some knowledge was more dangerous than ignorance.
They walked deeper into the village.
And behind them, or perhaps ahead of them, or perhaps all around them—
The watchers began to follow.
Unseen.
Patient.
Hungry.
"Some books are not written to be read.
They are written to be obeyed."