"The walls remember.
The stones retell.
And those who wander alone,
Will find that silence speaks louder than screams."
The morning after the ledger's warning carried a weight in the air.
The haveli's halls felt narrower.
Every doorway like a throat trying to swallow them whole.
No one spoke much during breakfast.
Just rustles of packets.
Sips of cold water.
The occasional scrape of a chair against stone.
The sounds of people going through the motions of living while something inside them had already begun to die.
When Kabir finally said, "We split up, cover more ground," nobody argued.
Fear had made them obedient.
Compliant.
Ready to follow orders without questioning them.
Pairs were chosen, not by trust but by uneasy balance.
By a calculation of who could tolerate whom.
By a desperate hope that smaller groups might accomplish what larger ones could not.
Saanvi and Meghna took the northern lanes.
Where the roofs leaned too close together.
Making shadows even at noon.
Making the sunlight seem like an intrusion.
Rohit and Yashpal headed for the temple ruins.
Its dome cracked open like a skull.
Like something had beaten through from the inside.
Kabir and Priya moved toward the market square.
Half-buried in dust and silence.
A place where commerce had once happened.
Where life had once moved.
And Abhay, with Diya, walked the southern quarter.
The ledger clutched tight in his hands.
Like it was a child he was protecting.
Or a thing he was keeping contained.
Saanvi and Meghna.
The narrow lanes stank of mildew.
A smell so thick it coated the back of the throat.
Clotheslines sagged between crumbling balconies.
Though no laundry hung there.
Just empty rope.
Just the suggestion of clothes that had rotted away decades ago.
Meghna brushed her arm against a wall.
Her sleeve came away streaked with pale dust.
Dust that felt warm.
Dust that felt alive.
"Feels like the whole place is molting," she muttered.
Her voice was small in the narrow space.
Saanvi didn't answer.
She was staring at the ground.
Tiny shoeprints dotted the dirt.
Footprints.
Multiple sets.
Too small for any of them.
Children's feet.
Small toes pressing into earth.
Patterns that suggested running.
Chasing.
Playing.
Her throat tightened.
"Do you hear that?"
Meghna froze.
Faintly, under the creak of swaying shutters, came the sound of giggles.
High-pitched.
Playful.
Innocent.
But the lane was empty.
There were no children.
There had been no children in Bhairavpur for years.
The laughter skipped ahead of them.
Like it wanted them to follow.
Like it was a lure.
Like it was bait in a trap they were already inside.
Against better sense, against every instinct screaming at them to run the other direction, they followed.
Halfway down the lane, the walls were smeared with handprints.
Small.
Greasy.
Pressed deep into the plaster as if the hands had struggled.
Some high.
Some low.
Some impossibly stretched upward.
As if small bodies had stood on tiptoe.
Reaching for something.
Reaching for help.
Meghna snapped a photo.
The camera clicked—that satisfying mechanical sound that usually meant documentation.
Evidence.
Proof.
When she checked the screen, the prints weren't there.
The wall appeared clean.
Unmarked.
Perfect.
"Don't," Meghna whispered.
Her voice cracked.
"Let's go back."
But the laughter had turned into whispering.
Close enough to feel the breath on their necks.
Close enough to hear words forming.
Forming but not quite becoming language.
Forming but remaining just at the edge of understanding.
They turned and walked.
Not ran.
Walking felt more controlled.
Walking felt like they still had agency.
But their pace quickened.
And behind them, the laughter continued.
Rohit and Yashpal.
The temple stood broken.
Its spire leaning like a crooked finger pointing at nothing.
At everything.
At a sky that had stopped caring about this place.
Inside, the air smelled of burnt oil and rust.
The smell of sacrifice.
The smell of time rotting.
Rohit kicked aside rubble.
His bravado a shield against the creeping dread.
"Haunted temple cliché, check."
His voice echoed in the space.
Bouncing off stone.
Multiplying.
Yashpal crouched near the wall.
His careful eyes cataloguing.
Measuring.
Processing.
"Not cliché. Look."
The stone murals—once carved with gods and stories—were scratched out.
Deliberately defaced.
The carvings had been gouged away.
Erased.
Unmade.
Over the gouges, fresh spirals had been etched.
Dozens of them.
Hundreds perhaps.
The same spirals from the ledger.
The same pattern that appeared on walls and in notebooks and on the faces of people long dead.
Rohit's bravado cracked like old paint.
"This… this wasn't here a century ago."
His voice wavered.
"It's new."
"It's being done now."
"Right now, while we walk."
Yashpal traced one spiral with a fingertip.
The stone was cold.
Impossibly cold.
But his skin tingled like static.
Like the stone was humming.
Like it was singing to him.
"Stop touching it, idiot," Rohit snapped.
His fear manifesting as anger.
As aggression.
Just then, a low hum vibrated through the floor.
Not a sound exactly.
A vibration.
A resonance.
A frequency that wasn't meant for human ears but was being transmitted directly into their bones.
Both froze.
It wasn't the wind.
It was deeper.
Older.
Like the ground itself groaning awake.
Like the earth was rolling over in its sleep.
Like something beneath Bhairavpur was stirring.
They backed out.
Neither wanting to admit they were running.
Neither wanting to acknowledge that they'd lost control.
That something had regained it.
Kabir and Priya.
The square lay in ruins.
Stalls slumped under collapsed roofs.
Vegetables long rotted to pulp.
The stench of decay hung thick.
The silence here was heavier than elsewhere.
As if the air wanted to keep its own secrets.
As if the space itself was holding its breath.
Priya rifled through a fallen stall.
Her hands moving with urgency.
With desperation.
Looking for something.
Anything.
"Ledger here too," she whispered.
Pulling out a dusty register.
The pages brittle with age.
Kabir leaned close.
The handwriting matched the cursed ledger in Abhay's hands.
Not identical.
More like related.
Like it was written by the same person at a different time.
Or by someone learning to mimic that handwriting.
Or by something that only thought it knew how to write like a human.
Names were listed in columns.
Dates beside them.
Records.
Inventories.
Catalogs.
The last entry chilled Kabir to his core:
"Travelers. Eight. Arrived."
He counted the names below it.
Eight.
Exactly their group.
Every one of them.
Listed.
Recorded.
Known.
Priya slammed the book shut.
"No. No way."
Her voice was pitched high with panic.
"That's not possible."
"This is old."
"This has to be old."
Before Kabir could reply, the bell above the stall clanged on its own.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The sound of a shopkeeper calling for attention.
The sound of a place still conducting business.
Still open.
Still waiting for customers.
They bolted.
Running now.
Not caring about control or appearance or the pretense that they understood what was happening.
Just running.
Away from the bell.
Away from the ledger.
Away from the terrible, impossible list of names.
Abhay and Diya.
This part of Bhairavpur was strangely preserved.
Doors shut tight.
Windows shuttered.
As though the village was still alive.
And everyone was hiding.
Waiting inside for something to pass.
Diya walked a step behind Abhay.
Watching him more than the street.
He was too calm.
Too measured.
The ledger didn't scare him.
He held it like it belonged to him.
Like it was a limb that had grown back.
Like it was part of his body that had been severed and was now being reattached.
"You don't flinch," she said finally.
Her voice cutting through the silence.
"Even when the book writes itself."
"Even when things happen that shouldn't be possible."
Abhay didn't look at her.
His pace didn't change.
"I've seen worse."
"What could be worse than this?"
He stopped.
The corner of his mouth twitching.
Not quite a smile.
Something more like a grimace.
Like the memory was painful.
"Once, when I was younger, my house burned down."
He spoke quietly.
As if sharing something sacred.
Something that shouldn't be spoken aloud.
"Everyone inside died."
"My family."
"All of them."
"For three months I pretended they were still alive."
"Ate at the table with them."
"Talked to them."
"Laid out their clothes in the morning."
"Waited for them to come home from places they were never going."
"Until the smell gave me away."
Diya's breath hitched.
She didn't know if he was confessing or warning her.
Didn't know if he was explaining himself or explaining what was about to happen.
Before she could respond, the door of a house creaked open on its own.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Inside: nothing but overturned furniture and claw marks on the wall.
Deep gouges.
As if something had tried to dig its way out.
Or dig its way in.
The ledger trembled in Abhay's hand.
The pages rustled as if turned by invisible fingers.
A new line had appeared:
"Two walked here. Only one leaves."
Diya's hand found his.
She gripped it.
Hard.
Real.
Human.
And Abhay didn't pull away.
By dusk, the pairs staggered back.
Pale.
Shaken.
Marked by what they'd encountered.
Each carried their own horrors.
But none could explain them.
Meghna showed the photo with missing handprints.
The wall that had been decorated with child-hands now appearing empty on the screen.
Yashpal described the spirals etched into stone.
The patterns that matched the ledger exactly.
The patterns that shouldn't exist.
Kabir laid the second ledger on the table.
The one from the market square.
The one that had listed their names.
All eight.
And Diya, wide-eyed, recited what she had read in Abhay's book.
The warning.
The threat.
The promise.
"Two walked here. Only one leaves."
No one spoke for a long while.
The haveli seemed to breathe around them.
Waiting.
Patient.
Hungry.
The tension stretched tight as a rope.
Ready to snap.
Then, softly, Priya said:
"We weren't supposed to split up."
Her voice was hollow.
Defeated.
"We were supposed to be watched."
"Each pair was supposed to see something different."
"Each pair was supposed to come back broken."
Silence.
Heavy.
Crushing.
Absolute.
And from somewhere outside the haveli, the sound of children's laughter echoed.
Closer this time.
So close they could almost reach out and touch it.
So close they could almost grab it and hold it.
But when they looked outside, there was nothing.
Only the village.
Only the darkness.
Only the terrible, patient silence of Bhairavpur waiting for the next chapter to begin.
"Some doors open inward.
Some outward.
But some… are never meant to open at all."