"Some names are whispers, easy to erase.
Some names are fire, etched into stone.
But the cruelest truth is this—
the village does not remember you,
unless it already owns you."
The morning light seeped through broken shutters.
Painting long, jagged shadows across the haveli floor.
The notebook lay in the center.
Its cover trembling faintly as though something inside still breathed.
No one touched it.
No one wanted to.
The thing felt alive now.
Dangerous.
Like it might bite if approached.
"Say it out loud," Rohit muttered, pacing.
His boots echoed in the space.
"Read it again."
"Maybe it's a mistake."
Yashpal shook his head.
His large frame stooped in disbelief.
In denial.
In the slow realization that denial was no longer an option.
"I've checked it five times."
His voice was hollow.
"All our names—gone."
"Every single one."
"Only Diya's is still there."
He pointed at the page.
At the single name that remained crisp and dark.
That gleamed like an accusation.
The silence that followed was thick.
Suffocating.
Like the air itself had weight now.
Diya sat by the far wall.
Knees hugged to her chest.
Her fingers pressing against the chain of the locket around her neck.
The child's locket they'd found in the fields.
She hadn't asked for this.
Hadn't volunteered.
But the others' eyes still lingered on her.
Curious.
Frightened.
Suspicious.
As if she had somehow arranged this.
As if her name had consumed the others through some dark bargain she'd made without knowing.
"Why you?" Priya finally said.
Her tone sharp.
Cutting.
Accusatory.
"Why your name?"
"I don't know!" Diya's voice cracked.
The first real emotion breaking through her careful composure.
"Do you think I wanted this?!"
"Do you think I asked for this?"
Abhay cleared his throat.
Trying to cut through the rising tension.
Trying to be the voice of reason in a situation that had stopped being reasonable days ago.
"It's not her fault."
His voice was calm.
Steady.
"We need to think."
"Maybe the village marks people differently."
"Maybe her name is preserved because—"
"Because what?" Meghna snapped.
Her voice sharp as broken glass.
"Because she belongs here?"
"Because she's theirs?"
The words hung in the air like a knife.
Like an accusation that couldn't be taken back.
Like a truth that had been waiting to be spoken.
The Search for Proof.
They decided to split again.
They couldn't afford to just sit and wait for answers.
Waiting felt like drowning in slow motion.
Kabir, Priya, and Saanvi headed toward the abandoned schoolhouse.
They wanted to check the scratched spirals again.
See if any name was carved beneath the layers of dust.
See if there was a pattern they'd missed.
Yashpal and Rohit went back to the temple.
Determined to question the inscriptions properly.
If names were being erased, maybe there was a list.
Maybe there was a record of those who once lived here.
Maybe there was a pattern of ownership.
Abhay and Diya remained in the haveli.
Tasked with guarding the notebook.
Though guarding felt like a euphemism.
They were watching her as much as they were watching the book.
At the Schoolhouse.
The schoolhouse was colder than before.
The air felt wrong.
Stale.
As if no one had breathed inside it for a very long time.
Priya brushed her hand across the same desk where the circular carvings lay.
This time, the dust felt fresher.
As if someone had disturbed it overnight.
As if someone had been here, working, studying the spirals themselves.
Kabir leaned closer.
His breath misting against the wood.
"Wait."
"These aren't just spirals."
"Look—between the circles."
Tiny lines.
Words.
Fragments of language.
Priya squinted.
Her eyes straining to make sense of the partial script.
"It's a name."
No—
It was several names.
Layered.
Scratched over and over.
Until only fragments remained.
Until the wood itself had become a palimpsest of identity.
"…Roh…"
"…Megh…"
"…Sanv…"
The blood drained from Kabir's face.
"Those are our names."
Saanvi's hand went to her mouth.
"How long have they been here?"
"How long has the village been waiting?"
"For what?" Priya whispered.
But she already knew the answer.
The desk was ancient.
The spirals were fresh.
The two timelines didn't intersect unless something was rewriting time itself.
Unless something was writing their names into a past that hadn't happened yet.
At the Temple.
Yashpal and Rohit ran their hands across the stone walls of the ruined sanctum.
The inscriptions weren't prayers.
They'd been wrong about that.
The inscriptions were records.
A ledger of sorts.
Names carved into the temple's ribs.
Organized in neat columns.
Like a roster.
Like a guest list.
Like an inventory of souls.
Some names were clear.
Still legible after decades or centuries.
Others faded halfway through.
The edges worn away by time or by something else.
Something that was trying to erase them.
And at the very bottom, carved deeper than the rest, was one name repeated again and again:
Diya.
Diya.
Diya.
Over and over.
Until the stone itself seemed to sing the name.
Until the temple's ancient stones had been worn smooth by the constant repetition of a single identity.
Rohit staggered back.
His hand reaching for the wall.
Finding stone.
Finding the grooves.
Finding the name carved so deep it felt like a wound.
"She's been here before."
His voice was barely audible.
"She's been here before."
"No," Yashpal said firmly.
Though his voice shook.
Betrayed his doubt.
Betrayed his terror.
"She couldn't have been."
"She came with us."
"In the van. In the crash. She survived with us."
"Then explain that."
Yashpal stepped back.
His mind reeling.
His data failing him.
His numbers suddenly useless against the weight of stone and repetition and a name that wouldn't be erased.
In the Haveli.
Back at the haveli, Diya traced the outline of her own name in the notebook while Abhay scribbled his theories furiously.
His pen moving fast.
His hand shaking.
As if the realization was pouring out of him faster than he could write it.
"Maybe you're the anchor," he said quietly.
His voice careful.
"Maybe you're the reason we're still seen at all."
"Without your name, maybe none of us would exist to the village."
"Maybe we're only real because you're real."
"Because you're here."
Diya shook her head.
Her fingers tracing her own name.
Over and over.
As if she could wear it away.
As if she could erase herself and therefore erase the strange weight of that truth.
"That doesn't make sense."
"Why me?"
"Why not Kabir?"
"Why not someone who wanted to lead?"
"Why someone like me?"
Before Abhay could answer, the shutters rattled.
Violently.
Suddenly.
As if struck by fists from the outside.
The walls groaned.
A sound like pain.
A sound like the building was alive and suffering.
And faintly, so faintly it might have been imagination, a voice slipped through the cracks in the plaster:
"Not yours. Not yours. Not yours."
The notebook flipped open on its own.
Pages turning.
Wind that didn't exist pushing them.
And new words scrawled across the page in jagged ink neither of them had written:
It only remembers what it has already taken.
Diya's breath caught in her throat.
"Abhay..."
But when she looked at him, his face had gone pale.
His eyes fixed on the words.
On the message.
On the terrible, impossible truth being written in front of them.
The Return.
When the group reunited that evening, no one spoke at first.
They gathered in the courtyard.
Each carrying their own discoveries.
Their own horrors.
Kabir laid down the carved desk plank.
The wood worn smooth in some places.
The names barely visible.
But visible enough.
Yashpal and Rohit revealed what they saw at the temple.
The repeated name.
The stone worn deep.
The impossible evidence.
The carved confirmation.
And every single clue pointed to the same thing.
Every piece of evidence.
Every discovery.
Every terrible realization.
Diya's name didn't survive because she was spared.
It survived because the village already owned her.
It survived because she belonged to Bhairavpur.
And had, perhaps, always belonged to it.
Diya stared at them all.
Her face pale.
Her hands shaking.
"You don't believe that, do you?"
"You don't actually think I'm—"
No one answered.
The silence stretched.
Became unbearable.
Became a confession all on its own.
But in the silence, the haveli groaned again.
The ancient wood settling.
Or perhaps waking.
And faintly, somewhere behind the walls, something whispered her name.
Over and over.
Like a prayer.
Like a claim.
Like a door being opened.
"Memory is not mercy.
A name that lingers
is not a name that is free."