"A village does not speak.
It chooses. And when it chooses,
the chosen can never walk away unmarked."
The night inside the haveli was restless.
Wind slipped through broken beams.
Carrying whispers that never quite became words.
Carrying secrets that almost took shape but dissolved before meaning could attach to them.
The group huddled close to the single lantern that burned low in the center of the room.
The flame flickering.
The light uncertain.
As if the fire itself was tired of burning.
No one laughed.
No one argued about who snored too loudly or who took up too much space.
The silence was unnatural.
Like the air itself was listening.
Like the darkness had learned to pay attention.
Priya sat cross-legged near the lantern.
Her camera strap wound tight around her wrist as if she expected someone to snatch it away.
As if she was afraid that if she let go, the camera would vanish.
And with it, all proof of what they'd seen.
Every few minutes, her eyes darted to Diya.
Not hostile.
Not trusting.
But measuring.
Cataloguing.
Making calculations.
Rohit finally broke the quiet.
His voice sounded too loud in the hollow space.
Too real.
Too alive in a place where silence had become the default language.
"We need rules."
"We can't just wander like tourists anymore."
"This place—it's not a prank, it's not a story."
"It's playing with us."
"It's hunting us."
"Priya sat cross-legged near the lantern, her camera strap wound tight around her wrist as if she expected someone to snatch it away. As if she was afraid that if she let go, the camera would vanish. And with it, all proof of what they'd seen. Every few few minutes, her eyes darted to Diya. Not hostile. Not trusting. But measuring. Cataloguing. Making calculations.
"Playing with her," Meghna muttered.
Her gaze slicing toward Diya like a blade.
Like an accusation.
Like a verdict already decided.
Diya stiffened.
Her hand unconsciously moving to the silver locket around her neck.
The child's locket from the fields.
The one that had belonged to someone else.
Someone dead.
"Stop looking at me like I asked for this."
Her voice was sharp.
Desperate.
"I don't know why my name's still there."
"I don't know why it's carved on walls."
"I don't know any of this."
"Maybe you don't," Kabir said carefully.
His voice calmer than the rest.
The diplomat.
The peacemaker.
"But maybe the village does."
The words settled like dust.
Heavy.
Unshakable.
Like gravity had suddenly increased.
Like the weight of truth was becoming physical.
By dawn, after restless half-sleep, they agreed to explore beyond the main street.
The temple and schoolhouse had already left their mark.
Abhay suggested the orchard near the eastern boundary.
No one argued.
Half out of exhaustion.
Half because they didn't want to admit they were afraid of saying no.
Afraid of what might happen if they refused to move.
If they dared to stay still.
The walk was longer than it should have been.
Paths curved back on themselves.
Lanes ended at walls that hadn't been there seconds before.
The village felt like it was rearranging behind them.
Reshuffling itself.
Rewriting the rules of space and direction.
When they reached the orchard, the air turned dry.
Sucked of all moisture.
All life.
The trees were wrong.
Fundamentally, offensively wrong.
Branches twisted into shapes that looked like hands.
Fingers.
Even twisted spines.
As if the trees were in agony.
As if they had been tortured into these shapes.
No leaves, no fruit.
Just husks dangling.
Cracked and hollow.
Like dried hearts left to rot.
Like the last remnants of something that had once been alive.
The ground beneath was worse.
It wasn't just soil.
It was layered with broken bangles.
Rusted lockets.
Beads that had scattered from broken strings.
Torn fabric.
Even children's toys.
A wooden horse with one wheel missing.
A doll missing its head.
A rattle with no sound left inside it.
As if people had emptied their pockets into the earth and never come back to claim them.
As if they'd been taken before they could retrieve what they'd left behind.
Saanvi crouched.
Her face pale.
The color draining as realization set in.
"These are personal things."
"Offerings."
"Or… sacrifices."
The word hung in the air like a curse.
Yashpal bent down and picked up an anklet.
It snapped in his hand like brittle bone.
The metal crumbling.
Crumbling like it was centuries old.
Like time had accelerated around it.
He dropped it instantly.
Revulsion crossing his face.
Then Priya gasped.
A sharp intake of breath.
Terror and recognition mingled in that single sound.
At the base of one of the central trees, carved deep into its bark, was a name.
Diya.
Not once.
Not twice.
But dozens of times.
Layered over and over.
Cut deep.
Carved with obsession.
Until the bark itself seemed made of her name.
The name repeated so many times it became a texture.
A pattern.
A skin.
"Holy shit," Rohit whispered.
His voice small.
Afraid.
"What the hell—"
Meghna's voice shook, but her words were sharp.
Sharp as a knife.
"This isn't random."
"This isn't us imagining."
"The village wants her."
Diya's breath hitched.
She stepped back, shaking her head.
Denying.
Refusing.
"No."
"No, I've never even been here."
"How could—"
"Trees don't just write names for fun," Priya said quietly.
Her eyes locked on Diya's trembling hands.
On the locket.
On the fingers that couldn't stop shaking.
"They don't carve messages on their own."
Abhay's voice cut in.
Sharper than usual.
Blade-thin.
"Stop."
They all turned.
Abhay rarely spoke with force.
But now his tone was iron.
Was command.
Was protection.
"We don't know enough."
"We have fragments, not truth."
"Jumping to blame her helps no one."
For a moment, silence.
Even the wind seemed to halt.
The twisted branches went still.
The air held its breath.
Diya looked at him.
Startled.
And strangely grateful.
For the first time in days, someone had stood between her and the group's suspicion.
Someone had refused to let her become the scapegoat.
At the orchard's edge, half-hidden by tall grass, stood a shrine.
Its stone was cracked.
Blackened with moss.
Worn by time and neglect.
Above it hung a bell.
Split perfectly in half.
Two pieces that should have been whole.
Two halves that would never ring together again.
On the altar below was an inscription.
Nearly erased by time.
But still readable if you leaned close enough.
If you wanted to read it badly enough.
"The one remembered must carry the silence of the rest."
Rohit swallowed hard.
His voice cracking.
"What the hell does that mean?"
Meghna's gaze slid back to Diya.
And in her eyes was the answer.
The terrible, crushing answer.
"I think we know exactly what it means."
"No," Abhay snapped again.
More forcefully this time.
His patience eroding.
His protection hardening into something fiercer.
"We don't know."
"We're reading riddles with tired minds."
"Don't make her your scapegoat."
But the look in Meghna's eyes didn't fade.
The suspicion.
The certainty.
The conviction that they'd finally understood something true.
And when Saanvi tugged her arm to walk away, she went reluctantly.
As if leaving the shrine meant abandoning a theory she'd finally solved.
That night, the orchard lingered in their thoughts like a bad taste.
Like poison that wouldn't be digested.
That would sit in their stomachs forever.
Kabir checked his camera.
Scrolling through the day's photos.
His frown deepened with each swipe.
The images of the orchard trees were blurred beyond recognition.
Branches stretched wrong.
Shadows swallowed the frames.
Faces of the group twisted into shapes he didn't remember capturing.
Twisted into terror.
Twisted into something other than themselves.
Except one photo.
That one was crystal clear.
Perfect.
Pristine.
The carvings of Diya's name on the bark stood sharp.
Cleaner than any detail in any image.
Each letter rendered perfectly.
Each groove visible.
It was almost as if the village itself wanted her name to be remembered.
As if the camera had been guided to capture that and that alone.
As if the lens itself had learned which subject mattered most.
Priya rubbed her temples.
Exhaustion written in the lines of her face.
"I don't like this."
"It's like everything here is telling us Diya is the—"
"Don't say it," Diya whispered.
Her voice breaking.
Shattering.
Like glass that had finally reached its limit.
"Please don't say it."
The shutters of the haveli banged open without warning.
All of them.
Simultaneously.
Wind howled inside.
Tearing through pages.
Tossing bags to the floor.
Scattering their few possessions like they meant nothing.
Like they were debris in a storm.
The lantern guttered.
Shadows crawling up the walls like living things.
Like they were hunting.
Kabir's notebook flung itself open.
Pages turning frantically.
Ink bled into words that hadn't been there seconds before.
Words that were writing themselves in real time.
In front of them.
Impossible words on impossible paper:
The village remembers what it has claimed.
It will not let go.
The lantern blew out.
Total darkness.
Absolute.
Complete.
And for a fraction of a second, in that absolute dark, every one of them saw her.
The bent woman.
Green sari.
Mole under her left eye.
Standing in the corner.
Silent.
Watching.
Waiting.
When the flame sputtered back, the corner was empty.
But the cold lingered.
The sense of presence remained.
The knowledge that she had been there.
No one spoke for a long time after that.
Minutes stretched into hours.
Or perhaps it was only seconds that felt like hours.
Time had become unreliable.
Rohit whispered finally.
His voice hoarse.
Destroyed.
"I don't think this place ever abandoned anyone."
"I think it keeps them."
Priya's hands tightened around her camera.
The strap cutting into her wrists.
Yashpal muttered a curse under his breath.
A prayer.
A plea.
Something that was neither and both at once.
Saanvi buried her face in her knees.
And Diya sat frozen.
Her locket clutched so hard it cut into her palm.
Drawing blood.
Her eyes wide as though she was listening to something only she could hear.
A voice.
A whisper.
A calling.
Abhay stared at the darkened corner where the old woman had stood.
His face betrayed nothing.
But inside, his mind tightened around a single thought.
A terrible realization.
A truth that couldn't be unlearned:
This village isn't choosing at random.
It's choosing her.
But why?
And for what end?
"To be remembered is not to be saved.
It is only to be kept."