"The dead do not haunt the living.
It is the truth they leave behind that refuses to die."
The chamber was colder than before.
Though no wind had stirred.
Though nothing had moved.
Each broken corner of stone seemed to lean closer.
Shadows bleeding outward as if trying to listen.
As if the walls themselves had learned to eavesdrop.
Yashpal lay slumped on the wooden table.
His back slick with sweat.
His pulse hammering so visibly in his neck that even without touching him, they could feel the feverish tremor.
Could feel the fever that wasn't entirely physical.
That came from inside.
From something that was burning him from within.
Meghna knelt by his side.
Coaxing him with a tin cup of water.
Her movements gentle.
Her voice soft.
As if gentleness could heal what had been broken in him.
His hands shook so violently he spilled more than he drank.
But she still held the cup steady.
Whispering reassurance.
"Calm yourself, Yashpal."
"You're safe here."
"No one's coming."
But the look in his eyes said otherwise.
Said everything that needed to be said.
His gaze darted at every corner.
Every crack in the wall.
As though he expected the shadows to bleed into form at any moment.
As though they were already taking shape.
Each time the lantern sputtered, he flinched.
Like a soldier still in battle.
Like a man who hadn't yet realized the war was over.
Or that he had lost.
Abhay crossed his arms tightly.
His jaw rigid.
He stood by the doorway.
Almost blocking it.
Though from what—none of them knew.
"You've said too much and not enough," he muttered.
His voice low but sharp.
Cutting through the room like a blade.
"What do you mean they never escaped?"
The words cut through the room like broken glass.
Like a truth that couldn't be softened.
Couldn't be eased into understanding.
Rohit stiffened.
His body reacting before his mind could catch up.
Priya looked at Yashpal with wide, frightened eyes.
Eyes that were beginning to understand.
That were beginning to see the shape of something terrible.
And Diya, sitting alone in the far corner, let her head tilt ever so slightly.
As though she had already heard the answer before.
Had always known the answer.
Had been waiting for the others to catch up.
"I told you," Yashpal croaked.
His throat raw.
His voice barely his own.
"You're holding onto a lie."
"None of them…"
"None of us ever left this place."
"We only…"
"Shifted deeper into it."
Saanvi frowned.
Confusion flickering across her tired face.
Desperation flickering behind the confusion.
"Shifted?"
"What does that even mean?"
"We walked here."
"We survived here."
"We're—"
"You think survival is proof of escape?" Yashpal interrupted.
His voice suddenly sharp.
Suddenly certain.
His eyes gleamed in the dim firelight.
And for the first time since he had collapsed, he sat upright.
Trembling but deliberate.
"This place doesn't let go."
"You don't escape it."
"It just…"
"Replays you."
"In fragments."
"In pieces."
"Over and over."
No one moved.
Even the lantern seemed to still.
Its flame curving but not fading.
Hesitating.
As if it too was listening to truths it didn't want to hear.
Abhay's knuckles whitened where he held the edge of the table.
His hands gripping so hard the wood groaned in protest.
"Are you saying we're already dead?"
Yashpal's silence was worse than any confirmation.
Worse than any scream.
Worse than any explanation.
The silence that came was the silence of certainty.
Of knowing something that couldn't be unknown.
Of understanding that would destroy everything they'd built to stay sane.
Rohit slammed his fist into the wall.
The thud echoing like a heartbeat.
Like the building was responding.
"No."
"No, I won't listen to this madness."
"We fought, we bled, Kabir—"
His voice cracked as Kabir's name passed his lips.
As if the name itself was too heavy to carry.
"We saw him die."
"That was real."
"Yes," Yashpal rasped.
His eyes dulling with grief.
With the weight of truth.
"That was real."
"And yet, tell me, why do you feel him still?"
"Why do you sense him when the night falls quiet?"
"Why do his screams echo in your head when you try to sleep?"
Priya hugged her knees.
Her lips trembling.
Her body folding in on itself like origami.
Like she was trying to make herself smaller.
"Stop…"
But it was too late.
The weight of Yashpal's truth—or delusion—was pressing into them like iron chains.
Like something that couldn't be shaken off.
Couldn't be denied.
And then, the look.
That fleeting glance.
It happened when Diya shifted in her corner.
Just a subtle movement.
The creak of old stone beneath her.
Yashpal's eyes flicked to her.
Just for a second.
But the others noticed.
They all noticed.
The way his gaze found her.
The way it lingered.
The way it held recognition.
Abhay narrowed his gaze.
His eyes becoming slits.
"Why her?"
Diya slowly raised her head.
Her dark eyes gleamed.
Not with fear.
But with something far more unsettling:
Acceptance.
"You think I don't know?" she said softly.
Her voice calm.
Eerily calm.
"You think I haven't felt it since the beginning?"
"The whispers."
"The stares."
"The way this place breathes when we do?"
"The way my name is carved into everything?"
Her words chilled the marrow in their bones.
Saanvi shook her head.
Trying to hold onto rationality.
Trying to find purchase in a world that was sliding away.
"You're just a child—"
"I'm not a child," Diya interrupted.
Her tone calm.
Terrifyingly calm.
"I remember what you refuse to."
"I see what you bury every time you close your eyes."
"You call it survival…"
"But survival ended long ago."
The lantern quivered.
For an instant.
Just an instant.
Shadows crawled up the walls like insects.
Stretching.
Elongating.
Becoming something with purpose.
Meghna turned sharply to Yashpal.
"Why did you look at her?"
The soldier's face paled.
Lips trembling with words he wouldn't give life to.
His silence was worse than an answer.
Was worse than any confession.
Rohit stepped forward.
His hand twitching near the knife at his belt.
"If she knows something, she needs to say it."
Abhay moved between them.
His voice carrying authority.
"Enough."
"No one touches her."
"We don't tear each other apart before—"
"Before we even know what we're fighting."
His words held authority.
But the fear behind them was plain.
Was visible.
Was cracking through.
Diya, however, did not cower.
She leaned her head back against the wall.
Eyes half-lidded.
As if she had spoken too many truths for her age already.
As if truth was something she'd been carrying her entire life.
"You're not fighting it," she whispered.
"You're feeding it."
That silence again.
Heavy.
Choking.
Suffocating.
Like the air itself had become solid.
Meghna's hands trembled as she clutched the empty cup Yashpal had spilled.
The metal cold in her hands.
Priya's eyes darted around the room as if she expected the walls to bleed.
Expected the plaster to open up.
Expected to see things that couldn't exist.
Saanvi stood frozen.
Rational words swallowed by doubt.
By the terrible understanding that rationality had no place here.
That reason had abandoned them the moment the van crashed.
And Abhay—
Abhay stared at Diya like a man seeing the outline of a puzzle piece he did not want to place.
Like a man who understood what it meant but couldn't accept it.
Something moved in the corner.
They all saw it.
A flicker.
A shadow crouching where none had been before.
It didn't lunge.
It didn't speak.
It only watched.
Patient.
Hungry.
Waiting for them to accept the truth they were all dancing around.
The lantern dimmed.
Almost extinguished.
The darkness pressing in.
Before flaring back to life.
Violent.
Desperate.
And the corner was empty.
No shadow.
No figure.
Just stone and dust and the absence of something that had been there.
No one breathed.
No one moved.
No one spoke.
Yashpal lowered his head.
His voice breaking into a hoarse confession.
"You'll see."
"Soon enough, you'll see."
"The truth will come crawling out from under the floorboards."
"And when it does, you'll understand why we can never leave."
And in that suffocating silence.
When all the others tried desperately to deny it.
When they tried desperately to find holes in the logic.
To find ways to escape this understanding.
Diya's lips moved again.
Barely above a breath.
A whisper.
A prophecy.
"I knew it."
"I knew it from the start."
Her voice was sad.
Not frightened.
But sad.
Like she was mourning something that had already died.
Like she was grieving people who were still walking.
Still breathing.
Still believing they were alive.
"The most terrifying monsters
are not the ones that emerge from darkness,
but the truths that step quietly out of silence."