"The first level is always the gentlest.
It shows you what you could have.
Before showing you what you will lose."
Morning came with a false kind of normalcy.
The sun rose.
The light filtered through the broken windows.
The haveli seemed almost peaceful.
Almost safe.
It was a lie that everyone desperately wanted to believe.
Rohit had stayed awake through the night.
His eyes red-rimmed.
His body running on pure adrenaline and the fear that if he closed his eyes, something would change.
Someone would vanish.
The rules would shift again.
When the others began to stir, he didn't mention the sounds.
Didn't mention the child's laughter that had eventually stopped around four in the morning.
Didn't mention the way the walls had seemed to pulse with each laugh.
Like the haveli itself was learning to breathe in synchronization with something living inside it.
Meghna was the first to truly wake.
She sat up slowly.
Her body aching from the hard floor.
She found Rohit immediately.
Their eyes meeting across the room.
An unspoken question passing between them:
Are you still real?
He nodded slightly.
She breathed out.
Relief so visceral it was almost painful.
Priya and Saanvi woke pressed against each other.
Neither moved immediately.
They simply lay there.
Aware of the contact.
Aware that it was the only warmth in this place.
Priya's camera was still in her hands.
Like she'd been holding it even in sleep.
Documenting dreams.
Recording nightmares.
Saanvi's hand rested on Priya's back.
A protection.
A comfort.
Neither of them acknowledged it when they finally stood.
But both understood that something had shifted.
That in the face of annihilation, they had chosen each other.
Not consciously.
But inevitably.
Yashpal remained on the table.
His hands now visibly changed.
The fingers longer.
The skin translucent in places.
Showing glimpses of something beneath.
Something that wasn't quite bone.
Wasn't quite liquid.
Wasn't quite anything that had a name.
He studied them with scientific detachment.
As if they belonged to someone else.
As if he was observing a fascinating specimen.
"It's spreading," he said quietly.
"The change."
"I can feel it moving up my wrists."
"Soon my arms."
"Then everything else."
No one knew how to respond to this.
So they didn't.
They simply moved around him.
Preparing what little food remained.
Going through the motions of survival.
Pretending that routine could halt transformation.
Abhay sat by the window.
Watching the village.
His face composed but his eyes tracking something.
Following something that the others couldn't see.
Diya moved through the space quietly.
But her attention was always on him.
Always aware of his position.
His breathing.
The slight tightening of his jaw when he looked at certain parts of the village.
Priya noticed this.
She began to document it.
Not with her camera.
But with her mind.
Filing away observations.
Building a profile.
The photographer in her couldn't help it.
She was collecting images.
Visual data.
Evidence of whatever was happening between those two.
Around mid-morning, Abhay stood.
"We should explore the southern quarter," he said.
"There might be supplies we haven't found."
"Or information about the village."
"I'll go with you," Diya said immediately.
Too immediately.
Like she'd been waiting for him to suggest it.
Like part of her was always prepared to follow him anywhere.
Rohit's jaw tightened.
"You're not going anywhere alone."
His voice carried an edge.
Not quite accusation.
But close.
"I'm not sending people into the village without backup."
"I'll go with them," Meghna said quickly.
She stood.
Moving toward Abhay and Diya.
Her expression set.
Determined to disrupt whatever dynamic was forming.
Rohit nodded.
Grateful for her intervention.
The four of them prepared to leave.
As they moved toward the door, Priya raised her camera.
"Wait," she said.
"Document this moment."
"Why?" Meghna asked.
But she understood.
In a place like this, moments of normalcy needed to be captured.
Preserved.
Proven to have existed.
Priya snapped the photo.
Four people.
About to walk into danger.
But still human.
Still functioning.
Still trying.
The streets here were different.
The buildings seemed older.
Or perhaps newer.
It was impossible to tell.
The architecture didn't follow logical progression.
A building could have walls that looked centuries old next to walls that looked freshly constructed.
Diya walked close to Abhay.
Close enough that their shoulders almost touched.
But not quite.
Maintaining the boundary that made it deniable.
That made it not-quite-a-thing.
Meghna walked on Abhay's other side.
A deliberate insertion into their space.
A statement without words:
I'm watching you.
Rohit followed behind.
His hand on the knife at his belt.
His eyes constantly scanning for threats.
For changes.
For signs that the village was reshaping itself around them.
"The office," Abhay said suddenly.
"Before we came here."
"Did you know this place?"
"Did you know what it was?"
Meghna hesitated.
"I heard stories," she admitted.
"My mentor at work—she'd been here once."
"Years ago."
"She said it was like stepping out of time."
"She said people there moved differently."
"Spoke differently."
"Like they were following a script that had been written long before they arrived."
Abhay nodded slowly.
"She was describing the village's influence," he said.
"The way it assimilates consciousness."
"The way it teaches you its language."
"Its rules."
"Until you forget you ever spoke anything else."
Diya stopped walking.
She turned to look at him directly.
"How do you know so much about this?" she asked.
Her voice carrying something beneath the question.
Curiosity.
Or recognition.
Or something more dangerous.
Abhay didn't answer immediately.
He looked at her.
Really looked at her.
In that moment, Meghna saw something flicker across his face.
Something like pain.
Or longing.
Or the memory of both.
"Because I've been here before," he said finally.
"Not in this lifetime."
"But in versions of this timeline that collapsed."
"In iterations that the village tried but rejected."
"I remember them all."
Rohit stepped forward.
"That's impossible."
"Exactly," Abhay replied.
"But you're going to have to accept the impossible now."
"Because the alternative is madness."
They continued walking.
Deeper into the quarter.
The buildings becoming more dilapidated.
The streets becoming narrower.
Until they found it.
A small shrine.
Made of black stone.
Covered in spirals.
Thousands of them.
Carved so deep they'd become grooves.
Channels.
Like the spirals were channels for something to flow through.
At the center of the shrine was a ledger.
Not the one they'd found before.
A different one.
This one was much older.
Its pages yellowed and brittle.
Meghna approached it carefully.
She opened it.
The pages crumbled slightly at her touch.
But the words were legible.
Names.
Hundreds of names.
Thousands perhaps.
All written in the same handwriting.
All documented with the same obsessive precision.
"These are people," she whispered.
"These are all people who came here."
"When?" Rohit demanded.
"How long has this been happening?"
Meghna turned the pages.
The dates went back.
Centuries.
Possibly longer.
Her hands began to shake.
"It's not recording new arrivals," she said.
"These dates... some of them are in the future."
Diya leaned in to look.
Her expression unchanged.
Unfazed.
"Because it's not a ledger," she said softly.
"It's a registry."
"A registry of who belongs to Bhairavpur."
"A record of the names it has already claimed."
Abhay reached out and turned a page.
His eyes scanning.
Until he found what he was looking for.
He stopped.
His finger resting on a name written in ink so dark it looked like blood.
Abhay.
But not just Abhay.
Abhay repeated.
Over and over.
Across multiple pages.
Abhay in different eras.
Abhay with different surnames.
Abhay dying and returning.
Abhay escaping and coming back.
"What is this?" Rohit asked.
His voice small.
His mind struggling to process.
"Evidence," Abhay said quietly.
"Evidence that I'm caught in a loop."
"Evidence that I've been here for a very long time."
"And every time I try to leave, I fail."
"And every time I fail, I restart."
Meghna turned pages frantically.
Looking for her own name.
For Rohit's.
For the others.
She found them.
All of them.
All listed with future dates.
All documented as if they'd already been claimed.
"We're already dead," she whispered.
"Or we will be."
"Or we've always been."
Diya's hand found Abhay's.
Not romantic.
But present.
Like she was confirming something.
Like she was saying:
I know.
I've always known.
And I'm still here with you.
"We should go back," Rohit said.
His voice cracking.
"We should tell the others."
But before they could move, the shrine began to hum.
Low.
Deep.
A frequency that seemed to resonate through their bones.
The spirals on the walls began to glow.
Faintly.
But unmistakably.
Like they were being activated.
Like they were a system being turned on.
"Run," Abhay said.
But it was too late.
The ground beneath them began to shift.
The stones rearranging.
The paths that had led them here suddenly becoming different paths.
Leading somewhere else.
Leading nowhere.
Meghna grabbed Rohit's hand.
Priya and Saanvi would have done the same if they were here.
But they weren't.
Only four of them.
In a shrine.
In a village that was learning their names.
Recording their presence.
Deciding what to do with them.
When they finally made it back to the haveli, hours had passed.
Or minutes.
Time was negotiable.
Priya and Saanvi were waiting.
Their faces showing relief and something else.
Something like they'd been having their own conversation.
Their own moment.
In the absence of the others.
"What happened?" Priya asked.
But she was looking at Abhay.
Studying him.
Like she'd figured something out.
"The village is cataloging us," Meghna said.
Her voice hollow.
"All of us."
"We're already recorded."
"Already claimed."
Yashpal looked up from the table.
His hands now changed almost completely.
"Welcome to level one," he said quietly.
"Where you learn that nothing you do will escape its notice."
"Where everything you are has already been filed away."
"Where the only thing left is to accept what you've already become."
Abhay moved to the window.
Diya following.
Always following.
And in the quiet of the haveli, the group understood:
They weren't fighting for escape anymore.
They were simply existing.
Within the constraints that had always been there.
Within the rules they'd never been taught but somehow always knew.
"The first level teaches acceptance.
The second level teaches surrender.
By the third level, you're no longer learning.
You're becoming."