"In the place where mercy dies and echoes rot,
The village learns to sing with voices bought.
Where flesh unmakes itself in spiraled song,
And those who scream discover they've been wrong."
Three days passed.
Or three hours.
Time had become a thing that bent around Bhairavpur rather than flowing through it.
Rohit stopped moving.
He sat on the same bench where Meghna had sat before her transformation.
His eyes fixed on nothing.
His body breathing but his consciousness clearly elsewhere.
Priya approached him once.
With water.
With food.
With the desperate need to help someone.
He didn't acknowledge her.
Didn't acknowledge anything.
She left the items beside him and retreated.
The apartment—no, the haveli—had begun to smell wrong.
Not decay.
But something closer to ozone.
Like reality was burning at the edges.
Like the boundaries between this world and whatever existed beyond were starting to fray.
Priya documented it anyway.
She'd picked up her camera again.
Not to capture beauty.
But to witness.
To create evidence that this place existed.
That this horror was real.
That she wasn't insane.
Though sanity felt like a luxury that required leaving Bhairavpur.
And no one left Bhairavpur.
Saanvi spent most of her time in prayer.
Not Christian prayers.
Not Hindu mantras.
Just sounds.
Phonetic fragments of belief systems she'd abandoned years ago.
Words that meant nothing but sounded like they meant everything.
Like repetition could create a barrier.
Like faith in anything—even meaningless sounds—could protect against dissolution.
Abhay remained by the window.
Always watching.
Always observing.
Sometimes Diya would join him.
Standing close but not touching.
Their silence a conversation that the others couldn't hear.
Couldn't understand.
Couldn't interrupt without risking something far worse than death.
Around midnight, Priya began to feel it.
A tingling in her fingers.
A lightness that suggested weight was being redistributed.
Redistributed away from her.
She looked down at her hands.
They were starting to become translucent.
Starting to show the bones beneath.
Starting to become something other.
"It's my turn," she said quietly.
Saanvi was beside her immediately.
"No," Saanvi whispered.
"Not you."
"Not yet."
But yes.
It was her turn.
The village had decided.
And the village's decisions were absolute.
Priya set her camera down.
For the last time.
She'd documented the entire spiral.
Every moment.
Every death.
Every transformation.
And now there was nothing left to document except her own ending.
"Stay with me," she asked Saanvi.
Not a plea.
A request.
A final assertion of humanity before humanity was stripped away.
Saanvi nodded.
She held Priya's hand.
And as the transformation began—as the light started to pour through Priya's skin, as her consciousness started to expand and fragment simultaneously—Saanvi didn't look away.
She bore witness.
She acknowledged.
She honored what her lover was becoming.
The process was faster than it had been for Meghna.
More violent.
More aware.
Like the village was learning.
Like each transformation taught it efficiency.
Like it was getting better at unmmaking people.
Priya's scream emerged from her throat as a sound that couldn't exist in this reality.
It was color.
It was texture.
It was the sound of consciousness being rewritten.
Of identity being distributed across stone and shadow and the spaces between thoughts.
And then she was gone.
Her body dissolving into the walls.
Her consciousness joining the chorus of voices that now haunted the haveli.
Saanvi stood alone.
Her hand still extended.
Still holding nothing.
Still feeling the warmth where Priya's hand had been.
The haveli groaned.
A sound of satisfaction.
The walls pulsed with new spirals.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands.
Each one a name.
Each one a record.
Each one a person who had been collected.
Rohit finally moved.
He stood.
His movements jerky.
Puppetlike.
Like he'd forgotten how to operate his own body.
"I'm going out," he said.
His voice flat.
Empty.
"I'm going to walk into the forest."
"And I'm going to keep walking until I can't walk anymore."
Abhay stepped away from the window.
"That won't work," he said.
"The forest will simply return you."
"Or it will keep you and dissolve you slowly."
"There's no escape."
Rohit laughed.
A sound like breaking glass.
"I don't want to escape."
"I want to stop existing."
"And if the village won't let me do that quickly, I'll let it do it slowly."
He moved toward the door.
Diya stepped in his way.
Not physically.
But her presence was enough.
Her presence seemed to occupy more space than it should have.
Seemed to push against reality itself.
"You have another purpose," she said.
Her voice carrying the weight of absolute certainty.
"The village isn't done with you."
"Let it be done," Rohit spat.
"I don't care what it wants."
"You will care," Diya replied.
"Because what it wants for you is worse than anything you can imagine."
"It wants you to remain conscious while you dissolve."
"It wants you to experience every moment of becoming other."
"It wants you to remember being human while you stop being human."
"It wants your suffering to be complete."
Rohit stared at her.
Seeing her clearly for what might be the first time.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"What are you?"
Diya tilted her head.
"I'm the keeper," she said simply.
"I've always been the keeper."
"And you're here because the village has chosen you."
"Chosen me for what?"
"To be the next one to remember."
That night, the spirals covered every surface.
They moved across the walls like living things.
Growing.
Multiplying.
Creating patterns within patterns.
Fractals of geometry that suggested intelligence.
That suggested purpose.
That suggested the village was becoming aware.
Was waking up.
Was learning to think at a scale that encompassed all of Bhairavpur.
Saanvi didn't resist when her hands started to glow.
She simply watched it happen.
Watched her body become a conduit for something vast.
Something that had been waiting for her to accept it.
She whispered prayers as she dissolved.
Different prayers than before.
These weren't prayers to anything external.
These were prayers to Bhairavpur itself.
Recognition.
Surrender.
Acceptance of merger.
And as she faded into the stone, her final thought wasn't of escape.
It was of Priya.
Of how they would exist together now.
Distributed across the same walls.
Forever merged.
Forever connected.
Rohit watched her go.
And something in him finally broke.
Not his will.
But his resistance.
He fell to his knees.
And he began to laugh.
A laugh that echoed through the haveli.
That bounced off the spirals.
That was multiplied by the walls until it sounded like a thousand people laughing.
Like the village itself was laughing.
Like Bhairavpur had finally achieved consciousness.
And consciousness found the situation hilarious.
By morning, only three remained.
Rohit.
Abhay.
Diya.
The haveli felt emptier than it should have.
Not because people were gone.
But because their echoes remained.
Haunting the walls.
Speaking through the spirals.
Singing in frequencies that made bone ache.
Rohit sat motionless.
His hands were beginning to show the translucence.
His eyes were beginning to hold that light.
He had perhaps hours.
Maybe less.
"Why keep me alive?" he asked Abhay.
"Why not let me dissolve like the others?"
Abhay was silent for a long moment.
"Because you're the messenger," he said finally.
"When the next group arrives—and there will be another group—you'll be here."
"You'll greet them."
"You'll warn them."
"And they won't listen."
"Just like no one ever listens."
"Just like the warnings are always ignored."
"Because the warnings only make sense after you're already trapped."
Rohit's laugh was bitter.
"So I get to watch it happen again and again."
"Yes," Abhay said.
"You get to watch it happen."
"And that will be your eternity."
Rohit looked at Diya.
"And what about you?" he asked.
"What's your role in this?"
Diya smiled.
Sad and ancient.
"I'm the first keeper," she said.
"The one who was here before the crash."
"The one who guides Abhay through his loops."
"The one who ensures that the pattern repeats."
"I'm the reason we can never leave."
Rohit's transformation accelerated.
Like hearing the truth had triggered something.
Like acceptance had opened a door.
His body began to glow from within.
His consciousness started to fragment.
And as he dissolved, he whispered a final message:
"Tell them I said—"
But the words were lost.
Consumed by the transformation.
Scattered across the spirals.
Distributed through the stone.
Never to be heard by living ears.
Only by the dead who dwelt in the walls.
And the memories that echoed forever.
When the dissolution was complete, Abhay moved through the haveli.
Counting the spirals.
Documenting the patterns.
Recording the data of dissolution.
There were thousands.
More than there had been before.
Each one a name.
Each one a person.
Each one a moment that the village had consumed and preserved.
Diya appeared beside him.
"How many this time?" she asked.
"Forty-seven," Abhay replied.
"This iteration was the fastest yet."
"The village is learning to accelerate."
"Good," Diya said.
"The next group will arrive soon."
"The pattern continues."
"The cycle restarts."
"And we remain."
Abhay turned to look at her.
"Until we don't," he said.
But even he didn't believe it.
Even he had begun to accept that this was forever.
That Bhairavpur was eternal.
That some places didn't let go.
They just learned better ways to hold.
Outside, the first vehicle appeared on the road.
A van.
Filled with people.
People who didn't know.
People who would crash.
People who would die.
People who would become spirals.
People who would feed the village.
And the cycle began again.
"Where the dead dance in walls of bone,
And the living learn they're not alone.
Where endings spiral into starts,
And Bhairavpur devours all hearts."