"New flesh tastes like memory,
Fresh screams write themselves in stone.
The village hungers for the unaware,
And feeds them slowly, right down to the bone."
The van skidded across gravel.
Tires screaming.
Metal crunching against stone.
The sound of collision echoed through Bhairavpur like a dinner bell.
Inside the vehicle, eight people lay unconscious.
Or dead.
It was impossible to tell the difference in a place where both states existed on a spectrum.
Abhay stood at the edge of the village.
Watching.
Waiting.
Diya stood beside him.
Her expression serene.
Like she was welcoming old friends.
"They'll wake in approximately four hours," Diya said.
"The village prefers its prey conscious."
"Unconscious victims don't generate sufficient fear."
"Fear is the nutrient."
"Terror is the food."
"Desperation is the seasoning."
A figure emerged from one of the buildings.
It wore Rohit's face.
But the eyes were wrong.
The movements were wrong.
Everything about it suggested human form with non-human operation.
"The keeper is ready," the Rohit-thing said.
Its voice layered with other voices beneath.
"The warnings are prepared."
"The cycle awaits initiation."
Abhay nodded once.
He walked toward the van.
His movements calm.
Patient.
Like someone approaching a task he'd performed countless times before.
Because he had.
He opened the van's side door.
Inside, the eight bodies lay in various states of injury.
Blood on faces.
Limbs bent at impossible angles.
Clothes torn and soaked with fluids.
But breathing.
All of them breathing.
The village wouldn't let them die before they could serve their purpose.
Death was a luxury.
Survival was the punishment.
They woke one by one.
Consciousness returning like drowning in reverse.
The first to open her eyes was a woman named Asha.
Twenty-six years old.
Travel blogger.
She'd been documenting a road trip through rural India.
She'd been so excited about finding "authentic" experiences.
Bhairavpur had given her authenticity.
Just not the kind she'd planned for.
Her eyes focused slowly.
The haveli's stone walls coming into view.
The spirals on those walls glowing faintly.
Like constellations of something terrible.
"Where—" she tried to speak but her throat was raw.
Raw from screaming before the crash.
Raw from inhaling dust and fear.
Behind her, a man named Dev was regaining consciousness.
He was older.
Forty-two.
A documentary filmmaker.
He'd been hired to create a travel piece about forgotten villages in India.
He'd forgotten to research the ones that actively didn't want to be found.
One by one, they woke.
A couple named Raj and Priya (different Priya, the village sometimes recycled names).
A solo traveler named Marcus (the village sometimes recycled people).
A journalist named Vikram.
An elderly woman named Savitri.
Eight people.
Eight consciousnesses ready to be processed.
Eight new spirals waiting to be carved.
Abhay entered the haveli.
He moved with the ease of someone greeting family.
"Welcome to Bhairavpur," he said simply.
His voice carrying weights and depths that hadn't been there before.
Like speaking the village's name had opened channels in his throat.
Had allowed it to speak through him.
Asha tried to back away.
But her legs wouldn't respond.
She looked down and saw why.
The floor beneath her was spiraling.
Literally.
The stone was moving in geometric patterns.
Creating paths.
Creating walls.
Creating boundaries.
She wasn't in a room anymore.
She was inside something alive.
Inside something that was reformatting space to accommodate her presence.
"This isn't real," Dev said.
His filmmaker's mind trying to rationalize.
"This is a hallucination."
"Trauma-induced delusion."
"We've hit our heads and our brains are manufacturing—"
"Your brains are fine," Abhay interrupted.
"Your understanding of reality is what's compromised."
"Bhairavpur doesn't work according to your rules."
"Your rules are external."
"Here, the internal rules apply."
"Consciousness creates environment here."
"Fear creates architecture."
"Desperation writes the dialogue."
Vikram stepped forward.
The journalist in him demanded answers.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
"Where are we?"
"What happened to our van?"
Abhay smiled.
An expression that was almost exactly like a human smile.
But not quite.
Like something had studied human smiles and created an approximation.
An echo of an echo.
"I'm a guide," Abhay said.
"A messenger."
"A record of what happens when the pattern loops back on itself."
"You're in Bhairavpur."
"A village that exists in a state of perpetual consumption."
"Your van crashed approximately six hours ago."
"Two of you died on impact."
He gestured toward two bodies stacked carefully in a corner.
Cold.
Still.
Beyond recovery.
"The village prefers even numbers," he continued.
"Eight is optimal."
"Eight creates a complete circuit."
"Eight can feed the spirals properly."
Savitri began to chant.
Low sounds.
Protective sounds.
The prayers of someone who had survived partition and war and famine.
Someone who had learned that some things couldn't be fought.
Could only be endured.
"There's one among you," Abhay said.
His eyes scanning them.
Landing on each face.
"One among you who was meant to be here."
"One among you who the village has been waiting for."
His gaze stopped on Marcus.
But not the Marcus who'd woken a moment ago.
Another figure.
Standing slightly apart.
A figure that none of the others had registered as being there.
The Mark-thing from the previous cycle.
The thing that wore Marcus's shape.
"Hello," the Marcus-thing said.
Its smile even wider.
"I'm here to welcome you."
"I'm here to show you the way."
"I'm here to teach you the pattern before you become part of it."
Time became negotiable.
That was the first lesson.
Asha watched the light change multiple times.
Morning to afternoon to dusk to midnight.
But it all happened while her eyes stayed fixed on Abhay's face.
Like time was moving around them rather than moving them through it.
Dev tried to leave.
He walked toward what he thought was a door.
It was a wall.
He walked toward what he thought was another door.
Also a wall.
The haveli was reshaping.
The boundaries were contracting.
The space was becoming smaller while remaining the same size.
Physics broken at a fundamental level.
Raj and Priya held each other.
They'd been married for three years.
They'd booked this trip to "reconnect."
They were reconnecting now.
In the face of the impossible.
In the face of dissolution.
They were more present with each other than they'd been in months.
Vikram continued to document.
He'd pulled out his phone.
He was recording everything.
But when he checked the footage later, the video was blank.
The audio was blank.
The phone had recordings of nothing.
Like Bhairavpur couldn't be captured by technology.
Like it existed outside the bandwidth of documentation.
Like it could only be experienced.
Never proven.
Savitri asked Abhay:
"How long?"
Three words.
But carrying the weight of an entire life lived.
"How long until what?" Abhay replied.
"Until I stop being myself."
"Three days," Abhay said.
"Approximately."
"It moves faster each cycle."
"The village is becoming more efficient."
"More hungry."
"More certain of what it wants."
Savitri nodded.
Like she'd been waiting for this her entire life.
Like she'd always known.
"Then I'll spend those three days remembering," she said.
"I'll spend those three days being present."
"I'll spend those three days refusing to forget who I was."
Abhay watched her with something that might have been respect.
"That won't help," he said.
"But it's admirable."
Around midnight, the first visitor appeared.
It was Yashpal.
Or the thing that had been Yashpal.
Its body was barely visible.
Just an outline.
Just a shadow that held the suggestion of human form.
It moved through the haveli like water.
Like liquid.
Like something that had forgotten it needed walls to contain it.
"I'm here to warn you," the Yashpal-thing said.
Its voice carrying the memory of Yashpal's accent.
His cadence.
His way of explaining things with scientific precision.
But underneath, a chorus.
A hundred voices.
A thousand.
"I'm here to tell you what comes next."
"The spirals you see on the walls are recording devices."
"They're capturing your consciousness."
"They're learning your architecture."
"They're preparing spaces for you."
"Soon you'll join us."
"Soon you'll be part of the village."
"Soon you'll understand that this was inevitable."
Marcus stepped forward.
He was shaking.
"Can we escape?" he asked.
The Yashpal-thing turned its fragmentary attention toward him.
"No," it said simply.
"Escape is not an option."
"I've tried."
"I've failed."
"Every version of me that has tried to leave has failed."
"Every iteration."
"Every timeline."
"Every possible path leads back here."
"Back to Bhairavpur."
"Back to the spiral."
"Back to becoming."
Asha couldn't take it anymore.
She ran.
She didn't know where she was running.
Just away.
Away from the voices.
Away from the words.
Away from the impossibility.
The haveli rearranged behind her.
Walls shifted.
Doors became hallways.
Hallways became rooms.
She ran deeper and deeper until she realized:
She was running through the same corridor over and over.
The same wall.
The same corner.
The same moment of terror and disorientation.
Repeating.
Never progressing.
Never arriving.
Just running.
Forever running.
She collapsed.
And when she stopped moving, she found herself back in the main hall.
With the others.
Like she'd never left.
Like her attempt at escape had been recorded.
Documented.
Added to Bhairavpur's collection.
By the second day, the second group had begun to understand.
This wasn't survival.
This was documentation.
This was the village collecting data.
Processing consciousness.
Learning how humans broke under pressure.
How they fractured.
How they dissolved.
How they became willing participants in their own unmmaking.
Abhay sat in his window seat.
Watching the second van that had arrived.
Eight more people.
Eight more spirals.
Eight more cycles in the eternal pattern.
Diya sat nearby.
Her locket held loosely in her hand.
"How many times?" she asked him.
"How many times have we done this?"
"Enough," Abhay replied.
"More than enough."
"But not the last time."
"There will never be a last time."
"This is eternity."
"This is what we chose."
Diya smiled.
Sad and ancient.
"We didn't choose this," she said.
"This chose us."
"And now we're the ones who make the choice for everyone else."
Outside, the spirals glowed brighter.
The haveli hummed with new consciousness.
The village sang with eight new voices.
Eight new names added to the ledger.
Eight new deaths beginning.
"Where arrivals precede the fall,
And spirals answer darkness' call.
The village wakes to feed again,
On those who thought they could descend."