"When flesh learns to sing in frequencies of pain,
And names are carved where sanity has lain.
The village drinks its fill and asks for more,
From those who knock upon its hungry door."
The second group fractured faster.
Asha was the first to show visible signs of change.
Her skin had taken on a pearlescent sheen.
Her eyes had begun to reflect light that didn't exist.
By the afternoon of the second day, she was already communicating with the walls.
Whispering to the spirals.
Having conversations that the living couldn't hear.
Dev tried to maintain documentation.
He'd found a piece of charcoal and was writing observations on the stone floor.
But his handwriting was degrading.
Becoming spirals.
Becoming patterns that suggested meaning but held none.
His mind was already being rewritten.
Already being prepared for distribution.
Vikram had stopped asking questions.
The journalist had learned that information was a currency that had no value here.
That understanding only accelerated despair.
That acceptance was the only currency that mattered.
Raj and Priya had stopped touching.
Like proximity to humanity was becoming toxic.
Like recognizing the human in another person only made the dissolution worse.
They sat on opposite sides of the hall.
Waiting.
Watching each other's transformations.
Documenting the death of their partnership through silence.
Marcus was different.
The new Marcus hadn't realized that the old Marcus had already been consumed.
That what walked in this haveli was only a shadow.
Only a record.
Only the village's memory of what Marcus had been.
He moved through the space with increasing confusion.
Sometimes he'd speak in Yashpal's voice.
Sometimes in Rohit's.
Sometimes in Meghna's.
The village was using him as a conduit.
Using his mouth to speak with the dead it had already collected.
Savitri prayed without speaking.
Her lips moved in patterns.
Her hands traced symbols in the air.
Protective gestures.
But protection was a concept that Bhairavpur didn't acknowledge.
Protection implied the possibility of harm.
Here, there was no harm.
Only transformation.
Only becoming.
Only the inevitable redistribution of consciousness into spaces that weren't spaces.
On the third morning, Meghna appeared.
Not as a suggestion of form.
But as a clear manifestation.
She was translucent.
But present.
She was dead.
But conscious.
She was everywhere and nowhere.
"I'm here to tell you it doesn't hurt," she said.
Her voice carrying harmonics that suggested multiple people speaking in unison.
"That's the lie they tell us when we're dying."
"That transformation hurts."
"But it doesn't."
"It expands."
"It dissolves the pain because it dissolves the self that experiences pain."
"Soon you'll understand."
"Soon you'll join us."
"Soon you'll be part of the village."
"And you'll spend eternity remembering what it was like to be separate."
"And you'll never forgive the universe for making you aware of that separation in the first place."
Priya stepped forward.
Not the journalist's Priya.
The new one.
"Can you feel it?" Meghna asked her.
"The way the stone is learning your shape?"
"The way the spirals are memorizing your face?"
"The way the village is practicing how to be you before you stop being you?"
Priya nodded.
Because yes.
She could feel it.
She could feel the stone beneath her feet becoming aware of her weight.
Could feel the air around her becoming conscious of her presence.
Could feel Bhairavpur learning her.
Digesting her.
Preparing to become her.
And the strange part was:
It didn't feel entirely wrong.
It felt like homecoming.
Like she was finally arriving somewhere she'd been meant to be all along.
Abhay sat with the third ledger that had appeared.
The ledgers multiplied with each cycle.
Each one documenting a different iteration.
A different group.
A different set of names.
He turned to the page marked with the current date.
Eight names were written there.
In handwriting that was already becoming spirals.
Asha.
Dev.
Vikram.
Raj.
Priya.
Marcus.
Savitri.
And one more.
A name that hadn't been there when the van crashed.
A name that had appeared in the ledger before the person had arrived.
Abhay's name.
Written in his own handwriting.
But written in a future date.
A date that suggested he'd already died.
Already transformed.
Already joined the chorus of voices that sang in the walls.
He traced his finger along the spirals that formed his name.
And he felt it.
The pull.
The village was learning him now.
After all these cycles.
After all these iterations.
It was finally ready to consume him.
Diya appeared beside him.
She looked exactly as she had when they crashed.
She hadn't aged.
Hadn't changed.
Hadn't transformed.
"It's almost time," she said.
"Almost time for what?" Abhay asked.
Though he already knew.
"Almost time for you to understand," she replied.
"Almost time for the loop to break."
"Almost time for the final chapter."
"But not yet."
"There are still chapters to write."
"Still cycles to complete."
"Still people to collect."
By evening, the transformations had reached a critical point.
Asha was barely recognizable.
Her form flickered between solid and translucent.
Between human and geometric pattern.
Between individual consciousness and distributed awareness.
She was remembering things she'd never experienced.
Memories from people she'd never met.
Conversations from centuries ago.
Lives lived in other timelines.
It was too much.
The human mind wasn't designed to hold infinity.
It collapsed.
It fragmented.
It exploded outward in directions that had no names.
Dev had stopped being a filmmaker.
He was becoming architecture.
His consciousness was learning to inhabit space.
Learning to become wall.
Learning to become corridor.
Learning to become the building itself.
When he moved, the haveli shifted with him.
His presence was becoming synonymous with the structure.
Soon there would be no distinction.
Soon Dev would be Bhairavpur.
And Bhairavpur would be Dev.
Vikram tried to fight it.
He tried to hold onto his sense of self.
Tried to maintain his identity as separate from the village.
But identity was the first thing Bhairavpur consumed.
It ate identity like medicine.
Like sustenance.
Like the only real nutrient that could fuel its hunger.
By the time he stopped resisting, he'd forgotten why he'd been resisting.
Raj and Priya held each other for the first time in hours.
In their final moments of recognizable humanity.
They dissolved together.
Their consciousnesses merging.
Becoming a single distributed entity that occupied multiple spaces simultaneously.
They were no longer two people.
They were a relationship given physical form.
A marriage encoded into the stone.
A love that had transcended the individual and become structural.
Marcus simply vanished.
One moment he was there.
The next, he was part of the wall.
Like he'd been absorbed so completely that no transition was visible.
Like the village had learned to consume without process.
Without visible degradation.
Just instantaneous integration.
Savitri was the last.
She'd spent her final hours meditating.
Accepting.
Preparing.
When her transformation came, she welcomed it.
She opened herself to it.
She invited it in like an old friend.
And as she dissolved, her final prayer wasn't a plea for help.
It was an acknowledgment:
"I was.
I am becoming.
I will be.
The cycle continues."
When the transformations were complete, the haveli had fundamentally changed.
It was larger now.
Or it contained more space than was physically possible.
The walls were alive with faces.
Translucent and transparent.
Showing the consciousnesses that dwelt within them.
Asha.
Dev.
Vikram.
Raj and Priya as a singular form.
Marcus.
Savitri.
And dozens of others from previous cycles.
All of them aware.
All of them watching.
All of them singing in frequencies that suggested both agony and ecstasy.
Abhay stood in the center of the main hall.
His form was beginning to flicker.
His consciousness was beginning to fragment.
Soon he would join them.
Soon his loop would reach completion.
Diya watched him with something that might have been affection.
Might have been hunger.
Might have been something that transcended the distinction between the two.
"How much longer?" Abhay asked.
"For this cycle?" Diya replied.
"Or for you?"
"Both."
"This cycle has twelve chapters remaining," she said.
"Twelve cycles of arrivals."
"Twelve more groups to process."
"Twelve more sets of names to be carved into the spiral."
"And then it restarts."
"And the first arrival of the next iteration sees you warning them."
"Sees you as the Rohit-thing."
"Sees you as the voice in the walls."
"Sees you as the death of hope."
Abhay nodded slowly.
"How many times has this happened?" he asked.
"How many iterations?"
Diya smiled.
"I've stopped counting," she said.
"After the first hundred, the numbers become meaningless."
"After the first thousand, you stop trying to track time."
"Now I just exist."
"Just witness."
"Just ensure the pattern continues."
Outside, a new van appeared on the road.
Its engine was loud.
Its headlights bright.
Eight more people.
Eight more consciousnesses.
Eight more spirals waiting to be carved.
The cycle was beginning again.
And Abhay understood:
He would watch them arrive.
He would guide them through the horror.
He would witness their transformations.
And then he would do it again.
Forever.
Unless something changed.
Unless something broke the pattern.
Unless something arrived that the village couldn't consume.
But nothing like that existed.
Bhairavpur was perfect.
It was infinite.
It was eternal.
It was absolutely certain in its consumption.
"The cycle spins and spins again,
Each arrival feeds the pain.
Eight souls fall to the spiral's call,
While the village devours them all."