"When the spiral breaks and consciousness returns,
The mind forgets what the body still discerns.
Between the nightmare and the waking breath,
Lies the threshold where madness meets death."
Abhay's eyes opened.
The ceiling was stone.
Real stone.
Unmoving.
He lay on the floor of the haveli's main hall, and for a moment, he couldn't remember how he'd gotten there.
His body ached.
Every muscle screamed.
His ribs felt like they'd been compressed by something massive and then released.
He pushed himself up slowly.
The movement sent waves of pain through his chest, but the pain was real.
Grounded.
Physical.
Not the abstract agony of the nightmares that were already dissolving in his mind.
What nightmare?
He couldn't quite remember.
There had been something.
Something that felt important and terrible and absolutely certain in its logic.
But the details were slipping away like water through fingers.
All that remained was a feeling.
A dread.
A sense that something fundamental was wrong.
"Abhay?"
Meghna's voice came from across the room.
She stood there, alive, breathing, entirely present in a way that made his chest constrict.
"You're awake," she said.
Relief flooded her face.
"We thought we'd lost you."
He looked at her.
Really looked at her.
Meghna.
Alive.
"What happened?" he asked.
His voice was rough.
"You collapsed," Meghna said, moving closer.
"After Yashpal... after what happened with Yashpal."
Yashpal.
Yes.
That had been real.
That transformation.
That moment when the hands changed and something that wasn't Yashpal anymore spoke through Yashpal's mouth.
But after that...
After that was fog.
Was nightmare.
Was something his mind had constructed to process trauma.
Had to be.
"How long was I unconscious?" Abhay asked.
"Hours," Meghna replied.
She sat beside him.
Not touching, but close.
"Since this morning, really."
"We couldn't wake you."
"You kept talking in your sleep."
"Talking about... I don't know what, actually."
"It didn't make sense."
Abhay wanted to ask what he'd been saying.
But something stopped him.
Some instinct that suggested knowing would be dangerous.
"Where are the others?" he asked instead.
"Still sleeping," Meghna said.
"All except Diya."
"She's been awake the whole time."
"Just sitting in her corner, waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
"For you to wake up, I think."
Abhay nodded slowly.
He tried to reconstruct the nightmare.
Tried to gather the fragments back into narrative.
But it was like trying to read words written in water.
There had been spirals.
Or had there been?
There had been deaths.
Or transformations.
Or something in between.
There had been cycles.
Or iterations.
Or versions of time folding back on themselves.
But the more he tried to hold onto the images, the faster they scattered.
What remained was just the feeling.
Just the dread.
Just the absolute certainty that something was fundamentally wrong with this moment.
With this place.
With the fact that Meghna was sitting beside him alive when something in his body knew she shouldn't be.
The Gathering.
By afternoon, the others had emerged.
Rohit looking haggard.
Priya with her camera already hanging from her neck like a lifeline.
Saanvi with the exhaustion of someone who'd been praying through the night.
They all looked at Abhay with expressions that mixed relief and something else.
Something like they were waiting for him to confirm or deny something.
"You gave us a scare," Rohit said.
"Talking nonsense in your sleep."
"What kind of nonsense?" Abhay asked.
"We couldn't really understand it," Priya replied.
"But you kept saying names."
"Kept talking about people dying."
"Kept mentioning spirals."
She paused.
"You seemed very convinced it was all real."
Abhay felt something cold move through his chest.
"I had a nightmare," he said carefully.
"A very vivid one."
"That's all it was."
But Priya was studying him with her photographer's eye.
The eye that saw what was actually there, not what was supposed to be there.
"You look terrified," she said.
"Like you still believe the nightmare."
Abhay didn't respond.
Because yes.
Despite knowing it was a dream.
Despite the fragmented memories that suggested impossibility.
Despite the logical part of his mind insisting that what he'd experienced couldn't have happened.
He still believed it.
He still felt it.
He still knew things he shouldn't know.
The Knowledge.
Later, when Abhay found himself alone, he tried to understand what he knew.
He knew something about Meghna.
Not clearly.
But the knowledge sat in his chest like a stone.
Like something heavy and inevitable.
He knew that something was going to happen to her.
Something that he should prevent.
Something that he couldn't prevent.
The knowledge had the texture of certainty.
The weight of fate.
The feel of something that had already been decided.
He wanted to ask her about it.
But how could he explain?
How could he warn someone about a doom he couldn't articulate?
How could he say: "Something in my nightmare told me you're going to die" without sounding completely insane?
He couldn't.
So he said nothing.
He simply watched her.
Watched the way she moved through the haveli.
Watched the way she smiled at Rohit when she thought no one was looking.
Watched her with the strange knowledge that time was running out.
That her existence in this moment was borrowed.
That something was already in motion.
The Question.
Around midnight, Abhay found himself at the window, staring out at the village.
The spirals on the wall seemed to glow faintly in the darkness.
Or maybe they'd always glowed and he was only noticing it now.
A figure appeared beside him.
Diya.
She moved silently.
She always moved silently.
"You remember," she said softly.
It wasn't a question.
"I remember fragments," Abhay replied carefully.
"Fragments of a nightmare."
"Nothing more."
Diya was quiet for a moment.
Then: "Do you remember why you were dreaming?"
"No," Abhay said.
"I don't."
"Do you remember what you learned?"
"I learned nothing," Abhay said.
"It was a dream."
But even as he said it, he knew it was a lie.
He had learned something.
He'd learned the shape of something terrible.
He'd learned the rhythm of something that was about to begin.
He'd learned that the village had rules.
And that those rules didn't care about his preference for denial.
"The dream was real," Diya said quietly.
"Not in the way waking is real."
"But real in the way that truth is real."
"Real in the way that inevitability is real."
"Real in the way that what's going to happen next is real."
Abhay turned to look at her.
"What's going to happen next?" he asked.
Diya smiled.
Sad and ancient.
"What always happens," she said.
"The village teaches you what you need to know."
"The village shows you the pattern."
"The village waits for you to understand."
"And then the village begins again."
She moved away.
Back into the shadows.
Back into whatever space she occupied when she wasn't being observed.
And Abhay was left standing alone.
With the knowledge in his chest.
With the dread that wouldn't dissipate.
With the certain understanding that his nightmare wasn't over.
It had only paused.
It was only waiting for him to forget enough.
For him to drop his guard.
For him to believe that the waking world was safer than the dream.
Because that was when it would begin again.
That was when the spiral would resume.
That was when the village would teach him the next lesson.
The Night.
Abhay didn't sleep.
He lay on the floor and waited for dawn.
Around him, the others slept fitfully.
Meghna with her hand on Rohit's chest.
Priya and Saanvi tangled together like they were afraid the other would disappear.
Rohit with his hand on the knife at his belt.
Diya in her corner, motionless, watching.
Always watching.
And Abhay understood something then:
The nightmare had changed him.
Whether it was real or not, whether it had actually happened or was only a product of trauma and stress and the breaking mind of someone in crisis—
It had changed him.
He could no longer see the others as they were.
He could only see them as they would become.
He could no longer see the village as a place.
He could only see it as a mechanism.
A machine designed to consume.
A hunger given architecture.
A pattern designed to repeat.
And he was at the center of it.
The conscious node.
The point of awareness where the spiral spiraled inward.
The one who would remember.
The one who would witness.
The one who would see it all happen again and again and again until understanding became acceptance and acceptance became surrender.
He closed his eyes.
But he didn't sleep.
Because sleep meant dreaming.
And dreaming meant spiraling inward.
And spiraling inward meant moving closer to understanding.
And understanding meant there would be no escape.
Only levels.
Only lessons.
Only the slow, inevitable descent into the knowledge that the pattern was eternal.
And he was trapped inside it.
The Morning After.
When dawn came, Abhay was still awake.
The others began to stir.
They looked at him with concern.
"You okay?" Rohit asked.
"You look like you haven't slept."
"I'm fine," Abhay replied.
But he wasn't fine.
He would never be fine again.
Because now he knew something that couldn't be unknown.
Now he could feel something that couldn't be unfelt.
Now he carried the weight of a nightmare that had the texture of prophecy.
He stood.
He moved toward the others.
And he began the day.
Not knowing if he was living it.
Or if he was dreaming it.
Or if the distinction even mattered anymore.
"Where spirals wake and dreamers fall,
The village feeds upon them all.
And those who wake within the dream,
Discover nothing's as it seems."