The morning unfolded in slow, silken quiet.
Sunlight streaming through the high windows spread in soft gold patterns over the marble floor. The scent of jasmine lingered in the air, faint and mournful.
She sat by the piano room, her sketchbook closed beside her. She was still, but her hands were folded too tightly in her lap.
The echo of her father's voice still lingered in the hall.
"You went out of town without telling me, Isabella?"
Belrum Moren's voice wasn't raised, yet it carried the kind of authority that pressed against the air. His tall frame cast a long shadow upon the floor as he stood near the entrance in his usual attire: a charcoal suit, sharp, and deliberate.
Rumi Lurest, still in her denim jacket and tied-up bun, shifted uneasily beside Isabella. "Uncle, it wasn't dangerous," she began, trying to sound cheerful. "We only went for a short trip—shopping, that's all—"
In Belrum's eyes, so warm, the eyes of restrained fear stared back.
"Rumi, this isn't about shopping," he said slowly, his tone soft but cutting. "You don't understand how quickly things can go wrong. The world is not safe. And you…" his gaze moved to Isabella, "you should know better."
The words struck harder than any shout.
Isabella looked down, murmuring, "I'm sorry, Father. I didn't mean to worry you."
He exhaled, the tension in his shoulders easing slightly. "Just - no more disappearing without telling me. I can't lose you too."
The quiet ache in his last words made her chest tighten.
As he left the room, silence followed him - heavy, layered, just like a curtain slowly falling.
Rumi let out a melodramatic sigh as the door clicked shut. "Well… that went better than expected. I thought we'd be grounded for life."
Isabella didn't reply. She had stopped, her eyes catching on something else. She stooped, her eyebrows furrowing.
"Wait…"
Her voice was soft — too soft. She pulled her yellow dress up an inch or so, exposing one bare ankle. The other glittered with a silver anklet, slender and slightly dented from age.
The matching one was gone.
"My payal," she whispered. "It's missing."
Rumi blinked, cocking her head. "You wore both yesterday, didn't you? I remember hearing them — the little bells."
Isabella nodded quickly. "Yes. I never take them off. I wore them when we left for shopping."
Her voice was distant. "It must have fallen somewhere."
She began to search-first around the couch, then near the dressing mirror, then under the table where she had been sketching earlier.
The silver anklet, which was her favorite since childhood, wasn't there.
Rumi joined her, half crouching, to move cushions aside. "It has to be somewhere in this house. Maybe it slipped off when you changed clothes."
But the longer they searched, the more restless Isabella grew. Her movements became sharp, her breaths short.
"It's the last thing my mother gave me before she…" She stopped mid-sentence and blinked fast, her eyes shining-no, not with tears, but with silent panic.
Rumi softened, kneeling beside her. "We'll find it, Isa. I promise."
Isabella sat back against the couch, clutching the single remaining anklet.
The small bells jingled softly; their song was light, yet unfinished. The sound tore at her heart.
She smiled faintly. "She used to say it would protect me. That as long as both anklets stayed together, no shadow could touch me."
Rumi reached for her hand. "Then we'll make sure you get it back."
But neither of them knew that far away, someone already had.
-------
Somewhere across the city.
The night was drenched with blood.
A body hit the warehouse floor with a dull thud. The smell of gunpowder hung thick, clinging to every inch of air.
Leonardo Romano stood over the man, his gun still raised, smoke curling lazily from its barrel. Cold, detached, his expression was unreadable. The silence that followed the gunshot was almost deafening.
One of the guards stepped forward. "He tried running with the money, Boss. We caught him before the border."
Leonardo's jaw tightened. He said nothing right away.
He looked down at the lifeless man, a thin scar running down his face, eyes wide in eternal fear.
"Throw him in the river," Leonardo said flatly.
"Yes, sir."
As the guards dragged the body away, Leonardo turned, running a hand through his black hair.
He felt nothing. He always felt nothing, until tonight.
For suddenly, out of that grim silence, something brushed through his mind.
A soft, tinkling noise.
Chime.
Chime.
Chime.
He froze.
It was soft, distant - yet hauntingly familiar - the faint ringing of tiny bells that had followed him since that day.
That girl.
He could still see her in his mind's eye - the reflection in the shop mirror, the way the sun had caught her red saree, the way her long hair had shimmied like chestnut silk. Her eyes had been the colour of honey under the light, framed by lashes that could kill a man's composure in one glance.
He swallowed, his chest tight.
"Who the hell are you?"
The question slipped from his mouth before he realized it. His voice sounded lower, darker - like something had stirred inside him, something dangerous.
He tried to brush it off, but the image refused to fade.
The scent of her stayed, it seemed, in his head. Her reflection replayed itself like a memory he never lived - only dreamed.
He sat down on a nearby crate, playing with the silver ring on his finger, his thoughts increasingly erratic. He imagined her again - closer this time, her breath near his neck, the faint brush of those anklets against his skin. He cursed under his breath and abruptly stood, pushing the thought away. But it remained - a burning, consuming, twisting inside him like a fever.
"Find her."
Alex's voice came from somewhere down the hall. "Leo, are you done here? We need to- "
"Find her," Leonardo said again, his tone like ice. Alex frowned, puzzled. "Huh?"
But Leonardo wasn't listening anymore. Already he was walking toward the door, that elusive memory of silver bells still ringing in his mind - sweet, yet maddening.
The payal that once belonged to Isabella Moren now lay quietly in the palm of his hand.
---
That night, while Isabella was tossing and turning in her bed, her fingers brushed the bare skin of her ankle again.
The silence was wrong, somehow hollow. As if something of her had been misplaced in a place she couldn't see.
And somewhere far away, a man with blood on his hands and shadows in his soul held the other half, turning it over in his palm, lost in the echo of her memory. The tinkling of her anklet had become his curse.