He found Meera on the terrace of her building at sunset, watering her mother's plants and listening to music through one earbud. She pulled the earbuds out when she saw his face.
"What happened?"
"I need to tell you something".
He Told her everything. The vision. The cricket ground. The chips packets. The chalk symbol on the wall. She listened without interrupting - which was not like her - but she could see it in him, that had changed, the door that had opened.
"The chalk marking - a circle with a line through it. You are Sure?"
"Yes. Why?"
She set down her watering can.
"There is a group. My mother mentioned them once. She said they meet in the old library annex on the east lane."
"The one with the lights on at midnight."
"You have noticed too."
"I assumed it was nothing."
"My mother said to stay with them. She said they are very dangerous not because they were wrong - but because they were right."
The VIGIL
"They had been there at every death. Watching. Recording. Leaving their quiet signature behind for anyone paying close enough attention. Most people weren't paying attention. "
Arjun looked out at the Chandravali skyline - the crooked rooftops, the dark ribbon of the river at a distance, the hill with the temple on it that had passed a thousand times without ever wondering what was on the other side of it.
"Then let's go find them."
In the annex of the east lane, Devraj Iyer had been translating the same passages for six years. Tonight, it was suddenly clear. He had reached passages he had never been able to fully decode - The astronomical references had always eluded him. But tonight, for reasons he could not explain, the language was suddenly clear.
He read it once. Twice. Three times. His hands begin to shake.
"When the sixth death approached, a child of neither goddess nor god shall open his eyes in the walking dream. He will see what the dead saw. He will carry what the living cannot. He is not chosen. He is awakened. And the goddess will feel him before he feels himself."
Devraj set the manuscript down. He sat in his small room above the chai shop - the same room he had moved into twelve years ago with his translation tucked inside his shirt and nothing else - and looked at passages for a long time. He thought about the temple. About his father's face when they told him to leave. About twelve years of being right and being alone in it.
He reached for his phone. He called Kiran.
"It has begun. Find the boy."