The flames moved wildly, like monsters.
Rohan was only five years old when his world fell apart. Smoke filled the air, making it hard to breathe. He held on tightly to the stair railing, his eyes stinging as fire burned everything around him. He heard his parents screaming, but he couldn't see them through the thick smoke. The heat was too much. Wood cracked, glass broke. Somewhere nearby, a bookshelf crashed to the floor.
Then everything went quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that means things are okay—
but the kind that comes when life disappears.
His parents never came out.
Later, the neighbors told him they found him near the front door, holding a burned piece of his father's watch strap. The firemen called him lucky. But Rohan didn't believe that. If he was really lucky, his parents would have survived too.
Five years later, fire was replaced by blood.
Rohan stood still by the side of the road. Cars stopped fast near the crash. Horns were loud. People were shouting. His sister's schoolbag lay torn in the gutter. Her yellow scarf was tied around his wrist. It was wet with blood.
People said the driver lost control. They said the brakes didn't work. They said it wasn't anyone's fault.
But Rohan had been standing there, waiting for her. He saw it all.
Her small hand stretched toward him through the shattered bus window. Then it vanished.
And just like that, the last person he loved was gone.
---
Grief became routine.
Rohan spent the next ten years living in the homes of strangers—people who gave him food and a place to sleep, but never really noticed him. The foster homes kept changing. Some people were kind, but most were distant. No one stayed long enough to realize the boy didn't talk much—not because he had nothing to say, but because he had learned that silence kept him safe.
Every time he opened up, something bad happened. His parents died when he was five. His sister was taken from him in front of his eyes. The people who were supposed to protect him always disappeared. So, he built a wall around himself—a quiet world where no one could hurt him again. Talking felt like inviting pain. Trusting felt like risking everything.
So, he chose to stay silent. He became the boy who followed rules, who didn't argue, who kept to himself. He was always there, but never really seen. No fights, no loud moments, no deep connections. Just a shadow in the background—present enough not to be a problem, quiet enough to never draw attention.
He passed school. Finished college. Graduated.
By 24, he had a job in a mid-tier tech firm in Pune. He lived alone in a one-room flat that smelled of old paper and silence. No family photos. No visitors. No birthdays. The world had moved on, and he'd stayed behind.
Until Priya.
---
She entered like a whisper. A new hire in the design team, sharp-witted, with eyes that lit up when she laughed.
Rohan noticed her because she noticed him.
One afternoon, during a team lunch, she caught him hiding behind his headphones and asked, "What are you always listening to? Ghosts?"
He smirked. "Silence."
She laughed. Really laughed. Loud and unapologetic.
He didn't understand it then, but something cracked inside him. Something old and tightly sealed.
They talked more after that. At coffee machines. In elevators. She had a way of pulling words out of him like thread from a spool. For the first time in years, he looked forward to something.
Then came the invitation. Dinner at her house. To meet her parents.
---
He wore his only blazer. Shaved twice. Rehearsed lines in his head.
Her house was all glass and expensive art. Her father was a towering man with eyes like courtroom judges. Her mother smiled the way knives might smile.
The questions came sharp and fast: "Where are your parents?" "What's your family background?" "Any siblings?"
And the answers, each like a dull blade: "Dead." "Foster care." "None left."
Her mother didn't even try to hide her disapproval. "You have no roots, no lineage. That's tragic."
Her father added bluntly, "We want stability for our daughter. Not a project."
Priya said nothing. Not in protest. Not in support. Just silence.
That silence hurt more than the words.
He left early. She didn't follow.
---
The unraveling began quietly.
He sat through meetings but couldn't focus. His code failed in testing. He forgot deadlines. Emails went unanswered. He heard whispers—about incompetence, mood swings, unprofessionalism.
Then came the client escalation. A high-priority delivery failed. And he, the project lead, had no excuse.
HR didn't sugarcoat it. "We're letting you go. You need time to figure yourself out."
That night, his flat felt smaller than usual. The walls pressed in. The ticking of the clock was deafening. Her laugh echoed in the silence. So did her mother's voice.
You have no roots...
He grabbed a half-finished bottle of rum and walked.
---
It was Amavasya—the moonless night. The sky above was pitch, starless, oppressive. The streets emptied early. Even the dogs didn't bark.
He walked until the city gave way to the riverbanks. The Mula-Mutha shimmered black under the dim streetlamps. Somewhere across the water, a crematorium burned faint orange.
He took another swig. Then another. His mind burned with memories—blazing timber, shattered glass, blood on asphalt, Priya's silence. A life filled with endings, never beginnings.
He staggered closer to the edge, shoes sinking into mud. The current whispered like voices just below hearing. Maybe they were calling him.
One wrong step.
The ground slipped from under him.
The world flipped.
And the river swallowed him whole.
---
Underwater, he opened his eyes.
The river wasn't cold. It was warm. Like memory.
He didn't feel pain. Only weight.
He saw them—floating beside him.
His mother, arms outstretched. Her face blackened by smoke. "Why didn't you save me?"
His father, crushed beneath a beam. "Why did you live?"
His sister, blood on her forehead, whispering, "You promised you'd be there."
Then Priya's mother: "You're nothing."
The current twisted around him like chains. He didn't fight. There was nothing to fight for.
But something—no, someone—pulled him back.
---
He awoke coughing, mud in his throat. The sun was rising, pale and cold.
He was on the riverbank. But not the one he knew.
No buildings. No bridges. Just trees. Fog. And silence.
He rose, trembling, soaked to the bone, and stumbled forward through tangled undergrowth until he saw it: a broken house.
Half its roof had collapsed. Vines crept along the brick. Its door hung open like a yawn.
Drawn by something unseen, he stepped inside.
The air was thick. Not dusty—oppressive. Like the house had been holding its breath for centuries.
He looked around. Torn wallpaper. Black mold. Symbols carved into the wood. Not graffiti. Older.
The temperature dropped.
A whisper crawled through the floorboards. Then another. Then a laugh—low, guttural, and not human.
The door slammed shut.
---
They came at him—shadows twisted into faces he recognized. The woman from the bus stop. His father's charred figure. His sister's shattered glasses.
He ran, but the hallway stretched longer and longer. He fell. Crawled. Cried out.
A voice, ancient and echoing, cracked through the darkness.
"You begged for death. Now we ask: what life do you have left?"
It wasn't a question.
It was a judgment.
He knelt.
Not out of fear—but clarity.
Everything he had feared, everything he had lost... it had brought him here. And there was nothing left to mourn.
He said nothing.
But something in his silence answered.
---
The room changed.
Red light seeped through the cracks in the walls. A shape formed—a face, not quite human. Eyes like dying stars. A mouth that didn't move when it spoke.
"You carry the weight of the dead. Would you bear their power too?"
Rohan looked up.
For the first time in years, his lips curled into something not quite a smile.
"What's the cost?" he asked.
The entity grinned.
"Only what's already been taken."
The pact was not sealed in blood. It was sealed in emptiness.
A soul with nothing left to lose... becomes the most dangerous vessel of all.
To be continued...