Recap:
Ansh experienced a terrifying vision of a woman dying on a train track—and then, the wall in his room vanished again. This time, he wasn't just watching. He was inside the vision. The woman looked at him and spoke his name: "Ansh… you shouldn't be here yet."
Ansh stumbled backward.
He wasn't in his room. Not anymore.
The air was cold and smelled of iron and damp moss. The forest around the track was hushed, but not silent. Insects clicked like distant clocks, and somewhere far behind him, a branch snapped. The woman's eyes were locked on his.
"You're not ready," she whispered.
Then—without warning—her body jerked, as though yanked by invisible hands. Her mouth opened to scream but no sound came. A blur of light. A screech of metal. The train.
Ansh turned away—but it was too late. He saw everything.
His body slammed back into his bed like he'd fallen from the ceiling. Gasping, drenched in sweat, heart hammering against his ribs.
3:03 AM.
He grabbed his journal and scribbled it down:
Forest again
Train tracks
She spoke to me
"You're not ready"
She died. Again.
He sat in silence, staring at his handwriting until the ink bled slightly from his damp fingers.
The next day, Ishu arrived first at the library where the trio often studied. He was skeptical, but curious enough to research anyway. He already had three tabs open: "Shared hallucinations," "Time perception distortions," and "Premonition dreams."
Vaishnavi slid into the seat next to him. "He saw her again, didn't he?"
"Yep," Ishu muttered. "And now she's talking."
Ansh arrived minutes later, looking pale. He dropped his bag and opened his notebook.
"She knows me," he said. "She said I shouldn't be there yet."
Vaishnavi's lips parted, her expression darkening. "Then she knows where you are. Not just who you are."
Ishu raised a hand. "Hold on. You're saying these visions have actual consciousness? Like—what—ghosts with GPS?"
"Not ghosts," Vaishnavi said. "More like echoes. Imprints of something that already happened—or will happen."
Ansh tapped his fingers anxiously. "What if I can change it? Save her?"
"Or what if changing it makes things worse?" Ishu asked.
Silence.
That evening, they met at Vaishnavi's place again. She had something to show them—a map of their city, with red pins in places where she had previously experienced her own visions.
"What are these?" Ansh asked.
"Real locations. Every time I had a vision, I marked it. And something bad happened at each one. Car crash. Fire. Suicide. They're all real. All documented."
Ansh pointed. "That forest—this one?"
Vaishnavi nodded slowly. "It's called Sompur Woods. Twenty kilometers from here. There's an abandoned rail line that cuts through it. No trains run there anymore. Not for decades."
Ansh's pulse quickened. "We need to go there."
Ishu groaned. "Of course we do. Because this isn't creepy at all."
That night, they packed flashlights, charged their phones, and took a late-night cab to Sompur Woods. The driver refused to go into the forest road, dropping them at the edge.
The silence was absolute.
The deeper they went, the louder the wind seemed to whisper—like it carried voices that never reached full words. Trees stretched like fingers above them. When they finally reached the old railway, Ansh stopped.
"This is it."
He turned. The others were right behind him.
Then, his vision swam.
The world twisted.
A sudden flash—like lightning without thunder—and Ansh was alone. The track was cold. The forest darker. And someone was standing on the rail line.
The woman.
But she wasn't running.
She looked calm.
She walked toward him, eyes glowing faintly.
And then she said something that froze the blood in his veins:
"They're coming for you now, Ansh. You opened the door."
A shadow moved behind her. A shape. Tall. Wrong. It didn't walk—it glided.
And it was looking at him.