AUTHORS POV
Morning didn't arrive gently. It came crawling into the dorm room like a pale intruder, spilling over the windowsill and settling across Sona Roy's face. She blinked against the soft light, a slow inhale rising in her chest, the kind that almost pretended the world outside was normal.
Almost.
The black rose on her nightstand ruined that illusion immediately.
Its petals were dusted with a cold, unnatural matte sheen, as if it had been dipped in shadow. A thin strand of ink yes, ink, not water trailed from its stem onto the wood surface like a quiet warning. Sona didn't flinch. She simply sat up, brushing her hair back, eyes calm. This wasn't new. This wasn't unfamiliar.
And that was the strangest part.
Across the room, Riya was still snoring softly, starfished under her blanket, unaware that someone had entered the dorm at some point in the night. No broken lock. No open window. No camera footage ever caught anything. Not even footprints.
But the roses always ended up exactly where Sona would look first.
She stepped out of bed, stretching the remnants of sleep away. She picked up the rose, its stem cool against her skin, and set it carefully in a drawer with three others. Three days of college and three roses. A small collection. A shrine built out of someone's obsession.
She wasn't frightened by it. Not anymore. Maybe she never really was.
Downstairs, the day began exactly the way college days always did: too loud, too crowded, and filled with too many people pretending life was simple. The four of them Sona, Arjun, Riya, and Kabir moved through campus like an inexplicable constellation, drawn together, tied together, without fully understanding why. All in their own glory of rich kids all looking like every but of expensive lawyers to be confident walk lazy easygoing nature combined with sharp eyes and something no one wanted to acknowledge.
Kabir complained about attendance rules.
Riya argued with him out of habit.
Sona walked between them, quiet, sharp, observing.
Arjun lingered slightly behind, his gaze unreadable, but always, always on her.
As if he knew something.
As if he had always known something.
The canteen buzzed with early chatter. Someone spilled coffee. Someone else dropped a stack of papers. Senior girls inspected their lipstick in phone screens. It was all so ordinary it ached.
So the black rose on Sona's seat didn't fit at all.
She paused when she saw it. Riya sucked in a breath. Kabir went fully alert. Arjun's jaw tightened not fear, but something heavier, deeper, disturbingly familiar.
A folded note lay beneath the rose.
Sona slipped it into her pocket without reading it. Not here. Not now. She wouldn't give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her react.
"Again?" Riya whispered.
"Someone has too much time," Kabir muttered.
Arjun didn't speak. His hand brushed the back of Sona's chair instead, slow, intentional, almost protective… almost territorial.
Her eyes flicked to him. For a second too long.
There it was again that unnerving déjà vu.
Like they'd danced this dance before.
Like he'd stood in this shadow with her in another life.
The conversation around them restarted reluctantly. But the air didn't soften. It clung to their skin like a warning.
Later, in class, Sona opened her notebook only to find a sliver of paper tucked between the pages. A line written in looping, elegant handwriting:
"Your calm is fading, little flame. I see the cracks."
No signature. No explanation.
She folded it cleanly and hid it between the pages again.
Her pulse didn't race. It steadied.
Arjun watched from two seats away, his fingers drumming softly against the desk, expression unreadable. He didn't look surprised. If anything… he looked like he was waiting for her to find it.
The rest of the lecture slipped by, a blur of half-heard words and shifting glances. Sona felt eyes on her the entire time, but not from anyone inside the classroom. Whoever was watching her wasn't close. Not physically.
But they were everywhere.
When the class ended, she walked toward the courtyard, her steps slow, deliberate. Wind brushed against her hair, tugging at the strands. She didn't turn when she felt that same familiar weight behind her.
Arjun fell into step beside her, almost silent.
"You slept?" he asked, voice low.
"Enough."
"Locked your windows?"
"Why?"
His gaze lowered, just briefly, to her hands…
to the faint stain of black ink smudged near her thumb.
"No reason," he murmured.
But there was reason.
There was always reason around him.
Kabir and Riya caught up soon after, breathless from running and arguing about something insignificant. The four of them drifted together again, pulled into a natural formation that felt unsettlingly predetermined.
On the surface, it looked like friendship.
Underneath, it felt like a trap.
The day trailed on, a tangle of classes, murmured secrets, and glances that lasted too long to be innocent. Sona should've felt the fear creeping in.
Instead… she felt the familiarity of it.
By twilight, the campus dimmed. Lamps flickered to life. Students walked back to dorms, laughing, gossiping, unaware of the quiet unraveling happening around them.
Sona reached her room alone this time. Riya had gone to meet Kabir for dinner. She turned the key, pushed the door open, stepped in
And froze.
The black rose was on her pillow again.
This time accompanied by a note pinned to the blanket with a thin silver needle.
"You sleep so softly. Almost trusting.
One day, little flame… you'll wake to me."
The room was fully intact.
Window locked.
Door untouched.
Riya's things exactly where she left them.
Someone had entered.
Someone had been inches from her face while she slept.
But Sona simply sat on the bed, crossed her legs, and read the note again beneath the lamplight.
Her expression didn't break.
Her heartbeat didn't trip.
Her fear didn't rise.
It was as if she'd lived through this before.
Outside the dorm window, across the courtyard, a silhouette stood behind a lit hallway window. Watching. Still. Patient.
Arjun crossed the courtyard minutes later, glancing up once, gaze catching the same window, expression sharpening just slightly like he knew exactly what Sona had found.
He didn't go to her.
He didn't knock.
He simply walked away.
Leaving the night colder, sharper, and more dangerous than before.
Morning crept in again, but softer this time, as if it already knew what waited for her. But there was no rose near her bed again riya hadn't came to room all night maybe cold and out with kabir she was on dinner date with him after all. Sona slept alone yet no rose? Strange.
pushing thought away. Sona stepped into the bathroom, rubbing sleep from her eyes, humming under her breath. Steam curled upward as the shower warmed, fogging the mirror, blurring her reflection. She dropped her towel onto the counter and striped off stepped beneath the water, letting the warmth soak into her skin.
For a moment, it was peace.
For a moment, it felt like the world had forgotten her.
Then she felt it.
A breath.
Not wind.
Not imagination.
A warm exhale against the bare skin of her back, so close it raised every hair on her arms.
She turned sharply. Water splashed around her. Her heartbeat stuttered.
But no one was there.
Just steam. Just silence. Just her own pulse echoing in her ears.
The glass door stood closed.
The floor was dry.
No footprints. No shadows.
Yet the breath had felt real.
She shut off the water, stepping out, wrapping her bare form in a towel. The mirror dripped, revealing a faint outline something smeared there in a shaky trail.
Not words.
A single small symbol: a petal-like curve.
A black rose, drawn in fog.
And beside the sink, placed neatly on folded tissue, was another real one full bloom, obsidian petals glistening like it had just been cut. With note that reads: you looked like mine even when your are naked and all vulnerable, little flame.
Her throat tightened, when she read it he saw her naked, vulnerable with all scars she hides from world. But the fear didn't fully bloom. It was a strange, familiar pressure. A memory she could almost reach but not name.
she pause looking herself in mirror the words she read in notes echoed her mind he called her HIS. Snapping out of it She dried herself and her hairs quickly, dressed, and left the room with more force than she meant. Her fingers trembled slightly as she reached the hallway.
She didn't even realize she was walking toward him until he stepped into her path.
Arjun.
Coffee in his hand. Soft fatigue in his eyes. Like he didn't slept all night and maybe he didn't. Hoodie loose around his shoulders. He stared at her like he already knew something had happened.
"You okay?" he asked quietly.
His voice wasn't casual it was too deliberate, too precise, like he was carefully tuning himself to her panic.
Sona exhaled. "I need to tell you something."
His brows pulled together in a way that made the world tilt. He gestured to the side, guiding her to a quiet corner behind the staircase where morning voices couldn't reach them.
"Talk to me," he said.
And for some reason she did.
"There was another rose," she whispered. "In my bathroom. And… someone was there. I felt something. Breath. And the mirror had a rose drawn on it."
Arjun's reaction was too perfect.
Not shock.
Not disbelief.
A slow, simmering anger or maybe possessiveness that looked almost rehearsed.
"Someone got into your room again," he said, jaw tightening. "Even while you were inside."
She nodded, her fingers curling into her sleeves.
He stepped closer not invading her space, but close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off him. "You're not safe like this."
"I wasn't scared."
"You should be."
The way he said it made something unfamiliar shiver up her spine. She couldn't tell if it was a warning… or a promise.
"I don't want to tell anyone else," she said, voice dropping. "Riya will panic. Kabir will go full detective. I don't want that chaos."
"So you came to me," he murmured.
"I trust you."
His eyes softened just slightly, and that softness made everything worse.
Trust.
Such a fragile, precious word.
His thumb brushed the back of her hand, a barely-there touch that could have been accident or intention.
"I'll handle it," he said. "Whoever is doing this… they won't touch you again."
Something dark flickered behind his eyes.
Protectiveness.
Possessiveness.
Or maybe he was just very, very convincing.
She didn't step away.
She didn't question him.
She didn't think she needed to.
Her chest eased, just a little. The panic that had been coiled inside her found somewhere to settle, and for reasons she couldn't explain, it settled in him.
"Thank you," she whispered.
He leaned closer not enough to touch, but enough that she felt the gravity in his silence. "If anything happens again… you come to me first."
"I will."
"Promise."
"I promise."
He nodded once, like he'd been waiting for that.
The day returned to its usual rhythm. Classes. Canteen. Noise. Crowds. But the tension wound itself through everything like invisible wire.
Sona kept checking her phone, feeling phantom buzzes.
Arjun's gaze trailed her more openly.
Kabir noticed something, but said nothing.
Riya remained blissfully unaware, rambling about midterms and outfits.
Normalcy wrapped itself around them but it didn't fit. Not anymore.
Every hallway seemed to watch her.
Every window felt like an eye.
Every corner hummed with danger she couldn't name.
And Arjun stayed close.
When seniors called her name from across the courtyard, his head snapped toward them first. When she bumped into someone in the corridor, his hand reached instinctively for her elbow. When her phone buzzed faintly at lunch, he leaned in before she even lifted it.
The message was short.
"You smell like fear this morning."
Her breath caught.
Arjun didn't bother to hide the way he watched her reaction. "Who?"
She hesitated. "Unknown number."
"Delete it," he said.
She did.
He took her phone afterward, examining it with quiet intensity, thumb brushing the cracked corner of her screen.
"You're mine to look after now," he said simply. "Whether some creep likes it or not."
His voice was calm.
Too calm.
Like nothing about this surprised him.
Sona should have questioned that.
She didn't.
Because when he spoke like that… she felt safe.
Or trapped.
She couldn't tell the difference.
Evening fell. Lights flickered on. Students drifted back to their dorms.
Arjun walked her all the way to her door.
"You'll be fine tonight," he said, watching her with eyes that didn't blink enough.
"You think he'll stop?"
"No," he answered honestly.
Then softer, "But he won't touch you."
"Because of you?"
A small smile ghosted across his lips.
Or maybe it wasn't a smile at all.
"Because you're not alone," he murmured. "Not anymore."
She stepped inside.
He lingered in the hallway until the door closed.
And somewhere in the building…
another black rose was already waiting.