The wind pressed against the lodge, rattling the windows with a hollow insistence. Inside, the room had gone unnaturally still. Meera lay quiet—too quiet. Her breathing came shallow, uneven, the faint green veins beneath her skin pulsing slowly, like something patient… something waiting. Riya sat beside her, fingers locked around her hand, terrified that even the slightest looseness might take her away. Aarav stood rigid, his eyes fixed on Meera, while Kabir remained silent.
And Mr. Shastri—he was still in the room. His body stood where it had been, unmoving, his hands hanging limp at his sides. But his mind had slipped away, drawn into the depths of memory like a thread unraveling from the present.
His eyes were fixed on Meera, but they didn't truly see her. They stared through her, past the flickering candlelight and the tense silence, into something unreachable. Something older.
It was as if the lodge itself had released him from its grip, allowing his thoughts to drift backward, into a time untouched by shadows.
Wealth had always favored them, their home filled with comforts and luxuries. Mr. Shastri owned several lodges scattered across the country—grand retreats nestled in forests, perched on hillsides, and overlooking rivers.
Yet for all their riches, their greatest desire remained painfully out of reach. For years they endured the silence of empty rooms, pouring their fortune into doctors, treatments, and rituals, sparing no expense in their pursuit of hope.
Each failure weighed heavier than the last. His wife's smile grew thinner, her eyes dimmer, until even the glow of their wealth could not mask the emptiness between them. At night, she would sit by the balcony, staring into the dark, whispering prayers that dissolved into silence.
And then—after so much waiting, after years of relentless pursuit—Sanya was born.
She was their miracle, their joy. He remembered her tiny fingers curling around his thumb, the way her laughter filled every corner of the house, chasing away silence that had once seemed permanent.
Every summer, they had a regime: the family would travel to one of Shastri's lodges for vacation. The lodge was more than a retreat—it was a place of stories, laughter, and memories. Sanya loved it most of all. She would curl up beside her father at night, her eyes wide with wonder, listening to the tales he spun against the backdrop of creaking wood and whispering winds.
One morning, Mrs. Shastri stood on the roof with little Sanya, rain pouring down around them. Sanya adored the rain—every downpour was her invitation to laugh, to dance, to bathe beneath the sky's silver curtain. That morning, she was playing with her red ball, tossing it into the air and chasing it across the slick tiles, her giggles rising above the patter of rain.
The ball bounced once. Twice. Then it rolled toward the edge of the balcony. The railing there was old, rusted, its paint chipped and its metal worn thin with time. Sanya leaned forward, stretching for it—just a little, just enough.
The railing gave a faint, almost imperceptible shift. And then, in an instant, she was gone.
The sound came after—a dull, distant thud that did not belong in a child's world. His wife's scream tore through the silence, raw and unrecognizable. He was running before he knew it, but never fast enough. The balcony was empty. The ground below was too still. The red ball rested beside her.
He remembered kneeling, holding her, speaking words he could no longer recall. Words that didn't matter. Her head rested against his arm, too light, too quiet. No crying. No movement. Only absence.
The memory fractured into hospital corridors, white lights, footsteps echoing endlessly. Flat lines. Stillness. And then—nothing. Back in the house, but it wasn't the same house anymore. His wife sat on the bed with Sanya's dress in her lap, folding it, unfolding it, again and again. Days passed, or maybe weeks. Time didn't move properly anymore. She stopped speaking. Stopped eating. Stopped looking at him.
At night, she stood on the balcony, staring down at the place where their daughter had fallen. The first time, he broke down the door and found her lying still, water pooling on the floor. The second time, there was no locked door, no warning—just absence again. Twice he had pulled her back from the edge, twice he had begged her to stay. Each time she whispered the same words, broken and raw: "I should have been watching her. It's my fault."
The lodge returned suddenly, its cold walls pressing in, its silence heavy and unforgiving. Mr. Shastri blinked, his breath ragged, his shoulders bowed beneath the weight of memory. His eyes found Meera again, but something had changed. He wasn't just remembering anymore. He was recognizing—the same stillness, the same wrong quiet, the same feeling of something already gone.
Meera's fingers twitched. Her lips curved, just slightly. "Papa…" The voice was soft, childlike, familiar. But her eyes were not hers. "I fell." The words landed gently, almost innocently. And somehow, that made it worse.