Episode 2: Neelam’s Mirror
The night was still burning.
Smoke. Screams. The smell of something ancient and angry.
And then… silence.
The fire in Room 207 vanished without a trace. Not even a scorch mark remained. But Rhea—who had entered alone—was gone.
The Room That Took Her
Meera banged on the walls. “RHEA! Open the damn door!”
But there was no door anymore.
Just a cold, blank wall.
Aarav staggered back, gasping. “We saw her go in. I swear. This was a door.”
Jay turned pale. “This place is shifting. It’s alive.”
The three stood frozen. A room had swallowed their friend.
And above them, through the broken ceiling glass, the blood moon watched silently.
A New Voice in the Hall
They carried their gear and fell back to the main hall. No one spoke for hours. Meera tried to convince herself Rhea had found a way out. But the air told her otherwise. It felt like Rhea was still inside… screaming quietly.
That night, Jay woke up first.
There was a soft sound coming from the hallway mirror — like someone breathing through glass.
He sat up, heart racing.
Then he saw it.
A line written in white on the dusty mirror surface:
“She spoke for me. Now she burns like me.”
Jay screamed.
The Mirror Doesn’t Lie
The next morning, Meera and Aarav cleaned the mirror to study it. The message had vanished.
But something else revealed itself: in the far left corner of the mirror’s reflection, Room 207’s door was visible — wide open.
Except when they turned to look behind them — the real hallway showed no door at all.
Just a flat wall.
“The mirror is a portal,” Meera whispered. “It shows what the palace is hiding.”
Aarav leaned closer, trembling. “Then maybe… maybe Rhea’s still inside.”
Suddenly, the mirror surface shimmered — like a ripple in water — and a charred hand slapped against it from the inside.
Aarav fell back, eyes wide.
They had seen it together.
It was Rhea’s hand.
Neelam’s Truth
They needed answers. So they returned to the main archives room — once the palace library. Under old dusty tarps and rotting wood, they found documents, photos, even court records.
One file stood out.
It belonged to Neelam, age 19, daughter of a local temple cleaner. She had come to work at Avadh Palace as a housemaid.
There was a report of “accidental fire” in 1998, but no body was found.
Her employers — the owner's son and his friends — were acquitted.
But tucked inside the file was something odd: a torn photo of Neelam, holding a small silver hand mirror, her eyes full of fear.
Behind her, in the mirror’s reflection, the blurry shape of a man with a cigarette... and a lighter.
Aarav touched the photo. “She didn’t die in silence. She died in betrayal.”
Reflections Speak
They decided to test the palace’s mirror — the one that had shown the door.
Meera set up her phone to record.
Jay sat in front of it and held a candle. “Neelam,” he whispered. “We’re not your enemies. Show us where Rhea is.”
For a while, nothing happened.
Then the flame flickered… and the mirror began to fog.
Letters etched themselves slowly into the glass:
“Come alone. Or more will burn.”
Jay stood up, horrified.
“Is it Neelam… or something else pretending to be her?”
Aarav spoke low. “Does it matter? We’re all part of her story now.”
Inside the Mirror
That evening, Meera returned to the mirror alone, just like the message demanded. The others begged her not to go, but she had made her choice.
She stood in front of it, holding Neelam’s photo like a key.
“Take me to her,” she whispered.
The mirror rippled.
The surface turned to liquid — and Meera stepped through.
The Other Side
It wasn’t what she expected. The other side of the mirror wasn’t a reflection. It was another layer of the palace — darker, older, covered in ash and sorrow.
She could hear footsteps… but no one visible.
Then, faintly — a sob.
Meera turned a corner and found a cell-like room — smoke stained, with scratch marks on the door.
Inside sat Rhea — eyes hollow, shivering.
“I couldn’t get out,” she whispered. “The fire kept coming back. But it wasn’t fire. It was her pain. Her memory.”
Meera pulled her up. “We’re going back. Together.”
But before they could move, a voice echoed through the darkness:
“I gave my life screaming. Now let them scream too.”
The walls flared with ghostly flames.
And standing above the fire… Neelam’s spirit.
The Curse Deepens
Neelam’s burned face was full of sorrow, not rage. Her lips moved slowly:
“I never wanted vengeance. I only wanted the truth to be known.”
She looked down at her mirror in Meera’s hand. “This… was mine. It saw everything. It remembers.”
The flames dimmed.
The spirit began to fade.
But just before she vanished completely, she whispered one last thing:
“One of you… carries their blood. One of you is not innocent.”
Return and Realization
Meera and Rhea stumbled back through the mirror just before it cracked loudly behind them. It was no longer a portal. Just glass.
Jay and Aarav rushed to them.
They cried, hugged, shook — all at once.
But none of them said a word about Neelam’s last warning. Not yet.
They all knew what she meant.
One of them… was connected to the murderers.
One of them… was keeping a secret.
And now, Avadh knew.
To Be Continued…
Episode 3: "The Blood That Binds"
What if the real horror wasn’t the ghost… but one of them?
