The rain had been pouring for hours that night, drowning the silence of the small hill-town. The streets were empty, except for one girl who was still walking alone with her umbrella, her eyes searching for a shortcut back home. Meera Roy had stayed late at the library, buried in her books, and now the storm forced her to take an unknown road.
Lightning cracked the sky, and in that flash she saw him.
A lone figure stood at the far end of the street, leaning against an old lamp post. His face was partly hidden in shadow, but his eyes… they caught her immediately. Cold, deep, yet strangely magnetic. He wasn’t just staring—he was waiting.
Meera’s heartbeat quickened. She told herself, “Maybe he lives nearby. Maybe it’s nothing.” But her instincts whispered otherwise.
As she walked past, the stranger moved. His steps were slow, but deliberate, as if he knew she would cross this path.
“Lost?” His voice was deep, almost too calm for the storm raging around them.
Meera hesitated. “No… I mean, I know my way. Just going home.”
The stranger gave a faint smile. The rain slid down his pale face, but he didn’t flinch, didn’t even pull up the hood of his coat. He simply kept watching her.
Something about him unsettled her, yet she couldn’t deny the strange pull she felt.
“I’m Aarav,” he said suddenly, as if reading her thoughts. “You shouldn’t walk alone at this hour. This part of the town… isn’t safe.”
Meera swallowed. His words weren’t threatening, but the way he said “isn’t safe” made her skin crawl. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine.”
When she tried to walk away, she heard footsteps behind her. Aarav was following.
Her instinct screamed to run, but before she could, the lights on the street flickered violently and went out. The road was swallowed in darkness.
For a moment, Meera froze. Then—whispers. She couldn’t tell where they came from, but she heard faint, chilling voices circling her ears.
“Don’t… trust… him…”
Meera gasped, spinning around. No one was there. Only Aarav, standing still under the lamp post, watching her with eyes that seemed to glow faintly in the storm.
The whispers faded. The lights came back. Aarav was closer now. Too close.
“You heard it, didn’t you?” His tone was calm, but his question cut through her fear.
Her lips trembled. “What… what are you talking about?”
Aarav didn’t answer. Instead, he extended his hand slowly, his gaze never leaving hers. “If you want to survive tonight, come with me.”
Meera stared at his hand, frozen between trust and terror. Every fiber in her body screamed run, yet her heart… her heart whispered stay.
Against all logic, she placed her trembling hand in his. His touch was icy cold, but it steadied her somehow, as though his grip carried both danger and safety at once.
“Good,” Aarav said softly, almost to himself. “You chose right.”
He led her through the storm, into an old road she had never noticed before. At the end of it stood a decaying mansion, its broken windows glowing faintly with candlelight. The gates creaked open by themselves as they approached, like something invisible had been expecting them.
Meera froze. “This place… what is this?”
Aarav’s expression darkened. “A place that remembers. A place that never forgets.”
As he pushed the door open, a gust of icy wind swept past them. Inside, the house smelled of damp wood and something metallic—blood, maybe. The walls were lined with portraits of people with hollow eyes, all staring down at her.
Meera shivered. “Why are you bringing me here?”
“Because,” Aarav said, his eyes fixed on her, “you’ve already been here before.”
Her heart skipped. “What do you mean? I’ve never—”
Before she could finish, lightning struck again, and she caught sight of a huge old painting at the end of the hall. Her breath stopped.
It was her.
The woman in the painting had her face, her eyes, even the same mole above her lip. But the dress was from another century, and in the painting she wasn’t smiling—she looked terrified.
Meera stumbled back. “This… this isn’t real.”
Aarav’s voice dropped to a whisper, his face unreadable. “It is real. You just don’t remember yet.”
Meera’s chest tightened. A thousand questions swirled in her mind—Who was he? Why did this place know her? Why did that painting exist?—but before she could speak, a loud thud echoed through the hall.
The doors behind them slammed shut on their own. The candle flames flickered violently. And then—those whispers returned.
But this time, they weren’t faint. They screamed through the walls:
“RUN… RUN BEFORE IT CLAIMS YOU AGAIN!”
Meera clutched Aarav’s arm, her eyes wide with terror.
Aarav’s gaze never left hers, though his jaw tightened as if he knew something she didn’t.
“You can run if you want,” he said, his voice low, “but if you leave now… you’ll never know the truth about who you really are.”
Her mind screamed to escape, but her heart… her heart was already tied to the mystery standing before her.
The storm outside raged harder, and within the old mansion, a new chapter of her life had already begun—one of love, horror, and a past that refused to die.
