"The mouth of silence opens wide,
It swallows sound, it swallows tide.
But deeper still, beneath its breath,
It hums a song too close to death."
The group regrouped by evening, their explorations stitched together into fragments of unease. The temple bells still chimed, but the village felt strangely hollow—as if the sound carried across bones instead of air.
Kabir and Priya recounted what they'd found—the schoolhouse with its spirals and warnings, the well that refused to echo, the woman who seemed more like a shadow than flesh.
Yashpal frowned. "A woman? In green sari? With a mole?"
"Yeah," Kabir said. "You know her?"
Yashpal exchanged a look with Rohit, who muttered, "That's not possible."
"What's not possible?" Priya pressed.
Meghna leaned forward. "The villagers we talked to… they mentioned no one has lived on this side of Bhairavpur for decades. Everyone moved out after the 'incident.'"
"What incident?" Saanvi asked sharply.
"They didn't say," Meghna replied. "Just—avoided answering. One old man only muttered, 'the walls listen too much.'"
The fire they had lit crackled louder than it should have, like it was trying to smother their silence.
Abhay, who had been unusually quiet, finally spoke. "She told you not to go down?"
Kabir nodded.
"Then that's exactly where we should go."
Rohit rolled his eyes. "Of course you'd say that. Bro, you're obsessed. This isn't one of your theories, this is—"
"—the point," Abhay interrupted. His tone was calm, but his eyes were sharp, almost glowing in the firelight. "Every story in this village bleeds into that well. You felt it, Kabir. Priya. It hums because it's alive."
No one liked the way he said alive.
Saanvi shook her head. "No. Absolutely not. I don't care what anyone says. We are not poking into cursed wells like horror movie extras."
But curiosity had already lodged itself in their veins. Even those who scoffed at Abhay's words couldn't shake the pull of that endless, echo-less dark.
Nightfall
When the village slept, the eight of them didn't.
They carried flashlights, ropes, and a bundle of half-baked courage toward the eastern edge of Bhairavpur. The air grew colder the closer they came, until their breath fogged like winter despite the late-summer night.
The well stood in silence, as if it had been waiting.
Meghna whispered, "Why does it feel like it's listening?"
Abhay ignored her, tying the rope to a leaning banyan tree. "I'll go first."
"No way," Yashpal said. "We don't even know how deep it is."
"Exactly," Abhay replied, lowering the rope. "That's why we need to find out."
But when he tugged at the rope to test it—
—the well hummed.
Not the echo of friction, not the vibration of rope. A deep, metallic resonance, like something ancient was waking.
Priya stumbled back. "Tell me you all heard that."
Everyone nodded, pale and silent.
For the first time that day, Abhay hesitated.
The First Descent
It wasn't bravery that pulled Kabir forward. It was the memory of those spirals scratched into the school desk, repeating like eyes that never closed. He had the sense that if they didn't confront this well, it would follow them anyway.
"I'll go," he said, snatching the rope from Abhay.
"No, Kabir—" Priya began, but he was already lowering himself in.
The well's walls were slick, blackened stone, colder than ice. His flashlight beam vanished after only a few feet, swallowed by unnatural darkness.
And then—
The carvings began.
Circles. Spirals. The same ones from the schoolhouse, etched all along the stone. Some fresh, some worn. Some carved so deep it looked like fingernails had bled to make them.
His chest tightened.
The deeper he went, the louder the hum grew. It wasn't in the stone anymore—it was inside his ribs, vibrating through his bones.
"Stop!" Abhay's voice echoed faintly from above. "Don't go deeper!"
Kabir froze. Not because Abhay had shouted—
But because something below had whispered his name.
Back Above
They yanked him out. Kabir was trembling, his eyes unfocused. Priya grabbed his face, forcing him to look at her.
"What did you hear?" she demanded.
Kabir swallowed hard. "It… it said my name. It wasn't an echo. It knew me."
The silence that followed was heavier than the night itself.
Saanvi broke it with a shaky laugh. "Nope. Nope, nope, nope. We're done. Whatever this place is, it's not worth dying over."
But Abhay wasn't listening. He was staring into the well, his jaw clenched, his fingers twitching like he was taking notes on invisible paper.
"The well remembers," he murmured. "It doesn't echo because it doesn't need to. It keeps."
The Village Breathes
As they turned back toward the cluster of empty houses, a sound followed them.
Not footsteps. Not wind.
Breathing.
Slow, heavy, and coming from the walls themselves.
Meghna clutched Rohit's arm. "Tell me that's not real."
The plaster beside them bulged, just slightly, like lungs inhaling.
Then it stilled.
No one spoke again until they were back inside the crumbling house they had claimed as shelter. Even then, sleep came only in fragments.
Because in Bhairavpur, nothing stayed quiet for long.
"Some wells do not echo.
Some walls do not rest.
And some names should never be heard,
if you wish to remain yours."