"Some names are whispers, easy to erase.
Some names are fire, etched into stone.
But the cruelest truth is this—
the village does not remember you,
unless it already owns you."
The morning light seeped through broken shutters, painting long, jagged shadows across the haveli floor. The notebook lay in the center, its cover trembling faintly as though something inside still breathed. No one touched it.
No one wanted to.
"Say it out loud," Rohit muttered, pacing. "Read it again. Maybe it's a mistake."
Yashpal shook his head, his large frame stooped in disbelief. "I've checked it five times. All our names—gone. Only Diya's is still there."
The silence that followed was thick.
Diya sat by the far wall, knees hugged to her chest, her fingers pressing against the chain of the locket around her neck. She hadn't asked for this, but the others' eyes still lingered on her—curious, frightened, suspicious.
"Why you?" Priya finally said, her tone sharp. "Why your name?"
"I don't know!" Diya's voice cracked. "Do you think I wanted this?!"
Abhay cleared his throat, trying to cut through the rising tension. "It's not her fault. We need to think. Maybe… maybe the village marks people differently. Maybe her name is preserved because…"
"Because what?" Meghna snapped. "Because she belongs here?"
The words hung in the air like a knife.
The Search for Proof
They decided to split again. They couldn't afford to just sit and wait for answers.
Kabir, Priya, and Saanvi headed toward the abandoned schoolhouse—they wanted to check the scratched spirals again, see if any name was carved beneath the layers of dust.
Yashpal and Rohit went back to the temple, determined to question the inscriptions properly. If names were being erased, maybe there was a list of those who once lived here.
Abhay and Diya remained in the haveli, tasked with guarding the notebook.
At the Schoolhouse
The schoolhouse was colder than before. Priya brushed her hand across the same desk where the circular carvings lay. This time, the dust felt fresher, as if someone had disturbed it overnight.
Kabir leaned closer, his breath misting against the wood. "Wait. These aren't just spirals. Look—between the circles."
Tiny lines. Words.
Priya squinted. "It's… a name."
No—it was several names. Layered, scratched over and over, until only fragments remained.
"…Roh…"
"…Megh…"
"…Sanv…"
The blood drained from Kabir's face.
"Those are our names."
At the Temple
Yashpal and Rohit ran their hands across the stone walls of the ruined sanctum. The inscriptions weren't prayers—they were records. A ledger of sorts. Names carved into the temple's ribs, organized in neat columns.
Some names were clear. Others faded halfway through.
And at the very bottom, carved deeper than the rest, was one name repeated again and again:
Diya.
Rohit staggered back. "She's been here before."
"No," Yashpal said firmly, though his voice shook. "She couldn't have been. She came with us."
"Then explain that."
In the Haveli
Back at the haveli, Diya traced the outline of her own name in the notebook while Abhay scribbled his theories furiously.
"Maybe you're the anchor," he said quietly. "Maybe you're the reason we're still seen at all. Without your name, maybe none of us would exist to the village."
Diya shook her head. "That doesn't make sense. Why me?"
Before Abhay could answer, the shutters rattled. The walls groaned. And faintly, so faintly, a voice slipped through the cracks:
"Not yours. Not yours. Not yours."
The notebook flipped open on its own. New words scrawled across the page in jagged ink neither of them had written:
It only remembers what it has already taken.
The Return
When the group reunited that evening, no one spoke at first. Kabir laid down the carved desk plank. Yashpal and Rohit revealed what they saw at the temple.
And every single clue pointed to the same thing:
Diya's name didn't survive because she was spared.
It survived because the village already owned her.
Diya stared at them all, her face pale. "You don't believe that, do you?"
No one answered.
But in the silence, the haveli groaned again.
And faintly, somewhere behind the walls, something whispered her name.
"Memory is not mercy.
A name that lingers
is not a name that is free."