"The dead do not haunt the living.
It is the truth they leave behind that refuses to die."
The chamber was colder than before, though no wind had stirred. Each broken corner of stone seemed to lean closer, shadows bleeding outward as if trying to listen.
Yashpal lay slumped on the wooden table, his back slick with sweat. His pulse hammered so visibly in his neck that even without touching him, they could feel the feverish tremor. Meghna knelt by his side, coaxing him with a tin cup of water. His hands shook so violently he spilled more than he drank, but she still held the cup steady, whispering reassurance.
"Calm yourself, Yashpal," she murmured. "You're safe here. No one's coming."
But the look in his eyes said otherwise.
His gaze darted at every corner, every crack in the wall, as though he expected the shadows to bleed into form at any moment. Each time the lantern sputtered, he flinched like a soldier still in battle.
Abhay crossed his arms tightly, his jaw rigid. He stood by the doorway, almost blocking it, though from what—none of them knew. "You've said too much and not enough," he muttered, his voice low but sharp. "What do you mean they never escaped?"
The words cut through the room like broken glass.
Rohit stiffened. Priya looked at Yashpal with wide, frightened eyes. And Diya, sitting alone in the far corner, let her head tilt ever so slightly—as though she had already heard the answer before.
"I told you," Yashpal croaked, his throat raw. "You're holding onto a lie. None of them… none of us ever left this place. We only… shifted deeper into it."
Saanvi frowned, confusion flickering across her tired face. "Shifted? What does that even mean? We walked here. We survived here. We're—"
"You think survival is proof of escape?" Yashpal interrupted, his voice suddenly sharp. His eyes gleamed in the dim firelight, and for the first time since he had collapsed, he sat upright, trembling but deliberate. "This place doesn't let go. You don't escape it. It just… replays you. In fragments."
No one moved. Even the lantern seemed to still, its flame curving but not fading.
Abhay's knuckles whitened where he held the edge of the table. "Are you saying we're already dead?"
Yashpal's silence was worse than any confirmation.
Rohit slammed his fist into the wall, the thud echoing like a heartbeat. "No. No, I won't listen to this madness. We fought, we bled, Kabir—" His voice cracked as Kabir's name passed his lips. "We saw him die. That was real."
"Yes," Yashpal rasped, his eyes dulling with grief. "That was real. And yet, tell me, why do you feel him still? Why do you sense him when the night falls quiet?"
Priya hugged her knees, her lips trembling. "Stop…"
But it was too late. The weight of Yashpal's truth—or delusion—was pressing into them like iron chains.
And then, the look. That fleeting glance.
It happened when Diya shifted in her corner. Just a subtle movement, the creak of old stone beneath her. Yashpal's eyes flicked to her. Just for a second. But the others noticed. They all noticed.
Abhay narrowed his gaze. "Why her?"
Diya slowly raised her head. Her dark eyes gleamed, not with fear, but with something far more unsettling: acceptance.
"You think I don't know?" she said softly. "You think I haven't felt it since the beginning? The whispers. The stares. The way this place breathes when we do."
Her words chilled the marrow in their bones.
Saanvi shook her head, trying to hold onto rationality. "You're just a child—"
"I'm not a child," Diya interrupted, her tone calm, eerily calm. "I remember what you refuse to. I see what you bury every time you close your eyes. You call it survival… but survival ended long ago."
The lantern quivered. For an instant, shadows crawled up the walls like insects, stretching, elongating.
Meghna turned sharply to Yashpal. "Why did you look at her?"
The soldier's face paled, lips trembling with words he wouldn't give life to. His silence was worse than an answer.
Rohit stepped forward, his hand twitching near the knife at his belt. "If she knows something, she needs to say it."
Abhay moved between them. "Enough. No one touches her. We don't tear each other apart before—before we even know what we're fighting." His words held authority, but the fear behind them was plain.
Diya, however, did not cower. She leaned her head back against the wall, eyes half-lidded, as if she had spoken too many truths for her age already. "You're not fighting it," she whispered. "You're feeding it."
That silence again. Heavy. Choking.
Meghna's hands trembled as she clutched the empty cup Yashpal had spilled. Priya's eyes darted around the room as if she expected the walls to bleed. Saanvi stood frozen, rational words swallowed by doubt. And Abhay—Abhay stared at Diya like a man seeing the outline of a puzzle piece he did not want to place.
Something moved in the corner.
They all saw it. A flicker. A shadow crouching where none had been before. It didn't lunge. It didn't speak. It only watched.
The lantern dimmed, almost extinguished, before flaring back to life. And the corner was empty.
No one breathed.
Yashpal lowered his head, his voice breaking into a hoarse confession. "You'll see. Soon enough, you'll see."
And in that suffocating silence, when all the others tried desperately to deny it, Diya's lips moved again, barely above a breath.
"I knew it. I knew it from the start."
"The most terrifying monsters
are not the ones that emerge from darkness,
but the truths that step quietly out of silence."