Professor Vaidya's Residence – Nagwa, Varanasi
The brass knocker slammed harder than she intended.
Devika stepped back, heartbeat rising, as the old wooden door creaked open. Inside, a woman in a cotton sari blinked at her, confused and cautious.
"Professor Vaidya is expecting me," Devika said quickly. "It's urgent."
The woman nodded once, stepped aside.
The house was dim. Wires coiled along the plaster like vines. Walls lined with books, old photographs, framed letters in Sanskrit. No overhead light—just a single lamp glowing on the far table.
Vaidya sat hunched in a rattan chair, shoulders stiff, fingers locked together over his lap.
He didn't rise.
"You opened the vault," he said.
Devika remained standing. "You knew I would."
He gestured to the chair across from him. "Sit."
She didn't.
"I touched it," she said. "Not just the text. I touched something older. It responded."
Vaidya looked up, eyes sharper now. "What did you see?"
Devika hesitated. Then:
"A ring of women. No faces. My own hands were inked. The floor was bleeding words. And then—" She paused. "Something was written on me. Rati."
Vaidya exhaled slowly. "The second syllable."
Devika frowned. "You've seen this before."
"Not directly," he said. "But I've seen references. Fragments from the Devangana folios found in Assam. There are accounts of women bearing marks they did not write. Words that surfaced after trance. One name appears again and again in those scripts—Ananga. And in every version, the Grantha isn't a text. It's described as an awakening. An incarnation of memory."
Devika's hands were clenched. "Then why hide it?"
Vaidya's gaze lowered. "Because it burns everyone it touches."
Silence swelled between them.
Then, from the other room, the soft chime of a ghanti.
Not mechanical. Not a phone. A real bell.
The kind used in temples. Ritual.
They both turned.
Vaidya rose suddenly. "Wait here."
But Devika followed.
Interior Room – Vaidya's House
The back room was small, windowless, with shelves stacked to the ceiling. In the corner stood a tall copper bell stand — the kind used beside goddess idols in rural shrines. It was swaying.
Below it: ashes. Scattered in a neat circle.
And drawn inside that circle, in dark vermillion: the same symbol—three crescent moons, and a rising flame.
Vaidya stared at it without moving.
"Someone was here," Devika said. "Tonight."
"No one has the key but me."
"Then it's not a person. It's the Grantha. It's moving."
Vaidya turned sharply. "It can't move on its own. It needs a vessel."
Devika's jaw clenched. "Then I'm the vessel, aren't I?"
He didn't deny it.
Instead, he walked slowly to a locked drawer, opened it, and retrieved an envelope—worn, yellowed, sealed with black wax.
He handed it to her.
"It arrived fourteen years ago. No name. Just this symbol on the wax. I kept it hidden."
Devika opened the envelope. Inside, a single sheet of palm parchment.
Written in fading black ink, in perfect Grantha script:
The womb remembers what the mind is told to forget.When she opens her voice, the fourth flame will rise.
At the bottom, a signature in red.
R.
Devika looked up. "Who's R?"
Vaidya shook his head. "I don't know. But someone has been waiting for you longer than you've known yourself."
Elsewhere – Kamakhya Hill, Assam
The sky over Nilachal was bruised violet.
He stood barefoot on the black stone, a garland of crushed hibiscus coiled around his wrist. Below him, a trail of pilgrims moved like ants through the steep incline.
He could smell her now.
Not her skin. Not her voice. But the shift in the field that bound them.
She had touched the second syllable.
The Grantha had begun to respond. Not just through dreams or marks—but through hunger.
A priestess in white approached him, bowing low.
"She's been seen," she whispered. "At Kamachha. And in the vault."
He smiled, slow and without warmth.
"Prepare the third site," he said. "And bring the red veil."