The petal stayed wet for hours.
She placed it on her tongue. Not out of impulse — but instinct. And it didn't taste like a flower. It tasted of ash, honey, and something older — like blood once spilt in ritual and preserved in the body's own salt.
The thumbprint beside it was unmistakably male. Not inked. Burned. As though left by touch, but with enough heat to enter the grain of the paper.
She closed the manuscript.
It opened itself again.
This time to a map.
Not a real map. Not in any geography she'd studied. It had no borders, no names. Just a series of markings: a river bending like a sleeping woman, a crescent carved into what looked like stone, and a single word beneath it, painted in Devanagari so old it might have been etched with bone.
"Aranya."
The forest.
She reached Vaidya's office just before dusk.
He looked up from a sheaf of brittle palm-leaf manuscripts, his face tightening when he saw her.
"You spoke the Fifth," he said quietly.
"I didn't mean to."
"No one ever means to."
He stood and pulled down an atlas from the top shelf — not a modern one, but hand-drawn. "The Aranya you seek is not on any tourist trail. It's not even in most colonial records. It lies in the Vindhyas. Between Kalinjar and Panna."
Devika frowned. "That's near—"
"Ajabgarh," he nodded. "Where the shrine collapsed during the famine. Where thirteen women burned themselves alive inside a sanctum no man had ever entered."
She felt the blood leave her limbs.
"You believe the chamber is still there?"
He didn't answer directly.
Instead, he retrieved a brass key from a velvet pouch.
"I found this buried beneath your grandmother's floorboards," he said. "Years ago. I never dared give it to you. Until now."
Devika took it slowly.
The key was small. Heavy. Warm to the touch.
It had the same glyph as her necklace.
A spiral enclosing a single flame.
"Go," Vaidya said. "But do not let him enter before you do."
Devika hesitated. "Enter what?"
He met her eyes.
"Your own remembering."
The train from Delhi to Satna groaned through the night.
She sat alone in the last carriage, watching the landscape flatten and then rise again. The manuscript, sealed in a cloth wrap, pulsed faintly against her hip. She didn't read it now. She didn't need to.
It was no longer a text.
It had become a companion.
Outside the window, the forests thickened. The shadows deepened. The modern world thinned behind her like breath after a long chant.
When she stepped off the platform the next morning, the air was different.
Damp with river soil. Sharp with bark.
And charged.
Not like weather. Like presence.
A man waited at the edge of the clearing.
He wore saffron robes, but not as a priest. His hair was gray at the temples, his wrists covered in copper bracelets. He bowed when she approached.
"You've come alone," he said.
She nodded.
"You shouldn't have," he added, without warmth.
He turned without waiting and walked into the trees.
She followed.
No trail. No markers.
Only footprints in soft leaves that disappeared the moment she stepped into them.
She asked no questions.
He said nothing.
Until they reached a broken stone gate, half-eaten by vines and silence.
Aranya.
The temple had no shikhara. No sanctum.
Just a single step leading underground.
The man stopped at the threshold.
"This is as far as I go," he said.
She faced the descent. A darkness so dense it felt wet.
She descended alone.
There was no light.
No torch.
But she could see.
Faintly.
Not with her eyes. With her skin.
The deeper she moved, the warmer the stone walls grew.
Not just warmth — memory.
Each step recalled a verse.
Each breath recalled a touch.
Each heartbeat reminded her of what she had once done inside this earth.
Then she reached it.
The chamber.
A circular space. The ceiling low. The walls smooth. The scent unbearable — ancient rose, sweat, oil, and blood.
In the center lay a slab.
Stone. Bare.
Except for the stain.
Not red.
Not black.
Gold.
It shimmered faintly, pulsing like a nerve.
And she remembered.
She had lain there once.
Naked.
Oiled in ash and saffron.
Three women had marked her thighs with blood taken from her tongue.
He had watched.
He had waited.
Not to enter her.
But to be entered through her.
She had offered the syllables, one by one.
Smarana.Rati.Svarna.Agni.
But when he came close to receive the fifth—
She had closed her lips.
Denied him.
And bound him into silence for seven hundred years.
She wept now.
Not from shame.
From recognition.
The slab pulsed beneath her hand.
She climbed onto it without instruction.
Unclothed herself without ritual.
And lay down.
Eyes open.
Arms spread.
Mouth ready.
"Come," she whispered."This time, I will finish the verse."