The house no longer breathed the way it once did.
Once, its corridors were filled with voices that rose and fell like tides: careless laughter, commands barked at servants, footsteps clattering up and down the marble stairs.
Now—
silence.
A silence that was not empty,
but swollen.
Swollen with the memory of her words,
with the shadows of what had been confessed.
Maya's voice—thin, quiet, almost reluctant—had carried a truth so heavy that the very walls seemed to bend under it.
Since that night, the mansion had changed.
The chandeliers still glittered, but the light seemed dimmer.
The carpets still stretched across the floors, but their colors seemed drained.
The mirrors reflected faces—but none of them could look at their own eyes for long.
It was not fear of Maya herself.
It was fear of what they had allowed.
Her silence was more terrible than her speech.
She did not smile—she never smiled.
She did not cry.
She did not rage.
She moved like a shadow clothed in human form.
Her brothers stepped aside when she entered a room.
Her mother, Mahi, lowered her gaze.
Even Anik—the sharp-tongued, proud Anik—found his words thinning, his throat tightening when she was near.
Maya had become the mirror none of them wanted to stand before.
Every morning, she went to the garden.
The air there was damp, heavy with the scent of earth.
She always chose the same patch of grass, where the soil was soft, where the wind was gentler.
She sat, unmoving, for hours, as if waiting for the ground beneath her to speak. She draw in her note book a boy over and over again. Again and again.
Rahi found her there one morning.
He came with a cup of warm milk, its steam curling in the pale light.
"Maya…" His voice trembled. "Why?"
It was not a question he knew how to finish.
Maya did not turn.
Her eyes remained fixed on the soil, on something invisible buried deep beneath it.
At last, she whispered—so faintly he thought the wind had spoken:
"He died in front of me."
Rahi's hands faltered. The warmth bled from the cup, cooling against his palms.
He sat beside her in the wet grass.
No answer came to him.
None was needed.
For he already carried the echo of her pain inside his own bones.
Inside the mansion, whispers spread like damp rot in the beams of a house.
"She survived all that?"
"Why doesn't she cry?"
"Why does she walk like a ghost?"
No one dared ask her.
They whispered only in corners, behind closed doors, never in her presence.
The weight of her silence was enough to choke them.
That evening, thunder cracked over the sky.
The storm returned, as it always did, just before something broke.
Maya stood by her window.
Lightning flickered across her face, sharpening her profile into stone.
She did not flinch.
She did not blink.
Her reflection in the glass stared back at her: pale, unblinking, unyielding.
Behind her, the door opened with a soft groan.
Mahi entered.
In her hands, she carried a small wooden box, old and worn, the kind that once might have held treasures of a child.
She placed it carefully beside Maya, her hands shaking.
"These were yours… from when you were a baby."
The words broke in her throat.
Maya's gaze shifted. She saw the box. But her hands did not reach.
"I'm not that girl anymore," she said.
Her voice was flat. Not cruel. Not angry.
Flat, like a door closing in the dark.
Mahi fell to her knees beside her daughter.
Tears clung to her lashes.
"I should've protected you."
Maya's gaze did not leave the rain-streaked glass.
"You didn't even remember me."
"I do now."
"It's too late now."
The thunder filled the silence that followed, rattling the frame of the window.
Then Maya's voice dropped lower, softer, like a blade sliding into flesh.
"I needed a mother.
You needed an heir."
The words cut Mahi open.
Sobs tore from her throat, raw and unashamed. Her hands reached, trembling, for Maya's arm. But Maya did not move. She remained still, her face carved in shadow.
Forgiveness was no longer something she could give.
Later that night, she wandered down the silent halls.
Her steps carried her to the old room with the broken piano.
The room smelled of dust, wood, and forgotten music. The ivory keys were yellow, some chipped, some missing.
Farhan sat at the bench.
His hands hovered above the keys but did not touch them.
He stared at the silence, his shoulders slumped forward.
Maya sat beside him without a word.
The bench creaked.
He did not turn his head.
But after a long silence, he whispered:
"Why do I always want to die?"
His voice cracked as if the weight of the words were too much for his chest.
Maya's fingers rested on the edge of the bench.
Her eyes stayed on the silent keys.
"I don't know," she said quietly.
"But I know what it feels like to die inside… and keep walking."
Farhan turned then. His eyes were red, wet with unshed tears.
"I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For surviving less than you."
The confession shattered the air.
Maya turned at last, her gaze steady on him.
"You survived differently," she said, her voice low but certain.
"That's enough."
Farhan looked away, his throat working. He lowered his gaze to the useless keys, his hands trembling over their silence.
Maya pulled her diary from beneath her arm.
She opened it. But this time, she did not sketch the broken lines of her imagination.
Her pen carved words into the page, slow, steady, each letter heavy:
Arab, I'm still alive.
I don't know why.
But I'm still breathing.
And sometimes, it hurts more than dying ever did.
When she finished, she drew.
Not a face.
Not a scene.
But a door.
Locked.
Chained.
She closed the diary.
Farhan's voice broke the silence.
"Is that what you feel like?"
Maya said nothing.
Her silence was sharper than any answer.
The storm raged outside.
The windows shook.
The thunder boomed.
But within the mansion, a deeper stillness reigned.
No one approached Maya without hesitation now.
No one spoke her name without lowering their voice.
The girl they had once thought fragile, pitiful, even weak—
had become something else.
Something they could neither define nor undo.
They had tried to name her before:
daughter, sister, subject, weapon.
But now she was none of those.
She was simply Maya.
A girl forged in silence.
A girl who carried scars like scripture.
A girl they could not undo.
And that truth—
terrified them more than her silence ever could.