Three days later, Tadala woke in the dead of night. The air in her room felt thick and suffocating, as though the walls themselves were holding their breath.
She cried out, a raw, desperate sound that dissolved into a low humming from the back door, a rhythm that pulsed through the house like a heartbeat.
She spun in place, heart pounding, and heard footsteps downstairs. She followed them, barefoot on the cold floor, but found nothing. Goosebumps prickled her skin; dread coiled in her stomach.
"Something dark and twisted is haunting me," she whispered, tears stinging her eyes.
Thirty minutes later, the footsteps ceased. In their place rose a new hum in a distant, chant-like, very different from before.
"My heart is racing," she breathed.
Memories of her grandmother surged up, sharp as a fishhook: "Some realities reveals when you are not ready, and some truths don't heal; they consume."
Years earlier, in a hut thick with the smoke of singed herbs, a witch doctor had cast rattling bones and spat out a prophecy: "Tadala will suffer for her own desires. She will seek a remedy to heighten pleasure in bed, only to be lured into a hidden world of ecstasy. Someone will watch her nakedness, but he will not enter her. They were fated before birth. If they ever lie together, the ancestors will hunt her to dust."
Tadala returned to her bed, pulled out the forbidden crimson gown, and retrieved the banned book of Nola Kates.
"Curiosity burns stronger than fear," she murmured.
She unwrapped the cloth and uncovered an ancient chest draped in the crimson gown. As she loosened the ties, the room grew colder; a faint metallic scent-like iron filled the air.
Inside the chest, lies a single ledger bound in red leather, its pages filled with names and verdicts scrawled in trembling handwriting. Beside each name was a date and a single word: Alive or Dead.
She turned the pages frantically until she reached a blank sheet. There, in fresh, glistening red ink, was her own name: Tadala Mhone.
Beneath it, words began to form, the ink bleeding across the page as if alive. Terrified, she dropped the ledger, but her name continued to glow in the darkened room.
Then the whispers began soft, pleading voices rising from nowhere and everywhere:
"You let him watch!"
"You let him take you!"
"You let her guide you!"
"You woke us!"
Tadala stumbled back. On the floor lay a single, red-inked feather, still wet. She recognized it instantly: the same feather Thocco had used to sign confessions in the university basement.
The Crimson Veil Society was no mere sisterhood. It was an ancient presence watching, judging, feeding in silence for generations. Its secrets were buried in banned books. Thocco had unwittingly summoned it with a ritual from the archives. And Tadala had broken the oldest taboo: reaching climax under a witness's gaze. The whispers grew louder.
RUN!
RUN!
RUN!
RUUUUUUNNNNNN!
"When the sun rises, the ink will finish its verdict," they hissed. "And then we will come for you."
Tadala snatched the ledger, the gown, and the feather. Barefoot and sweating, she fled into the night, running until dawn broke and she reached Thocco's door.
She burst inside, nearly shattering the frame. The crimson gown was clenched in her bloodied fist, its fabric torn and darkened by sweat and thorns. The air around her thrummed with unnatural energy; shadows at the edges of the room stretched toward her like hungry fingers.
Thocco recoiled, eyes wide, her usual calm fracturing. Her gaze darted to the gown, then to Tadala's ashen face.
"What the hell are you doing here?" she hissed, already knowing.
The words tumbled from Tadala in a frantic whisper. "Nola Kates… the Crimson Veil… it's hunting me. That night....the threesome....it summoned them. The Crimson isn't just a sisterhood, Thocco. They're spirits. Ancient. Hungry. They live in our minds, feeding on every moment of pleasure we give them." Tadala quickly explained while stammering.
Thocco's face drained of color. She pressed her palms to her eyes as if to block the truth. When she looked up, fear and fury warred in her expression.
"You didn't… you didn't open the ledger, did you?"
Tadala's silence was answer enough.
Thocco's gaze fell to the bundle in Tadala's arms. Horror twisted her features. "You've awakened something that's waited centuries. Once the veil is torn, it never mends."
The room seemed to shrink. The air thickened with the stench of blood and ancient decay. Tadala's eyes darted wildly, half-expecting the shadows to peel from the walls and take shape.
"They're coming for me," she whispered, voice breaking. "I saw my name. The ink was moving writing itself. The verdict is already there. I can feel them watching."
Thocco seized Tadala's shoulders, fingers digging in. "We have to perform the cleansing ritual now—salt, herbs, the old chants. We have to bind them before they claim you completely."
Tadala's eyes flashed with sudden defiance. "We can't just hide. We need to end it."
Thocco shook her head, almost sorrowful. "You don't understand. This isn't something courage can defeat. It's older than us. It has fed on generations of women who thought they could control it."
The darkness pulsed, alive. A low, rhythmic hum filled the room deeper now, more intimate, like a thousand voices murmuring inside their skulls.
Tadala's breath caught. She turned toward the thickest shadows. "It's too late," she whispered. "They're already here."
The lights flickered and died. Darkness swallowed everything, broken only by a faint, sickly red glow seeping from the ledger. The whispers rose, overlapping, accusing, ravenous:
"You fed us…"
"You let us in…"
"Now we take what is ours."
The crimson gown in Tadala's hand began to writhe, threads twisting into spiraling patterns. The feather lifted from the floor, quivering in an unfelt wind.
Thocco's voice came small and trembling. "Tadala…"
The whispers united into one chilling sentence that echoed from every direction:
"The ink is dry. The hunt begins."
In the red glow, two pairs of eyes wide, terrified, and utterly alone met in the dark. The Crimson Veil had come home.