CHAPTER 1 – Day 1
Aryan woke up tasting iron.
His mouth was dry, head pounding from last night's Old Monk. He rolled off the mattress in his Indiranagar studio, scratched his forearm, and froze.
There was a tattoo.
Three perfect concentric circles, a single black dot in the center. The lines were razor-thin, almost etched rather than inked. No redness, no swelling, no needle marks. As if the skin had grown that way.
"Photoshop pranks don't work on flesh, assholes," he muttered, thinking one of his red-team buddies had roofied and tattooed him for laughs.
He tried scrubbing it with soap, then acetone, then a steel scouring pad until he bled. The mark didn't fade. It didn't even smudge.
His phone buzzed. Unknown number. A single image: his sleeping body at 2:14 a.m., taken from the corner of the room where he kept no camera. The new tattoo glowed faintly under the flash.
Below the photo, a message in Kannada:
ಅಕ ಆರಂಭವಾಗಿದೆ. ೩೩ ದಿನಗಳು ಬಾಕಿ.
Ak has begun. 33 days remaining.
Aryan felt the floor tilt. He knew that phrase. Every Bangalorean who ever browsed the darknet knew it. Ten marked people in the last twelve years. All dead on day zero. All Kannadigas. All livestreamed.
He opened his laptop, fingers flying across the keyboard, diving into private IRC channels, Tor relays, dead drops. Every forum that once discussed the "Ak murders" had been wiped clean in the last six hours.
Except one post, uploaded twelve minutes ago:
New bearer confirmed.
Name: Aryan Kulkarni
Amount paid: ₹4.2 crore (anonymous wallet)
Place your side bets, gentlemen.
He stared at the screen until the letters burned. Someone had just paid forty-two million rupees… for him.
CHAPTER 2 – Day 2
Uttarahalli Police Station
Inspector Tara Nayak hadn't slept in thirty-one hours. The corpse on the steel table used to be Rohan Pai, startup founder, found hanging upside-down from the Namma Metro yellow line at 5 a.m. His left forearm was skinned clean, the mark carved into the muscle beneath.
Same mark her brother had worn ten years ago.
The forensic pathologist shook his head. "No hesitation marks, no rope fibers in the wrists. He was alive when he was strung up. And get this, the carving was done post-mortem… with surgical precision. Like someone wanted the mark preserved for the camera."
Tara's phone vibrated. A new tip from an anonymous source: another mark had appeared. This time on a living person.
The name attached made her stomach drop.
Aryan Kulkarni.
The same cocky kid who once helped her trace her brother's killer, then vanished into the ethical-hacking underworld when the trail went cold.
She grabbed her keys.
CHAPTER 3 – Day 3
Coffee Board Park, 11:47 p.m.
Aryan sat on a bench, hoodie up, watching the dark silhouette of a woman approach. She moved like someone who expected bullets at any second.
"You grew up," Tara said in Kannada, voice low.
"You didn't," he replied, same language. "Still smoking those navy-cut cigarettes that smell like my nightmares."
She sat beside him, showed him a photo on her phone: Rohan Pai's carved arm.
"Same mark. Same 33-day countdown. You're next."
"I noticed."
"Who did you piss off, Aryan? Politician? Russian mafia? Some crypto whale?"
"If I knew, I'd already be dead or rich." He pulled down his sleeve. The mark was darker today, almost pulsing. "I tried everything. Liquid nitrogen, dermabrasion, acid. It grows back in minutes. Like it's… alive."
Tara stared at him for a long time.
"There's a woman," she said finally. "Dr. Meera Shenoy. Epigraphist. She translated fragments found with the third victim. Claims the mark isn't a tattoo or a brand. It's a Harappan seal. 2600 BCE. The symbol reads 'Ak' in proto-Dravidian."
"Meaning?"
"'The debt that cannot be unpaid.'"
Aryan laughed, short and bitter. "Great. I owe money to a 4500-year-old civilization."
Headlights swept across the park. A black Innova screeched to a halt. Four men in balaclavas jumped out, suppressed rifles raised.
Tara was already moving, shoving Aryan behind the bench, drawing her service Glock.
The first bullet took the streetlamp above their heads, showering them with glass.
"Run!" she shouted.
But Aryan didn't run. He was staring at his forearm. The mark had begun to glow; faint red, like embers under skin.
And for the first time, he heard a voice inside his head, genderless, ancient, speaking perfect Kannada:
Day 30 remaining.
Deliver the bearer, or become him.
(End of available chapters for now)
Want Chapters 4–6 right now? Or the full twisty ending? Just say the word, I'll keep writing non-stop. 😈