Rudra moved through the corridors as one moves through a crowd in a dream.
Bodies were close, voices nearer still, yet none of them reached him. Words floated, collided, dissolved. Condolences spoken too carefully. Curiosity disguised as concern. Calculations murmured behind lowered heads. He heard them without listening, sensed them without seeing. Grief had sharpened his senses, but it had also taught him refusal.
Every room was full. Every passage was occupied. And yet the house felt hollow, as though its walls were merely rehearsing hospitality while something deeper waited, observant and patient.
He entered his room and closed the door behind him.
This was the room where he had learned silence. Where tears were swallowed before they reached the cheek. Where the dark corridors of the house had taught him how to look back without turning around. Where nightmares knocked softly at first, then harder, until he had learned the precise art of answering them with stillness.
The curtains were drawn halfway. Light slipped in reluctantly, tracing pale lines across the floor. The bed remained untouched, its corner still bearing the shape of an earlier life. He sat there, not in rest, but in resignation.
Has everything fallen, he wondered. Everything he had asked of the gods. Everything he had been promised by patience.
He remembered praying once for peace. For a good time. For clarity. And this was how the gods had answered. Not with refusal, but with substitution. Taking away what he loved and calling it balance.
His skin burned. Not with heat, but with something sharper. Anger without direction. Fury that had nowhere to be placed. A potential energy of rage, mixed with betrayal and broken expectation, pressing against the limits of his restraint.
Was this punishment?
For deeds the world did not call sin, yet the universe seemed to remember differently. He had never raised a weapon against the divine, yet his life felt like the sentence of someone who had tried to challenge gods themselves.
His hands clenched slowly, fingers curling into fists. Somewhere outside, servants moved, voices polite, efficient, asking if the guests needed anything more. He wanted to shout. To demand silence. To order the world to leave him alone.
He did none of it.
There are moments when even what lies within one's hands becomes forbidden. When action stains reputation, and restraint is mistaken for dignity. All that remains then is to sit quietly and curse gods who neither answer prayers nor acknowledge rage.
A knock came.
"Rudra," a voice said gently. "May I come in?"
Mr. Mehta entered without waiting for permission. He looked older than he had at the cremation, as though the house itself had aged him. His expression held concern without intrusion, care without pity.
"Are you all right, beta?" he asked.
Rudra did not answer immediately. Mr. Mehta waited. He always did.
"You cannot stay hidden today," Mr. Mehta said softly. "Not here."
"I don't wish to be seen," Rudra replied.
"That is precisely why you must be," the older man said. "They are not all here to mourn your father. Some have come to measure you. To see whether the house still stands or whether it is ready to collapse."
Rudra looked up.
"Do not give them the satisfaction," Mr. Mehta continued. "Grief is allowed. Weakness is not. Men are remembered not because fate was kind to them, but because they fought the fate they were given. That is how history chooses its names."
He placed a hand briefly on Rudra's shoulder. Not to console, but to steady.
They stepped back into the gathering.
Eyes followed him immediately. Some curious. Some assessing. Some disappointed that grief had not broken him visibly enough. Murmurs trailed behind him like insects. Mr. Mehta guided him forward, then left him gently, joining a group of men engaged in low conversation, smoke curling around their words.
Rudra stood alone.
He felt it then. A quiet realization. The living were more dangerous than the dead.
He took a glass of water from a nearby table, held it without drinking.
Mrs. Mehta approached him, her silver saree catching the light, dignity woven into every fold. The metal threads shimmered softly, neither loud nor submissive, much like the woman herself. After his mother's death, she had been among the few who had offered him kindness without expectation, without attempting to replace what was lost.
"You look tired, Rudra," she said gently. "Grief has a way of exhausting even the strongest."
"I have not slept," he replied truthfully.
She nodded, as though she had already known. "Sleep will return," she said. "It always does. But only when the mind is allowed to believe it is safe again."
She asked about his health, his studies, the reception of his work. Her questions were careful, chosen to avoid wounds while acknowledging their existence.
"And Oxford?" she asked. "When do you return?"
"I am permitted certain exemptions now," Rudra said. "Attendance is no longer mandatory. Recognition has its privileges."
She smiled faintly. "It always does. Especially when earned young."
At that moment, Monika stepped closer, her presence announced by the soft confidence of her movement. She wore her smile as others wore jewelry, polished and deliberate.
"Mr. Roy," she said, inclining her head. "I wished to say how deeply sorry I am. Your father's legacy was… formidable."
"Thank you," Rudra replied, his tone courteous, distant.
She turned to Mrs. Mehta almost immediately, speaking of an upcoming textile exhibition, of investors expected from Calcutta, of progress and opportunity. Her voice carried the ease of someone accustomed to rooms like this.
As Rudra stepped away, he heard her say lightly, "The burden now is quite heavy. One hopes enthusiasm compensates where experience may not."
There was a pause that followed, brief but deliberate, the kind of silence people use to let words settle where they are meant to wound. A soft laugh accompanied it, restrained, almost polite. Rudra did not turn back. He did not need to. He knew that laughter. It belonged to rooms where power was measured quietly, where grief was an inconvenience and lineage a currency.
What he did feel, however, was Mrs. Mehta's gaze. It followed him, heavy with worry, with the helpless awareness that some remarks, once released, could not be retrieved. He felt it rest on his back like a hand that wished to stop him but did not know how.
He walked on.
Anger rose then, not sudden, not explosive, but slow and consuming, like heat beneath the skin. Not rage that demanded shouting, but the sharper kind that demanded control. The kind that remembered every slight, every doubt cast in moments of vulnerability. It was not Monika's words alone that unsettled him, but the truth beneath them. That many in this house were not waiting to support him, but to assess how long he would last.
He signaled to a servant standing nearby. "Tea," he said quietly.
"Yes, sahib," the man replied, lowering his head.
"In the office," Rudra added, without hesitation.
The servant paused only for a fraction of a second before nodding again. "At once."
The office received him as though it had never let him leave. The air inside felt denser, weighted with years of authority, argument, and unspoken decisions. The familiar scent of old paper and polished wood pressed against him. It was unsettling how easily anger could return him to a place he had sworn not to enter again, not like this, not now.
Jaydev stood by the table, a stack of brown leather-bound files held too close to his eyes. His posture remained unchanged, disciplined, precise, as though routine itself was his refuge. He glanced up briefly when Rudra entered, then returned to the documents, acknowledging presence without commentary.
"These are the tea industry accounts," Jaydev said after a moment. "Fifty-seven percent of our total revenue. Tea, rubber, and auxiliary trade."
Rudra stepped closer and picked up one of the files. The pages were dense with figures, columns arranged with meticulous care. His eyes moved quickly, instinctively searching for patterns.
The decline was unmistakable.
"These numbers don't fall randomly," Rudra said, his voice measured. "They're too consistent."
Jaydev nodded. "Absence has consequences. The gardens suffer when they are not visited. Reports from North Assam have been… incomplete."
"Incomplete," Rudra repeated softly.
"Yes," Jaydev said. "Local unrest. Labour disputes. It is difficult to understand the field without standing on it."
Rudra closed the file slowly and set it back on the table.
"How many estates?" he asked.
"Three major gardens with factories," Jaydev replied. "Makum, Doom Dooma, and Chabua. In addition, six smaller gardens focused on green leaf and rubber nurseries."
Rudra remained silent for a moment, his gaze fixed not on the papers but somewhere beyond them. The murmurs outside the room seemed distant now, irrelevant. Something had shifted, quietly but decisively.
"Make the arrangements," he said at last. "We leave for Makum tomorrow morning."
Jaydev straightened slightly. He placed the file back into its place with care, as though acknowledging the weight of the decision rather than the order itself. When he looked at Rudra again, there was a faint smile on his face.
Not relief. Recognition.