The bells of Delhi had not rung that morning.
Vendors still shouted. Oxen still groaned beneath heavy carts. But somewhere in the bones of the city, something had stilled. The pigeons above the Jama Masjid scattered all at once, though no hawk circled the sky. The water in the courtyards rippled without wind.
And in the alleyways that never saw sun, the air smelled faintly of thread.
The Saanjh had arrived.
They came not as soldiers, but as silence. In pairs and trios, they stepped from beneath shadows, from beneath shutters long sealed, from beneath stone itself. No one saw their faces. No one remembered seeing them pass. But they were there, brushing fingers across doorframes, whispering into the cracks of flagstones.
And wherever they went, the threads began to stir.
At the palace's edge, beneath a broken arch where ivy grew unchecked, the Speaker of the Pattern stood cloaked in twilight. Her veil shifted gently in the breeze, though the alley was windless.
Behind her, the old loomhouse that was remade in secret, shimmered into being for a breath, then vanished again.
"This city carries too many lies in its walls," murmured the Speaker. "Let us see what happens when it remembers truth."
From her sleeve she withdrew a single thread; green as the first rains.
She whispered a name to it.
"Aarifa."
The thread vanished, drawn toward the palace like a compass finding true north.
The Saanjh fanned out.
They had come not to conquer, but to cleanse.
Elsewhere, near the great spice market where the heat clung like oil and the air sang of cinnamon and sweat, the boy stood very still.
The shadow behind him — taller now, more defined — stepped into the light.
Except it cast none.
Its face was not a face, but a suggestion: a hollowed space where light refused to settle. The threads around its limbs pulsed black, shot through with veins of gold.
More had joined them.
A woman in torn bridal silks, her veil scorched to ash. A man with hands burned by loom fire. Children whose eyes flickered like candles left too long in the wind.
Each bore a thread; ripped, charred, twisted; yet still connected.
Still part of the Pattern.
The sigil on the leader's chest, the falcon in chains and flame burned bright.
He raised a hand.
"We move on the palace," he said, his voice low, hollow, ancient.
The boy beside him looked up. "What if she's already there?"
"She is," the shadow replied. "And so is the one who unmade us."
His threads quivered. The looms had once called him prince. Now they called him revenant.
"We were cast aside," he said. "But not broken."
At that very moment, beneath the eastern wing of the Red Fort, a servant paused in a narrow hall. Her basket of rose petals slid from her hands, spilling across the marble like blood.
Something brushed past her. Not a person. Not a wind.
A presence.
She turned and for a breath, she saw a figure vanish into the wall, leaving behind only a wisp of golden thread.
The looms were awakening. And they no longer belonged to one side.
Back in the alley, the Speaker of the Pattern closed her eyes.
"They're already here," she murmured.
A younger Saanjh turned to her, uneasy. "The forgotten?"
The Speaker nodded.
"They seek reckoning. Not restoration."
And as she opened her eyes, they burned like stars glimpsed through silk.
"We give them both."
Khurram didn't struggle.
Not at first.
He stared at her…at it as the golden threads coiled tighter, not enough to cut breath, but enough to paralyze. Enough to command attention.
Aarifa's eyes, once the green of monsoon fields, now burned like emeralds set in a god's crown. Beautiful. Unyielding. Distant.
Her expression didn't falter, but something behind those eyes trembled. Flickered.
And Khurram saw it.
"Fight her," he rasped. "You're stronger than this."
The threads tightened, pulsing with the rhythm of a heartbeat that wasn't hers or wasn't just hers.
Mumtaz stepped forward. "She's not fighting me, Khurram," she said with something between pity and delight. "She's becoming what the Pattern always meant her to be. A vessel. A blade."
The ground beneath them rippled. Not shook—ripples, like a stone cast in water. The very fabric of reality now moved with her breath. Aarifa's breath.
"I remember," Aarifa said suddenly, voice flat.
Khurram blinked, struggling. "Remember…?"
"I remember the first thread I touched. It whispered your name."
Her hand lowered, just slightly. The threads at Khurram's throat loosened. A single breath's worth.
Mumtaz's eyes sharpened. "Don't!"
But Aarifa turned to her.
And smiled.
Not with kindness.
With understanding.
"I remember the second thread too," she continued. "It whispered yours."
Mumtaz stiffened.
The threads in Aarifa's palm began to split in two directions, two destinies. One wrapped in green fire. The other in frost.
Khurram fell to one knee, coughing, breath flooding back.
And in that moment of reprieve, he saw the truth.
Aarifa was still there.
But something ancient stood behind her soul, watching everything.
And it was waiting.
Far above the courtyard, unseen by all, the sky itself began to fray.
From the rent in the heavens came not light, but darkness and from within that dark, the Saanjh emerged.
Dozens of them.
Their veils gone. Their eyes glowing like stars spun from thread.
At their head, the Speaker of the Pattern raised one spindle.
"Aarifa," she said.
And in her other hand, she held a blade.
Not forged.
Woven.
"For what comes next… choose."
Pain did not greet her.
Power did.
It surged through her veins like molten thread; alive, searing, impossible to contain. Every breath she took echoed with forgotten voices. Every blink unraveled pieces of memory she hadn't lived. Yet, they were hers. All of them. The loom. The patterns. The choices not made.
She stood in the center of a palace courtyard that no longer belonged to the realm of men. Golden threads curled around her feet like smoke, whispering in a language older than stone. Somewhere nearby, Khurram was gasping for air and she could hear it, feel it but her body didn't move.
Because it wasn't just hers anymore.