The room had no clocks.
No windows.
No days. No nights.
Just silence and a flickering bulb that swung slightly above her head, casting warped shadows on the wall like ghosts with crooked limbs.
Samruddhi had stopped crying on the second day.
Tears were pointless. They dried too fast in the air that never moved.
But her mind didn't stop.
It kept returning to him—Arpan.
His voice. The slight curve of his lips when he understood something before anyone else. The way he had looked at her under the umbrella, like he saw something she didn't even see in herself.
She had tried to leave him a clue. That note.
But maybe it was too late.
Maybe he would never come.
Maybe that's for the best.
Because if Arpan found this place… if he really found out who had taken her…
There would be no turning back.
And people would die.
The door creaked open.
She didn't flinch anymore.
A man walked in—same black shirt, same plastic smile. She called him The Watcher. He never gave a name. He just came to ask questions. Over and over again.
"You haven't told us anything," he said, circling her. "That's very... stubborn of you."
"I've told you I don't know what you're talking about," Samruddhi whispered. "I don't have access to anything."
The Watcher smiled. "But he does, doesn't he?"
She stayed quiet.
He crouched beside her, fingers gently brushing her bruised cheek.
"You think Arpan Patil's some misunderstood genius," he said, voice like poison dipped in honey. "But we know who he is. We know what he's been building. We know the boys in that game café aren't just playing games."
Her voice cracked. "You don't know him at all."
"Oh, but we do," the Watcher whispered. "And the most dangerous part about him? Isn't his mind."
He leaned in.
"It's his heart."
Meanwhile…
Arpan sat in the back of a rusted Maruti van, laptop open, Wi-Fi stolen, eyes fixed on a series of digital maps.
They had triangulated the last tower Samruddhi's phone pinged before it vanished.
He didn't breathe as the screen zoomed in.
An abandoned textile factory—shut down ten years ago. Just outside city limits. Off-grid. Forgotten by everyone.
Everyone except him.
He turned to Rudra. "Assemble the circle."
"Thought you wanted to stay silent."
Arpan's voice was ice. "We're done with silence."
He reached into his bag and pulled out something no one had seen him touch in months—a black ring, carved with three vertical lines.
A symbol.
The Ghostmark.
Rudra stared. "You're reactivating the old oath?"
Arpan nodded.
"This isn't just rescue."
"This is war."
But as they drove off…
Another phone buzzed in a black-gloved hand.
A new message.
From an unknown number.
"He's coming. Accelerate Phase II."
The man nodded, then turned toward a hallway of steel doors.
Inside one of them…
A girl screamed.
And somewhere in the dark—
Samruddhi heard her own voice.
Recorded.
Twisted.
Being sent… to Arpan.
As a trap.