Chapter 21
Present — Rana Rathore House
Rajveer stared at his phone after Druve ended the call. He knew exactly what his question had done. The moment he mentioned Sruthi, Druve had assumed they had found something, and Rajveer hadn't been able to explain before the questions came pouring out.
"He thinks we found her," Rajveer said quietly.
Rana glanced at him. "Then call him again. Don't let him come here carrying the wrong hope."
Rajveer nodded and called again.
Druve barely noticed his phone ringing.
He was driving, but his thoughts had slipped back to the hill station—to Sruthi's frightened face and the pieces of that night that had never stopped haunting him. Seven years later, he could still remember enough to know he had failed the one person who had trusted him completely.
The ringing stopped, only to begin again moments later. When it rang for the third time, Druve finally answered.
"What?"
"Druve, listen to me first," Rajveer said. "I didn't find Sruthi."
The hope that had risen during their previous call disappeared instantly.
"Then why did you ask about her?"
"There is someone here. Dr. Sinha brought a man he trusts deeply. They call him the Master. He has spent years studying things most people wouldn't believe in. I thought maybe he could help us find some direction regarding Sruthi's whereabouts."
Druve frowned.
"I'm not saying we found a clue," Rajveer continued. "We haven't. But we've tried everything else for seven years. I thought this was worth trying too."
For those few minutes after the first call, Druve had allowed himself to believe Rajveer had finally found something. Now that hope was gone, leaving behind the familiar disappointment.
Still, he asked, "What does he need?"
"Sruthi's date of birth and exact time."
Druve pressed the brake and pulled to the side of the road.
"August 7th. 3:12 AM."
Rajveer froze.
His eyes immediately moved to Vikram, who stared back at him in equal shock. Rana understood a moment later, while Dr. Sinha turned towards the Master.
They had heard those exact details only minutes earlier—from Vikram, about Riya.
"You're sure?" Rajveer asked.
Druve's brows drew together. "Of course I'm sure."
The certainty in his voice was enough. Rajveer didn't question him further.
"Is that all he needs?" Druve asked.
"For now, yes."
Druve started the car again.
Rajveer hesitated. "Are you still coming? I wanted you to know the truth before you reached here. We haven't actually found anything."
"I'll come."
"Druve, this may lead nowhere."
"If there's even a 0.1 percent chance that this man can give me a clue about my Sruthi, I'll come."
Rajveer fell silent.
Druve looked at the road ahead. He had lost the sudden hope the first call had given him, but that tiny possibility was enough to keep him moving.
"I'll be there in an hour."
The call ended.
Rajveer lowered the phone slowly. No one needed to repeat what they had just heard. The coincidence was impossible to ignore.
The Master had not moved since Druve gave the details. His eyes remained lowered, but the stillness around him had changed. What had been suspicion until then seemed to have settled into something far more certain.
"As I thought."
He pulled the paper towards himself and began to calculate.
There was nothing hurried about it. He placed the two births against the same cosmic cycle, worked through a series of numbers and unfamiliar markings, then stopped. He checked the result from another direction, altered the sequence and calculated again.
The same answer returned.
The Master sat back.
Dr. Sinha knew that expression. It wasn't confusion.
It was disbelief.
"Master?"
The old man looked at the paper for a long moment before speaking.
"In all my years of studying the soul, I have come across references to this only a handful of times. Never as a proven event. Never with anyone left alive to examine."
Rana's attention sharpened. "What event?"
The Master raised his eyes.
"A cosmic anomaly."
The words were simple. Something about the way he said them wasn't.
"A soul is meant to enter this world whole. One essence. One life. One existence." He paused. "But the cosmos is not as flawless as mankind likes to believe."
Rajveer frowned.
"Very rarely—so rarely that centuries can pass without it occurring—the balance fails at the precise instant a soul crosses into life."
His eyes moved towards the room where Riya lay.
"And one soul becomes two."
No one interrupted him.
"Not twins. Not reincarnations. Not two souls connected by fate. One soul, divided at its origin, entering the world through two bodies at the same moment."
Vikram's face slowly changed.
His eyes went towards Riya's room.
Then towards the phone still in Rajveer's hand.
The Master continued before anyone could speak.
"Both halves live as complete individuals because neither knows anything is missing. They are given different bodies, different families, different memories. They love different people. They make different choices. If you met them, you would swear they had nothing to do with one another."
Rana's voice was quieter now. "Riya and Sruthi."
The Master didn't confirm it.
Not yet.
Instead, his expression darkened.
"But nature does not tolerate the division for long."
The room seemed to tighten around those words.
"What does that mean?" Vikram asked.
"Such lives rarely survive."
Vikram went rigid.
"The body carries an imbalance it cannot identify. Sometimes it appears as illness. Sometimes weakness no physician can explain. Sometimes an accident takes one before anyone realizes there was anything unusual at all. The cause differs."
The Master paused.
"The ending usually does not."
Rana's face hardened. "Death."
"Yes."
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Rajveer's eyes returned to the two names on the paper.
"Then how are we here discussing both of them?"
The Master looked at him.
"Because they did something they were never supposed to survive."
The answer sent a chill through Rajveer.
The Master continued. "There is, however, an older theory. One even I considered little more than fantasy."
Dr. Sinha stared at him. "What theory?"
"That what was divided can become whole again."
Something shifted in Rana's eyes.
"How?"
"Both halves must reach death at the same point."
Vikram stared at him. "At the same time?"
"Not minutes apart. Not one body dying while the other still clings to life. The separation began at one point in time. For it to collapse, both must return to that boundary together."
Rajveer's thoughts went instantly to everything they had been told.
Riya's heart stopping.
The impossible revival.
The night the machines had failed to make sense.
His mouth went dry.
The Master wasn't finished.
"Even then, reunion should almost never happen."
Rana's brows pulled together. "Why?"
"Because death does not immediately erase who you are."
The Master's voice softened.
"A soul carries its sense of self to the very edge. Its attachments. Its pain. Its love. Its memories of being someone. When faced with dissolution, it holds onto that identity with everything it has."
Vikram's throat tightened.
"Riya would fight to remain Riya," the Master said. "Sruthi would fight to remain Sruthi. Two halves, each believing itself whole. Neither would willingly surrender itself to the other."
"Then they can't join," Dr. Sinha said.
"Normally, no."
That single word changed the room.
Rajveer looked at him sharply.
"Normally?"
The Master slowly turned his gaze towards Riya's room.
"One of them didn't fight."
Silence.
Rajveer felt something cold move through him.
The Master spoke again, quieter.
"One half reached that boundary with no desire left to preserve who she was."
Sruthi.
No one said her name.
They didn't need to.
Rajveer remembered what they knew of her disappearance. The unexplained terror now living inside Riya. The panic at touch. The restraints she fought even when there were none. The scar that belonged to a wound Riya had never suffered.
And suddenly the thought of what it must have taken for Sruthi to reach a point where even her own soul stopped holding onto her identity was unbearable.
Rajveer looked away.
Rana's anger had disappeared.
Even Vikram had gone completely still.
The Master let the silence remain.
"She didn't surrender to the other soul," he finally said. "Understand that clearly. There was no other soul to surrender to."
His fingers moved across the paper and rested between the two names.
"She simply stopped insisting on being separate."
Dr. Sinha's breath caught.
And for the first time, something close to awe entered the Master's voice.
"That was enough."
The lights flickered.
Once.
Every eye lifted instinctively.
Outside, a low roll of thunder moved across the distant sky.
The Master didn't look away from the two names.
"At the same boundary where the cosmos once tore one existence into two, both halves met again. One still held the will to live. The other no longer fought to remain apart."
His fingers slowly closed over the space between the names.
"The division collapsed."
Rana stared at him.
"And Riya came back?"
The Master looked up.
"No."
Vikram's face drained.
Rajveer stopped breathing.
The Master rose.
"That is the mistake all of you have been making."
His gaze settled first on Rana.
"Riya did not come back carrying Sruthi."
Then Rajveer.
"Sruthi did not take Riya's body."
Then Vikram.
"And your sister was not pushed aside so another woman could live."
Vikram's eyes burned. "Then who woke up?"
For a moment, the Master said nothing.
When he finally answered, his voice held absolute certainty.
"Both."
Vikram stared at him.
The Master placed his palm over the two names.
"The soul that should have entered this world whole finally became whole."
Rana's eyes filled before he could stop them.
"Then... Riya is still there?"
The Master's expression softened.
"Every part of her."
Rajveer's voice was barely audible.
"And Sruthi?"
"Every part of her too."
Rajveer shut his eyes.
The Master looked towards the closed room.
"What happened that night was not possession. It was not reincarnation. It was not one life defeating another."
A faint tremor ran through the lights again.
"It was rebirth."
His voice dropped.
"A soul broken by a mistake of the cosmos died as two..."
He paused.
"...and rose as one."
The silence that followed felt almost sacred.
The Master looked at Rana, whose entire world had been built around the fear that his daughter had disappeared from the body lying in that room.
"Riya is Sruthi."
Then his gaze moved to Rajveer.
"And Sruthi is Riya."
Vikram's eyes slowly turned towards his sister's door.
The Master gave them the only truth that mattered now.
"Different lives. Different memories. Different names."
His hand closed over both names on the paper.
"But never different souls."
A distant flash of lightning illuminated the windows.
"The cosmos divided her."
The Master looked towards the room.
"And after all these years..."
His voice softened.
"...she finally came home to herself."
For several moments, no one spoke.
Vikram was still looking towards the closed door when a thought seemed to strike him.
"When she wakes..." His voice was careful now. "Who will she remember being?"
The Master did not answer immediately.
And somehow, that hesitation frightened Vikram more than everything he had said before.
"You don't know."
"No."
Rana turned towards him sharply.
The Master looked down at the two names beneath his hand.
"The soul is whole. The memories are not."
Dr. Sinha frowned. "Meaning?"
"Riya and Sruthi lived separately for years. Their memories were formed in different minds, through different bodies, different families, different pain, different love. The soul has reunited, but that does not mean two lifetimes of memory can settle into one consciousness overnight."
Rana's eyes moved towards his daughter's room.
"So when she opens her eyes..."
"I cannot tell you which life she will reach for first."
The answer landed heavily.
Then the Master glanced once more at his calculations.
"But if I had to believe one will surface first, I would say Riya."
Vikram's head lifted.
"Why?"
"Because when both halves reached death, Sruthi had already released her hold on herself. Riya had not."
The Master paused.
"One half had surrendered its identity. The other still carried the will to live. When the division collapsed, it was that will that pulled the whole soul back towards life."
Vikram's eyes burned with sudden hope.
"So she'll wake as Riya."
"I said I believe Riya's memories will rise first," the Master corrected gently. "I did not say Sruthi will remain asleep."
That hope changed shape.
Rajveer stared at him.
The Master continued.
"Sruthi is not buried inside her. She is not another presence waiting for her turn. Those memories belong to the same soul now. They will come."
"When?" Rajveer asked.
"I don't know."
The answer was immediate.
"They may begin as dreams. A face she recognizes without knowing why. A place she has never visited yet knows by heart. A touch that comforts her before she remembers who once gave it. Pain without an obvious wound. Love without a name."
Rajveer's chest tightened.
"And then?"
"Fragments will become memories."
The Master looked towards the closed door.
"And that is when this becomes difficult."
Rana frowned. "More difficult than what she is already going through?"
"Far more."
The answer silenced him.
"Imagine waking certain that you are Riya Rathore, only to begin remembering a childhood that was never yours. A brother you never had. People you have never met. Love you cannot explain. Then pain your body never suffered begins to feel like your own."
Vikram's jaw tightened.
"She could think she's losing her mind."
"She may."
The Master didn't soften it.
"And the more Sruthi returns, the harder it may become for her to understand where Riya ends and Sruthi begins."
He paused.
"Until she understands that neither ends."
The words settled quietly.
"There is something else."
Rana's expression changed immediately.
The Master looked towards him.
"The anomaly has corrected itself. That does not mean the correction is stable."
Dr. Sinha straightened. "What are you saying?"
"For decades, the universe sustained an error that should never have existed. Now that error has collapsed in a way that, according to everything I have studied, should have been nearly impossible."
A strange uneasiness entered his expression.
"The cosmos corrects imbalance."
Rana stared at him.
"And sometimes..."
The Master's voice lowered.
"...it corrects the correction."
A chill moved through the room.
Vikram took a step forward. "What does that mean for my sister?"
"It means you cannot assume that because her heart is beating, the danger has passed."
Rana's face hardened. "What danger?"
The Master was silent for a moment.
"Sruthi."
Rajveer went still.
"Her half surrendered before the fusion. She reached death without the will to remain herself. That absence did not simply disappear because the soul became whole."
Rajveer's throat tightened.
The Master continued carefully.
"Riya's will brought the whole soul back. But eventually Sruthi's memories will return with everything attached to them."
The room seemed colder.
"Her love."
A pause.
"Her loss."
Another.
"Her pain."
Rajveer closed his eyes.
"And the part of her that had already decided there was nothing left worth living for."
Rana's face changed.
"What happens then?"
"If those memories return and that part of the soul still finds no reason to live, the fusion may begin to fail."
Vikram's breath caught.
"No."
The Master looked directly at him.
"This rebirth gave them another chance. It did not guarantee they would keep it."
Rana stepped closer. "How do we stop it?"
For the first time since the explanation began, the Master did not answer with a theory.
He answered with a warning.
"Give Sruthi a reason to stay."
Rajveer looked at him.
The Master noticed.
"If there is someone from Sruthi's life whom her memories trusted completely—someone her soul associated with safety before everything was destroyed—bring that person close."
Rajveer stopped breathing for a moment.
There was only one name that came to him.
The Master continued, unaware of the storm those words had created inside him.
"When Sruthi's memories begin returning, she will need something they recognize. Something stronger than the pain attached to them. Riya's family can anchor the life she knows now. But Sruthi may need an anchor from the life she lost."
Vikram slowly looked at Rajveer.
Rajveer said nothing.
He didn't have to.
Druve.
The Master looked between them.
"You know someone."
Rajveer's voice came quietly.
"Yes."
The Master studied his expression.
"Then keep him near her."
Rana's brows drew together. "For how long?"
The Master looked again at his calculations.
This time, when he answered, there was no wonder in his voice.
Only gravity.
"Two years."
Rajveer's head lifted.
"Why two years?"
"Because if the whole soul remains stable through that period, the fusion should become permanent. Riya's will to live and Sruthi's returning identity will have had enough time to settle as one existence."
"And if it doesn't?" Vikram asked.
The Master looked at him.
No one in the room seemed to breathe.
"If Sruthi's half has not found the will to live by then..."
He paused.
"...Riya's half will not be strong enough to carry both forever."
Rana went pale.
The Master looked towards the closed door.
"You will not lose Sruthi."
His gaze returned to them.
"You will not lose Riya."
A beat.
"You will lose both."