Rudra Basu, a lowly library translator, discovers a half-burned palm-leaf manuscript while cataloging a mislabeled collection in the basement of the Asiatic Society Library in Calcutta. The air smells of old ink and cremation smoke. The script is in a forbidden tantric dialect: Sharabhra. A faint heat radiates from the page.
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The ceiling fan above Rudra Basu rotated with a dull, skeletal rattle, blades stirring more dust than air. The lantern on his desk hissed low, casting ripples of flame-shadow across the stacks of bundled palm-leaf scrolls piled like ribs around him. In the belly of the Asiatic Society's basement archive, time thickened like varnish—slow, airless, quietly rotting.
He adjusted his round spectacles and rubbed the ache from his eyes. Hours had passed since the sun fell, though no window confirmed it. He was halfway through sorting Collection No. 43-B, a pile of miscatalogued manuscripts dumped anonymously by a Raj-era collector whose estate had been liquidated after a scandal involving taxidermy and twin wives. Most of the documents were in Pali or crude Bengali, brittle with age, more mold than meaning.
But then his gloved fingers brushed something warm.
He paused. Not metaphorically warm—actually warm. In a crate otherwise cold to the touch.
Gently, he slid it free.
A palm-leaf bundle, bound in copper wire and black thread. Its edges were burnt and curling, the topmost leaf partially carbonized as if snatched from a pyre. A faint scent clung to it—sharp, acidic, something like scorched sandalwood and ghee.
He held it beneath the lantern. The script etched into the palm-leaf shimmered faintly—neither ink nor carving, but something more like a bruise across the grain.
Rudra blinked.
No… not a bruise. A script.
He leaned closer, pulse quickening.
Sharabhra.
The tongue of the Night-Tantrikas.
His father had once called it the devouring language—a script that read the reader as it was read, that buried syllables inside syllables like bones in a corpse-pit. Rudra hadn't seen it since he was a child, before they hanged his father at Fort William for "ritual sedition."
He knew he shouldn't even look at it directly. The British had banned all texts bearing the Black Sutras, and the Brahminical councils had issued silent warnings to those who even acknowledged their survival.
His hands shook as he set the scroll flat and began to copy the first line into his notebook, translating in real time. The Sharabhra script twisted and inverted as he stared, almost mocking him.
A single phrase resolved, inked in spidery red:
"Ashta-Kala awakens in silence."
The moment he read it aloud—just a whisper under breath—the air turned solid.
The lantern flickered.
And something in the walls shifted.
Rudra stiffened. The ink on the scroll crawled like it had veins. His vision tilted left, then spun.
There, just beyond the edge of the lantern's reach—
A figure.
A man? No—corpse. Blindfolded. Sitting cross-legged. Skin charcoal black, lips moving but no sound. Its head tilted toward him in slow, jerking pulses, as if straining to listen… or remember.
Rudra tried to look away but couldn't.
The corpse's mouth opened.
A sound like air reversing filled the room. Mantras. Backward.
He staggered back, nearly knocking over the lantern. His hand flew to his nose. Blood was running freely, thick and dark as ink.
His heart hammered. A sharp pulse bloomed behind his left eye.
He blinked.
The figure was gone.
The room was silent. Only the fan above, creaking.
The palm-leaf manuscript sat motionless on the desk, just as he had found it.
But when he reached out to touch it again—
—it was cold.