Meanwhile, in Valente Manor's moon-drenched library, "It's not just the eclipse," she murmured. Across the room, Alex's claws dug into the armrests—not out of fear, but calculation.
"You're thinking in wolf," Isabella observed.
Alex bared his teeth. "I'm thinking that rock in the sky didn't split itself."
A floor above, little Lev's wisp-light guttered out. The nursery door swung open of its own accord, revealing a hallway where the shadows no longer matched the furniture.
Indu's eyelids drooped. The hostel's pillow smelled like a hundred other girls' hair oil and defeat. She dreamed of her grandfather's betel-stained laugh, the way he'd spat into the village well and declared her "too much mouth for mud huts." The city's heartbeat thrummed through the mattress—subway groans, police sirens wailing in falsetto, the distant —thunk— of a vending machine disgorging disappointment.
She'd left her mother's sari folded on the bus stop bench like a surrender flag. The note tucked inside read "I'll die in a gutter before I marry that tapioca-faced banker." Now, curled around her neon backpack, Indu snored through the hostel's symphony of creaking pipes and Zoya's gum popping like tiny gunshots.
Somewhere under the bed, a cockroach dragged a glitter eyelash back to its harborage area.
---
The moon's wound wept. Bloodlight dripped onto Valente Manor's rooftop where Alex crouched, wolf claws carving grooves into the slate. "That's not celestial mechanics," he growled.
Isabella's fingers tangled in his shirt. Beneath them, baby Lev stirred in his crib. The will-o'-the-wisp nightlight shattered, releasing a scream trapped in glass for centuries.
Down in Sub ST's lobby, the night manager's chessboard erupted. Black bottle caps melted into the wood grain. The thirteenth step swallowed a puddle of shadow whole.
Indu woke choking on jasmine.
"Up!" Mish kicked her mattress. "Hostel Rule #4: When the walls start singing, you sprint."
A chorus of muffled sobs vibrated through the pipes. Laleh was already shoving feet into mismatched sneakers. "Last time this happened, Bed 12A's girl wrote her suicide note in Sanskrit she didn't know."
Indu's neon backpack pulsed like a dying star. Somewhere beyond the city, her grandfather swallowed another betel quid. Somewhere closer, the hostel's front door groaned open—revealing a hallway stretching into impossible black.
"Fuck," breathed Mish. Her sketchbook flowers bloomed thorns.
The supervisor's voice slithered up the stairwell, "Tsk tsk. Who didn't recite the verse?"
Baby Lev's first fang pierced moonlight.
Alex's howl split the sky in two.
Alaric's body washed ashore at dawn, his chest cavity blooming with saltwater lilies. But it was only in the mind's eye that Banesa was there, kneeling beside him. She plucked a petal, tasted iron. "History repeats itself messily," she whispered to the gulls. They screamed back in languages no human throat could shape. Banesa was gone—her presence a ghost woven into the dawn, lingering only in memory and thought.
The faint call of the Adhan echoed from afar, its melodious voice rising and falling like a gentle tide. The sky was beginning to lighten, streaks of pale gold and pink bleeding into the dark. The world was on the cusp of awakening again, the night's shadows retreating as the first light brushed the horizon, promising new beginnings and unspoken prayers.
Indu's hostel mates moved like windup toys with broken gears. Zoya spat toothpaste into the sink—a frothy pink hemorrhage against porcelain. Mish elbow-checked Laleh for mirror space. The single toilet screamed on cue, its pipes vibrating with the ghosts of a thousand hurried pees.
"Move your bony ass," Zoya growled, wiping mint foam off her chin with a hostel towel that smelled like defeat and industrial bleach.
Indu's toothbrush was still wrapped in the bus station napkin. She used her finger instead, scrubbing until her gums wept. The bathroom mirror reflected thirteen versions of her—each slightly more frayed at the edges. Behind her, Laleh's reflection mouthed words their ears couldn't catch.
Her other roommates darted past her in a flurry, grabbing their bags and jackets. "Lock the door before you leave!" one called out, already halfway down the corridor. "Hurry up, Indu! We're running late for work!"
Indu watched them rush out, their footsteps echoing down the stairwell. She understood—everyone had a rush, an urgency she didn't share. She needed to find a job soon, to catch up with the chaos of their lives. For now, she remained rooted, the weight of her own stillness pressing down on her.
Indu's stomach growled. The pickled mango jar mocked her from the windowsill. "DO NOT OPEN UNTIL GET RICH." She pocketed it anyway. The city outside smelled of diesel and rotting marigolds.
Indu's neon backpack scalded her shoulders as she elbowed past the hostel's front desk. The night manager's chessboard now featured bottle caps melted into Rorschach blots. He didn't look up from smearing jam on yesterday's newspaper obituaries. "Superstores don't take gutter rats," he muttered, licking grape jelly off his thumb. "Check the website. Maybe next century."
Indu stepped into the elevator, the hum of machinery vibrating beneath her feet. She pressed the button for the ground floor, and the panel flickered briefly before the doors slid shut with a soft hiss. As the lift descended, the morning light seeped in through the cracks in the walls, casting long shadows across the mirrored walls. The city's chaos awaited her below, but for now, she lingered in this quiet ascent, clutching her neon backpack tightly, ready to face whatever the day had in store.
She pushed through Sub ST Home Center's revolving doors—glass smudged with palm prints and what looked like ancient blood—into a fluorescent purgatory. The first floor was a maze of discount bins and surveillance cameras swiveling like hungry vultures. Aisles groaned under shrink-wrapped mattresses and blenders missing blades. Somewhere, a PA system crackled: "Attention shoppers, existential dread now 50% off in Home Decor."
The security guy— Garv, according to his peeling name tag—peeled himself off his plastic chair when Indu's shadow hit the lobby tiles. His uniform smelled like expired deodorant and yesterday's regrets. "Ey, Glowstick," he called, scratching his armpit through polyester. "You got that 'my-dreams-are-crushed' face. Try tuition jobs. Rich kids pay you to cry over their algebra." He grinned, revealing a gold canine tooth filed to a point. "Or sell plasma. Your veins look juicy."
Indu flicked her neon backpack strap at him. "What do you sell?"
Garv grinned wider, thumbing his belt buckle. "Sperm," he announced proudly. "Donated whole tankers at the clinic." He leaned in, onion-breath warm against her ear. "Got a plaque—'Most Generous Bastard of 2023.'"
Indu kicked his shin hard enough to hear polyester fibers scream. "Congratulations," she hissed. "Now donate silence."
Somewhere beneath the subway tracks, Alaric's fingernails scraped concrete.
He couldn't remember his name, only the taste of gunpowder and Banesa's laughter caught between his teeth like fishhooks. The brick in his hands was warm, smooth as a skull. Behind him, the foreman—a hulking silhouette with a voice like gravel in a tin can—barked orders no one understood. "Break. Stack. Repeat." The foreman spat a wad of betel nut onto Alaric's boots. "Or starve."Alaric swung the hammer. The brick exploded into crimson dust. His palms bled. He licked them clean. The taste was familiar—iron and salt and something older. The foreman grinned, revealing teeth filed to points. "Good dog."
Indu walked the footpath like it was a tightrope, her gaze drilling holes into the pavement cracks. The city's yellow guide lines—raised bumps meant for blind pedestrians—snaked beneath her sneakers. She dragged her heel across them, feeling the braille-like texture vibrate up her spine. This is how ants feel—, she thought, —when they crawl over gravestones.
Somewhere ahead, the street corner exhaled a plume of greasy smoke. A hot dog cart materialized—so rusted it looked like it had been dredged from the harbor that morning. The vendor, a man with a face like a deflated basketball and fingers stained nicotine-yellow, flipped sausages with a screwdriver. "Cold dog hot dog," he announced to no one. The cart's umbrella listed dangerously, its faded Coca-Cola logo now reading 'Coca'—the rest had surrendered to weather and neglect.
Indu hesitated. The scent—charred mystery meat and onions fried in motor oil—clawed at her empty stomach. "One hot dog please," she said, fingers tightening around her last crumpled bill.
The vendor didn't look up from scraping blackened crust off the grill. "Seven buck."
Indu stared at the sausage—grayish-pink and suspiciously smooth, like something extruded from a tube labeled "Meat?" She pinched it between two fingers. It bent like rubber. The bun had the structural integrity of wet newspaper.
Around her, the city inhaled. Office workers gulped down meals while walking, their strides synchronizing at crosswalks like a murmuration of stressed-out starlings. A woman in a pencil skirt juggled a kale smoothie and three phones. A construction worker licked mustard off his wrist without breaking his shouting match with someone named Masood.
Indu thought about the pickled mango jar burning against her thigh. Thought about the hostel's haunted toilet screaming at 3 AM. Thought about Mish's sketchbook flowers growing teeth. Most of all, she thought about Bed 12A's last occupant—how the ceiling fan had braided her hair into nooses by dawn. The city's heartbeat pulsed through her sneakers—subway trains groaning like dying whales, the hiss of pressure cookers in a thousand illegal dorm kitchens, the wet smack of a street vendor tossing pancake batter onto a griddle blackened by decades of broken dreams.
She walked backwards.
Not in the physical sense—Indu's sneakers still pointed forward, scuffing pavement cracks like an impatient deity erasing pencil marks—but her ribs ached with the gravitational pull of the place she'd fled hours ago. Sub ST Home loomed at the end of the alley, its peeling mural of a smiling sun now rendered ironic by the urine-yellow streetlamp glow. The building exhaled damp concrete and lost potential through its fire escape wounds.
"Back already, kid?" Garv's voice slithered from the guard booth, where he balanced a styrofoam container of congealing biryani on his knee. A single saffron-stained grain clung to his chin like a dying rebel. "Whole job hunt lasted what—three piss breaks and a nervous breakdown?"
Indu didn't answer. She straight walked toward the lift and pressed 12. The button flickered—once, twice—before surrendering to the pressure of her thumb. The elevator groaned like a pensioner forced out of bed. Inside, the mirrored walls showed twelve fractured versions of her: neon backpack straps digging into shoulders still bruised from last night's mattress coils, lips chapped from chewing hostel-issue anxiety.
"Oa Alaikum Salam," the thirteenth-floor security guard called after her, voice sticky with bread jam and boredom. His plastic chair squeaked as he leaned back. "Added rule now, girl. Every girl returns, gives me Salam. Gesture we maintain here."
Indu pivoted mid-step, neon backpack swinging like a distress flare. "Apologies," she spat, fingers already twisting the hostel key in its rusted lock. The door exhaled damp laundry and crushed ambitions. "Satisfied?"
The guard—his nametag read 'S. Haq' in peeling letters—licked jam off his thumb. "Kid's these days," he said, shaking his head. His smile stretched like a rubber band about to snap. "No respect. No patience.
Indu scowled. "I just came back—"
S. Haq flipped open a grease-stained notebook. His fingertip—calloused from years of pressing the same elevator buttons—stabbed a column of numbers. "Every door got different code. Every girl writes down. Tradition."
Indu eyed the notebook. The numbers swam like ants on a sugar high. Some doors had codes longer than debt collector phone calls. Others were just '1111'—the digital equivalent of leaving your underwear on a park bench.
The guard's pen hovered. "Bed 12A, yeah? Previous girl chose '6969'." His smirk implied it wasn't her birthday.
Indu stared at the ceiling—a constellation of peeling paint and dead mosquitoes trapped in webs. Every corner had its own camera, domed eyes glinting like oil spills. What if I'd pick something stupid! she thinks of herself.
S. Haq shrugged. "Then tomorrow, when your corpse swings from the ceiling fan..." His pen tapped an empty line. "Nobody blames me."
Indu snatched the notebook. "12D," she hissed underlining it with her pinky knuckle. "Not haunted. Not braid-strangling. Definitely not 6969." Her neon backpack pulsed like a dying starfish against her spine.
"Found it," she muttered to the ghost of her own breath fogging the steel.
Indu's fingers hovered over the lock pad—the kind that beeped like a dying robot with every press. She punched in 4-8-1-5. The door clicked open with the enthusiasm of a depressed toaster.
Inside, the room breathed. Not in the alive way—more like a lung half-collapsed. Four beds stood at attention, their metal frames rusting in strategic silence. Zoya's side smelled like chemically enhanced cherries and betrayal; her pillow still held the dent of last night's dramatic hair-flip. Mish's corner was a crime scene of charcoal smudges and violently flowering notebooks. Laleh's space—if you could call two square feet of mattress a "space"—was a shrine to folded sweaters and passive-aggressive Post-its "borrow my shampoo again and I'll salt your roots". And then there was Indu's bed.