"Yatra Stambhitā Strī, Tatra Chhanna Sūktaṁ."(Where the woman was silenced, there the hidden hymn awaits.)
The journey began without a map.
Just a single dream.
Devika had seen a cave carved into a hill of red stone, half-buried beneath the roots of a peepal tree. The tree was bleeding. Not sap. Not water. Vermilion.
Each branch twisted in the shape of a woman's open mouth.
In the dream, she had heard a voice whisper:
"Go where the trees weep.Where the verse turned to ash.Where the Devi was buried beneath her own flame."
By nightfall, she and Ahalya's daughter had crossed the river and entered Vindhyachal — a land of wild hills and older gods. No temples here. No priests. Only memory in stone.
They stayed in a shepherd's hut — its walls black with smoke, its silence thick with watchfulness.
In the dark, Ahalya's daughter lay beside Devika, whispering:
"They found her once, during Akbar's time.A scroll made of bone.Seven verses etched into each rib."
Devika said nothing.
She had seen that scroll.
In her ribs.
Every syllable. Every wound.
At dawn, they walked barefoot through thick sal forest.
Birdsong gave way to silence. Even the wind grew reverent.
The deeper they went, the more time twisted. The sun no longer moved. Their shadows stretched oddly. The leaves grew dull. It was as if they walked through remembrance, not terrain.
Then they found it.
Half-hidden under a mound of black soil.
A peepal tree, its trunk split.
Red drops stained the earth.
Not sap.
Not paint.
But the unmistakable scent of Sindoor.
And beneath it, a hollow.
They knelt and began clearing the soil.
Their fingers found fragments first — bits of burnt sandalwood, cracked bangles, a bronze anklet.
Then a stone slab.
Unmarked.
Except for one symbol at the center — a yoni flanked by seven curling flames.
They placed their hands together on it.
The slab warmed.
Their spines stiffened.
The earth gave way.
They descended.
The air inside was thick.
Not with dust — with waiting.
The chamber was circular, carved with ancient hands. No script on the walls. Only gestures — women in arching posture, arms above head, backs bent, mouths open, thighs parted.
And at the center — a raised platform.
Upon it, a skeleton.
No. Not just bone.
Fused glyphs — bones that had grown into language.
Each rib bore a syllable.
Six Devika knew.
The seventh?
It was not there.
It was missing.
Ahalya's daughter stepped forward.
Touched the pelvis of the remains.
And gasped.
"She was taken before the last verse was carved."
"Or she never received it," Devika said.
"No," she whispered. "She concealed it."
Devika touched her own belly.
Felt the faint flicker of a new glyph stirring beneath the skin.
Not pain.
Not pleasure.
Promise.
Suddenly, the air shifted.
A sound — faint, like humming behind stone.
Then a woman's voice.
Not either of theirs.
A voice that came from inside the bones.
It whispered:
"My verse was not meant to be read.It was meant to be birthed."
Ahalya's daughter fell to her knees.
Devika trembled.
The center of the chamber cracked.
Not broken by force.
Opened by recognition.
From the opening rose not fire, not light.
But a scent.
Heavy.
Intoxicating.
Mitti after first blood.
The smell of initiation.
And then — a scroll.
Thin.
Rolled.
Made not of palm or skin.
But hair.
Black. Coiled. Soft.
Bound with a single thread.
Devika took it.
Unrolled it with trembling fingers.
There was only one line.
Etched not in script, but in the pattern of a woman's breathing:
"Yoni hi Granthaḥ.Sparśa hi Sūktaṁ.Nāma na mama.Smṛti eva satyam."
"The womb is the scripture.Touch is the hymn.I have no name.Memory alone is truth."
Devika wept.
Not from sorrow.
From recognition.
She turned to Ahalya's daughter.
"We have it now."
"No," the woman said, eyes wide. "It has us."
That night, as they sat beside a sacred fire kindled with no wood — only ghee, ash, and breath — they chanted the verse.
Not in rhythm.
Not in meter.
In moan.
The seventh syllable rose.
Not as a word.
As a shiver between thighs.
And somewhere, far in the east, a temple roof cracked open and a priest found blood on his tongue.