3:33 A.M. The hour the sky forgets how to breathe.
Not quite night. Not yet morning. The moment time itself pauses— not in peace, but like a held breath that forgot how to exhale.
In the dead heart of Bhangarh, where stone and silence hold hands like old ghosts, even the air had stilled. No wind. No whispers. No creatures daring to move. Only a silence thick as syrup, pooling around the ruins like spilled prophecy.
And then—
A flicker. A spasm in the fabric of space. A stammer of light and memory.
Like an old television coughing through static, Raahi arrived.
Not landed. Not stepped. Not summoned. He arrived in the way thunder does— before the lightning knows it has happened.
His body didn't so much form as buffer. Skin stuttered between sinew and static. Edges twitching, limbs rendering out of sync, a collage of sparks, bone, and broken code.
Light bled from his seams like torn fabric stitched with electricity. His presence short-circuited reality.
"Time fracture registered." "Subject: Alira… A-li-ra..."
His voice didn't sound spoken. It was a mixtape of languages, syllables glitched in triplicate— past / present / potential.
He reached for his chest, then paused. His hand passed through it. Like his ribs belonged to a different century.
He didn't fall—he wavered. Dropped to his knees, not in pain, but from sheer disorientation. The desert was rejecting him. Reality flexed around his form like an immune system rejecting a virus.
The dust beneath him pulsed—geometric, alive. Swirls in sacred patterns, like the land remembered him. Or maybe not him. Maybe her. Maybe the idea of them.
Around him, the ruins breathed. Not metaphorically. Breathed. Exhaled memory. Inhaled possibility.
Time was not a straight hallway here. It was a maze of mirrors. And tonight, one finally cracked.
Raahi smiled. Barely. A fissure of expression on pixelated skin. "Right on time."
Above, a streetlamp burst into a blinkless stare. Moths scattered like failed theories, and something in the shadows shivered— not in fear, but recognition.
The desert was not silent anymore. It listened.
Deep within the haveli, a mirror pulsed. Not reflecting. Remembering. Watching. Wanting.
He stood slowly, glitching as he rose. One foot solid, the other flickering like unfinished thought. His coat whipped in a wind that hadn't arrived yet. His eyes glowed violet— not a color known to nature, but to memory.
"WARNING: Temporal displacement critical. Seek anchor point."
The machine's voice echoed between his ears and the sky. But Raahi wasn't listening. His gaze was locked.
The mirror. Her. Alira.
The three were indistinguishable in his mind.
He had been built to monitor. A watcher. A threadkeeper. Neutral. Emotionless. Outside of time, but responsible for it.
But this place— this moment—
It unraveled something in him.
Emotion. Memory. Longing.
Each heartbeat he wasn't supposed to have pulsed with her name.
"Alira."
Barely a whisper. A prayer not meant to be heard.
But the ruins heard. The stones leaned inward. The dust spiraled higher. The mirror rippled.
The world stuttered. Again.
And this time— it wasn't just Raahi.
Another presence. Faint. Inverted.
A shimmer behind the glass. A breath where there should be none. A shape half-formed in the reflection— not a woman, not yet, but a shadow waiting to become one.
The mirror had held her longer than time had names. Preserved her in flicker and echo. Not dead. Not alive. Just... paused.
A voice—hers?—ghosted through the static.
"Anchor point accepted. Sync initiated."
Raahi staggered. His body spasmed, half-transparent. The ground trembled beneath his feet, as if bracing for reunion.
He remembered. Not the mission. Not the timeline. Her.
Her laugh. Her logic. Her theories about reality folding in on itself like origami. She believed time wasn't a line or a loop— but a breathing thing. With organs. With scars.
She had kissed him once and said: "You were made to watch. I was made to break. We meet at the fracture. Always."
Now here they were. Meeting at the break again.
But this time, she wasn't flesh. She was mirror and myth. She was the code inside the cracks.
And Raahi—
He was the glitch that refused to be deleted.
The sky above split open. Not with light. But with sound.
A thousand radios trying to tune into the same sorrow. Static screamed. Dust lifted. Stars blurred.
And Raahi—
Raahi stood still. Not strong. Just... resolved.
His existence hurt. Every second here tore at him. But he stayed. Because she was here. Because time was watching. Because memory had finally called his name back.
The mirror shimmered once more. Her form sharpened in its depth. Not fully there, not yet— but coming closer with every breath he chose to take.
"Stability at 47%. Emotional override increasing."
His systems groaned under the weight of feeling. Longing was never coded in. But now it was everything.
The haveli walls creaked. Not from age— but from reawakening.
Stones glowed with ancient circuitry. Vines moved like circuits tracing back time. The air smelled of ozone and forgotten jasmine. The past reached forward like a hand through water.
Raahi reached out to the mirror. Fingers trembling. Not sure if they'd pass through— or finally touch.
"Alira," he breathed.
And this time, the mirror answered.
Outside the ruins, the world remained still. Unaware. Unchanged.
But inside Bhangarh, a timeline rebooted itself in secret. Not with explosions. Not with war.
But with a fracture. With a whisper. With a love story trying to finish its last line.
And in the pulse between heartbeats, in the static between words,
Raahi remembered who he was.
Not a machine.
Not a monitor.
Not a mistake.
But the echo of a promise.
A man designed to observe eternity— who chose, instead, to fight for a single, forgotten moment.
A glitch, yes. But a sacred one.
A ghost made real by love.
A timeline rewritten by longing.