There are moments when the air splits like silk.
Not with sound—
but with memory.
When two souls don't meet for the first time,
but for the last of many.
The corridor outside the sealed chamber breathed like a lung—
stone expanding and contracting in slow, seismic sighs.
Mirrors lined the walls like dormant eyes,
veiled in centuries of dust,
as if the haveli itself had chosen to forget what it once witnessed.
Until now.
Dust floated in the air like ash caught mid-spell.
Rasmika had come seeking solitude.
A moment away from the electromagnetic hum of half-burnt journal notes,
the buzz of her cursed palm,
and the uneasy tempo her heartbeat took on near the mirror room.
But solitude wasn't what she found.
She turned the corner sharply.
So did he.
They don't see each other—
not at first.
Raahi rounds the bend like a windstorm,
chased by a dream he didn't ask to inherit,
eyes wide with something between hunger and horror.
Rasmika walks like silence given form.
Shoulders squared,
steps sharp,
every movement a negotiation between grace and grief.
Then—
The collision.
Not dramatic.
No spilled papers, no apologies, no comic stumble.
Just a brushing of shoulders.
Just skin on skin.
But something ancient quakes.
A blink lasts too long.
A breath misfires.
Time hiccups.
Reality splits open like a seed.
RAAHI.
He feels it first in his teeth—like a ringing.
Then his spine locks.
Heart halts.
A cold rush climbs his neck like he's just stepped into sacred water too deep to stand in.
His eyes rake across her face—not like he's seeing it for the first time,
but like he's decoding scripture he once bled to protect.
Not déjà vu.
Worse.
Remembering too much.
A face haloed in firelight.
A whisper in a collapsing temple: "Don't go."
A kiss stolen during a siege.
A name carved into prayer beads.
A scream swallowed by a stone wall.
A girl in gold bangles and trembling hands.
Then—
It's gone.
Erased like chalk under monsoon.
He exhales—
but the air leaves crooked, as if memory still clings to his breath.
RASMIKA.
She doesn't flinch.
Doesn't breathe.
But pain slices through her, sudden and surgical.
Like someone pressed on a bruise she never showed anyone—
a bruise behind bone, memory-deep.
Her ribs tighten.
Her palm ignites.
The mark—a red crescent, etched since the fire—burns like it's remembering before she does.
Her vision fractures.
A fragment of a cry: "You chose her over me."
A red silk scarf flying from a cliff.
A fall.
A wound that never learned to close.
The cold of betrayal in a lifetime where they were not lovers,
but enemies who had loved once.
Gone.
Just like that.
She steels herself.
Repeats the lie she wears like perfume:
You don't believe in fate.
THE AIR BETWEEN THEM.
Not awkward.
Not silent.
Charged.
Like something just woke up.
Like the walls of the haveli blinked and remembered.
The mirrors hum, so low it's almost a growl.
For a moment, neither speaks.
Because language is too small.
Because syllables would collapse under the weight of what just passed between them.
Instead—
"Watch where you're going," she says, voice brittle.
"You alright?" he asks, but he's not talking to the girl in front of him.
He's speaking to the version of her who once stitched his wounds with anklet wire,
who spat blood into his mouth so he'd survive.
She blinks.
He swallows.
And they walk away—
—but the echo stays.
Not love.
Not yet.
Not even hate.
Just that pulseless space where something unfinished once lived.
TIME BREAKS AGAIN.
Just beyond the mirror room, reality fractures.
They cross paths again.
Shoulder to chest.
Only this time,
the world doesn't freeze like a metaphor—
it literally locks.
The haveli groans.
The air goes still.
Raahi's form glitches—his limbs juddering like corrupted code,
edges of his face pixelated, flickering in and out like a bad memory.
A pulse—not electric, not neon—
ritual blue.
The blue of lapis used in sacred ink.
The blue of a forgotten god's last heartbeat.
It surges through his irises.
And Rasmika—
she can't move.
The mark on her palm ignites like it's touched flame from the inside.
Veins blaze with memory.
Pain wraps her in tightening ropes of fire.
Her knees buckle.
Her eyes blur.
And then—
A flash.
A memory that isn't hers:
A temple burning.
A woman screaming in three languages.
A man shackled in silver, mouthing forgive me.
A kiss exchanged before death.
Ash falling like feathers.
The name— "Alira…"
She gasps, stumbling back, clutching her hand as if stabbed.
She meets Raahi's eyes—
wide, lost, mirroring her own confusion.
"Who the hell are you?" she chokes out.
But he—
He doesn't answer.
He can't.
Because his mind is fracturing.
Data unraveling like threads from a forgotten tapestry.
"Recognition match: 87%..."
"No. This can't be. You're not supposed to remember— not yet."
His voice—
not quite his.
Laced with static.
Like a recording playing through centuries.
Then—
the glitch passes.
His body stills.
Time stutters once.
Then resumes.
Reality presses play,
as if nothing happened.
But both of them knows —
Everything has.
They stare at each other,
like strangers holding jagged pieces of the same dream.
Both trembling with knowledge they don't fully understand,
but deeply feel.
The haveli watches.
The corridor inhales.
A ripple of recognition moves through the stones,
as if it's seen this before.
As if it's been waiting.
They have met in fire.
In flood.
In war.
In song.
In silence.
Over and over again, under different skies, different skins, different names.
But this time—
this lifetime—
something's changed.
And for the first time since Raahi entered this broken timeline,
with a heart too full of static and dreams he didn't dream—
He feels seen.