There's no ceremony to madness.
No red carpet to its door.
Just the quiet beat of your own heart—
becoming louder than the wind.
And still, it called her.
Rasmika did not mean to leave the house that night.
But meaning has nothing to do with what pulls you.
It was 2:13 a.m.
A number that felt like a key. Not symbolic—mechanical. Like something in the universe clicked into place and turned.
She stepped out barefoot.
School hoodie, torn sleeve. Nothing in her pockets but a folded note she hadn't read in days and her grandmother's ring, a soft curve of gold that pulsed now and then like it remembered something.
She walked like she'd been here before.
Her feet knew the way long before her mind caught up.
The desert night curled around her—not cold, not warm. Just... awake.
Like it was holding its breath, waiting for the next line in a story only she could finish.
The sand sighed underfoot. Somewhere in the far-off dunes, a jackal cried out, low and ragged, like it was mourning something ancient and unnamed.
She passed the sleeping camp like a shadow threading silence. Her presence didn't stir a thing. The world wasn't asleep. It was watching.
The haveli waited on the horizon, leaning into the dark like a memory that refused to collapse.
It was rotting, yes.
Its walls flaking like scabs. Its breath sour with time.
But it did not resist her.
She unlatches the rusted gate—
A squeal like a wounded thing,
A hinge screaming in tongues only the dead understood.
Under the arch, a flickering light stuttered once.
She walked through. The wind didn't follow.
It opened to her.
It had always opened to her.
She entered the mirror room.
Again.
The floor groaned under her, remembering her weight. The air here was thick, viscous, as if time had pooled into syrup and memory had begun to rot.
This time, the mirror didn't show her reflection.
It showed her.
Not Rasmika.
But a woman with brown skin, luminous and bruised with exhaustion that felt royal—like someone who had ruled centuries, burned kingdoms, and dragged their ashes through her own hair.
She wore a gold nose ring, a chain looping into the shadows of her veil.
Her hair coiled like a cobra preparing a sermon.
Her eyes—
Not glass. Not metaphor.
Witness.
She bled from the mouth, slow and stylish. Like bleeding was something she had learned to do beautifully.
She smiled.
Then she whispered—"Kālī."
Rasmika did not scream.
She couldn't.
Her throat closed—not in fear, but in recognition.
This was no ghost story.
This was no horror.
This was invocation.
Ancestral. Atomic. Realer than mirrors.
Her knees bent, but she didn't fall.
Her body remembered how to hold grief that had waited five lifetimes to be picked up again.
Something older than language opened behind her ribs.
She stepped toward the glass.
Not to touch it—
To open it.
Because it wasn't a reflection anymore.
It was a doorway.
A memory she hadn't lived.
A woman she hadn't been.
Or had she?
A thousand footsteps stampeded behind her eyes.
Not her footsteps. Not this life.
The woman in the mirror, this bleeding queen, chanted the name again—
Kālī.
Kālī.
Kālī.
Not a name. A weapon. A prayer. A birthright being recalled.
And then—Rasmika understood.
Not in words.
In knowing.
This woman wasn't haunting her.
She was handing her something.
Not a curse.
Not a weapon.
Not even a warning.
A name.
The mirror pulsed.
Rasmika's scar split open.
Not bleeding.
Breathing.
The woman raised her hand and pressed her bloody palm against the mirror.
"Mera khoon tumhare haath mein hai."
(My blood is in your hands.)
The mirror rippled. Not like glass. Like memory.
Behind her, shadows bloomed.
A throne room, overrun by ivy and ghosts.
A battlefield, the earth drunk with war.
A temple, burning from the inside out, its idols screaming gold.
The mirror didn't just reflect.
It testified.
Glyphs spiraled around the woman's silhouette—mandala patterns flickering in and out, unstable, like they were still choosing their shape. Symbols Rasmika had never seen, yet which made her spine flinch like they'd once been carved into her back.
She could smell something:
Sandalwood. Char. Old blood.
Ritual.
She stepped forward.
The mirror welcomed her like a long-lost twin.
Something in her cracked.
Not shattered. Not broke.
Cracked open. Like a seed. Or a spell.
Her breath came out in syllables she didn't recognize. Her hands twitched, fingers remembering mudras they'd never learned.
The room changed tone—not its temperature, its frequency.
Like a hum beneath sound.
"She's not coming to hurt me,"
she remembered.
"She's coming to remind me
who I was
before they taught me to fear mirrors."
She blinked, and the glyphs disappeared.
The battlefield vanished.
The woman remained.
Bleeding. Smiling.
Knowing.
When Rasmika left the haveli, she wasn't the same.
There was dried blood on her palms.
Her eyes were glassier now.
Not scared.
Just… older.
Inside her pocket, the note was still there.
She unfolded it under the starlight. The paper crackled like old skin.
She's not coming to hurt me.
She's coming to remind me who I was
before they taught me to fear mirrors.
The words vibrated now.
As if they had always been instructions, not poetry.
Behind her, the haveli didn't sleep.
Even when the desert quieted and the stars blinked out like dying embers, something in those walls continued to breathe.
Slow. Rotten. Patient.
Like time decomposing in a locked room.
She didn't tell anyone what happened.
She didn't need to.
The scar had healed into a shape it wasn't before. Not a wound. A mark.
Something sacred had rewritten her.
When she closed her eyes that night, she dreamed of a palace of mirrors.
A blade soaked in moonlight.
A woman laughing while the world burned behind her.
Not cruel.
Free.
Some stories don't come to you in a straight line.
They arrive like storms,
Or memories,
Or ghosts that speak in your own voice.
And when they find you—
They don't ask for belief.
They ask if you're ready
to remember.