The name left her lips like a forbidden prayer.
"Kalbindu…"
The syllables didn't slip out. They emerged. As if they'd been waiting behind her teeth for years, wrapped in dust and breath and something older than language. The word didn't just echo — it arrived. Like a prophecy that had finally found a voice.
And the mirror heard it.
A low crkkk shattered the stillness, hairline and delicate — but not delicate at all. A single fracture split the center of the mirror like a lightning bolt, slicing down its heart. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just the first betrayal of silence.
The air thickened. The haveli seemed to exhale — not wind, but memory. The kind you don't remember until it owns you. Something in the walls twitched, like old paint remembering who it used to be. The chandelier above them rattled faintly, though no breeze stirred.
Then—
A pull. Sudden. Brutal.
Not on her skin, but inside her skull. Like someone had hooked a hand into her mind and yanked.
The world around her blurred — not just in sight, but in meaning.
Her body stayed.
But her soul was dragged backward.
Flash.
Rope, tight and biting. Wrists red. Raw. Bleeding. Skin torn where the knot had refused mercy.
Her hands? No — not quite.
Another girl. Another version of her. Or the one before her. A memory wearing her face, but weathered by other lifetimes.
Flash.
Fire.
Coiling upwards. Devouring carved pillars and gold-threaded tapestries. Flames curled around temple arches like they were familiar. Hungry. Home.
The gods inside screamed — not in speech, but in silence. Statues crumbled. Eyes cracked.
No one prayed for them.
The fire didn't come to punish.
It came to remember.
Flash.
Smoke, thick and sour.
Molten flowers — petals dripping liquid gold, hissing when it hit the stone floor. A scent like blood and copper, corpse-wet. It crawled into her lungs and refused to leave.
Somewhere in the chaos: a voice.
Not loud, not screaming — just low and inevitable, like stone grinding against stone.
"The heart you burned will name its own justice."
Then: silence.
But not the peaceful kind.
The kind that presses against your eardrums like water. The kind that follows a choice you can't undo.
Her eyes snapped open.
But the world hadn't returned.
Not exactly.
She was in the room. Still in the haveli. Still standing before the mirror.
But the mirror — the mirror was no longer just a reflection.
It was a witness.
It didn't reflect her. It remembered her.
And not just her.
Within the web of cracks, a thousand versions of her peered back — veiled, bloodied, silent, burned, crowned, praying, cursing.
Eyes like hers.
Eyes older than hers.
Each crack glowed faintly — not with light, but with recognition.
And in the center of it all, the main fracture pulsed — faint but rhythmic.
A heartbeat.
Not hers.
The mirror's.
She whispered, "What are you?"
And the mirror whispered back, without moving:
"What are you becoming?"
"Rasmika."
A voice behind her.
Real. Solid.
Raahi.
His hand gripped her wrist. Hard.
Grounding. Cold.
She didn't remember him entering the room. But he was there now, eyes dark as ink, mouth tight.
"Do not say that name again," he said.
The mirror dripped.
The cracks, now wide as veins, oozed a thick black liquid — not glass, not ink, not blood.
Something in between.
Something ancient.
Ryan burst in next.
The door slammed into the wall behind him.
"What the hell was that?!" he barked.
But Raahi didn't look at him. Didn't release Rasmika.
His voice dropped into something quieter.
Not fear.
Ritual.
"The beginning," he said, "of the end."
She could still feel the echo of Kalbindu on her tongue.
It hadn't left her mouth — it had nested there.
She turned back to the mirror. Her breath fogged. The temperature had dropped; she could see her fingertips trembling, though she didn't feel cold.
And then—
Through the web of fractures, something shifted.
Alira.
She emerged from the vision like a figure painted in fire. Regal. Bleeding. Eyes like forged metal — heat-hardened, sharp enough to slice through centuries. Her hair trailed smoke. Her feet were bare, scorched. Her mouth was a silent snarl.
And behind her — a soldier in blackened armor. Not faceless. Aryan.
His gaze was broken open, like grief had unstitched him from the inside.
He reached for Alira.
But she didn't move.
She looked past him.
Right at Rasmika.
And for one breath — one cursed, holy moment — the mirror flickered.
Alira's face was gone.
Rasmika's own face replaced it.
Same blood. Same scars.
Same fire.
The crack spread wider. A web now. Spanning the entire mirror.
The past wasn't dead.
It was bleeding into her.
She stepped back. The floor creaked beneath her.
Ryan looked between them. "What is Kalbindu?"
Raahi's jaw clenched. "It's not a what. It's a when."
A pause. Heavy. Alive.
"It's the keyhole that fits no door in this world," Raahi said. "A name that doesn't ask to be understood. Only remembered. Or feared."
The air smelled of burnt jasmine and wet iron.
The walls of the haveli had gone silent — not empty, but listening.
Rasmika turned away from the mirror.
But the mirror did not stop watching.
It never would again.
Kalbindu is not a name.
It is a weight that sinks through lifetimes.
It is a prayer made of ash.
A curse written in bone.
It does not translate. It does not beg.
It demands.
And now that it has been spoken, the things that sleep beneath memory have begun to wake.
Some stir in rage.
Some in grief.
None in peace.
The crack pulsed.
The mirror waited.
And something deep inside Rasmika — something older than her own voice — whispered back.
Let it come.