As soon as Shivam felled every soldier before him, a vast shadow rose in the mouth of the cave — a presence so terrifying and menacing it stole the breath from our chests. I peered into that darkness and called out, "Abhishek, whose shadow is that? It looks enormous... dangerous."
Closer now, the shape resolved into something I had never seen before: part beast, part demon — a hideous fusion of animal and man. My skin crawled. Shivam readied himself, eyes cold and steady. "We already killed this thing once," he said. "How is it alive again? It's stronger now. We'll need both our wits and our strength."
I swallowed hard. "We must lure it out of the cave. Its powers weaken once it leaves. If we can draw it out, we can finish it."
Shivam nodded. "But how? What does it crave?"
A plan formed. Outside the cave, I had seen the two lifelike statues of the princesses — perfect counterfeit idols. If we could tempt the beast with them, it might rush out to seize them, not realizing their falsehood. Once it was distracted, we would strike, catching it in a moment of blind fury.
"We'll play with it," Shivam said, a grim smile tugging at his lips. "Make it angry, reckless. Don't be afraid to provoke it."
We set the bait and ran, heart pounding, sliding into hiding beyond the cave mouth. I urged Shivam forward. "You go first. I'll lure it behind me."
We ran until the cave mouth was behind us. As we crouched in the shadows, the heavy wooden door at the cave entrance suddenly slammed shut of its own accord, sealing us inside. We tried our powers, battered the door with all we had—but it would not budge.
There was another passage I had once carved — a narrow, treacherous route I could take to slip out. But it was hard to reach. Now we were trapped: the door locked, the half-demon at our backs, and the path ahead blocked by the very thing we feared most.
An ugly thought gnawed at me as we struggled: when I had cut off its head before, it had still come back. How do you kill something that does not stay dead? Perhaps its life-force resided in its skull. Maybe we had to destroy that center of energy — burn it, bury it — only then would it be gone for good. But to do that, we needed its head again. And first we had to escape the cave.
When the half-demon appeared before us in its full, terrifying form, we froze as if turned to stone. Yet there was no other choice: we had to fight. We ran in separate directions to split its attention, tearing down small sections of the inner wall and using our powers to create an opening. I led Shivam to the narrow exit I had prepared and urged him to go out while I kept the creature occupied.
Once Shivam had slipped through, he placed the two princess-statues on the inner side of the door like a talisman. The moment the statues touched the threshold, the door unlocked as if their presence were the password itself. The plan worked exactly as we had hoped: while the demon's gaze was consumed by those beautiful figures, I seized the chance. With a single, precise stroke I severed its head again.
"Quick!" I hissed. "Take its head and burn it with everything you've got. We can't allow it to possess another body."
Shivam acted without hesitation — he lifted the trophy skull and drew on his fierce spark, calling down a heat that seared like lightning. The head went up in an instant, blackening and curling to ash under the merciless fire. We both watched, breathless, as the last embers died. For the first time in a long while, I felt hope.
But a new dread took its place. What of the humans who had been turned into those stone figures and dragged here by the demon's minions? How could we restore them? My eyes fell on a concealed section of the cave I had never noticed before — a small chamber stocked with strange potions and jars, like a laboratory where experiments had once been carried out. It gave me the uneasy feeling of rodents on a surgeon's table.
There, on a shelf, sat a crimson-bound volume. I opened it and read by the glow of a dying torch. According to the faded script, to return a statue of stone to flesh required two things: the water of a blood-red pool hidden deep within the forest, and the root of a five-hundred-year-old banyan tree. Together, brewed in the correct manner, these two ingredients would reverse the curse.
We acted quickly. We dug up clay pots and filled them with the scarlet water described in the book, then gathered a segment of the ancient banyan's root. Back at the cave mouth, we mixed the two into a single, steaming concoction — following each instruction to the letter. When it boiled, an aroma rose from the cauldron: rich, intoxicating, a scent so full it seemed to fill the very air. For a second I thought of wearing it as perfume, a laugh on my lips that died quickly when I remembered why it existed.
We carried the potion into the cave and began to pour it over each stone figure. With every drop that soaked their stony skin, the chamber filled with that heady scent. The air seemed to hum. We watched the statues intently, waiting for the impossible to happen — for stone to give way to warm blood and breathing life.
Then we stepped back and let the magic do its work. Standing together in the cave's gloom, we breathed in the mingled scent of fire and the old banyan, listening as the world held its breath with us. When the first tiny crack formed on a statue's jaw, laughter surged in my throat — a fierce, raw hope.
We left the cave, triumphant and exhausted, the smell of the potion still clinging to our clothes. Outside, the night air felt softer somehow, as if the world itself exhaled. Behind us, the cave lay quiet at last — its shadows undone, for now.