The house had grown quiet again, the kind of quiet that felt aware.
Aarya moved through the old rooms slowly, her fingers brushing the surfaces — wooden dressers, carved door frames, a rusted key hanging from a nail. Everything smelled faintly of sandalwood and time.
She found herself drawn to her grandmother's bedroom.
The air was colder here.
As if the room had been waiting for her.
The cupboard creaked open with a soft groan. Inside, folded neatly in stacks, were the same faded cotton sarees her grandmother used to wear. Soft pastels. Floral prints. Gentle, like the woman who had worn them.
Except for the diary.
Aarya paused.
It was wrapped in red cloth and tied with black thread — the kind of knot old women used for protection.
Her throat tightened. She set it aside, not ready to open it yet.
Instead, she lifted the heavy wooden trunk at the bottom of the cupboard.
Inside were:
Yellowed letters
Old temple receipts
And a photo album, wrapped in muslin
Aarya carried the album to the light and opened it slowly.
Black-and-white photographs filled the pages — Villagers smiling shyly, a river, a market, her grandmother as a young woman with hair like dark silk.
Aarya smiled softly.
Then she turned one more page — and froze.
There, in a photograph dated 1917, stood a couple on their wedding day.
The bride in a flowing white ghagra, veil covering her face.
And the groom beside her —
Ayan.
The same profile.
The same eyes.
The same faint, sorrowful smile.
Aarya's heart slammed against her ribs.
No.
It wasn't possible.
The paper trembled in her hands. She touched the photograph — and the ink beneath her fingertips felt warm. As if someone had just held it before her.
Suddenly—
THUD.
The bedroom door slammed shut by itself.
Aarya flinched, the photo album falling from her lap. The window jerked open, curtains whipping violently although the air was still.
A breath — soft as a sigh — brushed her ear.
"He never made it to the altar."
Aarya's body went cold.
The whisper was not her imagination.
Not wind.
Not memory.
A voice.
Her breath shook.
"Who's there?" she whispered.
Silence.
But the mirror across the room fogged, slowly — as though someone was breathing on the glass from the inside.
Words wrote themselves across the surface:
HE IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK.
Aarya's knees weakened.
She stumbled back — and knocked something off the dresser.
A fallen object.
A chain.
She picked it up — her fingers trembling.
A locket.
Inside, a single pressed willow leaf.
Perfectly preserved.
Aarya did not remember going downstairs.
She only remembered the way her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
She didn't know whether she was terrified…
…or finally awake to the truth that had always been waiting for her.