It was a quiet night—the kind that felt deceptively gentle, like the world holding its breath.
Noorie sat alone by the window, humming a half-remembered lullaby, one her mother used to sing in a life she barely knew. The house was dim, wrapped in pine-scented silence. Arunav had stepped out earlier for what he called "a late call," his voice calm, his smile reassuring. She hadn't questioned it. She never did anymore.
Love had taught her trust.
As she rose to pour herself some water, a sound reached her ears—faint, unnatural. Whispers. Low. Measured. Not carried by the wind, but pressed into it.
Her heart tightened.
She moved toward the hallway window, peering past the curtains. Beyond the garden fence, near the forest trail that curved behind their cottage, shadows shifted. The moonlight barely touched the clearing, but she could make out two figures.
One of them was Arunav.
Barefoot, breath shallow, Noorie stepped outside. Dew soaked her feet as she followed the sound, each step heavier than the last, as if the earth itself were warning her to turn back. She stopped near the old pine tree—the same one where Arunav once kissed her forehead and promised safety.
He stood there now, facing a man cloaked in darkness. The stranger's face was swallowed by shadow, his presence wrong, heavy, like night condensed into human shape.
Their voices were hushed.
Then Arunav spoke.
"I'm sorry to delay," he said.
Noorie's blood turned cold.
"Please give me more time. I will kill her soon. I just need a little longer."
The sentence did not echo.
It detonated.
Her world cracked open without sound.
She didn't scream. Her body forgot how. Breath abandoned her lungs, her knees buckled, and every memory she had clung to shattered at once. The rain-drenched dances. The breakfasts. The way he tucked her hair behind her ear when she sang. The way she had slept without fear in his arms.
Was it all choreography?
Was love just a weapon dressed as warmth?
Her vision blurred as tears spilled unchecked. She turned and ran—through trees, over stones, down the narrow road—heart slamming against her ribs like it was trying to escape her body. One thought screamed louder than the rest:
How could something that felt this real be nothing but a lie?
But fate does not let you flee when the truth has already chosen you.
She stopped, gasping—only to find Arunav standing before her.
Waiting.
As if he had always known exactly where her terror would carry her.
"Noorie," he whispered.
The name burned.
"Don't call me that!" she cried, stumbling back. "Tell me the truth! Was I just a mission? A name on a list? Was everything—everything—a lie?"
She struck his chest, once, twice, her fists useless against the man she had loved. "How could you hold me like I was your whole world and still plan to end me?"
He caught her wrists.
He didn't flinch.
His eyes were wrong—too still, too deep.
Then his form began to change.
His skin paled, draining of warmth. His pupils bled into black, swallowing the blue she once trusted. The air around him vibrated, thick with something ancient. Not human. Never human.
"I'm not what you think," he said quietly. "I never was."
The truth unfolded like a curse.
"I am bound to Yam—the god of death. I was sent to collect your soul."
Her body collapsed beneath her.
"You were meant to die on that train," he continued. "The day of the robbery. Your time had ended. I came for you… and failed."
Her voice barely survived her throat. "Why?"
"I don't know," he said, and for the first time, his voice broke. "Maybe it was the way you knelt beside a dying bird. Maybe it was your silence. Maybe your soul reminded me of something I lost before I was made what I am."
He swallowed. "I stopped time that day. I changed fate."
Every accident. Every narrow escape. Every moment he had arrived just in time.
"I protected you from death," he whispered. "Because I loved you."
Her hands shook violently.
"You said only death could separate us," he continued. "You didn't know you were loving death itself."
She screamed. "Then fight again! Save me again! Let's run—please!"
Arunav closed his eyes.
"I can't."
He revealed the glowing wires in his hands. "Every moment I delay, another soul suffers. My defiance has consequences. If I don't end this… you will suffer far worse beyond this life."
She crawled back, sobbing. "Don't turn our love into a weapon."
His hands trembled.
"I never wanted to be your end."
The wires touched her sides.
Pain never came.
Her body seized, frozen, breath trapped. He knelt before her, tears falling onto her unmoving face. He kissed her forehead—cold now—and whispered, "Forgive me."
Then the blade pierced her heart.
Then the world vanished beneath her feet.
Time slowed.
As Noorie fell, the wind tore past her, but she did not scream. Fear had no space left inside her. Her life unfurled gently—frame by frame.
A well.A convent.Sunflowers.Pigeons.Sister Catherine's prayers.Anunay's kindness.Amira's courage.Her mother's arms.Jiya's laughter.And Arunav—always Arunav—looking at her like she was the answer to existence.
She fell with a tear on her cheek.
And a smile.
Her soul rose.
Behind her, Arunav collapsed to his knees.
He screamed—not as death, not as god—but as a man who had lost the only thing that made him human.
"I loved her!" he roared. "She was my heaven!"
The valley swallowed his grief.
The god of death did not answer.
And then judgment came.
For defying fate.
For loving what he was meant to end.
Arunav was cursed.
Stripped of immortality.
Bound to flesh.
Condemned to live as a human.
To age.To ache.To remember.
To carry the pain he had written into destiny—alone.
And somewhere beyond the veil, Noorie's soul hesitated…as if love, even in death, was not finished speaking.