YAHVI RAO

The first scream did not come from outside. It came from within me. Silent, soundless, and searing. I had been standing in the hallway outside the east wing, staring at the mural of lotus flowers Darsh’s mother commissioned before she died—a painting so violently out of place in a house brimming with unspoken horrors. The colours mocked me. Those petals had never touched filth, never touched blood. Mine had. And this house, this suffocating fortress of marble and secrets, knew it.