DARSH SINGH RATHORE

It began with the sound of dripping wax—soft, persistent, like the pulse of an old house remembering its sins. I had tried not to return to the eastern wing, but some doors, once opened, never truly shut. And the silence Yahvi left behind that night? It crawled into my lungs and stayed there, thick as smoke.

I entered the room just after midnight. No lamps. Just the moonlight slanting in through cracked windowpanes, painting shadows like bruises on the floorboards. The air smelled of time—damp paper, sandalwood, and the faintest hint of burnt metal. The portrait of the woman—her eyes still haunted, still knowing—watched me as I crossed the threshold. Her gaze didn’t accuse. It warned.

The wax seals on the lower drawers hadn’t been broken in thirty years. I knew this because I had watched my father reseal them after the fire. No one had spoken of what was lost then. Just a name: Zoya Rathore.

Z.R.

Yahvi had found the letter. Of course she had. She was born with blood that knew how to hunt.

I crouched beside the drawer and lit a match. Let the flame kiss the wax until it softened, surrendered. When it peeled away, it left behind a jagged red scar—fitting. Inside, I found a journal. Leather-bound, the edges eaten by time. A dried peacock feather tucked between the pages. I opened it, expecting nonsense. Instead, I found memory.

"To remember is to bleed all over again, but cleaner. I write not to forgive myself, but to preserve the map of how it was all undone."

Zoya’s words were not elegant. They were raw. Confessional. Like each sentence was a sin she’d scraped into the page with a knife. She had been the heir. Brilliant. Ruthless. Loved once by a man from the Rao bloodline. That was the first fracture. A forbidden union. Then the pregnancy. Then the silence.

It was all here.

The first Rao-Rathore child never made it past infancy. And neither did Zoya’s sanity. Betrayed by both families, her story was redacted from our records. Turned into myth. Buried under wax and ceremony.

But the worst entry?

"The child was not stillborn. I saw her breathe. My father gave the order. She was handed away before I could hold her. They claimed she died to preserve the ‘balance.’ But I hear her crying still. Somewhere in the walls. Somewhere, she is growing teeth.”

I dropped the journal.

It felt like the room had tilted. Like time hiccuped.

Yahvi had never known her mother. Her birth records were a mess of hospital fires and name changes.

It couldn’t be.

But what if—

The door creaked.

I turned, expecting a ghost. And found her.

Yahvi.

She stood at the threshold like a curse made flesh.

“I heard the seal break,” she said.

My throat was dry. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Neither should you.”

She walked in, took one look at the journal on the floor, and picked it up. Her fingers trembled. Not from fear. From knowing. Knowing before seeing.

“I dreamed this handwriting,” she whispered. “When I was a child. I thought it was nothing.”

“No,” I said. “It was everything.”

The air between us broke. We stood in the ruin of two legacies. Both of us heirs to a fire no one warned us about. And Yahvi—Yahvi might be more than just a woman wronged. She might be the scream Zoya left behind.

Outside, thunder cracked.

And inside me, something ancient stirred.