I know the story might feel a little confusing right now, but please bear with it 😭 Thank you so much for reading — love you, mwah 💕 And don't forget to smash that vote button too!

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Silence.

Not the kind that feels gentle or comforting, but a silence so deep it pressed in from every side, thick and suffocating. Everything felt slowed, as if time itself had forgotten how to move. There was no up, no down, no left or right—just darkness stretching endlessly in every direction. No beginning. No end. No light. No hint of an exit from the void swallowing everything whole.

At first, it was absolute.

Then the quiet cracked.

Soft at the edges, almost hesitant, came the sound of murmurs. Faint at first. Distant. A lot of them—many voices layered over one another, overlapping in a low hum that definitely belonged to humans, but none of the words made sense. They were blurred, smeared together, as if she were hearing them from underwater. The more she tried to focus, the less clear they became.

And then came the pain.

Sharp. Sudden. It tore through the silence like a hammer striking concrete. On one side of her head, it felt like someone was trying to slam a nail into a wall over and over again. A pounding, relentless rhythm, like a hammer that refused to stop. Then it shifted, harsher, rougher—like the roar of a drill machine tearing into the road, screeching, grinding, splitting her skull open from the inside.

The loud noise grew.

The hammering, the drilling, the continuous assault inside her head made the whispers grow louder, too. The faint murmur of voices swelled, but instead of becoming clearer, they just became louder and more sound, more noise, more chaos. Still blurred, still tangled, still impossible to understand. It felt as if the world around her was waking up in the worst way possible.

Then the struggle began.

Breath caught somewhere between her chest and her throat. It felt like someone was choking—like invisible fingers were closing around her windpipe, blocking the air, refusing to let it pass. She didn't know if it was her or someone else, but the sensation of suffocation was there—harsh, consuming. Each attempt to inhale felt like a battle, each exhale an escape that didn't last long enough.

The effort increased.

The struggle to breathe. The pounding in her head. The growing storm of blurred voices. Everything piled on top of everything else. The darkness around her, once still and dead, started to spin. The world turned in slow, sickening circles, round and round, as if she were trapped at the center of a whirlpool with no escape.

Then, just when it felt like she might be ripped apart from the inside, something changed.

The darkness didn't disappear—but it changed shape.

This time, it wasn't still. It shook. It vibrated. The quiet void that had held her moments ago now trembled, as if the darkness itself had started to fall apart. The whispers grew louder, closer. The pounding in her head didn't stop, but it moved slightly farther away, as if it had taken a step back while still keeping its grip on her.

Then—thud.

Everything crashed to a halt.

The spinning stopped so abruptly it felt like someone had slammed on invisible brakes. The sensation of falling, twisting, drowning in darkness... vanished. The pain in her head remained, a heavy, throbbing ache, like someone still banging on a door in the background. But it was no longer the only thing she could feel.

Her body.

Suddenly, she felt it.

Weight. Limbs. Skin. A chest that rose and fell. A heaviness that didn't belong to the void, but to flesh. It was like she had been floating outside herself for a long time and was now being shoved back in, forced to occupy a frame that felt too tight, too heavy, too real.

She was inside her body.

For the first time—at least, it felt like the first time—she was aware of it. The way her arms lay—the pressure against her back. The pull of gravity dragging her down—the faint brush of fabric against her skin.

Her mind, sluggish and mechanical, began sending signals, one after another, like a system slowly rebooting.

Eyes are closed.

That was the first clear thought. The darkness was no longer endless and shapeless—it pressed against her eyelids specifically. She could feel them shut, heavy, glued in place.

Sound belongs to people.

Voices. Yes, that was what they were. Not ghosts. Not echoes. People. A lot of them. Some close. Some farther away. Their tones rose and fell, urgency bleeding into the noise. But the words...

No word... understood.

Everything they said came through as blurred noise, distorted and distant, like a radio stuck between stations. Male. Female. Calm. Panicked. She couldn't tell. She only knew they were there, all around her, moving in the spaces she still couldn't see.

It is blurred.

Her awareness of the world felt out of focus, edges soft and undefined. Like she was here, but not fully. Like part of her was still stuck in that old darkness, gripping onto it while the rest of her tried to climb out.

The head is aching.

That message pulsed through her, clearer than anything else. The pain in her skull was real, anchoring her to this body, to this moment, to this... place, wherever it was. It throbbed in time with her heartbeat, each pulse a reminder that she was not gone, not completely lost, not dead.

Not yet.

With a sharp, broken gasp, her body jerked upward.

Her lungs dragged in air like she had been drowning for hours, each breath loud and harsh in her own ears. She sat up—if it could even be called that. Her spine curled forward, her back hunched as if it couldn't remember how to hold her upright. Her neck refused to stay still, her head lolling weakly from side to side, too heavy for the fragile muscles trying to support it.

Her chest rose and fell in frantic bursts, heart racing, mind scrambling to understand.

Where am I?

Her body felt terribly weak, as if every bone had been hollowed out, every muscle drained. Even holding herself in that half-sitting position felt wrong, unnatural, like she was forcing a corpse to move. Her arms trembled with the effort, her breathing turning more ragged with each second.

Her eyes—out of instinct, out of habit—tried desperately to look around.

She blinked once. Twice.

Darkness.

Not the endless void she had felt before, not that weightless emptiness, but a thick, suffocating black that clung to her. No shapes. No light. No outlines of walls, or people, or anything that could tell her where she was. Her gaze darted from side to side, chasing something that didn't exist.

Her hands started to move.

They tapped blindly around her, palms dragging over what she quickly recognized as a mattress. Sheets. Something like a blanket. Her fingers clawed at them, then stretched further, searching for edges, for rails, for something that could ground her. She needed to know. Needed to understand.

A touch stopped her.

Fingers closed around her wrist, firm but not harsh. Another hand pressed gently to her forearm, guiding it back down. The whisper of voices grew closer, clearer—not in meaning, but in proximity. They were right next to her now, hovering around her, a circle of sound. Someone was talking to her. Maybe several someones.

She couldn't understand a single word.

The voices washed over her in muffled waves, soothing in tone but still blurred, still unintelligible. It sounded like they were trying to calm her, talk her down, and explain. Another hand wrapped around her other arm, trying to put it back on the bed, to keep her from flailing, from pulling at things, from hurting herself.

She fought them.

She tried to yank her hands away, muscles trembling with the effort. She didn't care how weak she was; panic clawed at her ribs, demanding she resist. She needed to know where she was. She needed to see who they were. The need burned through her like fire, desperate and wild.

Who were these people touching her?

Trying to hold her down?

Trying to speak to her as they knew her?

A horrible thought slammed into her chest.

Him.

Was it him?

Was he alive?

Her heart skipped, then began to race even faster, pounding so hard it hurt. She had killed him. She knew she had. She remembered the knife. The blood. The way his body had fallen on top of hers. She remembered the weight, his final breath, his last words. He couldn't be alive. He couldn't.

And yet the fear was there, sharp and real, whispering that monsters like him didn't die that easily. That maybe this was him again, back to finish what he started, to remind her she could never escape.

Her breath hitched, her hands twisting against the ones holding her.

And then it hit her.

Not from outside—from inside.

Her memories surged up, fast and merciless. The knife. The sharp, blinding pain. The sensation of her eyes being torn from their sockets. The wet heat of her own blood pouring down her face. The sanitiser burned like acid in the raw hollows where sight had once lived. The world going dark—not the figurative kind, but the literal, final, all-consuming kind.

Her eyes.

He had taken them.

He had destroyed them.

She couldn't see anything.

The truth slammed into her harder than any hit he had ever given her. All that desperate effort to look around, to search the room, to see the faces hovering near her—it was pointless. There was nothing left for her to see. The darkness wasn't the room's.

It was hers.

A surge of anger roared through her chest, so sudden and fierce it almost stole her breath. It burned through the fog of confusion, through the weakness, through the fear. Fury at him. At what he had done. Fury that even here, even now, in a place she didn't understand, she was still trapped in the aftermath of his cruelty.

The anger came first.

Then the pain.

A sharp sting pierced her right arm, sudden and intrusive. For a second, her body tensed, mind flashing with old images of knives and blades and blood. But this was different. It wasn't tearing or ripping. It was pushing. Pressing. Sliding into her skin with a controlled, measured intent.

Something cool began to seep into her veins.

The sensation traveled slowly at first, a chill trickling under her skin, then spreading outward like frost along a windowpane. It was uncomfortable—strange and foreign—and then it started to hurt in its own way, a dull ache following the cold trail as it moved through her body.

But beneath the discomfort, beneath the sting, there was something else.

Relief. Not from the pain itself, but from the purpose of it. Even in her disoriented state, some quiet part of her understood that this wasn't the cruel, burning torture he had given her. This was different. This was mechanical. Clinical. Intentional in a way that felt... safer.

It was painful. Yes.

But deep down, she knew this pain wasn't meant to break her.

It was meant to help her.

Her heartbeat, still racing, began to slow just a fraction. Her breathing, while still heavy, started to lose some of its wild edge. The darkness around her remained absolute, but it no longer felt like a void trying to swallow her whole. It felt like a place she was passing through.

Her body sagged, the fight draining out of her muscles. The hands holding her arms didn't feel restraining anymore, but steadying. Grounding. Her mind, still foggy and bruised, began to slip again—not into the violent emptiness from before, but into something softer. Heavier. Pulling her gently downward.

Sleep.

This time, as she drifted, she felt that cool energy flowing deeper inside her. It moved through her chest, her limbs, her skull, weaving through the shattered pieces of her body. It hurt—yes, it hurt—but not in the way knives hurt. It was the ache of something being repaired after being broken for far too long.

__________

Night wrapped itself around the room.

The windows were open, letting the cold night air slip inside and crawl over her skin. Even in sleep, her body shivered, reacting on instinct. Her fingers curled tighter around the blanket, clutching it close to her chest, trying to trap whatever warmth she could. For a few seconds, that was all there was—cold, quiet, and the fragile rise and fall of her breathing.

Then the air shifted.

A soft creaking sound broke through the stillness, wood protesting under a new weight, hinges moving, something opening or closing. The flow of cold air changed, blocked by a presence that stepped between her and the window. The room seemed to grow warmer, not just from the loss of the breeze, but from something else. Something closer. Something human.

A low humming sound followed.

Soft. Unhurried. A tune with no words, just a quiet vibration that threaded through the darkness and brushed against her drifting consciousness. Her mind, which had been sinking into sleep, snagged on the sound and refused to let go.

She needed to wake up.

The thought rose slowly, like it was swimming up from the bottom of deep water. Her mind sent the signal: open your eyes. Her body obeyed, lids parting, muscles twitching as they responded to the command.

But all she saw was darkness.

Again.

The same suffocating black. No outlines. No colors. No shadows. Just nothing. The panic that had been resting quietly inside her chest surged awake. Her breathing, which had been slow and steady a moment ago, started to speed up. Each inhale came sharper, faster. Her heartbeat kicked into a sprint, pounding against her ribs like it was trying to escape.

A faint beeping sound crept into her awareness, keeping time with her pulse. Slow, then faster. Too fast.

Her hand moved instinctively.

She placed her palm flat on the surface beside her, fingers splaying out, searching for an anchor. The texture beneath her touch was smooth, solid—a bedside table, a rail, something sturdy. Using it as support, she shifted, pushing down, trying to sit up. Her muscles protested immediately, sending sharp spikes of pain through her torso, her arms, her neck.

The pain was too much.

Her strength gave out, and she slipped back onto the bed, a frustrated sound escaping her throat. Her head throbbed harder, the beeping sound sounding faster now, more insistent, echoing her unrest.

She tried again.

Drawing in a shaky breath, she used both hands this time, forcing her elbows to lock, her back to engage. Her body trembled with the effort, but she didn't stop. She refused to stay down. Inch by inch, she lifted herself, fighting the heaviness, the aches, the weakness that clung to every part of her.

This time, she didn't fall.

A strong hand slid around her, steadying her.

She hadn't heard him move. Hadn't heard footsteps. Just suddenly, there was support—a firm arm at her back, another guiding her shoulder. Those hands helped her sit up properly, bearing most of her weight when her own muscles couldn't. She felt the mattress shift as he leaned in, adjusting her gently.

He fixed the pillows behind her, lifting her just enough to wedge them in place, making sure they supported her spine. Then he helped her lean back against something that felt like a wall—but softened, cushioned by padding or a headboard. She could feel the solid structure behind her, grounding her, keeping her from collapsing again.

Those hands...

The touch felt familiar.

Too familiar.

Not just the way they held her, but the warmth of them, the way they moved—confident, controlled, unhurried. The scent that drifted closer with each breath made her chest tighten. Something sharp. Something clean. Something for him. The air around her shifted with an aura she recognized on a level that went deeper than logic.

An image flashed in her mind, uninvited and unwelcome.

Him.

No. No, no, no.

Her mind started to race, scrambling between denial and dread. This can't be possible. It can't be him. He died. I killed him. I felt his blood. I felt his body fall. He can't be alive. He can't. The more she repeated it in her head, the less convincing it sounded.

Because if he were alive...

If that scent, that touch, that presence really belonged to him...

Then it meant something else, something worse.

It meant she was alive,e too.

And if she were alive, then this wasn't peace. This wasn't an escape. This wasn't the end of her suffering.

It meant hell was still waiting for her.

Her hell.

His hell.

The thought ripped through her like a knife. Fear spread through her veins, ice-cold and merciless. It seeped into her bones, coiled tight around her heart, made her fingers tremble, and her muscles lock. Her breathing sped up again, coming in uneven bursts. Her body began to shiver—not from the cold air this time, but from the sheer force of the terror crashing down over her.

She sat there, blind in the darkness, feeling the ghost of his scent in the room, the lingering weight of his hands on her, and one horrifying truth echoing in her mind:

If it was him...

Then nowhere was safe.

Her thoughts were sliced in half by a voice she didn't recognize.

Calm. Soft. Nothing like his.

"Hey, relax. So, Aarohi... how are you feeling right now?"

Aarohi.

The name tugged at something inside her, but her mind felt thick, slow, like it was wading through mud. She forced herself to focus, to pull her thoughts into some kind of order. Her lips parted, dry and unsteady, and she pushed the words out in a low, strained whisper.

"Tired...a  bit of pain in the back."

She felt, rather than saw, the slight nod in front of her.

"Hello," the man said, voice still steady and gentle. "I am Doctor Satish, your doctor. And do you know what happened to you?"

Doctor.

The word lodged itself in her head, unfamiliar and almost unreal next to everything she remembered. She swallowed, her throat protesting, and nodded faintly.

"He killed me," she said quietly. "But... how did I end up here?"

There was a brief pause, then a soft chuckle, warm and almost amused—but not in a cruel way.

"Relax, Aarohi," Doctor Satish said, his tone patient. "Now I am going to do some tests, and you need to tell me whatever is asked, okay?"

She nodded again, the motion small and hesitant. His words still sounded blurred at the edges, like they were coming from a distance or through a wall, but they were clearer than before. Softer. Safer.

A light tap landed on her knees.

"Do you feel anything?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered, a little faster this time. "You are hitting me with... something. My knees."

"Good," the doctor responded, satisfaction threading his voice.

She felt his hand move away, then sensed him closer to her neck. Fingers brushed lightly against the skin there, exploring the area with a practiced gentleness. A second later, she heard the sound of something opening—like Velcro tearing apart. The tightness around her throat, something she hadn't even fully registered through the fog, suddenly loosened. Air flowed more freely, the suffocating pressure easing.

Whatever had been strapped around her neck was gone.

His hand came up to her jaw, guiding her head slowly. First lifting it a little, then lowering it, then turning it gently from side to side.

"Does it pain?" he asked.

She focused on the movement, the pull of muscles, the strain in tendons. She rotated her head a bit more on her own, testing.

"No," she said after a moment. "It doesn't."

"Good," he replied, and she could hear genuine approval now.

There was a small pause, then his tone changed—still calm, but a little more careful.

"Now I am going to take these blinds off your eyes," he said. "And tell me how you feel, okay?"

Eyes?

Her heart stuttered.

Eyes? But... he took them out. He destroyed them. There's nothing there. How?

The confusion hit hard and fast, tangling with fear. It didn't make sense. Bandages. Blindfolds. Blinds. Those were for people who still had something to cover. He shouldn't be able to say that to her. Not after what had been done.

She felt his fingers at the sides of her head, near her temples. The light, careful touch of hands that knew exactly where to be, exactly how much pressure to use. The soft, dry drag of fabric shifting against her skin followed. He began to unwind the bandages, layer by layer.

The roll went slowly, the cloth brushing against her cheeks, her forehead. Each turn felt like it took forever, like every inch removed was peeling back another layer of fear. Her heart beat faster with every subtle pull, every slight release of pressure.

And then, suddenly, the weight around her eyes was gone.

"Now open them," Doctor Satish said gently. "And tell me what you can see."

She nodded, tiny, hesitant.

Her eyelids fluttered. Muscles she didn't remember using moved slowly and stiffly. She forced them open, pushing against the heaviness.

Light attacked her.

It wasn't even that bright, but after so much darkness, it felt like staring into the sun. White, burning, blinding. Pain shot through her head, sharp and immediate, forcing a strangled gasp from her. Instinct took over; her eyes slammed shut again, squeezing tight to block it all out.

The world disappeared back into black.

Her chest rose and fell quicker, mind racing, trying to make sense of what was happening. Eyes. Light. Pain. Darkness. Again and again, her thoughts circled the same impossible truth:

She shouldn't be able to see anything.

And yet, for one harsh, blinding second, she had.

She tried again.

This time, she forced herself to go slower. Her lashes trembled as she pried her eyes open bit by bit, blinking rapidly, trying to let the light seep in instead of slamming into her. The brightness still stung, but gradually, the burn began to dull. Shapes formed. Colors separated. The world, blurred at the edges, started to take some kind of shape.

A man came into focus in front of her.

Not him.

Someone else. An unknown face. Dark hair. Calm eyes. A white coat. He was watching her carefully, every line of his expression focused on her.

"Tell me, can you see me?" he asked.

She froze.

Her mind stopped for a full second, her breath caught halfway in her chest. How is this possible? The thought screamed through her skull. He took out my eyes. He did the worst thing he could do to them. He destroyed them. So how... how can I see anything at all?

Her pulse pounded louder, drowning out everything else. Logic and memory crashed against what her body was telling her, and none of it fit. None of it made sense.

"Aarohi," the doctor's voice cut through again, sharper this time. "Answer. Can you see me?"

She swallowed, throat dry, and forced herself to move.

She nodded.

Her whole body was shivering now, tiny tremors running through her muscles. Confusion. Fear. Disbelief. All of it tangled together as she sat there, staring at the man in front of her, knowing that what she was experiencing shouldn't be possible—and yet it was.

Her gaze drifted away from him, pulling in more of her surroundings.

The room was unfamiliar, but not threatening. Clean walls. Soft lighting. Machines with blinking lights and faint beeps. A monitor. A stand with IV fluids hanging. The bed beneath her felt too soft, too expensive. The furniture was polished, the curtains thick, the floor too flawless. It felt... expensive. Private. Almost like a luxurious hospital suite rather than a normal ward.

No. This isn't right. This can't be real. How am I—

Her thoughts were cut off again.

"Do you remember him?" Doctor Satish asked quietly.

Something in his tone made her skin crawl.

Slowly, hesitantly, she turned her head toward where he was pointing.

And froze.

He stood there.

Same cold eyes. Same sharp, unforgiving face. The same body that had once caged her, hurt her, and broken her. Only now he wasn't naked, or blood-stained, or looming over her on a bed. He stood a few steps away, dressed in a perfectly fitted three-piece suit, dark and immaculate. The fabric hugged his frame in all the right places, his posture straight, composed, powerful.

His eyes bored into her, unblinking.

Those eyes. 

Those eyes she had last seen were filled with rage and pain as she drove a knife into him. Those eyes that had watched her scream. Those eyes that had burned with the promise that she could never escape him. They were the same. Unchanged. Cold. Sharp. 

He stood there with all the authority in the world, like he owned the room.

Like he owned her.

Her blood ran cold.

He is alive.

The realization hit like a punch to the chest. Her heart stuttered, then raced, her fingers digging into the sheets. But I killed him. I stabbed him. I felt his blood on me. I heard him fall. He killed me. I died. So how—how are we both standing here? What is happening?

The room seemed to tilt, the edges of her vision bending, the reality in front of her fighting with the memory etched into her bones.

No. No. This can't be. I must be hallucinating.

That had to be it.

Her mind, still fractured and recovering, was playing tricks on her. Filling in the blanks with the worst thing it could conjure: him. Maybe this was a nightmare layered on top of waking. Maybe her brain hadn't caught up with whatever had been done to her. Maybe she was still floating somewhere between life and death, and this was just another hell her mind had built.

But no matter how many times she told herself that, no matter how many times she repeated this isn't real, this isn't real, one thing refused to disappear:

The weight of his stare.

It felt exactly the same as it always had—like a hand around her throat.

And that, more than anything, made her want to scream.

"Do you remember him?" the doctor asked again.

The words dug into her like hooks, dragging memories she didn't want to see back to the surface. Everything he had done to her hit her at once—the knife, the apple, the darkness, the fire in her skull. Her chest tightened, breath catching, and before she could even think about controlling herself, her body reacted on pure instinct.

Her hand shot out.

She snatched the folder and clipboard from the nurse standing beside her, tearing them out of the woman's grip mid-note. Papers rustled, the plastic edge cutting into her palm, but she didn't care. In the next second, she hurled them with everything she had in the direction of the man standing behind her sorrow.

The board flew across the room, slicing through the space between them.

He flinched just slightly as it struck him, the corner grazing his skin before clattering to the floor. It wasn't enough to hurt him badly. It wasn't enough to break him. But it was enough to touch him. Enough to mark him, even if only a little.

She didn't stop there.

Adrenaline surged through her veins, hot and wild, burying the weakness for a moment. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and pushed herself up. The sudden movement yanked the syringe out of the vein in her hand, the needle tearing free with a sharp sting. The IV line snapped loose, the tube whipping as the now-unanchored glucose bottle toppled from its holder and crashed to the floor with a sharp shattering sound.

Blood sprang from the small wound on her hand, flowing freely, warm and sticky.

She didn't look at it.

Her gaze had already latched onto the first object within reach—a flower vase sitting on the bedside table. Her fingers closed around the cool ceramic, knuckles white with the force of her grip. Without thinking, without hesitating, she lifted it, ready to swing, ready to smash it into his skull, to feel something break that wasn't just her.

She took a step forward.

Or tried to.

Her legs buckled beneath her almost immediately. The brief, borrowed strength she'd ridden on vanished as quickly as it had come. Pain shot through her—her back, her head, her arm, her chest. The room tilted violently, the floor rushing toward her.

She never made it to him.

Her body crashed down, hitting the floor hard. The vase slipped from her grasp, shattering beside her in a spray of shards and water and crushed petals. Her limbs sprawled uselessly, her fingers twitching, her body trembling from the impact. The weakness she had tried to outrun came crashing back over her, heavier than before.

It didn't even take a few seconds before her vision blurred at the edges, her consciousness flickering.

The darkness started to creep in again.

The nurse gasped, her chair scraping back. In an instant, she rushed to Aarohi's side, hands sliding under her shoulders, trying to lift her. Another nurse scrambled to grab her arm, fingers pressing hard around the bleeding hand to slow the flow before it spilled any more onto the white floor.

"Get pressure on that!" someone shouted. "Careful with the line! Lift her—slowly!"

Footsteps pounded around her, voices overlapping in frantic tones she could barely hold onto. All of it felt distant already, like sound coming from the end of a long tunnel. The pain in her hand, the ache in her back, the sting in her knees where they'd hit the floor—everything was fading under a spreading numbness.

Her body went limp in their arms, her muscles surrendering, her mind slipping out of reach.

Unconsciousness claimed her before she could even form another word.

During all the chaos—shouting, rushing, the clatter of equipment—the man in the three-piece suit did not move.

Sidharth Sisodia stood exactly where he had been, his posture relaxed, his expression disturbingly calm. His cold eyes followed the scene with detached interest, as if watching someone else's tragedy played out in front of him. The only mark on him was a thin, shallow line of red along the side of his neck where the corner of the folder had grazed him.

He lifted his hand and rubbed the small scratch with his thumb, smearing the thin trail of blood.

His face didn't change.

No anger. No shock. No concern.

Just a slight narrowing of his eyes, a cold calculation settling in.