Sruthi had lost track of time in that hell.
Day and night had blurred together until they meant nothing. There were no windows to tell her whether the sun had risen or set, only a dim overhead light that flickered whenever it pleased, throwing weak shadows across peeling, mould-stained walls. Sometimes it stayed off for so long that she forgot what the room looked like. When it finally came back on, she almost wished it hadn't.
Light meant seeing the rusted chains around her wrists and ankles. It meant seeing the dried blood staining the floor, some of it hers and some belonging to people she had never known. It meant seeing the room clearly enough to remember that this place was real and that waking from it was not an option.
She had learned quickly that screaming was useless. In the beginning, she had screamed until her throat burned, begging for someone—anyone—to hear her. She pulled against the had chains until the metal tore her wrists open and her shoulders felt as though they might rip from their sockets. No one came.
The only answer had been laughter from somewhere beyond the darkness.
"I like that spirit," a man had said.
His voice had been calm. Almost amused.
"Let's see how long it lasts."
That was when they began.
Pain became a language Sruthi never wanted to learn, and they taught it patiently. Some days it came through needles pushed beneath her nails until her vision blurred. Other days it came through blades drawn across her skin with deliberate precision, sharp enough to make her bleed but never deep enough to give her the mercy of dying quickly. They knew exactly how far they could go. Every wound was measured, every punishment calculated.
Once, one of them caught her chin and forced her face toward the cracked mirror they sometimes brought into the room.
"She's pretty when she bleeds."
Sruthi had stared at the woman reflected there and struggled to recognize herself. Bruises covered her skin in fading purples and fresh blues. Her lips were cracked from thirst. Her face had grown thinner, her eyes too large against hollow cheeks. Hunger twisted through her stomach constantly, but the food they gave her was never enough to satisfy it.
Only enough to keep her alive.
That was the point.
They didn't want her dead.
Not yet.
In the beginning, she fought them every chance she got. She kicked when her legs still had the strength. She cursed them. She bit. Once, trembling so badly she could barely hold her head upright, she gathered enough saliva in her dry mouth and spat directly into one man's face.
For one glorious second, she saw rage replace his amusement.
Then his gaze dropped to her left knee.
Someone brought him a hammer.
The first blow erased the room.
Pain tore through her leg so violently that she couldn't even scream at first. Her body jerked against the restraints, breath trapped somewhere between her lungs and throat, and when sound finally came, it didn't resemble her voice. Darkness rushed toward her, promising escape, but they wouldn't even allow her that.
"No, no," someone whispered near her ear as hands forced her upright. "You don't get to leave just yet."
They became experts at keeping her balanced on the edge of what her body could survive. If she managed to sleep, freezing water dragged her awake. If exhaustion made her collapse, they hauled her upright before she could recover.
"Can't have you getting too comfortable."
Eventually, Sruthi learned that physical pain was the simplest thing they could do to her.
The wounds hurt. Bones healed badly. Hunger hollowed her out. But there were places inside her they discovered they could reach without ever touching her.
They made her listen to screams.
Some were fake. She knew that because she heard the same cries repeated in exactly the same pattern. Others were real.
And some sounded far too much like Dev.
Those were the ones that broke through whatever defence she had managed to build.
They would leave her alone afterward, sometimes in complete darkness, until silence became another form of torture. Without the weak overhead light, she had nothing to measure reality against. Her breathing became too loud. Her heartbeat became something she counted simply to prove time was still moving. Sometimes she heard footsteps that never reached the door. Sometimes someone whispered her name when she knew she was alone. Shadows moved in a room too dark to contain shadows.
Then, just when her mind began slipping somewhere she feared she might never return from, they would come back.
And they would show her things.
Dev.
Druve.
Her Druve.
They had images of him—alive, moving through a world that had continued without her. Every glimpse hurt in a way the blades never could.
He looked different.
Colder.
Harder.
The warmth she remembered seemed to have disappeared from his face, but she searched his eyes every time they forced her to look at him.
And she thought she saw it.
He was searching.
At least, she wanted to believe he was.
"He'll forget you," they whispered.
Sruthi kept her eyes lowered.
"He already has."
She refused to give them the reaction they wanted, but doubt had a cruel way of finding cracks no matter how tightly she tried to close them. Her faith weakened. Her mind betrayed her. Yet there were still things they couldn't completely take from her.
When the darkness became unbearable, Sruthi closed her eyes and went somewhere else.
She went to Dev first. She remembered the ridiculous arguments he could start over absolutely nothing and the way he would annoy her until she wanted to throw something at him, only to make her laugh before she had properly finished being angry.
And then she went to Druve.
Not the cold man on their screens.
Her Druve.
The man who rarely smiled but somehow always softened around her. She remembered deliberately irritating him just to watch his expression crack. She remembered winning an argument and catching that tiny, unwilling curve at the corner of his mouth before he tried to hide it. She remembered sitting beside him without speaking and never once feeling that the silence needed to be filled.
Those memories became the only place she could escape when her body could not.
So her captors learned to attack them too.
"Maybe he's stopped searching."
Sruthi stared at the floor.
"Maybe he knows exactly where you are."
She gave them nothing.
"Maybe he simply doesn't want you back."
Her fingers curled against the cold ground before she could stop them.
The man noticed.
After that, Druve became their favourite weapon.
Every image was chosen carefully. Every sentence was designed to turn hope into doubt. At first, Sruthi fought them inside her own mind, repeating the same words until they became a rhythm stronger than the voices around her.
He'll come.
Days passed.
Or weeks.
Maybe months.
Druve will come.
Time stretched until she no longer knew how long she had been waiting.
He'll find me.
Eventually, the certainty weakened.
He hasn't forgotten me.
And on the nights when even believing that hurt too much, the words became something she hated herself for thinking.
Please don't forget me.
Because Druve would search. She knew him. If he knew she was in danger, he would tear the world apart trying to reach her.
But what if he didn't know?
What if everyone believed she had simply disappeared? What if the people holding her had erased every trace that could have led him here?
For a long time, that possibility terrified her more than death.
Until one night, she heard two men talking outside her door.
They weren't whispering. Perhaps they wanted her to hear.
"How much longer?"
"Until she's ready."
A quiet laugh followed.
"Then what?"
"Then we let him see her."
Sruthi stopped breathing.
Druve.
"He should see exactly what his love did to her."
Another laugh followed, low and pleased.
"Imagine his face."
Sruthi stared into the darkness as something inside her slowly went cold.
For so long, the thought of Druve finding her had been the one thing she had refused to surrender. When everything else had been stripped away, she had kept that hope hidden somewhere they couldn't reach.
He'll come.
She had survived on those words.
Now, for the first time, she was terrified they might become true.
Not because she feared Druve.
Because she knew him.
Druve would look at every scar and somehow make it his own. He would see every wound, every broken part of her, and ask himself where he had been. Why he hadn't found her sooner. Why he hadn't protected her.
He would carry her suffering as though it belonged to him.
Sruthi closed her eyes, but the cracked mirror remained inside her mind. She could still see the woman reflected in it—the hollow face, the bruises, the scars, the eyes that no longer looked like her own.
That wasn't the Sruthi he remembered.
That woman felt impossibly far away now.
Maybe she was already gone.
Too much had happened. Too much had been taken from her. There were days when she could barely remember what it had felt like to wake without fear. Some things, she had begun to believe, couldn't simply be undone because someone loved you enough.
And Druve loved in a way that would make this worse.
Quietly. Completely. Without knowing how to forgive himself when something went wrong.
No.
He couldn't find her like this.
The realization hurt more than she expected. For years, she had survived by imagining the moment he would come for her. She had pictured hearing his voice outside that door. She had imagined seeing his face and knowing it was finally over.
Now she forced herself to let that dream die.
If Druve hated her for disappearing, let him hate her.
If he believed she had abandoned him, let him believe it.
And if one day he became tired of searching and finally forgot her—
Her chest tightened so painfully she had to force herself to breathe.
Even that.
She would accept even that.
Anything was better than him finding her and turning every wound on her body into another reason to punish himself.
For the first time since she had been taken, Sruthi stopped praying for Druve to find her.
A different thought took its place.
She had to get away.
Not so she could return to him. She no longer allowed herself to imagine walking back into his life and somehow becoming the woman she had once been. She didn't know what would remain of her if she ever escaped this place.
But she knew what these men wanted.
They wanted Druve to see what they had done.
They wanted her suffering to become his.
She would not give them that.
If another opportunity came, she would run. She would disappear somewhere they could never find her. Druve might spend the rest of his life believing she had chosen to leave him, and the thought tore something open inside her, but she would rather live with his hatred than become the weapon that destroyed him.
She might not be able to save herself anymore.
But perhaps she could still save him.
After that night, Sruthi stopped fighting.
At least, that was what she let them believe.
When they dragged her from the room, she no longer kicked or cursed. When someone approached, she stopped wasting strength trying to pull away. Even when they threw her into freezing water and held her beneath the surface until instinct forced her body to fight for air, she gave them little once it was over.
Her silence pleased them.
They mistook exhaustion for surrender and obedience for defeat.
Sruthi let them.
She learned to keep her eyes empty while listening to footsteps. She noticed which voices belonged to which men. She paid attention when doors opened, when keys changed hands, when someone became careless. She didn't know whether any of it would matter. She didn't even know if her body could still carry her far enough to escape.
But she listened.
She waited.
One day, one of the men crouched in front of her.
For a while, he simply watched her. Sruthi kept her gaze lowered, refusing to give him whatever reaction he had come looking for.
Then he asked, "What's your name?"
Her eyes lifted.
It was such a simple question.
Once, she would have answered without thinking.
But the name seemed strangely distant, buried beneath years of pain, darkness and voices telling her what she was until the woman she had been felt like someone she had known a lifetime ago.
Her lips parted.
Nothing came.
For the first time, Sruthi hesitated.
The room became very quiet.
The man smiled.
And that smile frightened her more than the question.
He thought they had finally done it.
He thought they had taken the last thing she had left.
Maybe they had come close.
Sruthi lowered her eyes again, allowing him to enjoy his victory. She didn't correct him. She didn't fight when he stood and walked away.
But somewhere beneath everything they had damaged, beneath the fear and exhaustion and the pieces of herself she could no longer reach, one thought remained clear.
Druve could never see her like this.
And if another chance to escape ever came, she would take it.