Silence.
Absolute, pin-drop silence filled the apartment — like the air itself was holding its breath. The faint glow from the burner phone spilled across their faces, casting their features in harsh contrast. Ananya's hand hovered near her mouth, frozen mid-motion. Abhishek stood stiff, his whole body tensed like a drawn bowstring.
And Kunal?
Kunal just sat there, still as stone.
The word on the screen — Kunala — burned deeper than anything else so far.
The illusion of safety they had tried to build?
Gone.
Shattered before it even took shape.
It had never existed.
And something inside Kunal cracked.
"WHAT THE FUCK DO THEY WANT?!" he roared, his voice a cannon blast in the room.
He slammed his hand onto the table, making the other burner phones clatter and jump. Rage poured out of him, raw and unfiltered — rage at his helplessness, at the fear crawling under his skin, at being pushed into a corner by something he couldn't even understand.
"Why me?! Who the hell are they?! Why can't they just LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE?!" His voice broke into a half-growl, half-sob. "What do these motherfuckers WANT from me?!"
And then the phone flickered again.
New lines of text crawled down beneath the name:
> Kunala
We know your plight
We are not your enemies
If you want answers
Visit Elephanta Caves
9 PM, two days from now
They leaned in, reading it again. Again.
The weight of the words sank like lead.
Elephanta Caves.
Two days.
At night.
Abhishek recovered first, shaking his head hard, like trying to clear poison from his system.
"No," he said flatly. "Hell no."
Ananya looked torn, her eyes flicking between the message and Kunal. Hope tugged at her — the desperate hope for answers — but the fear was louder.
"Who are 'we'...?" she whispered.
"Exactly," Abhishek snapped, already pacing. "How the hell do they have this number? We activated that SIM ten minutes ago — it was clean. No contacts. No data. No trail."
He turned, face dark.
"Either they've completely hijacked the telecom grid… or it's something else. Something worse."
He didn't say the word.
He didn't need to.
"It's a trap, Kunal." His voice dropped to something colder now. "Classic. Lure the target to a remote, unsecured location. No crowds. No witnesses. You go to Elephanta at night? You vanish."
"But they said they're not enemies," Ananya said, her voice weaker now. Even she didn't fully believe it.
Abhishek scoffed. "That's bait. Manipulation 101. 'We understand your pain. Come find answers.' It's always the same play."
He turned to Kunal, jaw clenched.
"Forget it. We go dark again. Leave Mumbai. Maybe even India. Go completely off-grid, stay under until we figure this shit out."
It made sense.
It was smart.
It looked the right way to move ahead in this.
And it was also exactly what Kunal couldn't do anymore.
His eyes stayed fixed on the phone.
If you want answers.
Those four words pressed something deeper inside him — not fear. Fury.
And beneath that… something else.
Something mysterious.
Trapped. Caged. Waiting.
It has started to stir.
He felt it in his skin when he touched the glyphs.
In his eyes and skull when the red stars burned in them.
In the dreams.
In the pain.
In the fire behind his eyes.
That fire wasn't leaving. It was growing.
And right now, it was boiling in his blood.
He couldn't run. He couldn't hide anymore.
He couldn't. And he wouldn't. His back is against the wall. He has no place to run to now.
He stood straighter, the room seeming to shift with him.
Not rage now.
Neither confusion now fear.
Resolve. Not just any resolve an ironclad resolve.
The kind warriors carry into war. The kind of men who walk into death locking their eyes with it and laughing at it's face and facing it head on with a smile.
"I'm going," Kunal said, calm and deadly sure.
The silence in the room snapped like glass.
"No you're not!" Ananya's voice cracked.
"Don't be stupid!" Abhishek barked. "You know it's a fucking trap!"
"I do," Kunal said, steady. "I know it is. I know how insane this sounds. But hiding won't save me. If not today they will get meeting someday if I will just keep running from them."
He looked at them both — something behind his eyes had shifted now. Something older.
Something unshakable.
"I've fought every battle in my life head-on, no matter how outmatched I was. I don't run from things that try to scare me. I break them. And this? This feels like the only way forward. The only way I get my life back."
He drew in a breath.
"If I die, I die knowing. Not hiding. Not begging the shadows to leave me alone."
Abhishek stared at him for a long second. His shoulders dropped, and with a sigh, he muttered,
"Goddammit, you stubborn bastard."
He clapped a hand hard on Kunal's shoulder — not gentle. A soldier's grip.
"If you're doing this… we do it right. No lone hero bullshit. You're not the Abhimanyu."
Ananya wiped her face quickly when they weren't looking.
"Alright," she said softly. "We prepare. Map the cave layouts. Entry, exit, timing, history, surveillance. Everything."
"Transport," Abhishek added. "Untraceable. Maybe a fisherman. Night access. No paper trail."
"Gear," Kunal said. "Whatever we can pull together."
Then a thought struck him.
That other throne. The one from the vision when he saw the lady and the monk.
It didn't looked Kunala's.
Older.
Colder.
Deeper.
The one that made even time itself seem to bend.
He could still feel it behind his eyes.
What was that?
And why…
did it feel like it was waiting for him?
To be continued…