🏠Empty Spaces
Isha stopped speaking.
Not out of anger.
Not out of sorrow.
But because words began to feel… foreign.
Every conversation sounded scripted.
Every smile from her "parents" made her skin crawl.
She stayed locked in her room. Curtains drawn. Black lenses in. Phone off.
Even Riya's constant messages faded, then stopped altogether.
No one pushed her.
No one came.
It was too perfect.
Too designed.
She began to suspect:
> They want me isolated.
They want me confused.
But why?
---
đź“ş The Static
Her TV turned itself on one night.
Just static. White noise.
But beneath the hum, she swore she heard a whisper.
Faint. Like someone calling her name backwards.
She unplugged it.
The whisper didn't stop.
---
🪞 The Eyes That Watched
Her own reflection began to frighten her.
She'd catch herself standing in front of the mirror — not remembering walking there.
Her eyes always glowed something new:
Blue, when she remembered Riya laughing beside her in primary school.
Black, when she doubted if that memory was even real.
Gold, when she felt something powerful beneath her ribs, like a sun begging to rise.
One night, she saw something else in the mirror. A second face.
Her own. But older. Sharper. Wearing a crown made of thorns and light.
> "I will burn the gods from the roots up," it said.
She shattered the mirror with her fist.
---
đź“š Meanwhile: The Circle of Ash
Chief Minister Deshmukh stared at a sealed report on his desk.
Isha's file.
"Her isolation is accelerating," whispered a man in black robes.
"She's rejecting the simulation. Her self-awareness is bleeding through."
"And the gods?" Deshmukh asked.
"No one else knows yet. Not even the Serpent's Eye or the Wings of Silence."
"Good," Deshmukh said. "Keep it that way."
---
đź“– Journal Entry: Found Crumpled in Her Bin
I am not Isha.
I am not their daughter. Not their friend. Not anyon
e's pawn.
I am…
…I don't know what I am.
> But I'm starting to remember what they made me forget.