The rain had arrived suddenly, and with it, the electricity went.
Devika lit no lamp. She sat cross-legged near the open window, letting the downpour speak. Every few minutes, a flash of lightning caught the gold pendant at her chest, making it flicker like a pulse not her own.
The manuscript remained open on the floor.
The fifth symbol still burned at its center — no longer just a mark, but an opening. A circular glyph with an eye in its core. Not sketched. Not stamped. It looked grown. As if the page had given birth to it in pain.
She hadn't slept in two days. But this wasn't exhaustion. It was readiness.
She had stopped resisting the visions.
Now she welcomed them.
By late morning, she had walked nearly six kilometers across the city — aimless, possessed by a compass her rational mind could not locate. Her feet carried her into gullies she'd never seen before. Past vendors who looked at her with silent recognition. Through a street where every door was painted blue.
The moment she stepped into the shade of a banyan tree, the scent stopped her cold.
Jasmine and rainwater.Clove smoke and old books.And something else — her grandmother's sari, when freshly ironed.
A woman sat on a stone plinth, stringing flowers. Her skin was the color of sun-dried wheat, her lips dark, cracked at the corners. She looked at Devika without surprise. Only recognition.
"You came too late last time," the woman said, without looking up.
Devika swallowed. "Do I know you?"
"Not in this name," the woman replied. "But your mouth remembers me. Your hips do, too."
She tied off the garland and finally looked up.
"Do they still call it the Grantha?"
Devika couldn't speak.
The woman stood. She was tall, taller than Devika, wrapped in a maroon cotton sari without a blouse. Her skin bore faint ink lines across her chest — faded, as if once tattooed in ritual and now nearly erased by time.
"I had it once," the woman said. "The Fifth. Took him into my body. Survived three nights. Lost my voice for seven years."
Devika stepped forward. "Who are you?"
The woman smiled without sweetness. "I'm the one who warned you. The first time. In the temple under the mountain. You were Vanya then. You screamed so loud when the flame touched your throat that the shrine collapsed."
Devika's knees went weak.
"I don't remember—"
"You will. The Fifth remembers for both of you."
She turned and walked into the alley. Devika followed.
They emerged in front of a rusted gate. Behind it: a low building, crumbling at the corners. A nameplate hung at an angle.
Shakti Granthalaya – Closed for Restoration
The woman pushed the gate open.
Inside, the smell of rain and old ashbooks filled the air.
"You want to finish it this time?" she asked.
Devika nodded.
"Then find the verse you burned."
"I don't know what it is."
The woman tilted her head. "Not yet. But your body does."
Devika touched the base of her throat. It throbbed faintly.
The woman drew a circle on the wall with her finger.
Ash fell from it like dry petals.
"There is a flame not written. The one beneath the Fifth."
"What's it called?" Devika whispered.
The woman leaned in so close Devika could feel her breath:
"It's called Kaam-Raag.The desire that remembers you even after you forget yourself."
Devika blinked.
And the woman was gone.
When she returned home, the house had changed again.
Not physically. Not visibly.
But the windows refused to shut.
The floorboards were warm.
The manuscript had moved on its own — now placed on the bed, the fifth symbol pulsing, as though it had a breath of its own.
Devika sat down slowly.She didn't open it.
Instead, she whispered the syllable that had haunted her since the banyan tree.
"Kaam… Raag…"
The moment the word left her lips, the mirror on the far wall fogged.
A shape appeared.
It wasn't hers.