She stood before the mirror for a long time, but the shape never clarified.
Not a man. Not a god. Not a shadow. Just... presence.
It moved slightly when she exhaled. When she stepped forward, it didn't recede — only deepened. The glass didn't reflect the room behind her anymore. Instead, it seemed to shimmer with a memory she hadn't yet recovered, as if the mirror was no longer an object, but an invitation.
She whispered his name again.
"Kaam-Raag."
The shape pulsed.
It wasn't a hallucination.
It was a response.
That night, she left the house without locking the door. The sky was heavy with stars, the kind of Banaras night that felt stretched between centuries. The streets had emptied after the evening aarti, but she kept walking, following nothing — and everything. A throb behind her navel. A scent in the air. The memory of jasmine crushed beneath bare feet.
She crossed the Assi Ghat, then took the back alleys leading into a part of the city she'd never entered without daylight.
And yet, she wasn't afraid.
She knew he would be waiting.
The entrance was narrow, hidden behind a half-collapsed brick wall and a rusted iron bell. A shrine once stood here. Now, only a trace. She stepped inside. The air was wet, alive, and sweet with fermented ghee and burnt cloves.
He was sitting on the stone platform, bare-chested, long hair tied loosely at the nape, legs folded in the lotus. His eyes were closed, but she knew he had been waiting long before she arrived. Not hours. Lives.
He did not look ancient. Nor young. Just... inevitable.
She knew the line of his collarbone.
The slight dip in his shoulder.
The way his breath paused before he opened his eyes.
And when he did, the world quieted around her.
"You took longer this time," he said.
His voice was neither soft nor commanding — only familiar. Like hearing a verse you once sang in another tongue, now returning through your bones.
"I didn't know I was still carrying you," she whispered.
He smiled. "You buried me in the Fifth Flame. Bound me in memory. Hid me in the ink of your womb."
Devika's breath caught.
"That's why the manuscript rejected me."
He stood slowly, barefoot, silent. The stone beneath him had darkened with sweat.
"Because I am the fifth," he said. "And the fifth cannot be read. Only remembered."
She took a step back.
He came forward.
"You undid me in Madurai. You denied me in Kamakhya. You burned my name in the temple beneath the Aravallis. And still... I returned. Each time. Not because I wanted your body—"
He stopped. Stepped closer.
"—but because your body remembers the verse that finishes me."
She closed her eyes.
His hand didn't touch her, but hovered near her jaw. His heat was unbearable.
"I'm not ready," she said.
"You were never ready," he replied. "Not when you bore the fourth. Not when you carried the glyph in your spine. Not when you offered blood to keep your voice from speaking the syllable you feared."
Her knees weakened.
He stepped around her. Not touching.
But she felt the wind shift with him, as if her body turned toward his without her command.
"What happens if I remember you?" she asked.
He didn't answer at first.
Then, from behind her, in a voice that echoed in the marrow of her neck:
"Then the Grantha finishes itself.""And you disappear."
The silence between them cracked.
Not with sound, but with sensation. Her skin began to hum — each vertebrae pulsing, as if her spine remembered being written upon.
He came close again, speaking near her temple.
"Say it," he murmured.
"I can't."
He leaned closer.
"You already did. The moment you returned to the house. The moment you placed the necklace against your skin. The moment you whispered 'Kaam-Raag' with your mouth open and your hips trembling."
Devika inhaled sharply.
Her body was betraying her now. Her thighs warmed. Her breath shortened. Her vision blurred slightly, not with confusion — but with recognition.
And then he stepped away.
The absence of his heat struck her like cold water.
"When you're ready," he said, "return to the chamber where you first cut me free."
She blinked. "What chamber?"
He tilted his head. "You'll remember it when the petals fall."
Then he turned.
And disappeared into the shadows behind the shrine wall.
Devika stood alone for a long time, the scent of his presence still clinging to her skin.
She hadn't been touched.
But she had been claimed.
Not with hands.With memory.
When she returned home just before dawn, the manuscript had flipped itself to a page she hadn't seen before.
There was no text on it.
Only a single red petal.
Still damp.
And a thumbprint.
Not hers.