She did not move.
The slab beneath her breathed. It wasn't cold anymore. It wasn't stone. It was memory made solid — the body of a goddess who once turned herself into a temple just to house the verse Devika now held at the tip of her tongue.
Her back arched as the fifth flame began to enter.
Not through touch.
Through sound.
"Smarana," she whispered.
The chamber vibrated faintly.
"Rati.""Svarna.""Agni."
Each syllable released heat.But the fifth — the true fifth — did not come from her mouth.
It came from him.
She heard it before she saw him.
Footsteps. Bare. Soft. Unrushed.
Then the scent — smoke, skin, sandal, and thunder.
She opened her eyes.
And the Fifth stood before her.
Naked.
Marked only with a single flame on his chest, drawn in something darker than blood.
He did not kneel.
He stood over her and began to recite.
"नाहं देहो न मे आत्मान मम स्मृतिर्जगच्च मिथ्या।कामरागश्च न पापो न पुण्यः—केवलं तव स्पर्श एव सत्यः॥"
(Nāhaṁ deho na me ātmā / na mama smṛtirjagacca mithyā / kāmarāgaśca na pāpo na puṇyaḥ / kevalaṁ tava sparśa eva satyaḥ.)
"I am not this body. Nor is this self mine. The world and memory are illusion. Desire is neither sin nor merit—only your touch is real."
She trembled.
That verse was not in any scripture.
It was her own. Composed once in a trance by her great-grandmother — the priestess who burned herself alive to stop a foreigner from stealing the Grantha.
She sat up slowly.
The slab beneath her seemed to sing now — a low, female hum that rose from the stone like breath under skin.
"Say it again," she whispered.
He did.
And she matched each word with movement — her fingers touching the places her ancestors once inked with ash: behind the earlobe. Beneath the breast. Inside the hip.
The slab pulsed.
The manuscript at her hip, still wrapped in cloth, unwrapped itself.
Pages began to float.
He approached.
But he still did not touch her.
"You are not ready," he said."You must offer your fear."
She blinked. "How?"
He stepped closer. His lips near her ear.
"Say the forbidden syllable. The one you buried inside the womb."
She felt it rise — not from her throat, but her pelvis.
The place no prayer had reached.The syllable she once sealed in blood.
She opened her mouth.
And screamed it.
"Roudra."
Wrath.
Desire unbound. Lust without guilt. The syllable taught to be feared.
The chamber shook.
Water began to fall from the cracks in the ceiling — not rain, but rose-scented liquid, as if the gods themselves were weeping for what was being recalled.
He reached for her.
This time, he touched her.
Not her hand.
Not her lips.
He touched the space above her navel.
Where the womb remembers its first command.
And she cried out, not in pain, but in recognition:
"Now I remember you."
When she woke, the chamber was dry again.
He was gone.
The manuscript lay beside her.
But the last page was no longer blank.
It bore a painting.
Of her.
Nude.
Lying on the slab.
Eyes open.
Mouth parted.
But not alone.
In the reflection of her pupil — him.
Watching.
Waiting.