The ride out of Jodhpur was a journey into silence. The city's glow faded in Neel's rearview mirror, replaced by the immense, star-dusted blackness of the Thar Desert. The air grew cooler, carrying the scent of dust and dry earth. By 10:30 PM, the paved road had dissolved into a rugged dirt track. Neel killed his headlamp, navigating the last kilometer by the pale light of a three-quarters moon, the thrum of his engine the only sound for miles.
Chimanpura Fort was a jagged silhouette against the sky, a broken tooth of history. It wasn't a grand palace but a forgotten military outpost, its walls crumbling, its courtyards reclaimed by thorny scrub. He parked his motorcycle in a deep shadow a hundred meters from the main gate, the silence rushing in as he cut the engine. He was utterly alone.
Drawing the 9mm pistol from his back, Neel moved with a fluid, practiced stealth that his years as a PI hadn't dulled. He didn't use the main gate. Instead, he scaled a collapsed section of the outer wall, his feet landing silently on the sand-dusted stone inside. His eyes scanned the darkness, his senses on high alert, searching for the tell-tale glint of a sniper scope, the scuff of a fresh footprint, the scent of anything other than dust and decay. There was nothing. The fort was holding its breath.
He checked the GPS coordinates on his simple phone. They pointed to the fort's old garrison quarters, a series of collapsed rooms surrounding a central, roofless chamber. As he approached, a faint, metallic smell reached him, cutting through the clean desert air. It was the scent of old, cold blood. He knew it instantly.
He stepped through a collapsed archway into the central chamber. And froze.
It was exactly the same.
A perfect, horrifying echo of the crime scene that had haunted his nightmares for ten years. A man was slumped on a stone throne in the center of the room, his identity obscured by the shadows. On the wall behind him, painted in blood, was the killer's signature: the serpent with the bleeding eye. And laid out on the floor before the victim, just as before, were five objects arranged in a star pattern: a dead bird, a broken clock, a mirror, a single white lotus, and a child's silver rattle.
Neel's training took over. He forced himself to ignore the rising tide of memory and focus on the details. The victim was not a recent kill; the body was stiff, likely dead for at least a day. He scanned the scene, his flashlight beam cutting surgically through the darkness, looking for what was different. The objects were identical, the placement precise. It was a perfect copy. It was a message.
Then his light found it.
There was a sixth object.
Placed directly in the center of the star pattern, an item that had not been there a decade ago, was something new. Something meant only for him.
It was a small, tarnished silver locket.
His breath caught in his throat. He knew it instantly. He had given that locket to a woman named Maya, his informant and the only person who had believed his theory about the killer's identity all those years ago. The locket, and Maya herself, had vanished the night before he was officially dismissed from the CBI.
The killer wasn't just recreating his old crimes. He was answering Neel's oldest, most painful question. He was telling Neel that he knew his secrets, that he had taken someone from him. This wasn't just a challenge. It was a declaration of war.