The journey down from Nahargarh was the inverse of the ascent. The fort's oppressive silence was slowly replaced by the familiar hum of the city, and the cool, thin air of the hills thickened into the warm, fragrant atmosphere of Jaipur at night. But the mood inside the police jeep had changed entirely. The spectral dread that had clung to them in the sealed room was gone, burned away by the harsh, clarifying light of Neel's discovery. They were no longer hunting a ghost; they were chasing a meticulous planner, a killer hiding behind a mask of folklore.
They drove through the sleeping city, its pink walls glowing a soft, ethereal rose under the streetlights. Riya handled the vehicle with a focused efficiency, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. Her mind was a flurry of activity, processing the implications of a staged crime scene. It was a professional affront, a direct challenge to her and her department, and the initial irritation she had felt towards the outsider from Jodhpur had been replaced by a grudging, but solid, alliance. He had given them the first solid piece of ground to stand on.
Maya sat in the back, the cryptic page from her father's journal now seared into her memory. The stars, the verse, the number. It was a puzzle, and her father had loved puzzles. For the first time, she felt a connection to his final moments that wasn't just about his death, but about his life's passion. It was a small, cold comfort.
Dr. Sharma's home was a modest, colonial-era bungalow in the quiet, leafy neighborhood of Civil Lines. A single constable stood guard at the gate, his presence a stark reminder of the violence that had breached this peaceful sanctuary. Riya dismissed him and unlocked the front door, which was already sealed with police tape.
"His study is at the back of the house," Maya said, her voice barely a whisper as she stepped into the home she had grown up in, now a crime scene.
The room was exactly as Neel had imagined, yet more potent. It was the den of a scholar, a physical manifestation of a man's mind. Bookshelves overflowed, covering every wall from floor to ceiling. Books were stacked on the floor, on the desk, on the chairs. The air smelled of aging paper, ink, and the faint, sweet aroma of the cardamom tea Dr. Sharma had constantly brewed. It was a room where the past was more present than the present.
Riya's police training kicked in. "We'll need to be careful. Forensics has already been through here, but anything could be evidence."
Neel, however, wasn't looking for evidence of a crime. He was looking for evidence of a thought. He stood in the center of the room, his eyes slowly scanning the space, absorbing the organized chaos. He noted the books on Sumerian astronomy placed next to texts on Rajput architecture. He saw maps of ancient trade routes pinned to a corkboard, overlaid with transparent sheets marked with geometric lines connecting temples and forts. This was not the office of a man merely dating frescoes. This was the laboratory of a man chasing a grand, unifying theory.
"He worked late," Neel observed, gesturing to the half-empty cup of tea still on the desk, a faint skin formed on its cold surface. "He was obsessive. Everything has a place, even in this mess."
"He was," Maya confirmed, a sad smile touching her lips. "He used to say that a messy desk was the sign of a brilliant mind, but a lost book was the sign of a failed one. He never lost a book."
While Riya began a methodical search of the desk drawers, cataloging their contents, Neel walked over to the maps on the corkboard. He saw the Saptarishi constellation drawn on one of the transparent overlays, its position marked relative to the geographic locations of Jaipur's three great forts: Nahargarh, Jaigarh, and Amer.
"The sun birds..." he murmured, recalling the Vedic verse. "Praising their share of immortal life." He turned to Maya. "Did that phrase have any special meaning to him?"
Maya thought for a moment, her brow furrowed. "The suparna. He talked about them once. He said that in the oldest texts, they weren't just birds. They were symbols for priests who possessed secret knowledge, keepers of the divine Soma, the nectar of immortality."
Keepers of a secret. Keepers of something immortal. Treasure. Knowledge.
Neel's gaze left the maps and swept across the room again, coming to rest on a heavy, steel-grey safe, partially obscured by a brocade curtain in the corner of the room. It was old but functional, with a circular combination dial.
Riya followed his gaze. "We found that. Tried all the usual combinations—birthdates, anniversaries. Nothing worked. We were going to get a specialist to crack it in the morning."
Neel walked over to the safe, Maya and Riya close behind. He looked back at the notebook in his hand, at the final page. The sketch of the stars, the Sanskrit verse, and beneath it all, the four-digit number. It had been the last thing Dr. Sharma had written down before going to the fort that night. A number he needed to remember.
Without a word, he knelt before the safe. He turned the dial with practiced precision. Right, left, right again. He entered the four digits from the notebook. He paused, then pulled the heavy handle.
With a low, satisfying thud, the safe unlocked.
Riya let out an audible sigh of astonishment. She looked from the open safe to Neel, her respect solidifying into something approaching awe. He hadn't cracked a code; he had followed a man's train of thought to its logical conclusion.
The contents of the safe were not what one would expect. There were no jewels, no cash. There was only a single, thick file folder, tied with a red ribbon. Neel lifted it out carefully and placed it on the desk, untying the ribbon.
Inside was a stack of documents: copies of centuries-old royal decrees, geological survey maps of the Aravalli hills, and a meticulously researched, unpublished manuscript. The title on the first page was bold and provocative: The Lost Armory of Sawai Jai Singh: Re-examining the Nahargarh Foundation.
Neel, Riya, and Maya began to read. The manuscript laid out a staggering theory. Dr. Sharma believed that the official history of Nahargarh was incomplete. Using a combination of astronomical alignments mentioned in Vedic texts and structural analysis of the fort's oldest sections, he had concluded that a secret, subterranean vault was built into the bedrock beneath the fort before the main structure was completed. He theorized it was a hidden armory or a treasury, a secret known only to the Maharaja and his closest advisors, its location deliberately erased from official records. His work on the frescoes was merely a cover for his real goal: to find the entrance.
Tucked into the back of the file were more recent papers: a series of letters. The first was a formal proposal to the Archaeological Survey of India, requesting a permit for a limited, non-invasive excavation. It had been denied. The next was a letter from a legal firm representing Vikram Rathore, the real estate magnate whose massive new luxury development, "Aravalli Vistas," bordered the Nahargarh nature preserve. The letter was a thinly veiled threat, warning Dr. Sharma against making any public claims that might disrupt the project's perceived stability.
The third was a scathing peer review of his theory, authored by Dr. Siddharth Rao, his academic rival at Jaipur University, calling the research "sensationalist fantasy built on mystical conjecture."
The final document was a crisp, formal notice from the "Royal Heritage Trust," an organization managed by Arjun Singh, a direct descendant of the last ruling Maharaja of Jaipur. It politely but firmly denied Dr. Sharma any and all access to the restricted royal archives.
Riya looked up from the letters, her face grim. "Vikram Rathore. Siddharth Rao. Arjun Singh." She said the names aloud, each one a pillar of Jaipur society. "They all knew about his theory. And every single one of them had a powerful reason to want him silenced."
Neel looked at the file, then back at the room—the sanctuary of a man who had dug too deep into the past. The ghost story was a lie to hide the murder. But they now understood that the murder itself was a lie, a brutal distraction to hide something far bigger. They weren't just investigating a killing anymore. They had stumbled into a conspiracy to keep a secret buried, a secret that was now guarded by three very powerful, very human dragons.