Chapter Six: "Ashes Don't Sleep"
Two years.
That's how long it had been since the night the forest almost swallowed them whole. Since the air had turned against them and the trees whispered things that still echoed in the cracks of Zayaan's dreams.
Two years of silence, distance, and pretending it had never happened.
But ashes don't sleep. Not forever.
Zayaan stepped out of the college library just as dusk settled in, the evening light filtering through the campus trees like half-formed memories. He had grown taller, quieter. His hair was longer now, falling over eyes that had seen too much too young. The pendant still hung beneath his shirt—he never took it off.
Some scars don't need to be visible to ache.
He didn't expect to run into Kian that evening. It just… happened. As if the silence had waited long enough.
They saw each other across the courtyard near the stone bench under the old Gulmohar tree. The tree didn't resemble the Chinars from home, but something in its slow rustling reminded them both of that place.
Kian looked different too—sharper around the edges, a little harder to read. But his smile, when it broke across his face, still held the same reckless honesty Zayaan remembered.
"You still wear it," Kian said, nodding toward Zayaan's chest.
Zayaan gave a slow nod. "I still dream."
The weight of everything unsaid settled between them like fog.
"You think it ever really ended?" Kian asked.
Zayaan didn't answer right away. His fingers unconsciously brushed over the pendant. It pulsed faintly, like it always did when something stirred.
"No," he said. "It just went quiet."
Kian sat down on the bench, patting the spot beside him. "So... you ready to talk about it?"
"I don't know if I am," Zayaan replied honestly. "But I think it's time."
And somewhere, far away, where the city met the fields and the fields met the wild—a whisper stirred in the roots of trees that had not forgotten.
---
Scene Title: "Things We Left Behind"
The following days felt oddly light.
For the first time in years, Zayaan and Kian were breathing the same air without the weight of unspoken fear between them. College life wrapped around them with its usual hum—professors with their too-fast lectures, hostel mess food that always tasted like regret, and late-night chai from the stall that felt more like a ritual than a drink.
They settled into a rhythm.
Zayaan had joined the literature department; Kian was in psychology. They didn't share classes, but their paths always crossed. They'd end up on the same old library steps, or sprawled across the broken benches behind the auditorium, laughing about people they didn't like and books they hadn't read.
Kian had changed—not just in appearance, though that was striking enough. His hair had grown longer, tied loosely at the back, giving him an aura somewhere between a poet and a wanderer. But there was something deeper, something quiet in his eyes. A knowing.
Zayaan never asked, not at first.
He was just glad to have him back.
---
One night, they were sitting on the rooftop of their hostel, watching the stars blur through city haze. The sky here wasn't like back home. There, you could still see the stars clearly, like scattered prayers. Here, they were ghosts.
Zayaan broke the silence first.
"You ever think about it?"
Kian didn't look at him. Just sipped from his steel cup of lukewarm tea.
"Every day," he said softly.
Zayaan leaned back. "I thought maybe we could... finally let it go. But I can't. It keeps coming back in flashes. Smells. Dreams."
Kian finally turned. "I didn't let it go either."
There was a pause.
Then Zayaan noticed something strange. Kian was wearing a silver chain—tucked under his T-shirt. When he leaned forward, a small symbol flashed out. Almost like the ones they'd seen carved into the trees years ago.
Zayaan narrowed his eyes. "What's that?"
Kian paused for a second, then chuckled. "Guess I can't hide it anymore."
He reached into his bag and pulled out a small black notebook. The cover was cracked, worn out at the corners. He handed it to Zayaan.
Zayaan opened the first page.
"Introduction to Field Paranormal Studies – Module 1."
His eyes shot up. "You... took a course?"
Kian nodded, almost shyly. "Six months. Online. Some weekend practicals in Himachal. A guy named Dr. Mohin used to run these secret workshops. Not exactly legal, but real. Legit people from across the country came. Survivors. Witnesses."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Kian hesitated. "Because I didn't know what I was looking for. I was... obsessed. I didn't want to drag you deeper until I knew it wasn't just in our heads."
Zayaan was quiet.
Some part of him felt betrayed. But another part—the part that still dreamed of the roots and the humming—felt something else.
Relief.
He wasn't alone in this.
"Zayaan," Kian said quietly, "what we saw back then... what we fought... it wasn't finished. The pact, the spirit, your connection with the trees... there's more."
"And now?"
"Now I think it's waking up again."
---
That night, they sat cross-legged on the floor of Zayaan's room, notebooks, printouts, and the jar from Rozin's shop between them. The pendant on Zayaan's neck seemed to throb subtly under the tube light glow.
They began retracing everything. The first dreams. The pact site. The symbols. Rozin's cryptic words.
And then Kian showed him something else.
A clipping from a forgotten case.
A boy, disappeared in 1995. Same town. Same woods. Chinar leaves found near his home.
The article was barely a paragraph. Almost no details.
But there it was: the first child.
Just like Rozin had said.
Zayaan looked at the clipping, then at Kian.
"We need to go back."
"Not just go back," Kian said.
"We need to remember everything we forgot. Everything we buried."
And somewhere, outside their hostel room, in a tree growing too close to the window, a single Chinar leaf fluttered where it had no business growing.
The past was no longer sleeping.
---
Scene Title: "The Circle That Speaks"
The room had never felt colder.
Not because of the temperature—but the weight. The kind of heavy stillness that seeps through windows even when they're shut tight.
Zayaan stood by the door, watching as Kian carefully drew the final line. The floor of the room was covered in chalk, candle wax, and old pages torn from a book with no title. In the center: a circle, perfect in shape, with a five-pointed star drawn inside. Each point was marked with something different—an object they had spent the entire day collecting.
A thorned Chinar twig.
A piece of rusted iron.
A drop of blood—Zayaan's.
A candle made of clove and ghee, burning low.
And a photograph. Blurred, folded—of the missing boy from 1995.
Zayaan watched him, unnerved.
"You sure this isn't some black magic crap?"
Kian didn't look up. "It's not that. It's closer to sympathetic tracing. Something Rozin mentioned. You don't summon. You listen. If done right, the past leaves echoes. We're trying to tune in."
Zayaan looked down at the circle. His own blood on the floor made it feel more personal than he liked.
"And if we tune into something wrong?"
Kian finally looked at him. His eyes were calm, but Zayaan saw the sleeplessness behind them.
"Then we cut the thread and get out."
Simple. Like switching off a light.
But Zayaan knew better. Once you hear something, you can't un-hear it.
---
The ritual began at 1:13 a.m.
They sat cross-legged on either side of the circle, palms facing downward, breath held tight in their chests. Kian whispered words in a tongue Zayaan didn't understand—probably Sanskrit, broken and mixed with something else. The candlelight flickered, casting shadows that didn't always align with their bodies.
Then, it started.
The smell.
Like old wood. Damp stone. And something else—ash.
Zayaan's fingers twitched. His head buzzed with static. Then, a voice—not in the room, not quite—inside. Whispered. Echoed.
> "He didn't run. He followed. We all follow when we hear it."
Zayaan's breath hitched. He looked up at Kian, whose eyes had turned glassy.
"Kian—what's happening?"
Kian's mouth opened, but the voice that came out wasn't his.
> "He was the first. Not to enter. But to be taken."
Suddenly the candle blew out. The room fell into thick darkness.
Zayaan scrambled up, bumping into the edge of the circle, nearly ruining the line. He could still hear the whisper.
Something brushed his neck.
A cold hand—or a memory pretending to be one.
The photo on the floor curled on its own, as if recoiling from something unseen.
Kian gasped, then collapsed backward.
---
Zayaan shook him.
"Kian! Wake up! Come on!"
Kian coughed, blinked twice. "I—I saw him."
Zayaan backed away. "Who?"
"The boy. He was... running through the woods. But not away. Toward something. There was a door. No, not a real one—a threshold. Between trees. It shimmered."
"And?"
Kian touched his chest. "He crossed it. But something grabbed him right after. It didn't kill him. It kept him."
"Kept him?"
Kian nodded slowly.
"He's not dead. He's... suspended. Like a thread pulled between two places."
Zayaan felt the room twist.
"Then we can still bring him back?"
Kian looked at him.
"If we do... we'll have to go through that door."
---
The room was silent again. Only the chalk dust hovered in the air like smoke from a fire long gone.
Outside the window, wind pushed against the glass in soft knocks.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
As if something had heard them.
And was waiting.
Scene Title: "When the Wind Changes Course"
It was still early morning when the knock came.
Zayaan and Kian were barely awake. They had fallen asleep on the floor of the apartment, surrounded by chalk lines and burnt candle wax. The ritual's weight still sat thick in the air. Neither had spoken much since Kian's collapse—just the occasional glance that said: We saw it, right? That really happened?
The knock came again.
This time sharper. Urgent.
Zayaan opened the door, expecting a nosy neighbor or some confused classmate.
Instead, Wizz stood there, wide-eyed, soaked in sweat and rain, with Yuwin right behind him—panting, holding a rolled-up sheet of black-and-white film negatives.
"You need to see this," Wizz said, pushing past.
Yuwin added breathlessly, "We didn't know who else to go to."
Kian stood up, rubbing his eyes. "What the hell?"
Wizz unrolled the film on the table, hands trembling.
"I was at the media archive last night—helping Yuwin shoot those abandoned warehouses. The ones behind the east end of town?"
Zayaan nodded. "Yeah. The ones near the old tracks?"
"Right. So we developed the film like usual... except this one," Wizz pointed at the negatives, "came out wrong. No scratches. No chemical damage. Just—wrong."
He held it up against the window.
Zayaan squinted.
There, faint but unmistakable, was a figure. Standing between two tall, thin trees. His head was tilted, hands at his sides. But the strangest part? There was light around him—a shimmer, like the air itself was warped in a perfect oval behind the trees.
A door. Or something shaped like one.
Zayaan froze.
"That… that's what we saw. Last night."
Yuwin looked at him. "Saw where?"
Kian sat down, suddenly pale.
"Inside the circle. We did a ritual. To find out what happened to the missing boy."
Wizz raised an eyebrow. "You performed a ritual? Without telling us?"
Zayaan stepped in. "It's… complicated. Kian's been learning things. We didn't want to involve anyone until we knew what we were doing."
"Clearly," Wizz muttered.
Kian got up, walked to the photo. His voice was low.
"There was a threshold. Not physical. A shimmer between trees. A boy crossed it in 1995. But something pulled him. We don't think he's dead. We think he's... trapped."
Yuwin exchanged a nervous glance with Wizz.
"We've been chasing this ghost story for years, and now you're telling me it's real?"
"It's not a ghost story," Zayaan said. "It's a gate."
---
Silence fell.
The weight of those words took a moment to land. No one wanted to say what they were all thinking.
Then Wizz broke the quiet.
"There's more."
He pulled out an old photo. One he found in the town's historical library weeks ago but hadn't thought twice about—until now.
It was dated 1979.
A class photo from the rural school that once existed at the town's edge.
In the back row was a boy.
A boy who looked exactly like the one in the forest image—same tilt of the head, same hollow eyes.
Yuwin whispered, "It's like he never aged."
Kian took the photo gently.
"That's not possible…"
"But if time doesn't pass the same beyond the door," Zayaan murmured, "then maybe it is."
Wizz sat back. "So what now?"
Zayaan looked at them all—his closest friends, now standing at the edge of something none of them truly understood.
He remembered Rozin's warning:
> "The trees don't forget. And what they remember… remembers you."
"We found the threshold again," Zayaan said. "Not from within a ritual. From the real world. We found the place. We see if it's still open."
"And if it is?" Yuwin asked.
Zayaan didn't flinch.
"Then we cross
Scene Title: "The Name That Wasn't There"
The air in the room thickened as Yuwin and Wizz sat opposite Zayaan and Kian in the dim dorm common room. The glow from the ritual circle had long since faded, but something lingered in the walls, like heat after a fire — unseen, but there.
Yuwin was the first to break the silence.
"There's something we found," he said, pulling a crumpled notebook from his bag. "Something weird."
Wizz, unusually quiet, nodded and added, "A newspaper clipping. From the year your mother was in school."
He handed it over.
Zayaan scanned the yellowed page. A group photo of five children beneath a headline: "Five Vanish in Forest Game—Only Four Found." But something was wrong. He counted again.
Four names were printed.
Only four.
"One of them... one of them was erased," Kian whispered. "Literally scrubbed from the records."
"But why?" Zayaan asked. "And why is Rozin hiding this?"
That's when Kian stood, moving toward the wall. He looked like he was trying to remember something just out of reach.
"He didn't just hide it," Kian muttered. "He buried it. The fifth child... he wasn't just forgotten. He was sacrificed."
Zayaan's blood ran cold.
"What do you mean... sacrificed?"
Wizz stepped forward, holding out an old page torn from Rozin's book. One Kian must have stolen. It was a faded, coded ritual — far older than anything Rozin had shown them. In it were instructions for a pact. One involving five children.
One to see.
One to speak.
One to believe.
One to forget.
One to feed the woods.
Zayaan read it again, then again. The lines twisted around his mind.
"I think we were chosen," Kian said slowly. "Not just cursed. Chosen. And someone already played the role of the fifth."
"And he didn't survive," Yuwin said, voice hollow.
A sudden wind pushed open the dorm window.
Zayaan looked down at the pendant around his neck. The one Rozin had given him. It had grown warm again.
And then, like a whisper in the back of his mind:
"You weren't supposed to remember."
Scene Title: "The Pact Remembers"
The air turned metallic that night.
Rain hadn't come, yet the sky hung low and swollen. The lights in the dormitory flickered, and the boys, still huddled in the common room, knew sleep was a stranger tonight.
Zayaan sat on the edge of the couch, the pendant burning softly against his chest, warm and restless. He couldn't shake the words off—the pact, the roles, the forgotten boy.
Wizz walked to the window, arms folded. "We all thought this ended back in the woods. That leaving the town was enough. But it didn't stop, did it?"
Yuwin, now bent over his laptop, had pulled up scanned school records from twenty years ago. He shook his head. "Here's the real kicker. There's an admission record for five children from your mother's batch. But only four graduated."
"And there's no expulsion or transfer?" Kian asked, already knowing the answer.
"No. It's as if the fifth one just... disappeared."
Zayaan's thoughts spiraled.
His mother had warned his father in that letter.
> "He is not like other children. Something follows him."
Maybe that something didn't just follow him.
Maybe it chose him.
"We need answers," Zayaan said. "No more guessing. No more half-truths."
Kian nodded grimly. "Then we go back. To Rozin."
Yuwin stepped in front of them. "No. You think he'll tell you the truth now? After hiding this much?"
There was silence.
But Wizz broke it. "Then we don't ask him. We make him."
---
The Confrontation
Rozin's house was older than memory itself. The wooden sign outside swung gently in the night breeze, creaking like a soft warning.
When they knocked, no one answered.
Kian tried the handle. It gave way.
Inside, candles flickered along the floor, casting twisted shadows on the walls. Books, herbs, and jars lined every shelf. It smelled of smoke and something faintly sweet—like dying flowers.
Rozin sat by the hearth, as if expecting them.
"I knew you'd come," he said, voice softer than usual. "The pact always remembers."
Zayaan stepped forward. "You lied."
Rozin's eyes didn't flinch. "I withheld. To protect you."
"To protect us from what?" Kian asked, stepping beside Zayaan.
Rozin turned toward the fire. "From the truth."
A long pause.
Then he rose and walked slowly toward an old wooden chest. He opened it, pulled out a wrapped bundle, and handed it to Zayaan.
Inside was a faded notebook.
His mother's.
"You said there was no diary," Zayaan whispered.
Rozin's face tensed. "She made me promise. Not to give it to you unless... unless the pact remembered itself."
Kian scanned the pages, flipping through feverishly.
Drawings. Symbols. Names. And then, the sketch of a boy—blurred, faceless—standing beneath a tree.
The fifth.
"She knew about him?" Zayaan asked.
Rozin nodded. "They were chosen together. But he… he didn't make it out."
Yuwin's voice was tight. "What happened to him?"
Rozin hesitated.
Then said: "He was taken by the woods. Not physically. Not at first. But his memory. His identity. The pact needed a feeder. And the forest took him."
Zayaan's throat dried.
"What was his name?"
Rozin closed his eyes.
"That's the part that was erased."
---
The Haunting Clue
Kian sat down hard, hands in his hair. "This doesn't make sense. Why Zayaan? Why is he connected to this?"
Rozin walked over and gently touched the pendant on Zayaan's chest.
"This wasn't hers. Not fully. It belonged to the feeder."
Zayaan looked up, shocked.
Rozin's voice darkened.
"Your mother kept it hidden. After he was taken, she pulled it from the roots. She swore she'd end the cycle. But it never ended. These woods… they remember. And now that it's back with you, so is he."
Zayaan's head swirled. "Who is he?"
Rozin didn't answer.
Instead, the candles blew out one by one. And from the darkness, the wind whispered—not through the door, not from the window—but from beneath the floorboards.
A soft voice.
"You're wearing my heart…"
Zayaan dropped the pendant. It pulsed on the floor like a living thing.
---
Scene Ends
This ends the next major scene, setting up the high-stakes, deeply twisted confrontation and the return of a memory that was supposed to be lost forever.
Scene Title: "The Language of Ash and Root"
The boys sat in silence.
The diary lay open on the table in Kian and Zayaan's shared dorm room, its worn spine cracked, pages yellowed and breathing with the scent of old woodsmoke and dried leaves.
It didn't read like a journal.
It read like something left behind on purpose. Like a warning whispered across time.
Wizz sat cross-legged on the floor, flashlight in hand, illuminating a half-torn page.
Yuwin leaned against the wall, cross-referencing sketches on his phone with old folklore maps.
Zayaan, however, hadn't moved for several minutes. His eyes were locked on a passage inked in his mother's looping, trembling hand:
> "When the pact is made, it isn't forgotten. It roots itself into the breath of the child, into the marrow. They carry it unknowingly, like hunger, like sleep. The fifth was not the first. Nor will he be the last. I fear… Zayaan may be next."
He whispered it aloud. "She knew. Even back then."
Kian exhaled slowly. "She didn't just know. She saw it coming. Maybe from the moment you were born."
Yuwin flipped to another page. "There's a date here. Two weeks before she died. Look."
He turned the book around.
A sketch. Of a tree. Familiar — tall, twisted, bark splitting like cracked lips.
It was the same Chinar tree they had seen in that forgotten clearing, the one where they found the threshold mark.
Beneath the drawing, a phrase was written in another language.
Wizz narrowed his eyes. "That's not Urdu. Not Hindi either. Is that… Kashmiri?"
Kian looked over Wizz's shoulder. "No. Older than that. Rozin showed me something similar once. It's pre-Himalayan. Symbolic."
Zayaan's voice came out soft. "Can you translate it?"
Kian reached into his bag, pulled out a worn leather-bound reference book from his secret course. He flipped pages with urgency, whispering half-formed words as his finger traced glyphs.
Finally, he froze. "It says: 'One must be offered for the forest to sleep.'"
Silence again.
Wizz looked up slowly. "Offered?"
Yuwin's eyes widened. "That's what she meant by 'the feeder.' One of them was given to the woods."
Zayaan felt the pendant press harder against his chest, as if it wanted to be acknowledged.
"Was it willingly done?" he asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
Kian shook his head. "No. The woods choose. They whisper to one of them. Make them wander alone. Then take them—memories first, then everything else."
A loud crack rang out.
Everyone turned.
The diary had fallen open again — this time, a loose page fluttering out. It had been folded several times and tucked inside the back cover.
Zayaan picked it up and unfolded it carefully.
The ink was different — fainter. Older.
> "If you're reading this, I am already losing pieces of myself. The boy — he came to me in a dream last night. I couldn't see his face, only the back of his head as he walked deeper into the forest. He said one word to me before vanishing.
'Return.'
If he finds his name again… he will find his way back. And he will not return alone."
Kian's voice broke the silence. "He's waking up."
Zayaan felt cold run down his arms. "And what if… we help him find his name?"
No one answered.
Because they all knew the answer.
—
Final Scene of Chapter 6
Title: "The One Without a Name"
The dorm room felt colder now, as if the diary itself had stolen something from the air.
For three nights straight, they'd tried.
Old town records. Abandoned school files. Forgotten family trees. Kian even used every contact from his paranormal course to trace references to any missing child from their village, their school, their block.
Nothing.
Every name led to a dead end.
Every photo was just one boy short.
Every record had four names, never five.
And yet, every memory Zayaan had from childhood felt like someone was missing. A presence. A laugh that echoed but didn't belong to anyone. A shadow in old pictures that didn't quite match the others. And sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could hear a name trying to be spoken — but never fully forming.
"I think we're too late," Yuwin said one night, his voice barely a whisper. "He's been erased properly. He's... become part of it."
"What if…" Wizz hesitated. "What if we're wrong about him being someone else?"
Zayaan looked up. "What do you mean?"
Wizz glanced between them, then said it:
"What if the Fifth Child… was never taken from the group?"
He turned to Zayaan. "What if you were him all along?"
Zayaan felt his chest tighten. "No. I remember. I wasn't the first. I wasn't… I wasn't even there when the pact was made."
Kian didn't speak. His gaze dropped to the pendant still hanging around Zayaan's neck.
"That's the thing, Zay," he said finally. "Memory lies. Especially when the woods want it to."
Silence.
The kind that hurts in the ears.
Then Yuwin broke it. "What if the pact didn't take someone away… what if it left someone behind?"
Zayaan backed away. "You're all just guessing."
"No," Kian said quietly. "We're connecting dots. And you're the only one we can't explain."
That night, Zayaan didn't sleep.
He sat in the common room long after the others had gone to bed, staring at the flame of a dying candle.
Was it possible? Could he be the Fifth — not just a part of the pact, but the outcome of it? A vessel meant to carry something ancient, something unfinished?
The flame flickered.
Then it died.
And a voice inside him whispered a name — not in words, but in a feeling, a loss, an ache.
---
The next morning, a college-wide email arrived.
Campus renovation. Fifteen days. All residents to vacate by evening.
They packed in silence.
No one said what they were thinking: that this break might be exactly what they needed — or exactly what the thing wanted.
As Zayaan zipped up his bag, his fingers brushed the pendant.
It felt warmer.
Like a pulse.
Like something was waiting to be remembered.