Bilkul ji Romi ✅
Main Chapter 1 n
The rain fell heavier than usual that evening. The city's streets glistened under the dim glow of the lamps, each droplet bouncing off the asphalt as if the world itself was weeping. Aarav Sharma, a nineteen-year-old boy with a stubborn heart and restless eyes, sat on the back of his father's old scooter, staring into the storm. His father's death had been two years ago, yet the question of how still tore through him like a blade.
Some people said his father, Raghav Sharma, had died of illness—a weak heart that finally gave up. But whispers in the market told a darker story. Raghav worked in a jewelry shop, a small but respected place in the old lanes of Delhi. There were rumors of smuggling, hidden ledgers, and dangerous men who would kill to keep their secrets safe.
Aarav had heard those whispers his whole life. He just didn't know which ones to believe.
That night, his mind wrestled with those questions as the scooter sped down the slippery road. The rain blurred the neon lights, and the cold wind stung his skin. He had been returning from college, late and tired, when the accident happened.
The truck came out of nowhere.
There was a screech, the flash of headlights, his father's smiling face flickering in his mind, and then—silence.
---
When Aarav opened his eyes, the rain was gone. The city was gone. The sound of honking cars and yelling drivers was gone.
He was standing in a wide, empty field under a sky painted in strange colors—violet clouds, crimson stars, and rivers of light flowing where the horizon should have been. His body felt lighter, as if gravity itself had loosened its grip. He touched his chest. No pain. No blood. No broken bones.
"What… is this place?" his voice trembled.
The air carried whispers, not of people but of time itself—echoes of conversations that had already passed, laughter that once belonged to strangers, and cries of moments yet to come. Aarav spun around, trying to find the source, but there was nothing. Only endless fields and a single, crooked tree in the distance.
Drawn to it, he walked. His footsteps left no sound.
When he reached the tree, he noticed something strange. At its roots lay an hourglass, cracked down the middle, its sand spilling into the earth and floating upward instead of downward. He reached for it.
The moment his fingers brushed the glass, the world bent.
Suddenly, Aarav was no longer in the field. He was standing inside the jewelry shop—his father's jewelry shop.
The smell of polished wood, the glitter of gemstones under white lights, the faint jingling of bangles—it was all so real, so vivid, that Aarav forgot to breathe. Behind the counter stood his father, alive, wearing his usual white shirt with sleeves rolled up. His smile was tired but warm, the way Aarav remembered it.
"Papa?" Aarav whispered.
But Raghav didn't hear him. He was speaking to someone—a man whose face was hidden by the shadows of the shop's awning. Aarav tried to move closer, but his legs refused to obey. He was a spectator, a ghost trapped in the flow of memory.
The shadowed man leaned in and hissed something Aarav couldn't hear. Raghav's smile faded. His hand clenched around the counter's edge. Then, almost as if sensing Aarav's unseen presence, his father turned slightly, his eyes wide with fear.
The scene shattered.
Aarav gasped and stumbled back. He was in the field again, the crooked tree looming over him. The broken hourglass pulsed faintly in his hand.
"What… just happened? Was that… the past?" Aarav muttered.
And then, a voice answered.
"You have touched the river of time," it said, deep and resonant, echoing inside his skull. "Few mortals are chosen. Fewer still survive."
Aarav spun around. A figure stood beneath the tree, cloaked in tattered robes, face hidden by a hood. Its eyes glowed like burning embers.
"Who are you?" Aarav demanded.
"I am no one," the figure replied. "Only a watcher. But you… you are something more. You are a traveler, boy. A traveler between what is and what was, between what will be and what must not."
Aarav's fists tightened. "Then tell me—my father. Did he die of illness… or was he murdered?"
The hooded figure chuckled, a hollow sound. "Answers lie scattered, like grains of sand. You may find them, but beware—every leap into time demands a price. And sometimes, the truth is more dangerous than the lie."
Before Aarav could speak again, the field trembled. The sky cracked open like glass, spilling darkness. The hooded figure dissolved into mist.
Aarav felt himself falling—deeper, faster—into an abyss of clocks, each ticking in different rhythms, each pulling him in a thousand directions. His body convulsed, his mind screamed, and then—
---
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The rhythmic sound echoed around him.
Aarav opened his eyes to see white walls, a ceiling fan spinning lazily, and a monitor flashing beside his bed. Tubes ran into his arms, and the heavy weight of reality crushed him.
He was in a hospital.
Through the blur of his vision, he saw his mother sitting at his bedside, her face pale, her hands clutching his. Tears slipped down her cheeks.
"My son… please wake up," she whispered.
Aarav wanted to answer, to tell her he was awake, that he was right here—but his lips didn't move. His voice was trapped inside. He realized then with horror: his body was still in a coma.
The hospital room began to fade, dissolving into the crooked tree's field once again. Aarav found himself standing, free, while his body lay motionless in the real world.
The hooded figure's voice echoed once more:
"You are between worlds, Aarav Sharma. Your coma is the bridge. Walk carefully. Each step into time may bring you closer to the truth… or bury you deeper in silence."
Aarav looked at the broken hourglass in his hand. The sand glowed faintly, pulsing with power. He thought of his father's smile, the fear in his eyes, the shadowed man at the counter.
His fists clenched.
"If this power can show me the truth," Aarav whispered, his voice hardening, "then I'll use it. I don't care what price I have to pay. I'll find out what really happened to my father."
The wind howled through the field, carrying the echoes of countless voices. Somewhere in that endless storm of time, the truth waited for him.
And so began Aarav's journey—half in the living world, half in the realm of echoes, armed with nothing but a broken hourglass and the burning need to uncover the secret behind his father's death.