Rajeev sat slumped against his pillows, the throbbing pain in his head a dull counterpoint to the sharp, cutting realization that his sanity was being attacked. Suresh sat beside him, still holding the laptop, his expression a mixture of profound concern and utter bewilderment. Mrs. Sharma, their anchor of domestic calm, stood near the door, a worried frown creasing her face.
"Rajeev, look at me," Suresh urged, gently taking the laptop and setting it aside. "I trust you. I believe you saw that email. But if Mom and I can't see it, it means this 'game'—or whatever it is—is happening inside your head. It's trauma, buddy. You're stressed."
"No, Suresh, you don't understand."
Rajeev's voice was weak, but his conviction was absolute. "If it was just my head, why did I fall? Why did I hit my head so hard? Did I just spontaneously decide to knock myself out on the dining table?" He pointed to the thick bandage on his forehead. "That's a real, physical injury. Something happened in that kitchen."
The Unseen Evidence
Mrs. Sharma stepped forward, placing a cool hand on his brow. "Did you see anyone, dear? A stranger? A burglar?"
Rajeev closed his eyes, replaying the sequence: the muffled whimper, the shadow of the child, the looming shape, and the final, icy whisper. "I saw shadows. I heard Anaya's voice. And just before I fell, something whispered in my ear. It felt like cold air, but I heard the words: 'This is not a joke, Rajeev.'
"
Suresh rubbed his temples, his practical, grounded nature warring with the sheer impossibility of the story. "Anaya's voice… the child's shadow you mentioned. That's your mind, Rajeev. That's your grief weaponized against you. Whoever sent that email knows about your wife and daughter. They're using your deepest wound as bait."
Rajeev nodded slowly.
"That's the chilling part. The mail arrived at midnight. I only fell unconscious because I disobeyed the unspoken rule. The mail gave me a choice: Go check or stay asleep. I chose to ignore it and go to the kitchen for water, but the entity forced my hand by using Anaya's voice to lure me into the danger zone. I was already outside the confines of the 'safe choice.' This is a deliberate, personalized attack."
He leaned closer to Suresh. "This isn't random. Someone knows me, Suresh. They know my routine, my house layout, and they know the exact moment I check my mail before bed. And they know what will break me: Anaya's ghost."
The Game's First Move: Isolation
Rajeev's current state—isolated from the truth because no one else could see the email—was clearly the first and most effective move in the game. It was a psychological masterstroke designed to pit him against the only people who could help.
"Listen, I'll call the cybercrime division. We'll report the email address, even if it's disappeared," Suresh insisted.
"It won't work," Rajeev said, shaking his head tiredly. "Anonymous Death is smart. If the mail vanishes from my inbox and is only visible to me, it means the entire operation is highly sophisticated. They're either routing the mail through a private network only my IP address can decrypt, or they're using some kind of neurological trigger that makes my mind project the mail onto the screen."
He paused, collecting his thoughts. "The objective isn't money, Suresh. It's terror. And the wrong step costs a 'big loss.' I lost Anjali and Anaya. What 'big loss' is left for me? My life? Or worse… yours?"
Suresh stared at him, the gravity of Rajeev's fear sinking in. "Don't even talk like that."
"I have to, friend. You and Mom need to stay away from this flat for a few days. If this entity can manifest shadows and cause physical injury, I don't want you dragged into it."
"Absolutely not," Suresh countered, his tone firm. "We're in this together. If they're using your isolation as the weapon, we'll fight back with connection. I'm taking the day off. I'm staying right here."
Mrs. Sharma nodded in agreement. "I'll bring over a thermos of good, strong tea and some food. You're not alone, Rajeev."
The Investigation Begins
Later that afternoon, after the sedative wore off and his strength returned marginally, Rajeev insisted on checking the kitchen again, accompanied by Suresh. They were looking for any minute physical trace of the night's events beyond the dry blood stains.
They examined the floor, the table, and the cabinets.
"Wait," Suresh said, kneeling by the dining table. "The water bottle was here, right?"
"Yes. I dropped it when I heard the whisper."
Suresh pointed to the wooden leg of the dining table. "See this? A fresh scratch." It was a small, horizontal gouge, about two inches long, slightly below tabletop height. "It looks like something sharp dragged across it. Too high for a bottle, too clean for a fall."
Rajeev felt a fresh wave of dread. "It was the sound I heard when I was half-asleep. A scra-a-ape. Maybe the shadow wasn't empty. Maybe the entity, whatever it was, was carrying something or had a sharp protrusion."
His mind raced to the sight of Anaya's shadow. The shadow of a small girl. What would a child's ghost be dragging?
Rajeev's eyes fell on the spot where he had fallen. He noticed a small, almost invisible detail near the corner of the wall—a faint, iridescent sparkle that shouldn't be there. He knelt and brushed the area with his finger.
It was a tiny, synthetic thread—a single, dark blue fiber, no longer than half a centimeter. It looked like the thread from cheap, synthetic plush toys.
He looked at Suresh, his eyes widening in horror. "Suresh, Anaya's favorite teddy bear, Mr. Snuggles. It was dark blue. It had a cheap, synthetic fur that shed these exact threads."
Suresh looked at the tiny thread, his rational defenses finally wavering. The scratch on the table, the child's voice, the vanishing mail, and now, a thread that could be from his dead daughter's teddy bear. It was a horrifying tapestry of the real and the hallucinated, woven by a master manipulator.
"This… this changes things," Suresh admitted, his voice barely a whisper. "This isn't just trauma, Rajeev. This is precision torture."
They knew now that the game wasn't just in Rajeev's head; it was bleeding into his reality. Anonymous Death wasn't a ghost; it was a clever, cruel puppet master with access to both technology and intimate, devastating details of Rajeev's tragic past. The stakes were suddenly terrifyingly real, and Rajeev's resolve hardened: he would find the sender, or die trying to end the game before it cost him another soul.