The rain tapped gently on the window panes as Aarya stepped into the dimly lit hallway of the ancestral mansion. Dust hung in the air like forgotten memories, and every slow footstep echoed behind her as though the house was breathing again after years of silence.
Aarya Malhotra had always been a woman who believed in logic, structure, and clean lines. Buildings made sense to her—people did not. As an architect in Delhi, she spent years designing spaces that felt safe, minimal, controlled—everything her life had failed to be.
Especially after Vikrant.
Even now, the thought of his name tightened something inside her chest. The engagement, the betrayal, the silence that followed. She had given her heart once. It had not ended gently.
So when the lawyer called to inform her of her grandmother's passing and the inheritance, she welcomed the escape.
"A fresh start," she had told herself.
But now, standing in the house she barely remembered from childhood summers, she wasn't sure she believed that anymore.
The mansion didn't feel abandoned.
It felt watched.
Her grandmother, Rajjo Devi, had been a quiet woman with eyes that always looked tired—tired and frightened. Aarya remembered how Dadi would lock all windows before dusk and whisper prayers under her breath. At the time, Aarya had laughed, thinking it was old age superstition.
Now, the house didn't make her laugh.
She moved deeper inside, tracing her fingers along chipped wallpaper and framed sepia portraits. The silence felt heavy—like it was holding something. Waiting.
When she opened the bedroom door, a cold breeze brushed past her.
The window was open.
But she was certain she hadn't opened it.
Outside, under the pale light of the stormy sky, the willow tree stood at the edge of the property—its long, drooping branches swaying even though the air was still. As a child, she had loved that tree. She used to play beneath it, braiding fallen strands of its leaves into little crowns.
Until the night Dadi caught her there after dark and slapped her for the first and last time.
She had said only one thing:
"Never go near that tree after sunset. Never."
Aarya had forgotten that memory—until now.
Lightning cracked across the sky.
The shadows under the tree shifted.
She froze.
Someone—something—was standing beneath it.
Tall. Still.
Watching her.
She blinked.
The figure disappeared.
A shiver crept up her spine.
That night, she couldn't sleep. Not because of the storm. Not because of the creaks and groans of the old house settling. But because of the whisper that came in the dead of night, floating like breath against her ear.
"Aarya…"
She turned sharply.
No one.
Just the open window…
and the willow tree swaying below.