When the Tide Refuses to Turn
During the 1900s, Chattogram, a colonial port-city governed by irregularities and mismanagement and the tidal waves, found its residents dead one after another.
The deaths themselves are not unusual. What is unusual is what happens after.
With each murder, the city becomes much calmer. Accidents disappear. Schedules realigns. The port operates with unusual efficiency as if nothing bad had happened. And then out of nowhere, everything resets.
Most people forget.
But a few don’t. Or rather, they remember something which they shouldn’t. Everything that refuses to disappear- grief without cause, instincts without memories, habits that refuse to disappear. Deep down they know what they remember is wrong, yet it feels more real than their present.
Rahim, a minor ledger clerk, feels that the city feels much better, much cleaner after a death. Amina, a young woman shackled by family duties, takes care of her sick parent, senses that she has already been mourning things that she has never lost. Gradually many more begin to awaken.
As they investigate the repeating murders, they uncover something far more sinister than a curse or divine punishment. The city is trapped in a repeating pattern of time, a loop, where human lives become variables, and death shows up when reality becomes unstable.
Old, redacted records show that a brilliant man once tried to solve this so-called anomaly by choosing logic over people and reason over everything. The attempt failed, leaving behind only fragmented notes and warnings.
Soon, violence began to escalate throughout the city and authorities tightened control. Rahim and Amina soon come to a terrifying realization-
The loop does not exist to punish them. It exists because it still works.
They want to escape. But soon realizes one thing.
If they want to escape, they cannot outrun the system.
They must do the one thing it cannot think of-
choose meaning over order, even if history refuses to remember why.
When the tide finally changes, the world will move on. History will not remember why.
But the city will remember.
