no isn't it too fast , make it slowpace there should conversation ,innermonlogue ,shock etc ,
# Prologue
Monsoon lingered over Chinmaya Gram, shrouding dawn in a sleepless grey. Aarav stared at the droplets tracing lazy veins down his window, torn from a dull sleep by something he could not name—tension, foreboding, a feeling caught between waking and nightmare. His mother's voice drifted from the kitchen, muffled by rain and the school bell's distant clang. He felt numb, hands reluctant to move; his mind kept returning to the shape of Diya's laughter, Kabir's teasing, and Ritwik's steady calm. All ghosts now, though morning claimed them alive.
The first notice of crisis came not as a scream but as a whisper. Aarav opened the door to a hush spreading through the courtyard. Neighbors clutched each other's arms. Even the air, thick with the lingering scent of festival powder and incense, stilled between each word.
He edged toward the crowd forming by the old school building. Murmured words—"terrible," "impossible," "blood"—spread faster than sense. Aarav's thoughts became a wild current: This isn't real. This doesn't happen here. His legs moved of their own accord.
Under the shadow of the school, he glimpsed Diya. Color drained from her face, contorted in terror, her hair singed with dried blood. Her body remained twisted beneath the broken window, neck bruised, eyes flung wide open. Aarav's chest tightened. His mind recoiled, then cycled rapidly—No, she'll get up. No, Diya can't die.
"Let the boy through," someone said, but the world had shrunk, and he saw only Diya's unmoving fingers pressed against her torn scarf. Vaguely, adults questioned him, but their words fell away like rain on clay.
He remembered, then, running back through the corridors—the clang of his shoes on tile, hands shaking so hard his knuckles ached—until Kabir's name rose against the wind. His mind clung to one image: Kabir swinging between the banyan roots only last evening, laughter loud, daring. Now that tree hulked at the campus edge, a grotesque silhouette against the storm. People clustered beneath it, some shouting, others sobbing. Every step closer made Aarav's heartbeat sharp, blood roaring in his ears.
Kabir hung from the tree, limbs bound and head slumped. Someone gasped, and Ajay's father pulled him away, but the copper wire glinting around Kabir's mouth, the rods pinning his arms, the crude message carved into bark—these plunged deeper than any yell ever could. Aarav stared so long his vision blurred, willing the scene to dissolve, to become a hallucination. He barely noticed the drizzle soaking his shirt.
At some point he retreated, legs carrying him instinctively to the chemistry lab—he refused to believe the murmurs about Ritwik. He thought, Not him, too. Not all of them. But the door wouldn't yield, people pounded from the outside, and then the window shattered beneath heavy hands. The sudden rush of chemicals—sharp, acrid, like burnt hope—overpowered all thought.
Ritwik's body was bent over the counter, chess piece in hand, chest torn by broken glass. A Polaroid was taped to his shirt, a relic of happier afternoons. Aarav stared at that photo, lost in widening numbness, the memory of that moment when all four stood together, talking about nothing—how had it come to this? He felt cold, so cold, his mind skidding between panic and blankness.
Long hours later, alone in his bed, Aarav found he could not weep. His mother hovered, her words distant, attention split between grief and disbelief. The world remained impossibly unchanged around him—crickets sang, pots clattered, and in the street someone greeted the postman as if nothing had happened.
In the stifling darkness of his room, Aarav's thoughts turned jagged. He burrowed into memories—last night's festival lights, Diya's red thread pressing into his palm, Kabir's voice echoing beneath the tree, Ritwik smiling awkwardly as he explained a chess opening. He tried to convince himself that tomorrow would be different, that he would wake from this nightmare, that time would move forward.
But as sleep approached, exhaustion won over will. He slipped under, mind torn by half-formed prayers and impossible shadows.
Morning came abruptly, like a door slamming open. The same rooster crowed. The same call for breakfast. The festival drums, already beating, sounded eerily unchanged. Aarav stared at the calendar: Monday, September 29th.
For a split second, a wave of relief flooded him—just a terrible dream. But the prickling memory of blood, shock, and those faces—the pain was unmistakably real.
He lingered by the mirror, clutching Diya's thread, hearing echoes of yesterday's horror behind every familiar sound. His hands trembled as he buttoned his shirt.
On the way to school, Kabir called from the porch, voice loose and light as always: "You look like you've seen a ghost, da!" Aarav just stared, unable to answer, heart hammering as Kabir bounded past. Ahead, Diya's laugh sent shivers through him, and Ritwik's serious nod only deepened the uncanny chill. Their presence was a mercy and a curse.
Every sight, every scent—marigold and rain, chalk and incense—felt doubled, as if layered atop a copy of itself.
Aarav's mind whirled with dread and disbelief. The murders—real? A warning? Was he cursed to relive their deaths, powerless? Or was this a chance to change what was set? As the festival banners fluttered in the same breeze, Aarav realized nothing in Chinmaya Gram had truly changed—except for him.
The school bell rang, slicing the numbness. Aarav squared his shoulders against the weight of memory and uncertainty, and stepped inside, determined to face the day—for the first time, and not the last.