The house had not changed in twenty years, but it no longer felt like her mother's.
The paint peeled more slowly now. The air was heavier. Each doorknob seemed to remember being turned by someone who left without saying goodbye. Devika walked barefoot from room to room, the gold necklace around her throat warmer than it had been in days. Her fingertips were dusted with sandalwood from the folio she had unwrapped only an hour ago. She had not lit a lamp, but the room glowed faintly. As if the old walls had begun to respond.
The manuscript was not behaving like a manuscript.
Its ink refused to stay still.
Letters curved, broke apart, realigned into unfamiliar tongues, then reassembled themselves into what she somehow understood — not because she read it, but because the script had begun to root itself into her blood. Some of the syllables stung when she whispered them. Some slid across her tongue like silk. One made her shudder so violently that she dropped the page and had to sit down before the pressure behind her ears became unbearable.
She was no longer reading.She was absorbing.
She breathed in through her nose and closed her eyes.
And then she wasn't there.
A room full of mirrors.
Not polished glass, but obsidian — black, glossy, endless. In each reflection she saw a version of herself. Older. Younger. Hair woven differently. Eyes painted with ash or lined in dark kohl. Mouths open in speech she couldn't hear. Fingers raised in mudras she had never been taught.
But the body was always hers.
In each reflection, the same scar beneath the left breast.
In every version, the necklace she now wore.
Then came the whisper — not from any reflection, but from the space between them.
"You've worn this body before. You've failed before."
The reflections went dark.The obsidian cracked.
She woke on the wooden floor, her palms aching, the necklace still pressed to her chest. The manuscript lay nearby, pages fanned out like fallen wings. One of the verses shimmered slightly in the dusk light — not glowing, not inked anew, but almost... humid. Breathing.
She reached for it with hesitation.
When the fourth burns, the mouth will remember.But only the body can speak what must be said.
She read it three times before daring to mouth the syllables aloud.
Her breath slowed. Her jaw tingled. The back of her spine felt hot.Then the name came, unbidden:
"Agni."
The fourth flame.
Not a concept, not a mantra. A force.
She pressed her palm to her lower belly. The warmth spread outward — like hands drawing patterns beneath her skin, awakening muscles that had held silence for too long.
Something stirred at her root.
The room dimmed.
She knew, suddenly, with terrifying certainty: she had spoken the fourth syllable too soon.
Night fell in silence. She did not light a lamp. The wind that slipped through the latticed window carried dust and memory. Her fingers traced the base of her throat.
There had been another presence in the house. Not living, not spectral. Something that had marked time in the corner of the room while she slept, waiting. Not a ghost. Not a god. But a witness.
In her dream — or memory — she had knelt in a temple far older than any on record. No deity in sight. No offering trays or rituals. Only her, naked to the waist, her breasts streaked with vermillion, her tongue painted with the syllable ka.
A man knelt behind her. Silent. Never touching.
But his breath was at her ear. His voice never spoke a full word.
Only the syllables.
He was teaching her. Without language.
She had failed then.She had fled then.But now, she had spoken all four.
And somewhere, someone had heard.
The next morning she found an envelope pinned to her doorstep.
No name. No address. Just a red wax seal marked with the flame and four crescents.
She opened it slowly.
Inside: a single sheet of cloth paper, creased at the corners.
In precise, inked Devanagari:
The fifth is not yours to speak.The fifth is not written.The fifth must choose you.
And beneath that, in smaller letters:
"Do not remember him.He already remembers you."
She sat still for nearly an hour after that.
She did not touch the manuscript.
She did not return to the attic.
She only stared at her reflection in the glass pane of the cabinet.
And for a moment — a heartbeat long — the reflection moved before she did.