She stayed in the house for three days.
Not out of fear.
Out of instinct. The kind animals possess just before a cyclone hits—the stillness that comes not from calm, but from knowing that movement will be punished.
The manuscript was sealed again. Not by cord or cabinet, but by resistance. The pages had stopped opening. Each time she tried, the text blurred, faded, or worse—stared back at her.
On the second night, the gold necklace singed the skin at her collarbone.
On the third, she bled for no reason. No wound. Just a fine line of crimson down the inside of her left thigh. When she touched it, it disappeared.
Maya arrived without warning, holding a jute bag and a small copper box.
"I thought you'd spoken too soon," she said quietly, seating herself on the floor without asking. "But now I know you were meant to. The manuscript has begun to defend itself."
Devika watched her unwrap strands of marigold and turmeric root.
"I thought I'd crossed the fourth flame."
"You have," Maya said. "But the fifth isn't a crossing. It's an invitation. One you once declined."
Devika blinked. "When?"
"In another skin. Another name."
Maya opened the copper box. Inside was a small circle of cloth—a faded red bindi, ancient-looking, pressed onto the center.
"This was your mark. The Fifth chose you then. You refused him. You burned his name."
Devika felt a tremor run up her back. "Who was he?"
"Not a lover," Maya said. "Not a god. Not a teacher. Something else. A mirror. He was the one who could complete the Grantha by remembering it through your body. But you broke the ritual before it was sealed. That rupture rewrote the lineage."
Devika's voice was hoarse. "And now he's trying again."
Maya nodded. "This time, he'll use memory itself to enter."
That night, Devika did not light the lamp.
She sat by the window, watching Delhi exhale its dust and diesel, and let the pulse of the city fall behind her. She had the sensation that someone had entered the house again. But it wasn't a man. Or a ghost.
It was the air itself—charged, dense, curling around her body like incense wrapping a deity before invocation.
The manuscript lay in the center of the floor, untouched.
But the necklace had begun to vibrate—very faint, like a thread humming with withheld sound.
When she fell asleep, she fell into the manuscript.
It wasn't a dream.
She knew that instantly.
She was back in the stone corridor. The same one reflected in the cracked mirror two days earlier. The walls were carved with symbols—not written in any script she knew. Not even pictographic. They resembled spinal curves, unborn flames, ribs bent into vowels.
She walked barefoot across a corridor of petals. Red. Wet. Fragrant.
She wasn't wearing the necklace anymore.
Instead, her body itself bore the symbols—one behind her right ear, one beneath her breast, another on the inside of her thigh.
The final flame flickered before her.
It wasn't fire. It was a figure.
Half shadow. Half gold.
Not a man. Not a beast.
Something between.
He did not walk toward her. He waited. The same way he must have waited centuries ago.
When she reached him, the voice was hers, and yet not.
"You were the verse I refused."
The figure did not move.
"You were the syllable I could not carry."
Stillness.
"You were what I would have become... if I hadn't run."
The fifth flame blinked—once.
Then he said, without moving his lips:
"Say my name, and you will become the Grantha.""Deny me again... and you will remain only the parchment."
Devika shook, but her eyes stayed open.
"I don't know your name."
"You once did. You burned it.Burn it again, and your lineage ends."
Then everything dissolved—into red dust, river mist, and ink that smelled of jasmine and blood.
She woke up choking.
The air in the room was thick with heat. Her sheets soaked. The manuscript wide open, the pages fluttering without wind.
At its center: a fifth symbol.
Not inked.
Burned into the parchment.