The sound came again.
Faint, but rhythmic.
As if someone, somewhere, was whispering the verses of the Grantha into wet soil, offering them not to gods, but to the womb of the earth itself.
Devika sat up sharply.
The manuscript at her side had darkened.
Not the pages — the cloth itself, as if sweat and ink had merged inside the wrap. She touched the covering and drew her hand back with a hiss. Heat. It pulsed now with agitation. As though it had sensed something it did not consent to.
Another voice.Another body remembering what was once hers.
By midmorning, she was on the road again — led by a map that existed only in her lower spine. The glyph behind her hipbone ached with every turn she made, as if the verse engraved beneath her skin had become compass and curse.
The villagers watched her leave in silence.
No one asked.
No one blessed her.
They only lowered their gaze, for they too had begun to feel it.
The Grantha had split.
The rains had softened the path, making the earth fragrant and unstable.
She walked through groves of fig and flame-of-the-forest, until she reached a river that had no name on any current map. The water moved with a peculiar slowness — as if listening. Her reflection flickered across the surface, then blurred.
And then — it appeared.
Not her face.
Another woman.
Half-submerged.
Eyes open.
Lips moving.
Repeating the verse Devika thought no one else alive could know.
"Agni sparśaṁ me dehi…""Kaam-Raag smaraṇāya nāmaṁ japāmi…"
She crossed the river barefoot.
The water was cold, but not inert.
It licked her calves, curled around her thighs.
She could feel it remembering her.
Not this body — a former one. The woman she had once been, who last walked this very riverbank with ash between her breasts and the Fifth pressed against her back.
She found her near a banyan tree, kneeling on damp moss.
She was younger.
Or perhaps only newly awakened.
Her blouse was torn. Her hair matted with sindoor. Her eyes wild — not in fear, but in recognition.
The moment Devika stepped into view, the girl flinched.
"You," she said hoarsely. "You were in my dream."
Devika stopped. "You were in mine."
They stared at each other in charged silence. The banyan leaves shivered above them.
"What is your name?" Devika asked gently.
"Ishani," she whispered. "I live in the next village. But I'm not her anymore."
Devika stepped closer. "When did the verses begin?"
Ishani's hands trembled.
"Three nights ago. I began to bleed. But not as a woman bleeds. It came with sound. Each drop spoke a word I'd never heard aloud."
She reached beneath her shawl and held out a thin palm-leaf scroll — not inked, but etched with fingernails.
"I don't know where it came from," she said. "I just… woke up with it."
Devika took it.
Read the single line scrawled across the center:
"Nā mama granthaḥ… nā tvam ekaṁ.""This is not my scripture… nor are you the only one."
Devika didn't speak.
Because she understood what had happened.
The Fifth Flame, once bound only to her, had fractured.
Not by error.
By design.
He was seeding remembrance through multiple vessels.
And not all would complete the verse safely.
"Ishani," she said softly. "Has he come to you yet?"
The girl looked down. Her voice was barely audible.
"Only in touch. Not form."
Devika's breath caught.
The most dangerous state.
Not dream. Not vision.
Incarnate possession through desire.
That night, they remained by the river. Devika lit no fire. Ishani rested with her head on Devika's lap, trembling in her sleep, reciting fragments of verses never written down.
Devika caressed her forehead, not with affection — with protection.
Not all who awaken the Grantha survive it.
Especially when it comes through the body, and not the will.
Just before dawn, Ishani woke screaming.
Devika held her.
He had come.
Not in body.
Not in shadow.
But in heat.
Ishani's thighs burned.
Her chest marked.
And between her breasts now bloomed a glyph Devika had never seen before.
A sixth flame.