Current Timeline: February 1998 Location: Hyderabad & The Ananthagiri Hills, Andhra Pradesh
Hyderabad, February 14, 1998
The Registrar's office in Abids, Hyderabad, was a building that seemed to exhale the heavy, dusty breath of a century of bureaucracy. It smelled of damp limestone, of old government files bound in pink ribbon that were slowly turning to powder under the weight of neglect, and the nervous, metallic perspiration of a hundred hopeful couples. It was a place where the fluid, chaotic romance of love met the rigid, ink-stained grid of the state. Ceiling fans, their blades thick with years of accumulated grime, sliced through the stagnant air—click-whir-click—counting down the moments of freedom like a metronome for the condemned or the blessed.
But for Arjun Verma and Ananya, the wait was finally over.
"Sign here, please. And here. Initial the bottom of page three," the clerk said, his voice flat, devoid of any celebration. He pushed a ledger that looked like it had survived the Partition across the scratched, ink-stained wooden desk. The paper was yellowed, the lines faint, the edges frayed.
Arjun took the pen—a cheap blue ballpoint tethered to the desk with a piece of dirty twine. At twenty-nine, Arjun Verma was a man of precision. He was tall, his posture carrying the unconscious rigidity of someone who held themselves to impossible standards. His face was sharp, defined by a strong jawline and eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles that were constantly analyzing, categorizing, and dissecting the world. As the Deputy Director of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Hyderabad Circle, his life was governed by the verifiable: carbon dating, stratigraphy, epigraphy, and the cold, hard facts of history.
He didn't believe in ghosts. He didn't believe in gods. He didn't believe in the "feeling" of a place. He believed in evidence. He believed in things that could be measured, weighed, and cataloged. To him, the past was a puzzle to be solved, not a spirit to be communed with.
And the evidence standing next to him—in a simple, breathtaking red chiffon sari, her hair loose and smelling of fresh jasmine—was the only miracle he was willing to accept as scientific fact.
He signed his name with a flourish, the letters sharp and angular: Arjun Verma. It was a signature of intent, of finalizing a variable.
"Your turn, madam," the clerk grunted, barely looking up from his tea, which had formed a milky skin on the surface.
Ananya stepped forward. At twenty-seven, Ananya was a study in contrasts to Arjun. Where he was sharp lines and logic, she was soft edges, intuition, and vibrant chaos. She was an orphan from Mumbai, a city she had left behind three years ago to escape memories she couldn't quite articulate—shadows of a childhood that felt like a blurry, overexposed photograph. She was a freelance photographer, a woman who viewed the world through lenses and apertures, capturing light in a way that often revealed more than the naked eye could see.
Her hand trembled slightly as she reached for the pen.
She felt it again. A hum.
It wasn't the hum of the fan or the traffic outside on Nampally Station Road. It was a vibration beneath the floorboards, a subtle, low-frequency thrum that resonated in her teeth. It was the sound of the earth shifting, or perhaps, something shifting within the earth. She had always been like this—a human radio tuned to a station no one else could hear. She felt the moods of rooms, the weight of history in old buildings, the prickly static of impending bad news. She often dismissed it as anxiety, as an overactive imagination fueled by her artistic temperament.
She ignored it, as she always did. She forced her hand to be steady.
Sign, she told herself. This is real. He is real. You are safe. The shadows can't touch you here.
She signed: Ananya.
"Congratulations," the clerk said, stamping the paper with a dull, final thud. The sound echoed like a gavel. "Next!"
They walked out into the blinding Hyderabad afternoon sun. The noise of the city hit them like a physical wave—rickshaw horns blaring in discordant harmony, hawkers selling roasted corn and jasmine strands, the distant, rhythmic call to prayer from a mosque.
"We did it," Arjun said, turning to her on the steps of the office. A rare, boyish grin broke his usually serious demeanor, softening the lines around his eyes. He took her hands, his grip firm and grounding. "Mrs. Ananya Verma. It sounds... statistically improbable, but undeniably true."
"Mr. Verma," she teased, reaching up to fix his collar, her fingers lingering on the warmth of his neck. "Don't analyze it too much. You might find a flaw in the structural integrity of our marriage before it even begins."
"Data suggests a ninety-nine percent success rate," he murmured, leaning in to kiss her forehead. "The remaining one percent is margin of error for your spice tolerance."
A small group of friends—colleagues from the ASI and a few of Ananya's art school friends—erupted into cheers. They threw handfuls of rose petals that got caught in the hot wind, swirling around them like pink confetti against the dusty street.
"So, where is the party?" asked Ravi, a fellow archaeologist and Arjun's closest friend at the ASI. He clapped Arjun on the back hard enough to make him stumble. "Biryani at Paradise? Or are we going fancy at the Taj Krishna? I'm starving, Arjun."
"No party," Arjun said, checking his HMT Pilot watch. "We are hitting the road. Immediately."
"Honeymoon?" Ravi winked, nudging Ananya.
"Something like that," Arjun said, his smile tightening just a fraction. "Just a few days away. To the hills. Ananthagiri. We need the quiet."
"Ananthagiri?" Ravi frowned slightly. "It's dry this time of year, Arjun. And the guest house is practically a ruin. The plumbing is ancient, and the electricity is a suggestion at best."
"It's secluded," Arjun said firmly. "That's the point."
They said their goodbyes quickly. As they walked towards Arjun's white Maruti Esteem parked under the shade of a dusty Gulmohar tree, Ananya noticed the slight furrow returning to his brow. The joy of the signature was fading, replaced by the weight of reality.
"You're thinking about her, aren't you?" Ananya asked softly, sliding into the passenger seat. The leather was hot against her skin, baking in the Deccan heat.
Arjun started the car, the engine purring to life. He sat there for a moment, gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. He sighed, a long exhale that seemed to deflate him.
"My mother... she's going to be furious, Ananya. You know how she is. Traditional. Orthodox. A woman who believes the stars dictate our bowel movements." He shook his head, shifting the car into gear. "If she knew I married a girl from Mumbai, an orphan with no family lineage, no gotra, no horoscope to match... she would have raised hell. She would have sat on a hunger strike outside the Registrar's office. She has been planning my wedding to a nice Brahmin girl from a 'good family' since I was five."
He looked at Ananya, his eyes full of apology. "I just... I want a few days of peace with you. Just us. Before I face the storm. Before I have to tell her."
"We can't hide it forever, Arjun," Ananya said, looking out the window as the Charminar passed by in a blur of stone and history, its four minarets piercing the blue sky. "She has a right to know. And maybe... maybe she will understand."
"You don't know Savitri Devi Verma," Arjun muttered, shifting gears aggressively as he navigated the chaotic traffic. "But for now, it's just us. Science and Art. The Skeptic and the Dreamer. Let's go find some elevation."
The Journey
They drove west, leaving the chaotic sprawl of Hyderabad behind. The concrete jungle of the city slowly gave way to the ancient, rocky landscape of the Deccan Plateau. Massive granite boulders, balanced precariously on top of each other by millions of years of erosion, dotted the landscape like sculptures left by giants. The land here was old—older than the Himalayas, older than memory.
The sun began to dip, painting the sky in shades of bruised purple and violent orange.
Arjun was a good driver—methodical, careful. He kept the car at a steady sixty. He talked about his work as they drove, his voice a comforting baritone that usually soothed Ananya.
"The excavation at Nagarjunakonda is stalling," he was saying, one hand on the wheel, the other gesturing. "The budget cuts from Delhi are ridiculous. People want history, Ananya, but they don't want to pay for the brushstrokes. They think archaeology is just digging up gold coins and statues. They don't understand that the real treasure is the context. The soil layers. The pottery shards that tell you what a common man ate in the 3rd century. That is truth. Not the myths. Myths are just stories we tell ourselves to hide from the dark."
Ananya listened, smiling faintly, playing with the rings on her fingers. She loved how passionate he was about the dead. It grounded her. She often felt too connected to the living, and sometimes, to things that were neither alive nor dead.
"You and your pottery shards," she laughed softly. "You look at a pot and see a civilization, a trade route, a carbon date. I look at it and wonder who held it. Was she happy? Was she sad? Did she drop it because her hands were shaking from laughter or from fear?"
"That's because you project emotion onto inanimate objects," Arjun countered playfully, glancing at her. "It's a pot, Anu. It held grain. It didn't hold heartbreak. Clay doesn't remember tears."
"Everything remembers, Arjun," Ananya said quietly, her fingers tracing the lens of her camera—a heavy, manual Nikon FM2 that she treated like a child. "Even the rocks. Especially the rocks. They watch."
The road began to climb. They were heading into the Ananthagiri Hills, a dense forest area in the Vikarabad district, the source of the Musi River. The landscape changed drastically. The scrubland vanished, replaced by tall eucalyptus trees, teak, and dense undergrowth. The air grew cooler, crisp with the scent of red dust and drying leaves.
The winding ghat roads were narrow, flanked by thick brush and towering trees that cast long, skeletal shadows across the tarmac. The light was fading fast, the 'golden hour' turning into the treacherous grey of twilight.
The car groaned as it took a steep incline, the engine whining in protest.
"Come on, old girl," Arjun muttered, downshifting to second gear. "Don't give up on me now. Just ten more kilometers."
Suddenly, a loud hiss sounded from under the hood, violent and sharp. It was followed immediately by a plume of thick white steam that erupted from the front grill, obscuring the windshield. The smell of burning coolant—sweet and acrid—filled the cabin.
"Damn it!" Arjun swore, slamming on the brakes. He wrestled the car onto a narrow patch of dirt on the shoulder of the road, barely missing a sheer drop on the left.
The engine sputtered, choked, and died. Silence rushed back in, heavy and ringing.
"Stay here," Arjun said. He popped the hood and got out, waving away the steam with his handkerchief.
Ananya followed him out, clutching her camera instinctively. The forest air was biting cold compared to the city.
"Radiator?" she asked, standing a safe distance away.
"Overheated," Arjun said, frustration leaking into his voice. He grabbed a rag and tentatively touched the radiator cap. He hissed as the heat radiated through the cloth. "It's bone dry. There must be a leak in the hose. I should have checked it before we left. Stupid. Basic maintenance. I was too focused on the wedding logistics."
He looked around. They were in the middle of a dense stretch of forest. The sun had set, leaving only a faint indigo glow in the west. The road was deserted in both directions.
"We need water," Arjun said, kicking the tire. "At least three or four liters to cool this down and get us to the guest house. And I have..." He checked the back seat. "...one half-empty bottle of Bisleri."
He ran a hand through his hair. "I don't think we passed a village for the last ten miles. This is a reserve forest area. There won't be any taps here. We might be stuck until morning."
Ananya stood still. She closed her eyes.
The hum was back. Louder this time.
It wasn't coming from the car. It was coming from the woods to their right. It sounded like the trickle of liquid, but also like a whisper. A beckoning. It felt... damp. It felt heavy, like standing near a subwoofer.
"There's water nearby," she said. Her voice sounded distant to her own ears.
Arjun looked at her, wiping grease from his hands. He gave her a tired, skeptical look. "Anu, please. We are in the middle of a dry deciduous forest in February. The water table is fifty feet down. There's no water here."
"There is," she insisted, opening her eyes. She pointed towards a dense thicket of thorny bushes and Sal trees to the right of the road. "Through there. A pond. It's... stagnant, but it's water."
Arjun frowned, walking over to her. "Have you been here before? On a shoot? Did you read a map?"
Ananya shook her head. "No. Never. I just... I can feel it. It feels... cold. Heavy."
Arjun sighed. He was a man of science. He knew that 'feeling' water was biologically impossible unless she was dowsing, which was pseudoscience. But he also knew they were stuck. He walked to the edge of the road and peered into the gloom. He squinted.
"Wait," he muttered. "The vegetation... it is denser there. And those are Terminalia trees. They usually grow near water bodies."
He looked back at her, surprised. "You might be right. There could be a natural catchment area down there. A hidden tank, maybe."
"I told you," she said, hugging herself against a sudden chill.
"It looks like a trek," Arjun said, grabbing the empty 5-liter plastic can from the trunk. "Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes down into the valley. I'll go check. If you're right, I'll never question your intuition again. If you're wrong, we are sleeping in the car until a truck passes."
"Be careful," she said. A sudden wave of nausea hit her, a warning bell ringing in her gut. It was sharp and metallic. "Arjun... maybe we should just wait. It's getting dark. The forest feels... watchful."
"It's fine. It's just trees," he said, walking over and kissing her cheek. His stubble grazed her skin. "Lock the doors. Stay in the car. I'll be back in twenty minutes."
He turned and disappeared into the brush, the sound of his footsteps crunching on dry leaves fading quickly.
The Viewfinder
Ananya stood alone on the side of the road.
She leaned against the car, the metal still warm against her back. The silence of the forest descended upon her. It wasn't a peaceful silence. It was a heavy, watching silence. The kind of silence that happens when a predator enters a room.
She felt exposed.
To distract herself, she lifted her camera. The light was beautiful in a haunting way—the "blue hour," where the world lost its color and became shades of shadow.
Click. Whirrr.
She took a photo of the winding road, the asphalt looking like a grey ribbon disappearing into the black throat of the hills.
Click. Whirrr.
She took a photo of the steam still rising faintly from the car hood, looking like a ghost escaping the engine.
Then, she turned her lens towards the forest where Arjun had vanished.
She looked through the viewfinder. The world condensed into a rectangle of glass and mirrors. She focused the lens, twisting the ring. The blurred greens sharpened into distinct leaves and branches.
Then she saw it.
In the viewfinder, deep in the background, peeking through a gap in the foliage that shouldn't have been visible to the naked eye, were ruins.
Ananya lowered the camera. She looked with her own eyes.
Nothing. Just a wall of green thorns, Sal trees, and darkness.
She frowned. A shiver ran down her spine. She raised the camera again.
There they were.
Grey, jagged stones. A collapsed archway. And something else... a flag? No, a piece of cloth, tattered and black, fluttering in a wind that she couldn't feel. The ruins looked... wrong. They didn't look like the Kakatiya ruins she had seen in history books or the forts Arjun talked about. These stones looked sharper, angrier. And they seemed to be vibrating in the lens, a visual distortion like heat haze, even though it was cold. It was as if the lens was picking up a wavelength of reality that her eyes were filtering out.
"What on earth..." she whispered.
She shouldn't go. Arjun told her to stay.
But the pull was irresistible. It was like a fish hook caught in her navel, reeling her in. It wasn't curiosity; it was a summons. A compulsion. A feeling of deja vu, but for a memory she didn't possess.
Just a peek, she thought. Just to get a better angle. It's right there. I'll stay within sight of the car.
She locked the car.
She pushed through the initial barrier of bushes. The thorns tore at her red sari, snagging the expensive chiffon, but she didn't care. She climbed a small embankment and found a game trail—a narrow path beaten down by animals... or something else.
She walked for what felt like five minutes, though her watch had stopped ticking. The air grew colder. The smell of eucalyptus vanished, replaced by a scent she couldn't place. It smelled like musk, old copper, and wet fur.
She broke through the tree line and gasped.
She was standing on the edge of a depression, a natural bowl in the earth hidden from the road. And in the center of it, half-buried in the hillside, were the ruins she had seen.
They were magnificent and terrifying. Massive blocks of black basalt, carved with intricate, swirling patterns that made her eyes water if she looked at them too long. It wasn't a temple in the traditional sense. There was no shikara, no mandapa. It looked like a bunker, a fortress built to keep something in rather than keep people out.
She raised her camera. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably.
Click.
The shutter sound was deafening in the silence.
Suddenly, a shadow detached itself from the top of the ruins.
It was a vulture.
But it was immense. Its wingspan seemed to blot out the little remaining light. It didn't flap; it just dropped. It dropped straight towards her with a silent, terrifying grace.
Ananya didn't scream. Her throat locked. She saw its eyes—milky white, blind, yet seeing everything.
It wasn't attacking her flesh; it was attacking her space. It swooped low, mere inches from her face, the wind from its wings smelling of carrion. It was a psychic assault, a sudden projection of malice and hunger into her mind.
Ananya scrambled backward in pure terror. Her heel caught on a thick, exposed tree root.
She fell hard.
Her head struck a stone jutting out from the earth. There was a flash of white light behind her eyes, then a dull thud.
The world tilted. The trees spun. The darkness rushed in from the edges of her vision, soft and welcoming.
The Silent Chamber
She didn't know how long she was out. Minutes? Hours?
When she opened her eyes, the forest was gone.
She was lying on cold stone.
She groaned and sat up. Her head throbbed with a blinding pain. She touched her forehead; her fingers came away wet and sticky with blood.
She looked around. She was no longer outside. She had stumbled—or been dragged—into the entrance of the ruins. The light was dim, coming from phosphorescent moss that clung to the ceiling.
She stood up, swaying, using the damp wall for support. Logic screamed at her to run back to the car. Arjun would be back. He would be frantic. He would be looking for her.
But her feet didn't move towards the exit. They moved deeper. The pull was stronger now. It wasn't a hook anymore; it was gravity. She felt like she belonged down there.
She walked through a collapsed archway. The stones had been deliberately arranged to form a descending tunnel, resembling the throat of a beast. The walls were smooth, unnatural, as if melted rather than carved.
She emerged into a massive cavern.
Ananya stopped, her breath hitching in her throat.
She was in a cathedral of shadows. The cavern was vast, the ceiling lost in darkness. But the floor... the floor was illuminated by torches that burned with blue flames—cold fire that gave no heat.
Huge drums were arranged in a circle. They were ancient, their wood black with age, their skins stretched tight. They looked like they were made from something... leathery.
They were silent.
That was the worst part. They were not beating. They were just there. Waiting. Their silence was heavier than any sound. It was a pregnant silence, a held breath before a scream. It was the silence of a held note, vibrating with potential energy.
And in the center of the cavern, dominating the space, was the Idol.
It was carved from a single block of obsidian. It stood at least twenty feet tall.
It was humanoid, but wrong. Its legs were digitigrade, like a beast's. Its torso was emaciated, ribs carved with horrifying detail. Great, leathery wings wrapped around its body like a cloak.
But the face...
Ananya whimpered.
The face had no eyes. Just a smooth, blank surface where eyes should be. And a mouth—a vertical slit that ran from the chin to the forehead, sewn shut with carved stone stitches.
It was Astoretha. Though she didn't know the name, her soul recognized the shape of its own nightmare. She felt a wave of dizziness, a sense of profound wrongness that made her stomach churn.
The energy in the room was overwhelming. It pressed against her psychic senses like a physical weight. She could feel the suffering that had happened here. She could hear the echoes of screams in the silence.
She backed away, clutching her camera to her chest. "I have to leave. I have to leave now."
She turned to run back up the tunnel.
"Have you come for darshan?"
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It was a female voice—cultured, soft, almost maternal, but layered with an age that chilled Ananya's marrow.
Ananya froze. She slowly turned back towards the idol.
Stepping out from the shadows behind the giant stone leg was a woman.
She was stunning. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, her skin glowing with an unnatural health. She wore a simple white cotton sari, the kind worn by widows, but on her, it looked regal. Her hair was loose, cascading down her back like a dark river.
But her eyes... her eyes were too wide, too black. And on her forehead, instead of a bindi, was a horizontal slash of fresh, wet crimson.
Ananya trembled. "Who... who are you?"
The woman glided forward. She didn't seem to walk; she floated. She looked at Ananya with a mix of pity and hunger.
"My name is Savitri," the woman said softly.
She tilted her head, observing Ananya's camera, her bloodied forehead, her fear.
"Have you come for darshan?" Savitri asked again, her voice like silk wrapping around a knife.
Ananya couldn't speak. She shook her head violently.
Savitri's smile vanished, replaced by a cold, imperious mask.
"It is not the time for darshan," Savitri said, her voice dropping an octave, resonating with the silent drums. "And this is not the procedure to come to offer worship."