WHY

The air was still, the kind that hums gently with fluorescent sterility and secrets unsaid. Somewhere, a heart monitor beeped in slow rhythm. A fan turned lazily overhead, its blades casting fleeting shadows across the white walls like ghosts on repeat.

Danuj stirred.

It wasn’t sudden. His eyelids twitched first, fluttering like wings waking from winter. A soft groan escaped his lips, barely audible. Then, his fingers clenched lightly over the coarse sheet tucked beneath him, as if testing the grip of reality. The nurse who had been flipping through a magazine at the far corner dropped it in shock. Her chair squeaked backward as she rushed toward the bed.

“Doctor! Doctor Mirza!” she called, her voice cracking, more from disbelief than urgency.

Moments later, the door opened with a practiced push. Dr. Mirza entered, composed, confident, and unhurried as always. The kind of man whose presence alone steadied the air. Salt-speckled beard, glasses perched low on his nose, and that faint scent of antiseptic and aged books followed him like a whisper. He came to the side of the bed, his eyes scanning the vitals.

“Danuj,” he said gently, a familiarity in his tone that was neither too warm nor clinical. “You’re awake.”

Danuj blinked slowly, the ceiling lights blinding for a second. “Where…?” His voice was hoarse, like it hadn’t been used for centuries.

“You’re at Westvale Private Hospital,” Mirza replied. “You’ve been unconscious for ten days.”

Ten days. The number echoed inside Danuj’s mind like a dropped coin in a well. He looked around, white sheets, a machine breathing beside him, an IV drip hanging silently. No flowers, no cards. No visitors.

His gaze finally landed on Mirza. “What happened?”

The doctor sat beside him, folding his hands over his knee. “You were in an accident. A head trauma. You were found unconscious inside your car, parked dangerously close to a cliff’s edge. You’re lucky to be alive.”

Danuj searched his own thoughts like rummaging through an old drawer. His name? Yes. His address? Clear. His company? Sharp. Favourite whiskey? Glenfiddich, 21-year-old, neat. But there was a gap. A murky fog that clung to the recent past like a damp cloth he couldn’t peel away.

“I remember everything. I think,” he said, frowning. “Except… the last few months. It’s just… gone.”

Mirza nodded, unfazed. “Retrograde amnesia. Not uncommon in traumatic brain injuries. Think of it as your brain’s way of protecting itself from something it wasn’t ready to handle. But don’t worry. Everything else is intact. Your long-term memory, your cognitive abilities, speech, motor skills perfectly functional. We’ll monitor you, but there’s nothing to panic about.”

It sounded too calm.

“I’m alone?” he asked suddenly.

Mirza hesitated, then nodded. “No next of kin. But your household has been informed. Your… people are waiting.”

People. Not family. Not friends. Just… people.

Danuj leaned back against the pillow. The hospital smelled like lemon disinfectant and resignation. He had always known loneliness, but never had it felt so absolute. He was a billionaire with an empire, yet here he was waking from the edge of death, and the only witness was a nurse who couldn’t remember his coffee order and a doctor who knew too much, too calmly. He closed his eyes briefly, letting the hum of the machines lull him into an uneasy peace. But then, just as the nurse began checking his IV, he noticed it, the faintest shimmer on the window glass. He squinted. It was nothing. A trick of the light. But for a second, he could’ve sworn he saw… something.

An eye.

Watching.

The car ride home felt like slipping into a tailored memory, familiar leather seats, the faint smell of cedar and cologne, the low hum of the engine, but something about it pressed heavily against Danuj’s senses. The trees lining the road outside blurred past, casting fleeting shadows that melted into one another like silent witnesses. He sat back, eyes half-lidded, trying to convince himself that the weariness in his chest was just the lingering fog of sleep.

Not grief.

The gate to the mansion swung open without a sound, like it had been waiting.

His estate stood there grand and precise, trimmed lawns hugging the curved driveway, white pillars flanking the glass doors like guards carved from ice. It hadn’t changed. Not one brick out of place. The world he had built with ruthless efficiency. But as the car rolled closer, Danuj couldn’t shake off the sensation that he was not arriving home but returning to the final page of a book he hadn’t finished. The doors opened before the car even stopped.

A line of staff stood in quiet formation: the maid with her crisp uniform, hands folded and eyes low; the watchman nodding politely, his jaw clenched a second too long; the chef, apron spotless, offering a too-eager smile. Everything is in place. Every gesture is clean.

It was too smooth.

“Welcome back, sir,” said the butler, a greying man with a voice like dry silk. “We’ve kept everything as it was.”

As it was. That phrase stuck like a thorn in his thoughts.

Danuj walked into the mansion, and silence rushed to greet him. The air was cool, perfectly conditioned, but lacked warmth. No jazz humming from the stereo. No faint scent of sandalwood candles. No movement, except for eyes that followed him silently.

He took the stairs slowly, his hand brushing along the mahogany banister, polished to an unnatural sheen. The chandelier above flickered faintly—not broken, but as if something unseen had passed beneath it.

In his room, nothing had changed. Not a crease in the bedsheet. Not a book out of line on the shelf. Even the glass of water on the bedside table looked untouched, like it had been waiting ten days without evaporating. He sat on the edge of the bed. Tired, but not from the journey. From the hollowness.

The maid, Latha, he remembered vaguely, entered with folded clothes. She didn’t look up, didn’t speak unless prompted. He tried to smile. “You’ve been here long?”

“Eight years, sir,” she replied, eyes fixed on the fabric in her hands.

He waited for her to say more. She didn’t.

That evening, he stood at the balcony, looking over the garden. Sunset poured its dying colours across the lawn like spilt wine. He breathed in, deeply. There it was again, that gnawing emptiness. As if the house had forgotten how to feel. Later, as he washed his face, the mirror fogged gently with the warmth of the water. He wiped it absentmindedly… and froze.

There, on the edge of the sink, as water spiralled down the drain, it formed a pattern, just for a moment.

A perfect, slitted eye.

He blinked. The water swirled into nothing. His fingers trembled slightly as he gripped the edge of the counter. “You're imagining things,” he murmured to himself. “Residual anaesthesia. Stress. That’s all.”

The eye was gone. But the feeling remained. That something had looked back at him. That night, he lay in bed, eyes wide open. He closed his eyes, forcing sleep. Forcing trust. Forcing normalcy.

The morning sun spilled across the marble floor like molten gold, pooling beneath the windows that towered above the central hall. Danuj sat at the long breakfast table, one end to himself, while a white napkin lay folded with military precision beside his untouched plate. A cup of black coffee steamed silently. It had always been this way, orderly, efficient, sterile. But now, in the absence of distraction, it felt almost... performative.

Across the room, the maid was polishing the silver tray again. The surface already gleamed, yet her hand moved over it in tight, repetitive circles, as if she were scrubbing away something unseen. The chef stood nearby, his hands behind his back, humming softly under his breath. A strange tune. Unmelodic. Childlike.

“Is that a song?” Danuj asked, half without thinking.

The chef paused, lips pressed into a faint line. “Hmm? Oh. Just something my grandmother used to sing.”

“What language was it?”

The man smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m not sure, sir. I think it was just gibberish. For kids.”

Danuj nodded slowly, watching him turn and walk away.

He felt like he was watching actors in a play he no longer remembered auditioning for.

Later that day, as dusk crawled its way up the mansion walls and painted the halls in orange melancholy, Danuj found himself in the guest bathroom on the third floor, the one he rarely used. The bulb flickered faintly overhead as he leaned down to wash his face, the water chilling against his skin, chasing away the remnants of a day filled with wordless eyes and rooms that felt a degree too cold.

He stood upright and glanced in the mirror.

Nothing unusual.

But then… the sink.

Water swirled into the drain, as it always did. But this time, he didn’t look away. Something about the movement drew him in. The whirlpool of water narrowed as it descended, twisting faster, pulling light into its centre. Within that whirl, just for a breath of a moment, the spiral took on shape. Not random. Not a trick of light.

An eye.

Perfectly circular, pupil narrow like a serpent’s, watching him through the water.

His breath caught.

He blinked, and it was gone.

The drain gargled its last breath and fell silent.

His heartbeat sped up, not in panic, but in puzzled disbelief. He leaned in, wiped the rim, and turned the tap again. Water flowed, ordinary and obedient. He stood motionless for a long time, letting the silence return. When he stepped out of the bathroom, the hallway was empty. No footsteps. No distant murmurs of life. Just that same odd lullaby. Somewhere in the house.

That night, sleep came slowly.

The warmth of the bed, the dim lights, the faint lavender from the diffuser, nothing calmed the friction inside his head. He lay staring at the ceiling, tracing the contours of the crown molding with his eyes. In the hush, he could almost hear the house thinking.

He threw the blanket aside and walked into the hallway. Maybe he’d drink something. Or read. Anything to shake off this restless inertia. But as he passed the study, something caught his eye. A shimmer.

He stopped. Walked back. The antique brass handle of the wine cellar door, something was carved into it. Barely noticeable in the low light. He ran his thumb over it.

The same symbol.

The eye.

But this time, it wasn’t accidental. It was intentional. Etched. As though someone had drawn it with a blade, hidden in plain sight. He heard a sound behind him. He turned quickly, but saw nothing. He stepped into the study. Pulled open drawers. Checked shelves. No new books. No messages. But then he noticed a faint scratch beneath the desk, right under where he usually sat.

He bent down, squinting.

Another eye.

This one is messier, rushed. Almost like a warning.

He stepped back, the air in the room suddenly heavy. Every sound now rang louder: the creak of the wooden floor beneath him, the distant hum of the refrigerator, the soft knock of wind against the windows.

Was this madness?

A side-effect?

Or was it something buried within the lost memory?

Something trying to surface?

Dr. Mirza’s words echoed in his mind: “There’s no damage to motor functions. No sign of brain trauma. You just lost time, Danuj—not yourself.”

But what if the lost time was where the damage lived?

What if the fracture wasn’t in his head... but in his world?

That night, he didn’t sleep. Morning arrived not as a blessing but as an interrogation.

The curtains let the light in too eagerly, slicing across Danuj’s face like accusations. He hadn’t slept. Not truly. His eyes had closed, yes. But his mind… it had wandered endlessly through winding hallways and water-eyed drains, humming lullabies, and the scraping etch of symbols where they had no reason to be. He sat now in his private lounge, fingers brushing over the keyboard of his laptop with the sort of hesitation a man might have before opening a door marked Do Not Enter.

He typed:

Short-term memory loss causes.

Symbol hallucinations.

Eye symbol subconscious memory.

Visual pareidolia. PTSD?

Lack of warmth in familiar places.

Amnesia and stress triggers.

Each search led him deeper, down sterile medical definitions, scattered forum posts, case studies of war veterans, and head trauma patients. Some spoke of memory gaps induced by trauma, others of hallucinations caused by stress, even rare psychosis triggered by subconscious guilt.

But nothing quite… fit.

He wasn’t hallucinating people, wasn’t hearing voices in his head (yet). The symbols appeared in objects. Carved, etched, scratched. Physical. And no trauma memory explained the behaviour of the people around him.

The maid who never made eye contact.

The chef whose lullaby had no origin.

The watchman who always saluted, even if Danuj passed by unnoticed.

It wasn’t paranoia. It wasn’t just trauma.

It was as if they were playing a part, a role they had rehearsed.

And he… was the only one without a script.

The study had always been his place of power. Walnut-paneled walls. Books organized alphabetically. A custom-built humidor in the corner. The scent of old leather and tobacco ink gave the room a sort of grounded finality, as if decisions made here shaped the world outside it. But now, seated at his desk, with the ghost of a symbol still etched beneath it, he felt like a guest in his own kingdom.

He picked up a pen and began to scribble on a notepad. It wasn’t planned, it was instinctive. He wrote one word.

WHY.

Then underneath:

Why would I have memory loss?

Why are they too polite?

Why are there symbols in my house?

Why do I feel like I’m being watched—even when I’m alone?

Why does this house feel like a crime scene that’s been cleaned too well?

He tapped the pen against his bottom lip, the rhythm steady and quiet. And then, without thinking, he whispered to the room, “What don’t I know about myself?”

The question hung there, suspended.

Outside, the wind pressed softly against the windows. A bird called from the garden. A soft clink echoed from the kitchen downstairs, cutlery perhaps. But something inside him shifted. It was the first time he had said it out loud.

Not What happened to me?

But what do I not remember about myself?

He called Dr. Mirza that afternoon.

The doctor answered quickly, his voice composed, warm as ever. “Danuj. Good to hear from you. How are you adjusting?”

“I have a few questions,” Danuj said, not masking the edge in his voice. “About my condition.”

“Of course. Ask anything.”

“You said my accident was trauma-induced. Can trauma cause me to see things? Symbols?”

There was a pause, short but perceptible. “Yes. Visual hallucinations aren’t common, but are possible in extreme stress cases. Often, your brain misinterprets patterns in your environment. Have you seen something?”

“Maybe,” Danuj said flatly. “Also… you’re sure I didn’t suffer any severe brain damage?”

“No haemorrhage. No lesions. Your scans were pristine. You just… lost time. Memory loss due to psychological shock is not uncommon in cases where—”

Danuj cut in. “Where is the trauma still happening?”

Another pause. This one is heavier.

“Danuj,” Mirza said gently, “Are you feeling unsafe?”

He stared out the tall window, where the gardener was pruning roses methodically… snip, snip, snip. Too methodically.

“I don’t know yet,” Danuj said. “That’s the problem.”

That night, as he walked past the wine cellar again, he stopped. He turned the handle slowly. The door creaked open. Inside, the darkness smelled of stone and oak barrels and something older, like wet metal and forgotten days. He stepped in, dragging his fingers along the shelf edge. There was a stillness here, not just of air but of intent. As if the room was waiting.

And then he saw it.

On the barrel closest to the wall, near the base, chalk lines, faint but deliberate.

An eye.

Again.

But this time… it wasn’t alone.

Beside it, in hasty, half-erased script, was a word.

"REMEMBER."

His breath caught in his throat.

He stepped back.

He didn’t sleep that night either.

But this time, he didn’t lie in bed.

He sat in his study, the wine cellar door locked behind him, and stared at the word he had written earlier on the notepad.

WHY.

He added a new line below it.

What should I ‘remember’? And who wrote it?

Sleep finally came, but only because his body betrayed him.

After two days of pacing corridors, whispering to himself, and staring at ink-stained notepads, Danuj collapsed on the study couch, fully clothed, heart thudding like it had just outrun something it couldn’t name. The lamp cast a low amber hue over his sharp cheekbones and stubbled jaw, turning the calm of his face into a question, not an answer.

And then came the fragments.

Like lightning in fog.

A wet floor…

Crimson shards of glass…

A scream swallowed by thunder…

A woman’s hand slapping against a windshield, smearing something red across it…

And above it all, a voice. Not loud. Not angry.

“He shouldn’t wake up.”

Danuj jerked awake, mouth dry, lungs panicked. His eyes searched the room for the scream, but there was only stillness. The grandfather clock chimed once. It was 3:15 a.m.

He wiped sweat from his brow and stumbled to the mirror. He gripped the edge of the sink, trying to breathe.

You’re imagining things.

It’s trauma. It’s dreams. It’s chemical echoes from a broken brain.

And yet…

That voice had been too clear. Too real. Not imagined. Not a creation.

It had weight.

He glanced down.

There, faint but present, was the shape again, at the corner of the mirror frame.

The eye. Not chalk this time. Etched. Like a fingernail had scraped it in long ago.

His vision blurred for a moment. Then steadied.

He whispered, “No one else is seeing this… because it’s for me.”

Later that morning, he walked through the mansion like a man looking for landmines. His fingers grazed the edges of picture frames, bookshelves, lampshades. He wasn’t sure what he was searching for anymore, scratches? Warnings? Clues? Or some message from a version of himself he could no longer remember.

Everything about the house seemed the same. The cushions never shifted. The shoes by the door were always lined perfectly. The table was always set, forks left exactly two inches from the edge, napkins folded into tight swans. And then, just as he was about to turn into the guest corridor and he stopped.

The sound.

Soft. Careful. Just barely there.

A hum.

Not just any tune. That lullaby again. The same one the chef had hummed the other day.

But it wasn’t coming from the kitchen now.

It was upstairs.

From his old art studio.

The one no one was supposed to enter.

His heartbeat slowed, not from calm but from instinct. The kind that tightens before danger.

He climbed the steps like a ghost retracing its own murder. The studio door creaked as he pushed it open. Dust had gathered on the edges of easels; canvases leaned against one another in careless silence. But in the centre, on the stool, it was something new.

A fresh canvas.

Blank… except for a symbol painted in thick black strokes. Sloppy. Desperate.

The eye.

But this one had something more. A crack through the pupil. Like it was breaking open. And behind it, resting neatly on the ledge of the window, was a single leather-bound glove. His glove.

He picked it up.

Inside, tucked in the inner lining, was a folded piece of paper. He opened it with trembling fingers. It was a torn page, ripped from a notebook. His handwriting.

"The cellar knows. Don’t trust the dream. Ten shadows. Don’t forget: The trigger was not the accident. The silence is their weapon."

A coldness pooled in his stomach. He was leaving messages for himself.

Warnings.

And he was running out of time to understand them.

That evening, while sipping untouched scotch and staring into the fireplace that refused to comfort him, Danuj tried to recall anything. Just one thing. A full memory. Not a flash, not a fragment.

But the more he searched, the louder the pressure became in his skull. Like something was clawing from the inside, desperate to be freed, and yet terrified to be seen.

And then, unexpectedly, came the sound of footsteps.

Not on the marble floor.

Above him.

In the attic.

No one was supposed to go there. No one had reason to.

And yet… someone was walking.

Cautious. Slow. Pausing between steps.

He stood, glass still in hand, and listened.

The footsteps continued. Until abruptly they stopped.

He waited.

Nothing.

Then, a soft scrape. Like a chair dragging across wood. And silence.

He walked to the base of the stairs but didn’t climb. He didn't dare to climb. He whispered into the emptiness, “You’re watching me, aren’t you?”

It had rained the night before. Not the kind of storm that roars and shakes windows in a fury, but a slow, deliberate downpour, one that whispered over rooftops and slithered down glass panes like secrets too heavy to hold. The smell of wet earth clung to the marble columns of the estate, and a low mist had curled itself along the edges of the driveway, veiling everything in a soft, silver breath.

Danuj hadn’t slept.

He hadn’t even pretended to.

Instead, he had sat for hours near the library window, watching the moon dissolve into grey, waiting for nothing, yet expecting everything. The folded note from his glove, the eye with the cracked pupil, the whisper that had chased him through sleep and silence. It all played over in his mind like a song that refused to finish its final verse.

And then came the movement.

Subtle. Almost respectful in how it tried not to be noticed.

He saw it through the gap in the curtains, just a flicker at first. The tall, lean figure of the watchman, moving across the outer edge of the back gate with an awkward urgency, hunched over something metallic. There was a cloth in his hand. He kept wiping harder than necessary, over and over, like he was trying to erase something that didn’t want to be forgotten.

Danuj stood slowly, quietly.

He didn’t take the front steps.

Instead, he moved through the kitchen corridor, across the laundry passage, and slipped out through the service exit, his bare feet brushing against the wet stone path like a memory half-recalled. The early morning air was cool, laced with petrichor and smoke from the night guard’s cigarette.

By the time he reached the back gate, the watchman had finished. But he hadn’t expected to be seen. When Danuj called out, his voice was low but firm, the kind that didn’t need volume to demand attention.

“Bittoo.”

The man flinched and turned around with a practiced smile that was far too late to be real.

“Sir… didn’t expect you up this early,” Bittoo said, his voice a mix of forced cheer and badly hidden fear. His eyes darted to the rag in his hand, now stained with something dark that wasn’t just rust.

Danuj’s gaze fell to the gate behind him. It had been scrubbed clean but not perfectly. The faint outline of a symbol lingered like a bruise. The eye. Again. Only this time, its edges were jagged. Almost angry.

“What were you wiping?” Danuj asked.

Bittoo’s smile faltered. “Oh, kids, sir. Must’ve sneaked in at night. Drew something… some nonsense graffiti.”

“Nonsense?”

“Yes, sir. Some eye thing. You know how these village kids are, they copy symbols from horror shows. Silly things.”

Danuj took a step closer. “Then why erase it before anyone saw it?”

Bittoo’s mouth opened, then closed. His hand twitched around the rag like it might save him from the question.

“I… I just thought… didn’t want to upset you, sir. After what you’ve been through. Thought it might… scare you.”

Danuj tilted his head, his voice dropping just a note lower. “And why would an eye scare me, Bittoo?”

The man’s face drained of color. And in that silence thicker than fog, Danuj saw it. The smallest thing. Bittoo’s other hand, clenched at his side, bore a faint trace of charcoal. The same black residue he’d found on the painting in his studio.

Bittoo had drawn it.

Not the kids.

Not vandals.

The watchman was paid to protect him, but instead, he was creating fear.

But Danuj said nothing.

He smiled.

A slow, thin, cold thing that made the watchman step back slightly without realizing it.

“Good work,” Danuj said softly, as if praising a loyal servant. “But next time… just leave it. I’d like to see what the kids are up to.”

Bittoo nodded too quickly. “Of course, sir. Of course.”

And he turned, vanished into the mist before Danuj could say another word. But the damage had already been done.

That night, Danuj sat in his study, watching the live CCTV feed of the house, split across sixteen small boxes glowing on the screen. He had always invested in the best surveillance, wired not just outside, but in every hallway, corner, even inside select rooms. A necessity when you lived alone. A habit when you were rich.

And yet, something didn’t sit right. He scanned the footage for the night before.

The back gate.

Time: 1:00 a.m.

The watchman should have been on his usual round. He fast-forwarded. 1:10 a.m. Nothing.

1:15 a.m. The camera glitched. A faint static flickered, then a jump.

Time skipped. The clock jumped from 1:16 to 2:03.

He rewound.

Same glitch.

Same missing segment.

He tried other angles, the kitchen, the hallway, service door.

All showed the same blackout between 1 and 2 a.m.

It wasn’t a system failure. It was a deliberate cut. Someone had erased that hour. All of it. And they had done it almost professionally. Except they hadn’t accounted for one thing.

Danuj had a shadow copy, a personal backup rigged through his office desktop, mirroring live feed data to a private drive, encrypted under his old finance folder. It was a setup only he had access to. Not even his former IT staff had known.

His hands moved quickly, unlocking the drive, fingers trembling with a rush of cold adrenaline.

The backup loaded. Pixel by pixel.

1:00 a.m.

There was the back gate.

Empty.

1:08 a.m.

Bittoo walked in from the east wall, holding a torch in one hand and a cloth in the other.

He reached the gate.

Knelt.

Then something even stranger happened.

Two more shadows joined him.

The chef.

The maid.

They stood behind him, whispering.

The chef handed Bittoo a folded sheet of paper. He opened it, glanced at the drawing, and matched it to the mark on the gate. They had been marking the symbol themselves.

Then wiping it.

And laughing.

Like it was a ritual.

A routine.

Something they’d done before.

Danuj stared, heart sinking, blood roaring through his ears. His voice, barely audible in the silence of the room, broke into a whisper.

“…How long have you all been doing this?”

His own staff.

In his own home.

Carving symbols, then hiding them. Wiping traces. Erasing hours from the night.

And smiling.

Like it was a game.

Like it meant something.

The eye wasn’t a hallucination.

It was a message.

And now, he realized, it hadn’t been meant to scare him. It had been meant to wake him.

The next morning there was something unnatural about how the day began, as though the walls of the mansion had swallowed up sound. No clattering of dishes from the kitchen, no distant humming from the garden radio the maid usually tuned into at dawn. Even the crows perched on the rusting iron gate seemed hesitant to call.

Danuj noticed.

Not just the silence but the way it wrapped around him, like it had been placed there. Purposefully. As if the house was waiting. Watching. Holding its breath for something to happen. He didn’t go to the main hall. He went upstairs, towards the forgotten west wing of the estate. A part of the house that hadn’t been touched in years. Not since his father’s passing. Not since his mother’s final stroke of madness, when she began locking herself in for days, scribbling numbers on old curtains and weeping into pages that no one ever found.

The wing had been shut since then. Partly from neglect, partly from fear.

But something about the surveillance footage, those laughing faces, those carved symbols, had awakened an instinct in him. A whisper from beneath memory’s surface that told him the truth wasn’t in the footage. It was somewhere older. Closer.

The door creaked as he pushed it open. Dust swirled like disturbed dreams in the shaft of light from the stained-glass window at the far end. Old sheets clung to forgotten furniture. Portraits, half-faded, peered down at him with eyes that seemed almost aware. And then he saw the old piano.

His mother’s.

A haunting thing, upright and broken, its keys yellowed with time, its strings eaten by rust and rats. Yet one of its legs was missing, and years ago, someone had propped it up with a stack of books. On top of the stack, wedged tight beneath the weight, was something else.

A leather-bound notebook.

Worn. Almost crumbling at the edges. But unmistakably his.

Danuj froze.

The initials embossed in gold—D.V.—were in the same style he’d used for his old journal designs back in college. But he didn’t remember bringing this one home. Didn’t remember owning one with such a deep, forest green leather cover. And yet… the moment he touched it, his fingers tingled with something not quite nostalgia. Something darker.

He pulled it free.

The piano groaned slightly, shifting its weight, but the books held. He sat cross-legged on the floor, notebook in hand, and opened to the first page. His handwriting.

But the words weren’t his.

"Today she spoke again. Not to me, but to the mirrors. I heard her say, ‘He isn’t ready yet.’ I think she meant me. Or maybe the other one. The version of me I don’t remember becoming."

He blinked.

Flipped the page.

"The eye keeps watching. It doesn’t blink anymore. Last night, it whispered through the window—no sound, just a pull. A tug at the part of my mind that still believes in childhood fears."

A chill crawled down his spine. The entries weren’t dated. There was no sequence, no structure, just thoughts, fragments, moments of unravelling, like the scribbles of a man slipping between sanity and something else.

He kept reading…

"They are all part of it now. The maid. The cook. Even the old gardener who limps when he walks. They don’t call it a cult. That’s too crude. They call it 'The Eye of Arrival.' They say it’s older than the house. Older than me. And it chose me."

Danuj closed the book for a second, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped thing. He opened the last written page.

"I tried to tell Dr. Mirza. I even showed him the drawings. But he only smiled. He said, ‘That’s good. It means it’s almost time.’ Then he gave me the pills. I pretended to swallow. I never did."

Dr. Mirza.

The name slashed across the page like a nail dragged on glass. Danuj stood up slowly, every hair on his arms standing upright. He turned the notebook around, checked the spine, the cover, the margins—looking for any mark, any confirmation of when it had been written. But there was nothing.

Except—

On the inside of the back cover, in faint pencil strokes nearly erased, were four words:

“You forgot. Again, D.”

He dropped the book.

Stumbled backward, breath catching in his throat.

Had he written this… before the accident?

Was this why the eye kept appearing—not as a threat, but as a memory? A trigger?

The silence outside the room cracked.

Footsteps. Coming from the main hallway.

Not hurried.

Measured.

Too careful to be innocent.

Danuj snatched up the notebook, hid it beneath his shirt, and slipped quietly through the service passage that led down to the wine cellar. The walls narrowed here, and the light dimmed. It was the same path the old house staff used decades ago to move unseen during lavish parties. The notebook was still pressed against his chest beneath his shirt. Its leather edges had begun to warm against his skin, but it pulsed there like a living thing, like it had a heartbeat of its own. This wasn't just a remnant of his forgotten past. It was a map, and somewhere within its pages, the next step lay hidden.

Danuj walked slowly, careful not to let the heel of his shoes echo too loudly, his breath held in shallow sips. He stopped at the base of the stairs, listening.

Whoever it was had entered the west wing. He held his breath.

And then… a voice.

Faint. From upstairs.

Familiar.

“…He’s starting to remember.” Said Dr. Mirza

He was shocked to hear Mirza’s voice, and he silently moved towards the service stairwell that led down to a lower level, a place he barely remembered even existing. A metallic clang echoed far behind him. He didn’t look back. He couldn’t afford to.

The cellar door creaked open with resistance, groaning as if it hadn’t been touched in years. Inside, the wine racks stood in towering rows, once proud displays of vintage collections, now dusty relics. Bottles lay like corpses in velvet-lined coffins, their labels peeling, their contents forgotten.

Danuj moved past them. He wasn’t here for wine.

His fingers trailed along the far wall, a smooth, polished panel of mahogany that didn’t quite match the stone and cement surrounding it. The inconsistency had always struck him as odd, even before the accident. He remembered asking his father once, during a tour of the estate as a boy, why that panel looked different.

His father had smiled faintly and said, “Some things are kept locked not because they’re dangerous, but because they’re true.”

Back then, it made no sense.

But now… now it felt like prophecy.

He pressed his palm against the wood. He stepped back, looking at the symmetry of the cellar, the quiet perfection of it. And then, almost instinctively, he turned to the adjacent wine rack and ran his fingers along the top row of bottles.

The fourth bottle from the left had no dust.

It was clean. Recently touched.

He pulled it.

A soft click.

The wooden panel shifted with a reluctant exhale, revealing a narrow gap, an old door, reinforced with iron at its edges. At the center, engraved with precision, was the same symbol.

The eye.

This time, it wasn’t scratched or half-visible.

It was carved with reverence, circled by a serpent devouring its own tail, surrounded by ancient-looking glyphs. It wasn’t decoration. It was ritual.

Danuj stared at it for a long time.

Then, slowly, he reached for the old bronze handle.

The door was heavier than it looked, but it opened inward, revealing a chamber swathed in shadow. The air was colder, preserved like a tomb. He stepped inside.

And froze.

The room wasn’t empty.

Along the far wall, lined neatly like a library of horrors, were photographs. Hundreds of faces. Polaroids, yellowed prints, digital prints, even old daguerreotypes. Men, women, children. Some smiling. Some blank. Some with the eye symbol inked onto their foreheads.

Pinned below each photo was a tag.

A name. A date. A time.

Danuj’s eyes scanned the wall in disbelief.

Some of the dates went back decades. Others, centuries. One in particular made his stomach tighten: January 5th, 1991 – 11:40 PM.

His birthdate.

And beneath it… His photograph.

It wasn’t a picture he remembered posing for. In the image, he looked barely twelve. He was standing in what looked like the mansion’s study, his head tilted slightly, eyes unfocused. A faint shadow hovered behind him in the photograph.

Danuj reached for the tag beneath his photo.

Handwritten.

"Subject 537: First sign of awakening at age 28. Intervention required."

His knees nearly gave out. He stumbled backward, catching the edge of an old oak desk to steady himself. On it lay a stack of files, bound tightly with red ribbons. Folders labelled with names, many he recognized.

The chef. The maid. The security head.

And on top of them all… Dr. Mirza.

He untied the ribbon with trembling fingers.

Inside the file were transcripts, handwritten reports detailing his behavioural patterns, his dreams, his mood fluctuations, even conversations he'd had with people he no longer remembered. It wasn’t just surveillance.

It was a study.

Dissection.

And worst of all… manipulation.

One report stood out.

"He resists full compliance. Mild doses of Neurozen-X are being administered in orange juice at breakfast. Continue dosing until signs of spiritual destabilization are present. If resistance escalates, initiate protocol 7: Memory Loop."

He clutched the file to his chest.

His vision blurred, not from tears, but from fury, from betrayal so vast it felt like it would crack his bones from the inside out. He had been studied. Tracked. Drugged. Every part of his life, his mansion, his routine, his staff, had been a performance designed to keep him caged.

A pet in golden walls.

He stared at the photo wall again. One photo, in the far-left corner, had a red thread running from it.

A woman.

Her eyes were shut, her mouth sewn with black thread in the photo, a ritualistic mark, perhaps. But the label beneath made his blood freeze.

"Subject 212: Devi Vaanika (Deceased). Mother of Subject 537. Final protocol executor."

His mother?

He was in disbelief because she had died of a stroke. But the threads. The whispers. The numbers she scribbled. The mirrors she spoke to…

It hadn’t been madness.

It had been a memory.

He sank to the ground, notebook in one hand, file in the other, as the door behind him began to creak slowly shut. When Danuj emerged from the hidden chamber, his limbs felt like they carried the weight of centuries, as though some spectral force had pressed down upon his spine and refused to let go. He didn’t lock the door behind him; he didn’t need to. The very air surrounding that room, thick with forgotten oaths and invisible threads of betrayal, acted like a curse, daring no ordinary soul to ever wander near again.

But he was no longer an ordinary man.

He now carried the burden of knowledge, and with it, the sharp ache of awakening. The world around him, once polished and pristine, now stood naked in its illusion. Every hallway, every glimmering chandelier, every obedient nod from a staff member, it was all a façade, a theatre built not to protect him but to contain him. His life had been performed under a microscope. His every emotion catalogued, his dreams dissected like insects pinned to a velvet board. Even his grief had been curated.

His mother’s image, stitched mouth and closed eyes, haunted the edge of his vision with each blink. Had she known all along? Had she tried to warn him, only to be silenced when her love became a threat to their control? The memory of her gentle touch, the lullabies sung in a language he no longer remembered, now pulsed with hidden meanings. Every bedtime whisper might have been a code, every glance in the mirror a cry for freedom she was never allowed to voice.

The deception was total.

But Danuj was done being watched. He was done being the subject of their experiment. Now, he would become the architect of their downfall. He made his way back upstairs with calculated calm. His footsteps were unhurried, his breathing deliberate, as though nothing had shifted within him, though everything had. He passed the kitchen, offering the chef a polite nod. He walked by Mira, the housekeeper, as she adjusted the vase in the corridor, and greeted her with the same practiced smile she was used to. He could see it in her eyes: relief. She thought the loop had resumed. They all did.

Good.

Let them believe it. He needed them to.

By the time he returned to his study, the shadows of dusk had begun their silent invasion of the mansion. Golden light from the windows filtered in long, melancholy streaks, painting the walls in the colour of endings. Danuj sat at his desk, the surface of which had once held nothing more significant than business files and old novels. Now, it would become a battlefield.

He opened the notebook again, his mother’s words flickering between the lines of his own handwriting, like a code passed down in invisible ink. One sentence stood out now, shining like a compass star:

“You were meant to remember slowly, or it would destroy you. But now, my son, the time to forget is over.”

He read it again. And again. Until it rooted itself into his bones. He then picked up his phone, not the one the staff had access to, but a hidden burner phone he had once used for emergencies and forgotten in the recess of his wardrobe. It still worked. He dialled a number, his fingers trembling for the first time that day, not out of fear, but out of the weight of what he was about to set in motion.

It rang only once.

“Hello?”

The voice was cautious. Masculine. Dry.

“Reyanth,” Danuj said, his voice level, masking the torrent beneath, “I need you. I think it’s finally happening.”

A pause.

“You’ve remembered?”

“I’ve seen the photographs. The files. The room. Everything.”

Another beat of silence, and then, “I’m coming. Tonight.”

He hung up before emotions could rise. Reyanth was the only person outside the mansion who had once tried to tell him something wasn’t right. A friend from college who had later become a freelance investigator. Their last conversation, years ago, had ended in an argument after Danuj brushed off his concerns and cut him off, fearing the truth would drive him mad. And yet, Reyanth had never completely walked away. He had waited in the margins of Danuj’s world, just in case. Now, that case had come.

Nightfall brought with it a different kind of silence, one that didn’t belong to nature but to design. Every room in the mansion seemed too still. The windows reflected only darkness, not even the silver gleam of the moon. It was as though the sky itself had conspired to withhold its light.

Danuj dressed in quiet precision. No suit tonight, no silk tie or polished shoes. Just a plain charcoal sweater, black jeans, and sneakers. Something that could move. Something that could run, if needed. He walked toward the main lounge and saw Dr. Mirza sitting in his usual chair, a cup of chamomile tea in hand, and a soft smile curving the edges of his lips. That smile, a mask so perfectly worn, it might’ve fooled even Danuj a day ago. But not anymore.

“You look well,” the doctor said, gently placing the cup on its saucer. “Rest helps. The body forgets, but it also heals.”

Danuj met his gaze, calm and unreadable. “You’re right. I slept deeper than I have in days.”

“Excellent. Would you be open to another session tomorrow morning? I believe we’re close to the core of it. The subconscious is loosening.”

Danuj nodded slowly. “Tomorrow, yes. Let’s do that.”

Mirza stood, fixing his coat collar. “Sleep well tonight. Dreams can be telling.”

As the doctor left, Danuj didn’t blink. The game had begun. And tonight, beneath the stars that refused to shine, the hunter who had once been prey would take his first step toward unravelling the web that had nearly devoured his soul. Danuj stood by the window of his study, the drapes drawn just enough to reveal the curve of the driveway that wound like a silent serpent toward the gate. The garden lights flickered softly, casting shifting shadows on the gravel path, shadows that seemed to move even when nothing did.

And then, a flicker of motion, too discreet to be noticed by the security cameras, too fast for any of the watchful eyes in the house. A black vehicle, sleek and low, rolled through the gate without the usual sound of gravel crunching beneath tires. The engine was soundless, he had expected nothing less from Reyanth. He had always been a ghost dressed as a man, a watcher of watchers.

Danuj turned from the window just as a faint knock sounded, a pattern of three, pause, then one. No doorbell. No call from the intercom. Just that familiar rhythm. The same rhythm Reyanth used to knock with during college, when they would sneak back into the dormitory after midnight, reeking of alcohol, rebellion, and the kind of questions only privileged boys dared to ask.

He opened the door without a word.

Reyanth stood there, unchanged in essence though the years had added a certain austerity to his features. His hair was longer now, a little unkempt, as though he had stopped caring what people thought. His eyes, sharp and restless, scanned Danuj not with affection, but with calculation, like a man who had seen the worst in people and learned to recognize its subtle scent in the air.

“Still alive,” Reyanth murmured, stepping inside without waiting for permission. “Didn’t expect that.”

Danuj shut the door behind him. “Neither did I.”

Reyanth’s gaze swept the room in seconds, noting every detail, the unlit candles, the books that had been moved slightly, the security camera blinking lazily in the corner. “They’ve kept you in a dollhouse,” he muttered, “but the dolls don’t blink, do they?”

Danuj allowed himself a breath. “Tell me what you know.”

Reyanth didn’t sit. He never did in places he didn’t trust. He stood near the edge of the bookshelf, fingertips grazing the spine of a leather-bound volume. “After our last talk, when you brushed me off like I was insane, I dug deeper. I started looking into your staff, your estate, your sudden silence from social media, and your absence from board meetings. I traced patterns. Transfers of large sums of money into obscure wellness centres. A strange spike in property surveillance around your house. One of your staff members used to work in a psychiatric facility that was shut down for patient abuse. Another is linked to an offshore cult based on celestial alignments and blood rituals. I tried contacting you again. Everything bounced.”

Danuj’s throat tightened. “I saw her. My mother. Stitched lips. A black cloak. She was in that hidden room below the wine cellar.”

Reyanth froze. “You found it?”

Danuj nodded. “There’s more. Symbols carved beneath chairs. Etchings behind mirrors. A file of mine. Photos. My medical records. Notes written by someone”

“I warned you,” Reyanth said, his voice sharp with regret. “This wasn’t just about memory. They were never trying to help you heal. They were conditioning you. Preparing you for something.”

“What?” Danuj whispered.

But Reyanth didn’t answer immediately. He walked to the edge of the desk, pulled out a slim folder from inside his coat. “This,” he said, placing it gently on the wood, “is the full list of names. The Ten. Most of them have aliases. Three of them have histories that have been erased. It’s not just this house. This is part of something larger. They plant themselves around people who match… certain criteria. Birth times. Astrological alignments. Psychological vulnerabilities. Wealth is a bonus, not the motive. They want something else.”

Danuj opened the folder.

Each page hit like a silent scream. Photos of his driver, his housekeeper, and even Dr. Mirza. Beside each name were timelines, fake credentials, and cross-referenced bank records. One note read:

“Subject under observation since age 11. Mother's resistance neutralized in 2014. Conditioning began in 2016 under Program Variant-Red. Phase 3: Nearing Completion.”

He stared at it, hands trembling. “They’ve been doing this since I was a child.”

Reyanth’s voice was low. “Your accident wasn’t an accident. It was an interruption. Something didn’t go according to their plan. And now, they’re improvising.”

“I found recordings,” Danuj said slowly, “on the attic cameras. They meet when they think I’m asleep. They talk in riddles. They’re afraid I’m remembering too much.”

“Because you are,” Reyanth said. “And if you remember everything, you break the control loop. They lose their grip. That’s why they stitched your mother’s mouth. Symbolic erasure. The voice that could break their chant.”

Silence hung heavy between them. The kind of silence that didn’t belong in a house but in a grave.

Finally, Danuj whispered, “I want to end it. But I don’t know who I am anymore.”

Reyanth turned to him then, eyes dark but unflinching. “You’re still Danuj. You always were. But the version they built, the version they shaped from shadows and sedation, is dying. You just must decide which one of you survives.”

The clock on the wall ticked once, then stopped. The air felt like it was holding onto a secret. Danuj looked up, something burning behind his eyes.

“Then let the other version die.”

It began in silence, like all revolutions do. The kind of silence that isn’t peaceful but waiting. Waiting to bloom into something louder than words. Two nights had passed since Reyanth’s arrival, and in those forty-eight hours, the very bones of the mansion had been rewired. Not by electricians or architects, but by old codes and newer instincts. Danuj and Reyanth worked like ghosts in their own house, moving through halls with breath held and hearts tethered to instinct. Wires were rerouted, dead CCTV feeds replaced with wireless micro-cameras hidden behind bookshelves, clock faces, even the eyes of a bronze statue that stood at the corridor’s mouth like a silent sentry. Reyanth had brought more than a folder. He had brought truth, and with it, a blueprint for war.

The plan was simple in shape, deadly in execution: lure them into one space, fracture their pact, force one of them to crack. Let panic unravel their unity. Let their own fear do the tearing.

And so, the stage was set.

Danuj stood in his study, dusk bleeding in through the tall windows, casting gold-tinged shadows across the marble floor. His voice recorder was on the desk, already blinking red. Hidden transmitters hummed quietly in the corners. He took a deep breath, the kind you take before diving into a sea whose bottom you’ll never touch.

Then he pressed the intercom.

“All staff to the drawing room,” he said, his voice calm, even, unnervingly precise. “Now.”

The words weren’t shouted. They didn’t need to be. The house, he had come to realize, reacted to tone more than volume. Within minutes, they arrived. One by one, like chess pieces set into motion.

Latha, the maid with hands too smooth for decades of labour, walked in first, eyes darting like they were reading invisible code on the walls. She took the corner seat.

Next came Naveen, the chef, apron pristine, fingers twitching ever so slightly. He settled beside her, his lips moving, murmuring something under his breath, perhaps that same lullaby Danuj had heard in fragments, always just before a memory collapsed into static.

Then the driver. The security head. The two gardeners. The nurse who was never seen during the day but was always found near the staircase past midnight.

All ten arrived.

All ten sat.

Not one asked why.

That was the first crack.

Danuj entered last. Not as their master. Not as a man playing polite host in his own home. But as the storm they didn’t prepare for.

"I found something," he said, standing before them. His hands were behind his back, not in anxiety, but restraint. "Behind the wine cellar. Below the basement floor. A room."

No one moved.

He walked to the centre of the room, slowly turning, letting his gaze fall on each face.

“I saw a cloak,” he continued, “and a woman with lips stitched shut. A ritual altar. Blood mixed with ash. Symbols carved with precision. An eye watching even in darkness.”

Still, they sat.

But something in their breath shifted. A collective inhale. Like animals cornered, not yet feral but close.

Then he said it.

“I know about the program. Variant-Red. Conditioning. Selection based on the hour of my birth.”

A flicker passed between Latha and Dr. Mirza. The others sat still, as if carved from wax. But their stillness trembled. A muscle twitch. A foot tapping too rhythmically. A shoulder slightly hunched as if to protect a secret not yet exposed. Danuj reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small black device. With a click, the room filled with sound, not of his voice, but theirs.

“He’s remembering.”

“We should’ve finished it. He wasn’t supposed to wake.”

“The ritual without the full cycle, we’ll unravel.”

Every word had been recorded two nights ago. From the attic. In their own voices. Now, those voices looped and echoed inside the drawing room, like ghosts whispering their own death sentences. One of the gardeners rose sharply. “He’s bluffing,” he barked, “These are edits—this means nothing!”

But another, Sharmila, the nurse, sank back into the couch, her hands trembling. “He wasn’t meant to find it,” she whispered, not to anyone, but to herself. “He wasn’t meant to reach the cellar.”

“I did,” Danuj said, his voice calm. “And I reached something else, too.”

He turned toward the door. It opened soundlessly. Reyanth entered.

And behind him, two officers in plainclothes, and a silent, grim-faced woman who had once been declared dead: Dr. Neha Dey, former investigative psychiatrist, once buried under falsified records after a case tied to a cultic psychological experiment gone rogue.

She had lived. In hiding. And now she was here, her eyes scanning the room like she’d found the monsters from her nightmares again.

The room shattered.

The driver lunged for the nearest officer. The security head pulled something from his sleeve, but Reyanth was faster. In seconds, the room was chaos, screams, restraints, the snap of zip ties, the thunderous collapse of secrets spilling too fast to control.

Only Mirza remained still.

He stood slowly, dusting an invisible speck from his shoulder. Then, locking eyes with Danuj, he spoke in a voice far colder than science ever demanded.

“You think you’ve won?” he said. “This house was just one site. One experiment. There are others. You were simply... promising.”

Danuj didn’t blink. “Then I’ll promise something back.”

Mirza smiled. But it didn’t reach his eyes. As the officers cuffed him, he turned once more, voice dipped in venom.

“They only tried to silence your mother. Imagine what they’ll do when they realize you can speak.”

The city lay far below, a scatter of molten gold beneath the indigo sky, pulsing like a living creature breathing in the night. Danuj stood at the edge of the rooftop, arms crossed, chin slightly lifted, eyes glazed not with tears but with the heavy sheen of thought too thick to fall.

The storm was over.

At least, that’s what everyone said.

The ten had been arrested, the recordings secured, and the mansion was no longer a stage for whispers and false gestures. Dr. Neha Dey’s testimony, combined with Reyanth’s intelligence network, ensured the case wouldn't be buried under bureaucracy. Headlines splashed across newspapers: “Cult of Ten Exposed in High-Society Scandal”, “Billionaire Survives Ritualistic Conspiracy”. The world, as it always does, moved on faster than it should.

But the storm hadn’t really passed. Not for Danuj.

Because the real damage, the kind that couldn’t be stitched up with police reports or press conferences, lay somewhere deeper. Somewhere quieter. In places no flashlight could reach.

He didn’t sleep much anymore. Not because of fear, but because of the silence. It had changed shape. Before the accident, silence had been his sanctuary. It had cushioned his thoughts, calmed his mind, soothed the tremors of boardroom battles and public masks. Silence had been his partner. But now, it had turned feral.

Now, it whispered.

Now, it stared.

Now, it had the shape of an eye, always watching, even behind closed lids.

Danuj turned slowly from the cityscape and walked back to the centre of the rooftop, where a small writing table stood, untouched since morning. Upon it lay a half-filled journal, the leather-bound kind, hand-stitched, like the ones his mother used to keep. Neat handwriting ran across the pages, paragraphs marbled with rage, sorrow, disbelief, and something stranger still: hope.

He uncapped his fountain pen, its nib poised over the paper, but his hand didn’t move.

Instead, he whispered aloud, only to himself.

“They took something I can never get back.”

Not his wealth. Not his memory. Not even his pride. What they took was the trust in his own silence. The comfort of not needing answers. The peace in not needing to remember.

Because now, every gap in memory was not just a blank space, it was a threat. A void waiting to be filled with clawed hands and stitched mouths and a lullaby that could trigger collapse. Even now, when he passed mirrors, he sometimes paused, not to admire or fix, but to check. To see if the eye would appear again, faintly fogged in the reflection. Once, it had. He wasn’t even sure if it had been real.

But he never looked at that mirror again.

He dipped his pen finally and began to write.

“This is not a diary. It is not a confession. It is not a therapy exercise.

This is a record. For the next person. For the next version of me. For the one who wakes up one day and can’t remember why the toast smells like ash or why the staff hums lullabies in minor chords.

I’m calling it Ten Shadows.

Because for every person who stood before me with a lie behind their eyes, there were ten moments I almost believed them.

But I won’t forget again.

I won’t close my eyes in peace again.

Maybe that’s the price.”

He paused.

The rooftop wind picked up then, tugging at his coat like a ghost asking for one last dance. He turned his head skyward, and for a moment, he imagined his mother’s voice again—not as a whisper in the cellar, not from a fragmented hallucination, but from memory.

Clear. Alive. Stern.

“People will always try to carve truth into manageable lies, Danuj. Don’t let them hand you something clean when you know it was once soaked in blood.”

He closed the journal.

He wasn’t healed. He probably never would be.

But he was awake now, in a way he had never been before.

He locked the journal, placed it in the safe, and stepped down from the rooftop with a single thought nesting quietly in his mind:

Not all scars bleed.

Some just wait, beneath the skin,

to whisper when the world is quiet enough again.

It took six months for the mansion to be emptied. Not just of people, but of their shadows. Their smells. Their footprints in the dust of things long neglected. Each room had to be exorcised, not by rituals or fire, but by the quiet insistence of closure. Danuj did not call-in cleaners. He handled it himself, slowly, methodically, as if pulling weeds from a poisoned garden.

He started with the wine cellar. The shattered bottle had long been cleared, but the metallic scent of memory still clung to the air. He stood there, in that suffocating silence, and let the past press into him like steam. He didn’t stay long. Just enough to look it in the eye and say, “I’m done.”

Room by room, memory by memory, he peeled the mansion away from his soul. The humming kitchen was silent now. The piano room, once echoing with ghostly lullabies, stood stripped, the keys sealed under a cloth. The watchman’s hut by the gate was dismantled brick by brick. Even the garden, which had once bloomed under artificial sunlight, was dug out and returned to soil.

Then one day, it was gone. Not demolished but sold to a foreign buyer who knew nothing of its history, and perhaps never would. The paperwork was signed, the key was handed over, and Danuj didn’t even look back as he stepped into the waiting car. Because sometimes, healing doesn’t come with a dramatic finale. Sometimes, it’s simply the quiet act of walking away.

He moved into a small penthouse overlooking the city skyline, closer to his headquarters. It was minimalist, sleek, warm, not sterile. Every object inside was chosen by him, touched by his hand. There were no secret compartments, no hums in the walls, no servants whispering behind closed doors.

Only space. Stillness. A different kind of silence.

He threw himself into the company like a man who had been denied oxygen for too long. Meetings ran longer. Projects moved faster. He expanded across continents, investing in tech, infrastructure, and mental health innovation. People whispered about his “comeback,” but they had no idea what he had returned from.

Investors admired him. Clients praised him. Employees respected him. And among them, there were just a few who genuinely cared.

There was Parth, his old CFO, who brought him strong coffee with zero sugar and always asked, “You okay, boss?” like he actually meant it. There was Mira, the young assistant who once baked him a cake on his birthday, even though he never celebrated it. There was Reyanth, of course, who stood by him like an unshakable wall, loyal to the marrow. And Dr. Neha Dey, who still called once a month to ask how he was sleeping, not as a professional, but as a friend.

Yes, there were people who loved him. But Danuj always kept a small wall. Not a fortress. Not a moat. Just a thin veil, barely visible, yet always there. A self-built boundary between what was real and what could turn. A line he never crossed, even when they smiled at him with warmth and trust.

He wasn’t cold. He laughed. He spoke gently. He helped others.

But somewhere inside, he remained a man who had once woken up in a room of strangers wearing masks of care. A man who had trusted too many kind eyes.

So he loved quietly, from a distance.

He cared in silence.

And he never let anyone get too close again.

One night, as the rain pattered softly against the glass walls of his penthouse, Danuj opened a drawer and pulled out a slim, bound book.

Ten Shadows.

The manuscript had been printed, only one copy, never published. He ran his fingers over the cover, over his own words. He read a passage he’d once written:

“Not all scars are born from pain. Some are reminders of how deep a man had to dig to find himself buried underneath everyone else's version of him.”

He closed the book, returned it to its place, and turned toward the window.

Danuj was not broken.

He was fractured, but those cracks had let in the light.

And sometimes, that was enough.