
Authors pov.
Morning arrived with the same hollowed-out light that had been bleeding across campus for weeks, the kind that never quite warmed anything. The air outside hummed with fear; the serial killings had torn through the city like teeth through soft fruit. Police sirens echoed in the distance for the third time that morning, a grim reminder that someone out there was hunting without hesitation.
But in Sona's eyes, the news didn't spark fear.
It sparked… anticipation.
She walked across the courtyard with that faint, forbidden smile tugging at her mouth. The smile she tried to hide. The smile she thought no one noticed. Except Arjun. Always Arjun.
He walked beside her, hands in his pockets, posture loose, almost lazy. Calm. Too calm. While the entire campus vibrated with whispers about the killer, missing students, warnings to travel in groups… rigjt killer has started tarking students youngsters…Arjun looked like he was strolling through a familiar garden.
But his eyes kept flicking to her.
Studying her.
Reading her like scripture he's memorized in another lifetime.
Sona's fingers brushed the fading bruise on her wrist, hidden beneath her sleeves. Arjun noticed. He didn't comment. He only smirked faintly, a twitch of the lips that looked nothing like concern and everything like confirmation.
Behind them, Kabir and Riya walked slower, whispering urgently.
"She smiled," Riya murmured. "At the news last night."
Kabir swallowed hard. "And Arjun… didn't even react."
"You think—"
"I don't know. I don't know anything anymore."
They were both unraveling, but in different directions. Suspicion had a way of peeling reality like old wallpaper, revealing all the rot underneath. And they were seeing too much.
By the time they reached their classroom, tension had clung to all four of them like static. Other students crowded the hallway, talking in panicked bursts about the killer. A girl sobbed quietly near the vending machine. A boy flinched every time someone brushed past him.
Fear had become oxygen.
Sona drifted to her desk, sliding into her seat with a serene calm that didn't fit the moment. A black rose waited for her on the table, petals bruised like midnight. She didn't gasp or freeze. She just tilted her head, tracing the stem slowly, lovingly.
Arjun's gaze darkened.
Not angry.
Or jealous.
Something more intimate.
Like someone watching an echo of themselves.
Kabir stepped closer to Riya. "Another one," he whispered. "This guy's getting bold."
Riya watched Sona's reaction, or rather, her lack of reaction. "She's not scared. Kabir… she's not scared at all."
Sona glanced at the two of them sharply, like she had heard every whispered syllable. Her smile didn't deepen, but her eyes gleamed.
Arjun shifted beside her desk, lowering his voice. "Don't touch it too much. Could be evidence."
Her lashes flickered up at him.
"Scared for me?"
He met her gaze without blinking.
"Always."
Something electric crackled between them—too heavy, too knowing. And Kabir caught it. Riya too. Their shared panic was turning into something sharper, like dread.
They tried to distract themselves with the investigation. At lunch, they gathered in the back corner of the cafeteria, table covered with folders, printed screenshots, notes, timestamps. Riya had scribbled a messy list of suspects. Kabir had highlighted patterns in the stalker's behavior.
"Look at this," Kabir said, pointing at his notes. "The roses show up every time Sona's alone. Whoever it is watches her constantly."
Arjun sipped his drink casually. "So we look for someone who moves unnoticed."
Riya frowned. "But you said the same thing last week. And the week before that. Why do you always sound like you already know the answer?"
Kabir added, "Why are both of you acting like this is normal?"
Sona leaned back in her chair. "Because panicking won't fix anything."
Her tone was too smooth.
Too logical.
Too practiced.
Riya looked between Arjun and Sona. "Both of you… you've been weird since the start of this. It's like you're hiding something."
Arjun's jaw ticked once. "Everyone hides something."
The way he said it sent a cold prickling down Kabir's spine.
The investigation dragged on. They compared timestamps. They rewatched the hallway footage. They matched handwriting on the notes to samples from their list of suspects. They practiced analyzing patterns, motives, schedules.
But every time they narrowed the suspect list, it circled back—
To someone who moved silently.
Who knew Sona's routine intimately.
Who had access to her dorm.
Who left roses with intention.
None of that should have pointed to Arjun.
None of it should have pointed to Sona.
And yet Kabir couldn't unsee the tattoos on the surveillance frame—the same shapes, same style he'd glimpsed on Arjun's wrist last month in gym class.
And Riya couldn't forget the moment she saw Sona wipe away a bruise on her neck with an expression that wasn't fear but memory.
Things weren't aligning.
They were overlapping.
As the afternoon dimmed into early evening, a scream sliced through the quad. Students rushed toward the commotion. Campus security pushed through the crowd.
Another body.
Another staged scene.
And roses.
red ones entirely different from blue and blacks appearing around them both , pattren was different mayeb 3rd person was their. Roses were placed carefully around the victim like petals at a devotion site.
Sona stood with the crowd, watching the scene with an expression she couldn't fully conceal—the faint flicker of recognition, like she understood the pattern too well. Like she saw this all too closly. Liek she is used to these kind of things. Arjun stepped behind her, eyes locked on her reaction, not the body.
Kabir saw.
Riya saw.
Fear rooted deep in their chests.
Later, as they walked back toward the dorm, Kabir pulled Riya aside.
"They're not scared," he whispered shakily. "You see that, right? They're not scared."
Riya nodded, pale. "They're hiding something. Together or separately… I don't know. But something's wrong."
Up ahead, Arjun and Sona walked a little too close.
A touch of her shoulder brushing his arm.
A look exchanged that was too quiet, too aware.
Behind them, the city screamed with fresh blood.
And Sona smiled again—tiny, soft, dangerous.
Arjun's eyes caught the smile.
He didn't flinch.
He simply matched her pace.
Like he had always been waiting for her to stop pretending.
And somewhere, unseen, something began shifting in the story—
A fracture widening.
A truth preparing to crawl out.
The cracks were no longer cracks.
They were openings.
Campus nights had begun to taste metallic, like the air had borrowed something from the killer's breath. Fear roamed the hallways more faithfully than any student, and yet… somehow the four of them kept walking straight into the storm.
Roses kept showing up.
Notes kept arriving.
Cameras kept glitching conveniently.
The stalker wasn't slowing down.
If anything, he had started enjoying the escalation.
Arjun noticed the shift before anyone else. Like he made it happned in first place.
He always did.
The next morning began with a scream outside the girls' dorm. Someone had found another note pinned to the laundry room door with a single red thorn. The message looked freshly carved, the letters shaking like the hand that read them:
next your turn. .
Sona stepped past the crowd, eyes lingering on the note for a moment too long. That familiar flicker crossed her face—quiet amusement veiled as concern. Arjun watched that flicker. Kabir watched Arjun watching. Riya saw all of them and felt her stomach twist.
"I… I need to go to class early," Sona murmured.
Riya looked at her sharply. "You have no morning class today."
"I forgot something in the library," she said quickly.
She didn't wait for questions. She just slipped away, disappearing between the columns of the campus archway like she'd stepped through a portal.
Kabir frowned. "She's been doing that a lot lately."
"Doing what?" Arjun asked, too fast.
Kabir swallowed. "Leaving without explanation."
Riya added, "And coming back looking different. Like she walked through something she shouldn't."
Arjun said nothing. But the silence he offered wasn't defensive.
It was practiced.
Moments later, he checked his phone.
A blank screen.
A notification that vanished too quickly.
"I have to go too," he said abruptly. "Project meeting."
Kabir stared. "At 8 AM? Who—"
But Arjun was already gone.
Riya whispered, "They keep disappearing at the same time."
Kabir's jaw tightened. "Maybe coincidence."
Riya shot him a glare. "You don't even believe that."
He didn't.
They waited. And waited.
Two hours passed.
Sona reappeared first, sliding back into class with her hair slightly windswept, collar tilted, and a look in her eyes that didn't belong to the girl who had left earlier. She offered no explanation. No apology. Just a soft, secret smile when she saw Arjun's empty seat.
Ten minutes later, Arjun walked in.
Neck damp.
Shirt rumpled.
Expression carved into perfect calm.
Riya's heart cracked sideways.
Something was wrong.
Deeply, disturbingly wrong.
During lunch break, they split into pairs. Kabir and Riya pretended to go to the cafeteria but doubled back instead. They weren't playing supportive friend roles anymore.
They were hunting answers.
They searched Arjun's dorm first—quick, quiet, careful. His room was too clean. Too arranged. Almost curated. Notes were stacked in perfect order. Books aligned alphabetically. Bed smooth as if untouched.
And yet…
Riya found a drawer that didn't quite close. Inside was a single pressed blue rose.
Dried.
Old.
But cherished.
Kabir felt a cold chill run down his spine. "Who… gives him blue roses?"
They both knew the answer.
Neither said it.
Next, they went through Sona and Riya's room. At first everything looked normal. Sona's perfume bottles lined up neatly. Makeup scattered like always. Books arranged with small sticky notes blooming between them.
Then Riya noticed it.
A notebook beneath Sona's pillow.
She hesitated.
Then pulled it out.
Inside weren't diary entries.
They were patterns.
Timelines.
Details of the killer's victims.
Old killlers. History's.
Notes about their routines.
Drawings of roses—with petals shaded in colors that matched the roses showing up on campus.
Whole pages of black roses.
Whole pages of blue ones.
And now single page of red roses freshly draw.
Kabir turned pale. "Why would she—"
Riya flipped a page.
Her breath hitched.
There, slipped between the notebook pages, was a polaroid.
A photo taken at night.
Of Arjun.
Standing outside Sona's dorm building.
Lit by a streetlamp.
Head tilted like he was listening for a pulse.
Riya's hands shook. "Kabir…"
Kabir grabbed the polaroid with trembling fingers. "What the hell is happening?"
Before they could process any of it, footsteps echoed in the hallway.
Fast.
Soft.
Approaching.
They shoved everything back, slammed drawers shut, tossed the blanket over the pillow, and ran out of the room through window just as the dorm door opened behind them.
Meanwhile, across campus, Arjun walked beside Sona to the parking lot. Students whispered about the recent killing. The crime scene tape fluttered like severed caution.
Sona smiled again.
"What's funny?" Arjun asked quietly.
She shrugged. "Everyone's scared."
"You're not."
"I don't see the point."
He looked at her for a little too long.
"Fear makes people predictable."
"And predictable people make mistakes," she finished.
He smirked. She returned it.
Two wolves in human clothes.
Behind them, Kabir and Riya stood hidden near the staircase, watching the way Arjun and Sona moved together.
Not like friends.
Not like lovers.
Not like enemies.
Something else.
Something worse.
"You saw the bruises," Kabir whispered. "And she didn't look surprised when she found the rose this morning. She didn't even flinch."
Riya nodded slowly. "They're lying to us."
Kabir looked grim. "No. They're lying to everyone."
By evening, Riya was shaking from the weight of the discoveries. Her head felt full of broken glass. She couldn't unsee the notebook. The patterns. The polaroid. The roses.
She rummaged through more of Sona's things after class.
And then—
"Kabir…" she whispered, voice cracking.
She found something else.
Papers.
Dozens of them.
Stuffed beneath Sona's mattress.
Riya didn't even care about being caught anymore. She clawed at the papers with shaking hands until she could breathe again.
Then she froze.
Her eyes widened.
Her pulse slammed.
She stumbled out of the dorm room, sprinting down the hallway with the papers crushed against her chest.
" Kabir!" she shouted, voice echoing through the corridor. "Kabir, I found something— you need to see this right now!"
Because what she found…
Was about Sona.
Not the stalker.
Not Arjun.
Not the killer.
Something older.
Something darker.
Something that shouldn't exist.
And the chapter ends as she bursts into Kabir's room, breathless and terrified, holding the papers that might just blow everything open.