Authors pov
Riya didn't bother knocking. She crashed into Kabir's room then in his arms like breath itself had betrayed her. Papers rained out of her shaking hands, scattering across the floor like fallen feathers from something hunted.
Kabir lunged forward. Holding her tightly against him.
"Riya hey, hey, slow down—" she cuts him off.
"No," she gasped. "Just… look."
He crouched, picking up the nearest sheet. His brows knit together.
It wasn't a diary page.
It wasn't notes.
It wasn't academic work.
It was an outline.
A book outline.
A detailed, meticulously researched structure of crime patterns. Locations. Kill signatures. Schedules. Rituals. And at the top, written with a certainty that didn't belong to a college girl:
"PROJECT: REAL BLOOD.
A STUDY IN KILLERS AND THE ONES WHO WALK BETWEEN THEM."
Kabir felt his mouth dry up. "What… is this?"
Riya dropped onto his bed, gripping the edge like it grounded her in a world that had just slipped sideways. "She's a crime author, Kabir. Not amateur. Not hobby. She's… known. She writes under a pen-name."
Kabir stared blankly. "What?"
"Sona," Riya whispered, "is Daimond."
Kabir's entire face drained.
Daimond.
The anonymous online author whose books were so disturbingly accurate that cops accused them once of being involved in a real case. The writer who predicted murders before they hit the news. The one who had millions of silent readers, obsessed fans, and a reputation for being able to "see through killers."
Kabir sank onto the bed. "No way. No way—" he trails off.
"She tracks them," Riya whispered, voice breaking. "She follows real killers. Real criminals. Studies them. Their patterns, their histories, their psychology… everything."
Kabir shook his head violently. "But why would she smile at the news? Why disappear in the mornings? Why.."
she hit his arm , "Because she follows them, Kabir." Stop asking stupid questions.
Riya's eyes gleamed with the shine of swallowed panic.
"She follows real killers for inspiration."
Kabir's breath caught. "That means—" he trialed of again.
"She knew him," Riya whispered. "She knew the killer before the campus killings even started." And maybe she knew her stalker aswell. And whos knows maybe she knows Arjun's stalker as well.
And that was somehow worse.
Because the smile Sona wore yesterday morning suddenly had a story behind it.
A history.
A reason.
Kabir stood abruptly. "We need to think. We need to——"
A sudden knock on the door made both of them jump.
They didn't answer.
They didn't breathe.
The knock came again light, deliberate, like the hand on the other side already knew they were afraid.
Kabir approached the door slowly. Riya clutched the papers behind her, heart pounding.
Another knock. Harder this time.
Kabir opened the door.
It was Arjun.
His eyes were calm. Too calm.
"Hey," he said, tone loose, casual. "Either of you seen Sona?"
Riya and Kabir exchanged a glance.
"No," Kabir lied instantly. "She's at the library."
Arjun's head tilted slightly. A small, unreadable smile ghosted across his lips.
"Right. Library."
But he didn't leave.
He leaned against the doorway, eyes flicking across the room like he was scanning for something out of place. Something missing. Something taken.
Riya hid the papers behind her leg, fingers trembling.
Arjun's gaze dropped to the floor for a moment, taking in the mess, the scattered pages. His lashes lifted lazily.
"Studying?" he asked.
"Yeah," Kabir said too fast.
Arjun didn't blink.
He just stared at him.
Long. Quiet. Suffocating.
"Cool," Arjun murmured finally. "Tell her I'm looking for her."
He pushed off the wall and walked away, steps smooth, unhurried.
Riya didn't breathe until the echo of his footsteps disappeared.
Kabir shut the door instantly. "He knows."
"He always knows," Riya whispered. "Kabir, we need to get out of here. We need to—" this time kabir cuts her off.
"No." Kabir's voice cracked with fear and determination. "We can't run. Not yet. We need more proof. We need to understand what we're dealing with."
Riya spread the papers across the floor. Kabir kneeled beside her.
They flipped page after page.
Crime scene diagrams.
Maps of cities she'd traveled to alone.
Photos of alleys.
Police reports printed and underlined.
Sketches of roses.
Handwritten timelines of killers who made history.
But what shocked them both wasn't the content.
It was the dates.
These weren't from months ago.
Not weeks.
They were recent.
Fresh.
Written days before each campus murder.
"She's been following him," Riya whispered. "The real killer. This entire time."
Kabir swallowed. "But what about Arjun? Where does he fit in?"
Riya's voice dropped to a shiver. "He always disappears after her. Ten minutes later. Always ten. Like he's giving her a head start."
Kabir felt dread coil in his stomach. "Is he following her? Or protecting her?"
Riya shook her head. "I don't know. And I don't want to find out tonight."
But they would.
Because the investigation didn't stop when you got scared.
Fear only sharpened your senses.
Outside the dorm window, the sky churned with cold gray. Sirens wailed again in the distance. Somewhere on campus, a killer moved with confidence. Somewhere closer, two people knew far more than they pretended.
Riya gathered the last set of papers with trembling hands.
"These show where she goes. Every time she disappears."
Kabir leaned closer. "Where?"
Riya pointed to circled marks.
A graveyard.
An abandoned warehouse.
An old police station.
A stretch of forest near the creek.
And last:
"OBSERVATION POINT."
Right behind the engineering building.
Kabir's stomach dropped. "That's where the last victim was found."
Riya nodded, breath shaking. "Kabir… she was there. Before the police even knew."
The truth grew roots between them.
Sona wasn't reacting strangely to the murders.
She was reacting like someone who understood.
Someone who had seen it before.
Or seen it being made.
Kabir stood up sharply. "We keep watching them. We act normal. Pretend we don't know anything."
Riya hesitated. "And the killer?"
Kabir looked toward the window, where the quad was emptying slowly under the weight of another fearful night.
"The killer is still out there," he said quietly. "And Sona… she might be too close to him."
Or too close to something even worse.
They didn't say it, but the truth pulsed between them:
She might not just be following the killer.
She might be walking beside him.
Another body hit the city like a dropped match: sudden, scorching, and everyone pretending they didn't smell the fire. The news alert pinged across every screen in the dorm hallway just as Sona slipped back inside, hoodie half off her shoulder, strands of hair stuck to her cheek like she had walked through smoke.
Riya froze mid-step when she saw her. Something flickered across her face, something sharp and frightened, but she pushed it down and forced a half-smile.
"Sona… you're back early."
Early was a lie. It was 3 a.m. Early for ghosts, maybe.
Sona only smiled, slow and secret, like the world had just told her its favorite joke.
Ten minutes later because of course it was ten Arjun walked through the same hallway door, jacket creasing at the shoulders, breath controlled too carefully for someone who claimed he'd just been out "getting coffee." His eyes locked on Sona instantly, the way magnets find each other through walls, and Kabir noted the timing again without saying a word.
He didn't need to. Riya's hand tightened around the folder she was holding.
They retreated to their rooms, doors closing like quiet threats, yet no one slept. Not really.
Riya and Kabir took the moment, the tension, the pattern forming in their ribs like a bruise, and decided together without speaking that following only campus suspects was no longer enough. They needed to look deeper. Into pasts. Into histories. Into the kind of shadows people carried from old lives into new ones.
And Sona and Arjun's shadows were beginning to feel like they'd been growing for years.
Kabir logged onto old databases with tricks he wasn't supposed to know. Riya dug into article archives like someone afraid of what she might find but more afraid of not finding it. Their desks became nests of scribbles and string, timelines they didn't want to understand but couldn't stop building.
The more they searched, the more the silence around Sona and Arjun's pasts felt intentional. Like someone had erased whole chunks of their lives with careful hands.
And just as the pieces began forming teeth, another murder hit the news.
This one was different. Not in brutality; that stayed consistent like a signature written in sweat and fear. But in message.
A note. Left near the body. Written in sharp, controlled strokes.
STOP FOLLOWING ME.
Police assumed it was for them.
But Riya remembered the way Sona's eyes had lit up when she'd read earlier crime reports. She remembered how Arjun always arrived ten minutes after her, always just slightly too calm, too prepared, too quiet.
What if the message wasn't for the police at all?
What if it was for someone who had stepped too close to the killer's orbit?
Someone watching him.
Someone studying him.
Someone learning how he moved.
Kabir reread the words again and again until they burrowed into him.
Stop. Following. Me.
He looked at the side table in Sona's room through the slightly-open door. Crime notes. Patterns. Timelines. Drawn not like a curious student, but like someone preparing a hunt.
Sona returned to the dorm the next evening with dirt on her sleeve. She brushed it off carelessly while Arjun leaned against the wall behind her, jaw tensed, eyes unreadable. His presence beside her felt protective in a way that scared Kabir more than it reassured him.
Then Arjun's phone rang.
The sound sliced cleanly through the air.
He stepped away, voice low but urgent. The call lasted less than a minute. When he came back, his expression was closed, distant, like someone bracing for impact.
"I have to go home," he said. "Family emergency."
He didn't offer details. Didn't wait for questions. Didn't pretend.
He turned to Sona last.
Not touching her, but looking in a way that felt like a grip.
"Don't go after him until I'm back."
The sentence wasn't a request. It was a quiet warning dressed as concern. Cause everyone present in that room knows who she is , and who he is now anyways. Maybe. Those twelve words delivered like a promise he already knew she'd break.
He left within the hour. The room felt wrong without him—too open, too unguarded—like the walls had lost their second heartbeat.
And Sona?
She didn't even pretend to listen.
By midnight she was gone again. Not with excuses, not with explanations. Just the quiet flick of her hoodie pulled up and the door whispering shut behind her.
Riya noticed first. Always observant. Always scared in all the right ways.
"Sona's not in her room," she whispered.
Kabir checked the time.
Then checked it again.
Ten minutes later, the empty hallway. Empty stairwell. Empty campus maps glowing pale in the dark.
No Arjun.
Not this time.
Not following her.
Not shadowing her path.
Riya's heartbeat stuttered.
"So if she's out there alone… what is she doing?"
Kabir didn't answer.
He kept replaying the serial killer's note in his mind.
Stop following me.
But what if she hadn't stopped?
What if she had stepped even closer?
What if she had gone after him alone?
The next evening passed. And the next.
No Sona.
No Arjun.
No message. No trace. No footsteps. No alibis.
Just the widening space in the dorm where two people should have been breathing.
Riya searched the campus twice. Kabir checked police scanners. There was nothing. Nothing except the growing realization that they weren't investigating a killer anymore.
They were circling something far more personal.
Something that had been circling them back.
By the second night, Riya slammed into Kabir's room holding a handful of papers. Old printouts. Old records. Something she must have found when digging where she shouldn't.
Her hands shook.
"Kabir… I found something."
The last word broke.
Something.
About Sona.
Something important.
Something dangerous.
Something they were never supposed to see.
And the story didn't end there.
Because the hallway lights flickered.
The news pinged again.
And somewhere far from campus, another scream disappeared into the city's throat.