Authors pov.
Sona didn't return the next morning. Or the next. Her side of the dorm stayed quiet in a way that felt wrong, a silence stretched sharp enough to cut through bone. Her shoes were gone. Her coat missing. Her little notebook—the one she hid behind a stack of criminology magazines—vanished.
And the city answered her absence with a corpse.
Another body. Another warning carved into the concrete beside it like the killer had finally lost his patience. Kabir stood behind the police line, his face drained enough that he didn't bother to hide his trembling. Riya squeezed his arm, too shaken to say a word. For the first time, their fear wasn't academic or investigative. It was human. It was threaded with Sona's name.
I told you not to follow me.
That's what the message said. And it wasn't written for the police. It was for the shadow following him. For her.
Sona, who had slipped off the map without a single footprint left behind.
Two days. No texts. No calls. No quiet footsteps in the hallway. Nothing but the echo of unanswered questions.
And then Arjun returned.
He walked into the dorm like a storm collapsing back into its origin. His jaw tense. His eyes darker than Kabir had ever seen them. He didn't even put his bag down. He scanned the room once, twice, and the moment he realized Sona wasn't there, something inside him cracked, splintered, came unhinged.
"Where is she?"
His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. The walls felt it.
Kabir swallowed hard. "She didn't come back. Since the… since the last murder—"
He didn't finish.
Arjun didn't need him to.
He moved toward Kabir with the kind of silent fury that made the air go tight. His fist grabbed Kabir's collar and slammed him into the wall so fast Riya screamed. Arjun wasn't shaking, but Kabir was. Not from pain. From the look in Arjun's eyes, that cold flicker, like someone much older, much darker, much more dangerous had taken the wheel of his pulse.
"You knew she wasn't here," Arjun said, voice low, venom-soft. "You knew she was gone. And you didn't tell me."
Kabir almost choked on the words. Riya tried pulling Arjun back, but the look he shot her froze her on the spot. Not rage. Not hatred. Something more terrifying.
Possession. Obsessed.
Over someone who wasn't even here.
Arjun's grip tightened. "Two days, Kabir. Two days she's been missing. And you waited."
Kabir stammered, "W-We didn't know what to do she disappears sometimes, she always comes b-back—"
Arjun leaned closer, his breath steady, his voice collapsing to a feral whisper. "She didn't come back this time."
Riya grabbed Kabir's wrist and yanked him free when Arjun finally let go. Kabir stumbled forward, coughing, clutching at his throat. Arjun didn't apologize. Didn't explain. Didn't even look at them again.
He turned away like a creature being pulled by instinct alone.
"Where are you going?" Riya's voice cracked.
Arjun paused at the door.
"To bring her back."
No promise. No reassurance. Just certainty. And that was somehow worse.
The door slammed shut behind him.
Kabir and Riya stared at each other, both shaken. They had seen flashes of something strange in the two Sona with her eerie smiles and cryptic disappearances, Arjun with his too-calm reactions, his too-fast appearances after her but this was different.
This wasn't suspicion.
This was fear.
And fear demanded answers.
Kabir wiped the sweat from his forehead and moved toward Arjun's empty desk. "We need to know what they're hiding. Before something happens to her."
Riya nodded, still pale. "Check her things too. Anything. We need patterns."
So they began.
Drawers. Bags. Old textbooks. Notes tucked between pages. Anything they could find. Each little breadcrumb tightened the knot in their stomachs.
They found Sona's old school ID first. Kabir paused, eyes widening.
"She went to my school…" His voice sounded far away. "And… my high school too."
Riya looked up sharply. "You never told me that."
"She never remembered me." Kabir swallowed. "Or maybe she pretended she didn't."
That changed things. That rearranged every piece of the puzzle in a way they weren't prepared for.
Riya opened another file and froze. "Kabir… look at this."
Old newspaper articles. True-crime forums bookmarked. A list of cold cases. Annotated. Almost obsessively so.
Kabir whispered, "She's been tracking killers… since before college?"
Riya's voice trembled. "And Arjun knows. He definitely knows…"
Kabir sat back, breathing hard. "What were they doing all this time…?"
Riya shook her head slowly. "Something dangerous."
A vibration echoed through the room suddenly.
Arjun's phone.
He had left it.
The screen lit up with a missed call from an unknown number… then a new message.
Kabir picked it up with shaking hands.
The message read:
Tell him.
She's next.
Kabir's knees nearly gave out.
Riya grabbed the phone, eyes wide with horror. "Kabir… this… this is the killer."
And Sona
Sona had been gone for two days.
Kabir didn't breathe for several seconds. "We need to find Arjun. Now."
Riya nodded, voice cracking. "But he didn't tell us where he went."
Kabir looked at Sona's empty bed.
"She did."
He pointed at her notebook drawer ripped open. Empty.
"She took her notes with her. She went after him."
Riya's face drained of color. "And he… went after her."
Kabir grabbed his coat. "We move now. Before we lose them both."
He didn't say the last thought forming in his mind.
That maybe… they already had.
Kabir grabbed his coat, ready to bolt out the door, but Riya's hand shot out and caught his wrist. Her fingers shook, her voice even more.
"Kabir… wait."
He turned, impatient, desperate, terrified all of it etched across his face. "We don't have time—"
"Just answer me once."
Her voice wavered. "You said she was in your school. And your high school. That's the past."
Kabir swallowed. "Yeah. But we weren't close. Not really."
Riya's eyes didn't leave his.
"And Arjun."
Kabir froze.
"You and Arjun are childhood friends… right?"
Kabir didn't nod. He didn't deny.
He didn't blink.
Riya whispered, almost as if saying it aloud made it too real:
"Sona and Arjun… were classmates."
Silence dug into the room like teeth.
Kabir's lips parted, a slow, dawning horror crawling up his spine. Memories he never connected suddenly lined up with terrifying clarity.
"And the roses…"
His voice cracked.
"Blue-black roses… those were in school too. Those notes, the pranks, the rumors… she always got those roses. And Arjun… he always had drawings of them."
He whispered the conclusion like his lungs had forgotten how to breathe.
"They weren't just being stalked."
He looked at Riya with a dread that didn't feel human.
"They were stalking each other."
Riya's hand flew to her mouth. Tears gathered in her eyes, trembling at the edges of her lashes.
"It's not safe," she whispered. "Not for us. Not for anyone. Kabir, they're both… something else. And the way he looked at you today…" Her breath hitched. "He'll bring her back. He always does. We shouldn't follow them."
Kabir closed his eyes, head heavy, thoughts spiraling in directions that made no sense and every sense at once.
"We need the truth," Riya whispered. "Not their present. Their past. What they really are."
Kabir finally opened his eyes.
And nodded.
They didn't move. Not yet. Not when the world tilted again.
The news alert on Kabir's phone chimed loud enough to split the quiet.
Riya's heart dropped as she leaned over his shoulder.
The headline chilled them both.
"BODY OF SERIAL KILLER FOUND NEAR ABANDONED LAKE HOUSE OUTSIDE CITY."
Kabir could feel his pulse in his teeth.
Riya's knees nearly buckled. "Kabir… that lake house… it's the same direction she disappeared."
Kabir barely heard her. His throat was too tight. His mind too loud.
"If the killer is dead…"
His breath trembled.
"…who killed him?"
Riya's face went white.
"They did."
The room felt colder.
And hours later, when the sky bruised into evening, the door slammed open.
Arjun walked in.
Dragging Sona in with him.
She stumbled, huffy, irritated, half asleep covered in grime and bruises like someone who fought the forest itself — and lost half the round and won the other half with teeth.
Her hair messy. Knuckles scraped. A tear in her jacket.
And she had the audacity to pout.
"Arjun, I was fine—"
"You were not."
His voice cut through the room like metal.
"You disappeared for two days."
She crossed her arms stubbornly. "You disappeared too."
"Sona."
Her name wasn't spoken. It was warned.
She stuck her tongue out at him. "I was working."
"On dying?" Arjun snapped.
She blinked, startled. Not by the tone by the strain in his voice.
The fear hiding beneath it.
Kabir and Riya stayed silent in the corner, watching a storm unravel itself.
Arjun's hands cupped Sona's face, thumbs brushing her bruised cheekbones like he was memorizing every injury to punish the world for daring to touch her.
"You went after him alone."
He wasn't asking.
He already knew.
Sona muttered, "You told me not to go. I didn't say I won't."
Arjun exhaled sharply, dragging a hand through his hair, pacing like someone who wanted to throw a chair or kiss her senseless or both.
"You don't get to vanish."
His voice dipped low, almost shaking.
"Not from me."
Her eyes softened. Just a flicker. Then gone.
Kabir and Riya felt like intruders in a place not meant for mortals.
Sona pulled her phone out, probably to prove some point—
And froze.
Arjun saw her expression first. "What happened?"
She didn't answer.
Arjun took the phone from her hand.
And stopped breathing.
The screen was filled with pictures.
Sona.
Naked.
Sleeping.
Unaware.
Taken from above .
Riya covered her mouth to muffle her gasp.
Kabir's blood ran cold.
But Arjun…
Arjun turned to stone.
The veins in his neck stood out. His jaw clenched until muscle trembled. His grip on the phone tightened enough to crack it.
"Who took these?" Riya whispered, horrified.
Sona's voice was small now, stripped of her bravado. "I… I don't know."
Kabir whispered, "But the killer is dead."
Arjun didn't look at them.
His voice was low enough to scrape the floor.
"I didn't take them."
For the first time in a long time, doubt flickered in Sona's eyes.
Not at him.
At the world.
Because if the killer was dead—
Then someone else had been in her room.
Someone else had touched her hair while she slept.
Someone else had captured her in vulnerability Arjun worshipped but would never exploit.
And that someone was out there.
Still watching.
Still close.
Arjun lifted his head.
Eyes dark.
Voice hollow.
"We're not dealing with one monster."
He looked straight at the door.
"Someone new just stepped into the game."