Authors pov
Night didn't fade so much as it recoiled from the two boys walking back into their apartment like storm fronts wearing human shapes. Girls were sleeping in room, arjun kabir they had bound the culprit to chair kidnapping him in his own house.
Kabir slammed the door behind them. Arjun tossed his jacket aside and grabbed the laptop, already pulling up Nikhil's details.
"He had access to our girls phones," Kabir muttered, pacing. "He had to."
Arjun's voice was cold metal. "Then let's peel through every wall he thinks he built."
Kabir slid beside him. Their movements synced from years of knowing each other's rhythm, but tonight it looked more like two predators sharpening claws.
Arjun connected to the hidden network he never admitted owning. Kabir typed in manual overrides. Within minutes they were inside Nikhil's cloud.
First his emails.
Then his backups.
Then his camera rolls.
Kabir cursed softly. "Here."
Arjun leaned closer.
Folders labeled with initials.
Time-stamped notes.
Coded messages.
Kabir cracked the code with a few keystrokes. It wasn't complicated. Nikhil always had the arrogance of someone who thought no one would ever look.
When the texts decrypted, Kabir's face drained.
"It's him. He sent every threat." I knew it, he slammed fists against couch,
"And he sent the nudes," Arjun said quietly.
More images.
More proof.
Screenshots of Riya's Instagram.
A video of Sona at the café last month, zoomed in, slowed down, cut frame by frame.
Kabir's jaw tightened until his teeth creaked. "He was following them before we even realized."
Arjun's hands froze over the trackpad.
Then they moved again, faster, smoother, lethal.
They cracked his phone next.
Then his GPS logs.
Nikhil had been near their dorm building three times last week.
Near Riya's hostel twice.
Near Kabir's room once.
Arjun's voice lowered into something ancient. "He was testing boundaries."
Kabir stood, raking his hair back. "And he crossed them." He hired that man who we just kidnapped.
Arjun nodded once. "Coward can't even do anything alone." He smirked
They didn't even talk. They just started moving.
In ten minutes they were outside Nikhil's apartment building. It was still early dawn, cold mist coiling around the street like warning breath.
Arjun checked the windows.
Kabir checked the hallway.
Then Kabir said, "He's home."
Arjun's expression didn't change. Only his posture shifted, like he quietly removed the last piece of his restraint.
Kabir rang the bell.
No answer.
He rang it again.
Inside, faint movement.
Arjun placed his palm on the door… and pushed.
It wasn't locked.
Nikhil stood inside with his phone in his hand and fear all over his face.
He opened his mouth. "Wh–"
Arjun was on him in two strides.
Kabir shut the door behind them without blinking.
"Sit," Arjun said.
It wasn't a request.
Nikhil stumbled back, collapsing onto the sofa. Kabir stood near the door blocking escape. Arjun walked around the room slowly, like memorizing it.
"You sent them," Kabir said.
Nikhil swallowed. "I- I don't know what you're talking about."
Arjun tossed the laptop on the table. The screen showed Nikhil's own messages, his own threats.
Nikhil's breath hitched. His fingers shook.
"I didn't mean harm—"
"You photographed Sona."
"You followed Riya."
"You hacked their phones."
"Your heird that man to edit their pictures and hack their lives".
Kabir listed each sin like a rope being tightened.
Nikhil broke. "Okay! Fine! Yes! But I didn't touch them! I just—liked watching!"
Arjun's gaze hardened. "And you liked terrifying them."
Nikhil's lips trembled. "I- i -It was—admiration."
Kabir made a noise that wasn't human.
Arjun grabbed Nikhil's collar and whispered, "You shouldn't have admired what's mine."
The next moments blurred.
Not violence.
Just speed.
Kabir taped Nikhil's wrists behind him.
Arjun gagged him lightly.
They lifted him between them like he weighed nothing.
Outside, the city was slowly waking. But the lake house waited in silence, as if it knew the boys were bringing it something dark.
They shoved Nikhil into the car trunk and drove without speaking. Every turn on the road seemed to echo Kabir's pulse. Every streetlight reflected in Arjun's eyes like hunger.
Soon the forest swallowed the headlights.
The lake house appeared.
Still. Empty. Watching.
Inside, man nikhil had heird was already bound to chair unconscious.
they tied Nikhil to a chair, beside him.
Not painfully.
Just inescapably.
Kabir checked the knots twice.
Arjun pulled the cloth from Nikhil's mouth.
"I was your classmate," Nikhil choked. "I never meant—"
"You meant every part of it." Arjun's tone stayed soft, which somehow made it worse.
another man still not conscious flutter from sounds.
Just then. The door burst open.
Riya and Sona stepped in.
Kabir had texted them the location once the boys knew it was safe. He didn't trust leaving them alone with a threat still loose.
Sona stopped, eyes narrowing at Nikhil, and man beside him.
Riya froze, breath trembling.
Nikhil's voice cracked.
"Sona… please… I never—"
Sona tilted her head, studying him like an insect pinned to a glass sheet. Nothing dramatic.
Just curiosity gone sharp.
Kabir whispered, "He sent those pictures." And he hired that man for help.
Riya's fear snapped.
Sona's expression darkened.
"What do we do with him?" With them. Kabir asked.
Arjun's answer was quiet.
"Let them speak first."
So the girls stepped forward.
Not to hit.
Not to hurt.
Just to stand in front of both culprits while holding the truth of what they did.
Riya spoke first. "You terrified me."
Nikhil started crying. "I'm sorry—"
Sona laughed softly. And Nikhil stopped breathing for a second.
"You should be," she murmured.
Arjun watched her with something like pride.
Kabir watched with dread.
Their girls weren't fragile.
They were furious.
And Nikhil?
He was cornered prey.
Sona stepped back, showing off her manicured nails, "I m not getting my hand dirty for mosquitos'.
Riya stepped back taking deep trembling breath, " kill them." She whisperd without even thinking.
Only then Arjun nodded to Kabir.
It was time.
They pulled the girls back gently and stepped closer to Nikhil and his man,The chair creaked under him. Other was still unconscious beaten, bruised.
Kabir's voice was calm and cold. "The police can't protect you both from what you did."
Arjun's shadow stretched long across the wooden floor. "But we can end it."
Kabir tore throat of that man with single slide of knife without word.
Nikhil begged.
Cried.
Screamed.
Nothing graphic happened.
Nothing horrifying.
Just one mistake:
Nikhil tried to run.
The moment he bolted, Arjun grabbed him. Kabir pinned him. There was no blood, no theatrics. Just a single sharp movement, a choke of breath, and then…
Silence.
Nikhil slumped.
Kabir stepped back.
Arjun stared down, breathing steadily.
"It's done," Kabir whispered.
But the dawn outside felt… wrong.
Like something bigger was just beginning.
The lake house exhaled once the boys stepped outside with Nikhil's and that man's body. Sona watched from the doorway, her silhouette thin and sharp against the dim light, her expression unreadable… but her eyes glowed with the feverish clarity of someone storing every detail for later.
Riya lingered right behind her, arms wrapped around herself, trembling but steady enough to stay. This was the moment she finally understood: her best friend wasn't afraid of darkness.
She studied it.
She collected it.
She fed on it for pages yet to be written.
Kabir and Arjun carried Nikhil and that man between them without speaking. The forest swallowed them quickly. Sona followed them with her gaze until the trees hid them.
Riya whispered, "You're… taking notes in your head."
Sona didn't deny it.
Her lips quirked too soft, too calm for someone who'd just watched a man die.
Riya shivered.
Inside her mind, Sona was already building sentences.
The way Kabir's jaw clenched when he lifted the bodies.
The eerie quiet between Arjun's footsteps.
The sound of forest soil accepting another secret.
The way Nikhil's last panic ans that mans unconscious silence stuck to the air like humidity.
All of it would become ink soon.
While the girls stayed by the doorway, the boys found a spot near the lake where the killer's body had been buried days earlier. Kabir handled the shovel first, hands sure and strong despite the faint shaking in his tendons.
Arjun didn't shake at all.
He stood like a sentinel, watching the treeline, listening for something no one else could hear. After a few beats, he joined Kabir in digging the second grave—parallel to the killer's, third right beside both's close enough that anyone searching might assume the same monster had done thrice.
It was a neat ending.
A clean lie.
Another buried truth.
They lowered Nikhil in. Then that man. Kabir whispered something under his breath—maybe a warning, maybe a goodbye, maybe a shield. Arjun covered the bodies without a sliver of hesitation, as if the earth itself was an accomplice.
When they returned to the house, both boys were coated in soil. Sona's gaze dropped to their wrists, their nails, the dirt stuck under their cuticles.
Evidence.
Textures.
Descriptions.
Arjun noticed her watching.
He didn't scold her for it.
"Got enough material?" Kabir muttered, half annoyed, half oddly proud.
Sona nodded once. "For a whole trilogy."
Riya nearly fainted.
They headed back to campus before sunrise. The car smelled like forest mud, metal silence, and the ghost of fear they refused to acknowledge.
No one talked.
But somehow they all felt… linked.
Bound by something ugly and unspoken.
Once back in the dorm building, they split.
Arjun guided Sona upstairs like she was something breakable only he was allowed to break. Riya followed Kabir into their floor, her fingers clutching his sleeve the entire climb, before he gave in and picked her up in his arms like she was his to carry.
Inside her dorm, Sona peeled off her jacket and threw it aside. The air tasted too clean after the night they'd survived. She moved toward the desk automatically, as though a magnet dragged her.
Arjun caught her wrist.
"Shower first," he said quietly.
Sona blinked up at him. "I won't forget anything."
"You don't need to remember dirt under my nails," he whispered, brushing his thumb across her cheek.
She inhaled sharply. But she didn't argue. She walked into the bathroom, and Arjun listened to the water run like someone guarding a temple.
When she came out wrapped in steam, he exhaled sharply shutitng his eyes curling fists. "Stop killing me little flame," he huff storm in next, while muttering about girls needed to wear appropriate cloths instade of short towels.
Half annoyed, half exhausted. He scrubbed the forest off his skin, the body off his fingers, the adrenaline off his spine. But the part of him that felt alive burying a threat?
That part stayed.
Kabir returned to his own dorm, showered until his fingers wrinkled, then collapsed onto the bed beside Riya, who refused to leave. She clung to a pillow like a shield.
Their shared fear was different from the other pair's.
Less hungry.
More human.
Kabir took pillow from her and made her sleep beside him in his arms.
The dawn seeped in through the curtains as all four finally felt the night slide off their shoulders.
For an hour… life was almost normal.
Sona sat at her desk, still in towel just to tease arjun towel-dry hair clinging to her shoulders, fingers flying across her keyboard like she was possessed.
Every detail poured out.
Every secret.
Every breath.
Kabir and riya had returned as sokn as it was morning.
Riya watched her, equal parts horrified and impressed.
"You're going to write about… all of this?"
Sona didn't look up. "Of course."
"And what will you call it?"
Sona smiled softly, wickedly. " monsters killing monsters."
Arjun sat on her bed, arms crossed, eyes half-lidded but alert in that predatory way. He was exhausted, but he wasn't about to sleep before she did. Right he was awake whole night.
Kabir paced room, phone in hand, repeatedly checking the locations of police who was about find our bodies… even though he knew exactly where they were.
They'd survived the storm.
They'd buried the threat.
They'd cleaned their hands.
They'd returned to routine.
Almost peaceful.
Almost.
But peace never lasted with them.
By late afternoon, the campus speakers crackled.
Sona paused mid-sentence.
Arjun leaned forward.
Kabir froze in doorway.
Riya lifted her head from the pillow.
A monotone voice echoed through the corridors:
"Attention students… the annual college graduation ceremony will be held next Friday. Attendance is mandatory."
Arjun's eyes narrowed.
Sona's smile spread slow and deliberate.
Kabir muttered a curse.
Riya whispered, "This is too soon… too calm."
Sona tapped her keyboard once more, adding a new line to her manuscript.
Chaos doesn't end.
It only changes outfits.
Arjun saw it.
And understood.
The night had buried a monster.
But next Friday?
Something else was going to rise.