The last morning of the trip arrived with the kind of softness that made leaving feel unfair. For the past few days, the world had been reduced to mountain air, cold mornings, shared meals, badly made tea, endless teasing, and the kind of laughter that only grows when a group of people becomes so comfortable with one another that even silence feels companionable. They had come to celebrate a successful collaboration, to take a break from the suffocating rhythm of work, meetings, deadlines, and expectations, and somewhere between the winding trails, wooden cottages, bonfire nights, and unplanned moments, the trip had become more than just a getaway. It had become a memory. The kind that settles into your bones before you even realize you are living it. The kind that later hurts to remember.
The mountains that had surrounded them for days stood quiet and grand under the pale morning sky, as if they had witnessed every joke, every hidden glance, every little argument, every spark of tension, and every growing feeling that none of them were ready to name out loud yet. The cottage grounds, which had felt lively and full of noise until the previous night, seemed strangely calm that morning. Perhaps it was simply because departures always carry a certain stillness with them, or perhaps it was because none of them truly wanted to admit that the trip was ending.
Inside the cottages, however, calm was the last thing anyone could call it.
There was chaos everywhere. Open bags lay half-packed on beds, jackets were draped over chairs, chargers had gone mysteriously missing only to be found under pillows or stuffed between blankets, and every room seemed to contain at least one person loudly accusing someone else of stealing their belongings when, in truth, they had simply forgotten where they had placed them.
In one room, Nadya was dramatically declaring that she was going to leave half her luggage behind because she refused to fold anything "like a civilized human being" this early in the morning. In another, Myrah was arguing with her own suitcase as if it had personally betrayed her by refusing to close. Somewhere down the hallway, Shaurya was insisting he had packed efficiently while everyone around him loudly disagreed. Rithik, who had packed in under fifteen minutes like a suspiciously functioning adult, had made the mistake of announcing that fact, and as a result, Myrah had nearly thrown a pillow at his head.
The entire place was full of noise, movement, and the kind of harmless chaos that had become their natural rhythm over the last few days. And for a little while, it almost felt as if they could stay in that world forever. Aradhya, however, knew better than to trust peaceful moments too much. She was standing near the window of the cottage she had shared with Myrah and Nadya, zipping up her bag after checking it twice, when she noticed movement outside. Through the glass, she saw Armaan standing a little away from the others near the parked cars, one hand in his pocket, the other resting lightly against the hood of one of the SUVs. He looked calm from a distance, but there was something in the stillness of his posture that caught her attention immediately.
He had been fine since the previous night, or at least he had acted fine, but she had not forgotten what he had said to her when they had sat outside the cottage together in the dark while everyone else slept. She had not forgotten the strange uneasiness in his voice, the way he had confessed that he could not explain why but something felt wrong, and the way that odd heaviness had remained with him even after he tried to laugh it off.
At the time, she had dismissed it as one of those irrational moods that arrive without reason. Everyone gets them sometimes, and perhaps the isolation of the mountains, the weak network, and the silence of late night had simply made him overthink. That was what she had told herself, at least. But now, seeing him standing there again with that same faint distance in his expression, she found herself pausing. Before she could decide whether to go to him, Myrah's voice broke through her thoughts from behind.
"If you're done staring dramatically out of windows like a tragic heroine, can you please help me sit on this suitcase before it explodes?"
Aradhya turned and gave her a dry look. "You packed half your wardrobe for a four-day trip. This is your own fault."
"It is not my fault that I believe in outfit changes," Myrah said with complete seriousness.
Nadya, who was trying and failing to fold a hoodie in any recognizable shape, snorted. "You changed twice a day."
"That is called maintaining standards."
"That is called being jobless," Aradhya muttered, though a small smile tugged at her lips as she walked over to help. Within minutes, the room was back to its usual energy, and whatever strange heaviness had briefly brushed against her thoughts was pushed aside by the simple practicality of leaving.
Outside, the group slowly gathered near the vehicles with bags, jackets, water bottles, and leftover snacks that no one admitted to taking but everyone somehow carried. The air was crisp, the kind that pinched at the skin and made the warmth of tea seem more precious, and though there was tiredness in everyone's eyes, there was also that subtle glow people carry after a good trip—the kind that comes from shared happiness. Plans were being made even before they had properly left.
"Next time," Nadya announced while adjusting her backpack dramatically, "we are going somewhere with room service and heaters that actually work."
"They worked," Shaurya said.
"They worked emotionally, not physically."
"That sentence doesn't even mean anything," Aahan pointed out.
"It means I suffered."
"You suffer by choice," Reyansh said mildly.
"And yet I survive so beautifully," she replied, placing a hand over her heart.
That earned an eye-roll from half the group and laughter from the other half. For a few moments, they all stood there together in the mountain cold, their breath fogging lightly in the air, and no one realized that this was the last completely normal moment they would share for a long time. When it was finally time to leave, the car arrangements were made quickly.
In the first car sat Armaan, Aradhya, Yuvaan, Nitika, and Aahan.
In the second sat Rithik, Myrah, Nadya, Reyansh, and Shaurya.
The luggage was loaded, final checks were made, and after one last collective look at the cottages and the hills that had held their little world for the past few days, they finally began the journey back.
At first, the drive was exactly what one would expect after a trip like theirs—loud, messy, and full of half-finished conversations.
In the second car, according to the voice notes Nadya kept sending in the group chat whenever the network flickered back for a few seconds, absolute nonsense was taking place. She had somehow convinced Myrah that Shaurya looked like the type of person who would secretly cry during dog rescue videos, and now the entire car was apparently trying to force him into admitting whether or not that was true. Rithik had been dragged into the conversation against his will, Reyansh was laughing more than he usually did, and Nadya had proudly declared herself the "backseat emotional investigator" of the group.
The first car, though slightly calmer, was not exactly peaceful either. Aahan, who seemed physically incapable of staying quiet for too long, kept switching between songs, random business observations, and unnecessary commentary about how everyone looked suspiciously dead for people returning from a celebratory trip. Yuvaan, seated beside him, had long given up trying to maintain order and was simply responding when necessary while occasionally checking his phone for signal. Nitika sat by the window, quieter than the others but not detached, occasionally smiling at their nonsense and sometimes joining in when Aahan's dramatic exaggerations became too ridiculous to ignore. In the front passenger seat, Aradhya sat with her head turned slightly toward the window, one elbow resting lightly against the door as the mountain roads curved around them. She was not exactly silent, but she was not as engaged as she usually would have been either.
And that was because, despite the chatter in the car, her attention kept drifting toward Armaan. He was driving. His focus was on the road, his posture relaxed enough to appear normal, and every now and then he responded to something someone said, but there was a subtle difference in him that she could not ignore. It was not dramatic. If anyone else had been watching casually, they might not have noticed anything at all. But Aradhya had a habit of noticing what others missed, and the longer the drive went on, the more certain she became that the uneasiness he had mentioned the previous night had not fully left him.
At one point, while the others were distracted in conversation, she turned slightly toward him and asked quietly, "You okay?"
Armaan glanced at her briefly before returning his eyes to the road. "Yeah."
She waited. Then, because she knew him well enough already to hear what was missing from that answer, she asked, "Actually okay?"
That earned the faintest smile from him, though it did not quite reach his eyes. After a few seconds, he said in a lower voice, "I'm fine. Just… I don't know."
She studied him. "Still feeling weird?"
He exhaled softly through his nose, almost like he was annoyed at himself for it. "A little."
Aradhya turned more toward him now, her expression losing its earlier lightness. "About what?"
"That's the problem," he said, his fingers tightening almost imperceptibly on the steering wheel. "I can't explain it."
For a moment, only the hum of the road and the faint chatter behind them filled the space between them. Then Armaan said, quieter this time, "It's probably nothing. Maybe I'm just tired."
Aradhya looked at him for a second longer before nodding slowly. "Maybe."
But even as she said it, something in her did not fully believe it. Still, before she could say anything more, Aahan leaned forward dramatically from the back seat and asked, "Why are you two whispering like you're plotting my murder?"
Aradhya didn't even turn around. "Because your murder would bring peace."
"Wow," Aahan said, wounded. "I speak one truth in this car and suddenly I'm oppressed."
Nitika laughed under her breath, Yuvaan shook his head, and Armaan, despite himself, smiled faintly. The mood lightened again after that, and for a while the strange heaviness in the air seemed to fade beneath the normal comfort of shared teasing and tired travel.
As the mountains slowly gave way to more familiar roads and the journey stretched on, the group began discussing what they would do once they reached the city. It started casually enough, with complaints about work, pending emails, and how quickly reality would reclaim all of them, but eventually the conversation shifted toward something softer.
"I'm going to Rathore Mansion first," Armaan said at one point, eyes still on the road.
The others in the car looked at him.
Yuvaan nodded immediately. "Obviously."
"We should all go," Nitika said quietly.
That suggestion was so natural that no one even paused to consider it. Of course they would go.
The trip had been fun, but throughout it, everyone had spoken at least once about how much the grandparents would have loved hearing every ridiculous detail from them. Armaan's grandparents had always been among the few older people who genuinely enjoyed listening to their chaos instead of pretending to tolerate it. Dadi especially had a way of making everyone feel as though their smallest stories mattered, and Dadu had always laughed at their nonsense with the kind of warmth that made his presence impossible not to miss.
"We haven't seen them in days," Aahan said, stretching slightly. "Dadi's definitely going to complain that we forgot about her."
"She'll pretend to be angry for exactly two minutes and then feed everyone," Yuvaan said.
"And Dadu will act like we returned from war," Nitika added with a small smile.
That made Armaan's expression soften for the first time in a while. "Yes," he said quietly. "Exactly."
And so, somewhere on the road back home, in the most ordinary way possible, they all decided that instead of going to their own homes first, they would go straight to Rathore Mansion together. It was not a dramatic decision. Not suspicious. Not planned for any reason beyond affection. It was simply what felt right. And perhaps that was what made what followed even crueler.
By the time both cars entered the city and eventually turned onto the familiar road leading to Rathore Mansion, evening had already begun settling over the sky. The light had dimmed into that soft grey-gold hour between late afternoon and night, and the city's usual noise seemed to blur around them as they drove through the large gates of the mansion.
The first thing that felt wrong was the silence. Not silence in the literal sense, because there were still sounds—the gravel under the tires, the distant rustle of trees, the faint hum of the fountains near the entrance—but the house itself felt wrong.
Normally, Rathore Mansion was never like this when people were home. Even on calm days, there was always some movement—staff walking through the hallways, faint music from somewhere, voices from the sitting room, someone calling out from the dining area, or at the very least the warm sense of life that clung naturally to a lived-in family home.
But as both cars came to a stop in the driveway and everyone stepped out, that warmth was missing. The mansion stood in front of them exactly as it always had—large, elegant, beautifully lit by the exterior lanterns—but it felt strangely hollow.
Armaan noticed it immediately. His uneasiness, which had lingered like a shadow all day, returned in full force so suddenly that his chest tightened. He glanced toward the main entrance where a couple of staff members stood, and even from a distance, something in their faces felt wrong. Not just serious. Stricken. The kind of expression people wear when they know they are about to say something that can never be unsaid. The group, who had all been casually gathering their things only moments ago, slowly began noticing it too. Their earlier chatter faded one by one until no one was speaking at all. Armaan took a step forward first. Then another. And then, before anyone else could ask anything, one of the older staff members approached with visibly trembling hands and tear-filled eyes.
"Sir…" the man began, but his voice broke before he could finish.
Something inside Armaan dropped. "What happened?" he asked, and for the first time all day, there was no room left in his voice for denial.
The man's lips trembled. Then he said the words that shattered the world in one breath.
"Dadu and Dadi… are gone."
For one terrible second, nobody understood. Not because the sentence was unclear. But because the human mind, when hit with something too painful too suddenly, often refuses to accept meaning at first. Armaan stared at the man as if he had spoken in another language. "What?" he said, though it came out more like a whisper than a word.
Behind him, the others had frozen. The staff member was crying now, unable to hold himself together anymore. "They… they passed away, sir."
No one moved. No one breathed properly. Armaan looked as though the ground had disappeared beneath him. "No."
The word was small. Hopeless. Childlike in its disbelief.
"No," he repeated, louder this time, shaking his head as if he could physically reject reality through force alone. "No, what are you saying? What do you mean they passed away?"
His voice cracked on the last words. Aradhya felt her own body go cold. Beside her, Nitika's hand flew to her mouth. Nadya, who had just stepped out of the second car moments ago, stood rooted to the spot as if her legs had forgotten how to function. Yuvaan's face had drained of all colour. Rithik and Shaurya exchanged one stunned look before immediately turning back toward Armaan, as if the only thing that mattered now was whether he was still standing. Armaan was no longer hearing anything clearly. He was asking questions—too many, too fast, none of them coherent—but his voice had already begun to break under the weight of panic.
"When? How? What happened? Where are they? What are you saying? No—no, no, no…"
And then he was moving. Not walking. Not thinking. Just moving. Toward the house, toward the hall, toward whatever impossible answer waited inside. The others followed immediately. Inside, the atmosphere was worse. Far worse because now there was no mistaking it. The silence in the mansion was not emptiness, it was mourning. There were flowers. White sheets. Relatives in pale clothing. Red eyes. Low whispers. Prayer lamps. The faint smell of incense so thick in the air that it clung to the lungs. And at the centre of it all lay the truth they had not been there to stop.
Armaan stopped so abruptly in the middle of the hall that Aradhya nearly collided with him from behind. For a second, he simply stood there. And then the reality of it reached him. His grandparents were gone. Really gone. And all the days he had spent laughing in the mountains, all the moments he had been unreachable, all the hours he had been cut off from the world by weak network and distance—during all of that, something terrible had happened here. The sound that left him then was not the kind people can prepare themselves to hear. It was raw. Broken. The sound of grief arriving all at once and tearing through a human being without mercy. Aradhya's eyes burned instantly. Nitika began crying openly. Nadya, who had adored them both almost like her own grandparents, broke down beside Reyansh so suddenly that he had to hold her upright. Myrah's face crumpled, and even Rithik, who rarely showed too much outward emotion, looked visibly shaken. Shaurya lowered his head and covered his eyes for a second as if even looking at the scene hurt. Yuvaan stood still for only a moment before stepping forward toward Armaan, but he stopped just short of touching him, perhaps understanding that some grief cannot be interrupted immediately. Armaan dropped to his knees beside the bodies like the strength had been torn out of him. He was crying now without restraint, without pride, without any attempt to hold himself together. He kept shaking his head, as though somewhere inside him there was still a child stubbornly insisting that if he denied it hard enough, it would become untrue. Aradhya could not remember moving toward him, only that somehow she found herself close enough to hear the shattered way he kept whispering, "No… no… no…"
And in that moment, watching him break like that, something inside her own chest twisted painfully. Because grief is terrible enough on its own. But grief mixed with helplessness, distance, and missed goodbyes is something even crueler. None of them had gotten to say goodbye. That truth hit each of them in different ways over the next few hours. Nitika remembered how Dadi used to save the softest rotis for her because she always complained about the crispy ones. Shaurya remembered Dadu pretending to be offended every time Shaurya refused a second serving of food. Nadya remembered how Dadi would scold her for skipping meals and then secretly hand her extra dessert five minutes later. Myrah remembered being teased mercilessly every time she entered the mansion dressed "too fashionably" for no occasion. Rithik remembered Dadu's quiet approval, the kind that never came loudly but always meant more because of it. Yuvaan remembered how warmly they had always treated him, never once making him feel like an outsider to their family. Reyansh remembered the rare kind of acceptance that had come without questions. Aahan remembered how easily they laughed, how naturally they loved. And Aradhya remembered the way Dadi had once tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and told her she looked too serious for someone so young.
Small memories. Simple memories. The cruelest kind. Because they are the ones that hurt the most after people are gone. That night, none of them returned home. They stayed in Rathore Mansion because leaving felt impossible, because Armaan should not have had to sit with that grief alone, and because the house itself seemed to need people in it, as though emptiness would only make the loss feel more monstrous. The night stretched long and mercilessly slow. No one slept properly. People cried in corners, sat in silence, held each other together when they could, and tried to process a reality that still felt too sudden to fit inside the mind.
And though none of them knew it yet, though none of them could have guessed how deep and ugly the truth beneath this loss truly was, something had already begun shifting that night. Because some deaths do not leave behind only sorrow. Some leave behind questions. And sometimes, before the truth ever reveals itself, it first enters a room as a feeling. A silence. An uneasiness that refuses to leave. Armaan had felt it before they returned. He just had not known what it meant. But soon, all of them would.