Chapter 1
The screen of the ancient, dust-filmed laptop cast a flickering, ghostly blue glow over Shreya’s bedroom. Outside, the twilight was bleeding into a suffocating summer night, but inside the four walls of her sanctuary, the temperature didn't matter. Shreya was entirely removed from reality, her knees pulled tightly against her chest, her chin resting on the worn fabric of her sweatpants. She didn't blink. She couldn't afford to.
On the screen, the grand finale of No One Knows was unfolding. It was a high-budget fantasy drama she had spent the last three weeks sneaking glances at during the dead hours of the night.
The scene was framed in stark, grim cinematographic tones. A tight, oppressive circle of villagers stood in a clearing, their shadows stretched long and twisted by the setting sun. At their feet lay a body. The boy was young, his clothes torn, his skin marred by deep, jagged wounds that still wept dark crimson onto the dusty earth. Yet, as the camera panned across the faces of the onlookers, Shreya felt a familiar, cold shiver run down her spine.
None of them showed a single shred of human emotion. Their faces were smooth, blank, and unbothered, as if they had simply culled an animal from the herd rather than snuffed out a human soul. There was no guilt in their eyes. There was no hesitation. There was only a terrifying, unified vacuum of empathy.
Then, the frame shifted. The heavy, orchestral background score swelled, dominated by a mournful violin. A girl stumbled into the clearing.
Shreya leaned forward, her chest tightening. At first, the girl’s face was a mask of pure confusion. She looked from the blank faces of the villagers to the center of the ring, her steps hesitant. But the exact microsecond her eyes landed on the broken body, she froze. It was an acting performance that had won awards, but to Shreya, it felt sickeningly real. The girl’s legs simply gave way. She collapsed to the hard-packed earth, her hands clawing at the dirt, her jaw dropped in a silent, agonizing shock that seemed to rattle her entire frame.
Through the laptop's cheap, rattling speakers, Shreya watched something die inside the character. The boundless, gentle kindness the girl had carried through twenty-four episodes of television was evaporating in real-time, replaced by a hollow, terrifying darkness.
"Why?" the girl sobbed, her voice cracking, raw and bleeding with betrayal. She forced her head up, her tear-blinded eyes sweeping across the faces of the people she had grown up with. "Why did you all do this? Why did you kill him?"
A man stepped forward from the crowd. His hands were literally coated in the dead boy's blood, the dark fluid dripping from his fingertips into the dust. He didn't look ashamed. He looked righteous. "Because he deserved it," the man declared, his voice flat. "He betrayed us. He was a traitor to our bloodline."
"Why?" the girl screamed again, the word tearing from her throat like a physical wound.
Another villager chimed in, crossing his arms defensively. "He had different thoughts from us. He questioned the ancient ways. He didn't believe in the path the Master set for us. A mind that wanders is a mind that betrays."
The girl didn't look at the villagers anymore. Slowing rising to her feet, her trembling hands curling into tight fists, she turned her gaze toward the back of the clearing. There, seated on a raised wooden dais, was the Master—a man draped in pristine white robes, his expression completely detached from the slaughter before him.
"You could have stopped all of this," the girl whispered, though her voice carried perfectly across the silent clearing. The anger in her eyes was a burning, incandescent thing. "Why didn't you? It was your duty to guide us, to protect all of us. And you failed. You sit there in your purity, and you let them butcher him."
A collective gasp echoed from the digital crowd. Shreya felt her own breath hitch. In the rigid, hierarchical world of the drama, the Master’s word was absolute law. To question him was heresy; to accuse him of failure was a death sentence.
The blood-stained villager took a menacing step toward the girl. "You have no right to speak against our Master! You know nothing! That boy tried to steal our sacred stone—the very anchor of our village's life force. That is why we executed him. We protected our future!"
"No," the girl spat, her voice dropping into a register that made the hairs on Shreya’s arms stand up. "You didn't kill him for that reason. You killed him because he was the true descendant of the stone. He was the only one who actually understood its power, but he wasn't the same as you. He wanted to use it to free people, not control them. You killed him out of fear."
For the first time, the Master spoke. He didn't yell. He simply looked down at her with a chilling, clinical calm. "Yes, you are right. This stone is everything to us. It is our past, our present, and our future. It is our absolute duty to protect it at all costs."
"And because of this rock, you killed a human being," the girl said, her voice shaking with disgust. "For you, an inanimate object is more important than a human life."
The Master didn't flinch. "Yes, it is."
The moment the words left his lips, the digital sky on the screen violently shifted. The bright twilight was instantaneously swallowed by an unnatural, bruised purple darkness. Heavy, dark clouds rolled in like a closing fist, and a simulated gale-force wind began to howl through the speakers, whipping the girl's long hair across her face.
The girl didn't look at the Master anymore. She turned her gaze to the center of the clearing, where a massive, glowing blue crystal sat atop a stone pedestal—the sacred artifact of the village. For twenty-four episodes, the stone had been established as indestructible, an ancient deity in physical form.
The girl raised her right hand. She didn't chant an incantation. She didn't draw a weapon. She merely focused her gaze.
With a single, sharp, violent snap of her wrist, a shockwave of raw, golden energy erupted from her palm. It slammed into the crystal. For a fraction of a second, time seemed to stop. Then, with a deafening, shattering roar that made Shreya’s laptop vibrate against her desk, the sacred stone fractured. Millions of glowing blue shards exploded into the air, raining down like dying stars.
The villagers screamed, scattering in blind panic. The Master stood up from his throne, his pristine white robes whipping wildly in the storm, his face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated terror. His voice, previously so calm and authoritative, was reduced to a pathetic, trembling squeak.
"Yo... you... you have powers. How is this possible? No one outside the royal bloodline can even touch the stone, let alone break it! What are you?"
Fear, heavy and contagious, spread through the crowd like wildfire. They fell to their knees, not out of reverence, but out of absolute dread of the monster they had inadvertently unleashed.
But the girl didn't react to their fear. She didn't strike them down. She didn't say a word. Her face returned to that eerie, expressionless blankness, her jaw locked so tightly Shreya could see the strain in her neck. She was desperately, brutally fighting to cage her own emotions, to lock the grief away where these people could never see it. Her eyes brimmed with tears, reflecting the dying light of the shattered stone as she stared down at the dead boy.
One single, heavy tear finally broke free, falling into the dust.
"How did she get her powers?" Shreya muttered aloud to the empty room, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. "Why was she hiding them all this time? If she had just shown them earlier, she could have saved him. She wouldn't be alone. I need to know everything..."
SLAM.
The heavy wooden door of her bedroom flew open, bouncing off the rubber stopper with a violent thud that shattered the atmosphere instantly. Shreya’s heart leaped into her throat. In a reflex honed by years of practice, her thumb slammed onto the laptop touchpad, minimizing the media player and bringing up a static PDF of her advanced chemistry textbook.
Her mother marched into the room like a general inspecting a poorly managed barracks. Her face was set in lines of deep, permanent dissatisfaction, her eyes scanning the small bedroom for any sign of laziness.
"Will you please stop wasting your life watching all these brainless things?" her mother snapped, not even waiting for Shreya to speak. She walked over to the desk, picked up a stray ballpoint pen, and tossed it aggressively onto Shreya’s open notebook. "Learn something from our neighbors’ children, Shreya. Seriously. Every single time I visit their house, their children are glued to their desks. They are studying. The younger one, Riya, is even in your own class. At least learn something from her. She has some sense of responsibility."
Shreya felt the familiar, hot prickle of anxiety in her chest, but she forced her facial muscles to relax. She had learned long ago that showing fear or irritation only prolonged the lecture. Instead, she leaned back against her headboard, pulling off a perfectly executed, playful pout.
"Still, Mom," Shreya said, her voice light, teasing, and entirely artificial. "Despite all her studying, I still get more marks than her in every single terminal exam."
Her mother crossed her arms, her expression hardening rather than softening at the joke. "Maybe she doesn't score more than you on a piece of paper, Shreya, but she has much more practical knowledge. She knows how the world works. She’s beautiful, she has a sweet, respectful voice, she dresses properly like a young lady, and she is so friendly to everyone who visits. Meanwhile, look at you. Look at what you are wearing right now."
Shreya looked down at herself. She was drowning in an oversized, faded grey cotton T-shirt that belonged to her older brother, the sleeves hanging past her elbows, paired with baggy, shapeless sweatpants.
"I've been wearing Bhaiya's old clothes since I was a kid, Mom," Shreya reasoned quietly, her voice losing a bit of its playful edge. "I'm used to it now. I only feel comfortable in them. Tight clothes make me feel like I can't breathe. And as for Riya... she's an extrovert. She thrives around people. I'm an introvert. I can't even talk properly to my own cousins at weddings without wanting to hide in the bathroom, so how am I supposed to charm total strangers?"
"Don't argue with me!" her mother shouted, her voice rising an octave, cutting through Shreya's logic like a blade. "Always an excuse! Always some psychological word to justify why you can't behave normally. I still can't believe how a well-mannered girl like Riya even became your best friend. It makes no sense."
Shreya forced a small, sad smile onto her face, keeping her gaze fixed on the floorboards. "Opposites attract, I guess."
Smack.
Her mother’s hand came down lightly but sharply against Shreya’s upper back. It didn't physically hurt, but the sting of the sudden contact made Shreya’s stomach turn over.
"Go study," her mother commanded, her voice dropping into a low, threatening tone that carried a very specific weight. "Stop wasting time, or I'll tell your father the moment he walks through that front door. You know how he gets when he thinks you're slacking off."
The mention of her father acted like a physical anchor, dragging Shreya’s mood into the depths of the earth. The playful demeanor evaporated completely, leaving her face pale and compliant.
"Okay, okay," Shreya said dramatically, quickly pulling her chair into the desk and grabbing her pen, her voice dripping with a carefully manufactured sense of obedience. "I'm going to study right now. See? Chemistry is open."
Her mother lingered in the doorway for three agonizing seconds, her critical eyes burning into the back of Shreya’s head, before she finally stepped back out and pulled the door shut with a sharp click.
The silence that returned to the bedroom was different now. It wasn't the peaceful silence of an hour ago; it was heavy, tense, and violent with unspoken thoughts.
Shreya let go of the pen. Her hand was trembling slightly. She stared at the complex chemical formulas on the screen, the black text blurring together into meaningless shapes. Her mind drifted back to her mother's threat.
Just before Dad comes home, Shreya thought, her chest tightening so much she had to take a conscious, shallow breath. I have exactly forty-five minutes to memorize this entire chapter. Because if Dad comes home and asks me a question, and I hesitate for even a second...
She didn't finish the thought. She didn't need to. The memory of the last time she had faltered on a progress report was enough to keep her eyes locked onto the screen, reading the same sentence over and over again until the words ceased to have any meaning at all.
