Prologue - The Lake
The girl stood at the edge of the lake, her red bracelets catching the moonlight.
They clinked softly every time she shivered.
“Aayra,” she whispered, voice trembling, “don’t look.”
But seven-year-old Aayra Mehta couldn’t look away.
The water was too still.
Too dark.
Too quiet.
And the man behind them breathed too loudly.
Aayra felt his shadow fall over her, stretching long and thin across the wet stones. The girl beside her squeezed her hand—cold, small, desperate.
“Remember what I told you,” the girl said. “If he tells you to run—run. Don’t turn back.”
Aayra nodded, eyes stinging. She didn’t understand everything, but she understood fear. She felt it in the air like smoke, thick and metallic.
The man stepped closer.
The girl’s bracelets trembled.
“Close your eyes,” the girl whispered.
Aayra did.
But it didn’t help.
She still heard the splash.
She still heard the scream cut off halfway.
She still felt the girl’s hand slip away from hers, swallowed by the cold, merciless water.
And then—
a breath.
Warm.
Behind her ear.
“Shh,” the man whispered. “You didn’t see anything.”
Aayra couldn’t scream. Her throat was frozen, her legs rooted to the stones.
“You’ll forget this,” he murmured. “Children forget everything.”
The night swallowed his footsteps.
Aayra stood there alone until her knees gave out and her forehead touched the dirt. A single red bracelet washed up next to her, gently tapping against her wrist as if trying to climb back.
She didn’t remember picking it up.
She didn’t remember going home.
She didn’t remember anything after the whisper.
And the next morning, when the police asked her questions, Aayra said the only words she could say without her voice breaking:
“I don’t know the girl. I didn’t see anything.”
She never returned to that lake.
Not until the calls began.
Not until she heard her own breathing mirrored on the line.
Not until someone whispered the same phrase again—
“Shh. You didn’t see anything.”
And suddenly, after twenty-two years, Aayra remembered everything she was never meant to.
She never returned to that lake.
Not until the calls began.
Not until she heard her own breathing mirrored on the line.
Not until someone whispered the same phrase again—
“Shh. You didn’t see anything.”
And suddenly, after twenty-two years, Aayra remembered everything she was never meant to.
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If you'd like, I can now start Chapter 1, or we can refine the prologue’s tone (more cryptic? more brutal? more subtle?).
