PROLOGUE: The Girl Beyond the Palace Gate
As soon as the small hand crossed nine, all the villagers who were outside went into their houses and locked their doors.
The oil in the wick of the lamp had not yet burned out. But darkness had already engulfed every house. Since all the lamps inside the houses had been extinguished, the entire village of Kalikapuram was deserted.
With the movement of people reduced, even the street dogs were nowhere to be seen. Seeing the owl perched on a tree, all the other birds hid inside their nests. The owl, looking at the silent village, kept twitching its ears from side to side and began staring towards the palace opposite it.
The time was 9:45 p.m.
Noticing that everyone who had been guarding the palace until then had left, two girls emerged from behind the bushes. The girl walking in front with a lantern waved it from side to side and gestured to the girl following her that there was no one around.
When the two girls reached the entrance gate of the palace, they looked at a board attached to the entrance gate.
“ENTRY PROHIBITED.”
“Do we really have to go inside?” the girl behind asked, holding the shoulder of the girl carrying the lantern.
“If we want to know why the people of this village are rejecting the government order, we have to do this. Turn on the camera,” the girl holding the lantern encouraged the girl behind her.
When the girl behind her turned on the camera, the girl carrying the lantern placed it on the ground, picked up a large stone lying nearby, and struck the lock on the gate.
Since everything around them was silent, the sound of “TANG!” echoed loudly in the surroundings. Hearing it, the owl began to cry, “U H U U U U U H.” Both girls were startled by the cry, and the girl holding the stone turned around to look behind her. They saw the owl sitting on a tall tree directly opposite the entrance.
The girl holding the stone touched her heart and, picking up the stone again, tried to break the lock. But instead of the lock, the stone broke.
“I couldn't see properly in the darkness. This is a brick. Pick up the stone over there,” she said, and struck it two more times. The rod attached to the gate broke, and the latch came loose.
The owl, which had been crying until then, fell silent as it looked towards the gate that had opened with a sound.
“This silence is much scarier than all the cries we heard until now,” said the girl holding the camera, tightly gripping her trembling hand with her other hand as she began walking behind the girl carrying the lantern.
As they walked through the darkness, the sound of their footsteps echoed—tak, tak, tak. After they had gone some distance, the sound could no longer be heard. Because the closer they came to the palace, the only sound that could be heard there was the chak, chak, chak, chak, chak of the huge clock standing in the middle of the palace.
Pointing the lantern towards the palace in front of them, they stared at the huge clock before them with their mouths agape.
It extended exactly from the lower part of the palace to the roof.
The time on the clock was 9:59, and the second hand was still racing towards twelve.
Chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak....... Tang! Tang! Tang...!
The time was 10:00 p.m.
The sound of the bells coming from the clock echoed throughout the village. At that exact moment, while the two girls watched, the palace split into two, creating a gap in the middle of the palace.
Since the gap was circular in shape, the clock tilted backwards and settled perfectly into place.
The girl who had been standing there watching everything that was happening while holding the lantern turned around and asked, “Did you record this?”
But the girl holding the camera was nowhere to be seen.
“Maya! Maya!” she called out as she began searching for the camera girl who had disappeared.
As she searched in the light of the lantern, she felt as though someone was standing on the other side of the palace and turned around to look. On the other side of the gap in the middle of the palace, a girl was standing there, holding a lantern and looking straight at her.
“W... who are you?” she asked, pointing the lantern forward.
Then she stopped.
“Maya!” she screamed loudly as she looked at her friend standing there with half of her face burned.
Her scream startled the entire village awake. But no one dared to come out of their houses.
