nazmnotes

Listen.

Close your eyes and listen to the rhythm of the rain before it falls..

Listen to the sound of dry earth splitting open under a midday sun, begging for a drop of water, even if that water tastes of salt and blood.

When the coldness of the earth cried out to the scorching sun,

Neither the ground beneath was sane, nor did the sky belong to us.

One body was the sanctuary, one soul was parched,

That was not mere love; it was a desperate compromise of God.

Look at the dust.

​Do not look past it; look at it.

See how it rises from the ground in heavy, golden waves, kicked up by the iron-shod hooves of stallions that were born in the wild north and brought here to be broken. The dust is everything in this land. It is the beginning of the day, and it is the shroud that covers his chest when the night finally takes him. It settles into the lines of a man’s palms, it mixes with the sweat of his brow, and it becomes a second skin.

​A dark, sun-baked skin.

​Imagine a man carved out of that very earth. He stands between the sun and the stone walls of the palace, he casts a shadow that looks like a mountain. His shoulders bear the invisible scars of ropes, of heavy yokes, of a life spent pushing against weights that would break a lesser creature. He does not breathe the air; he conquers it. Every inhale is a growl of survival; every exhale is a defiance of his low birth. His chest is a broad expanse of muscle, glistening with sweat and the grime of the stables, smelling of hot leather, dry hay, and a wild, animal heat. He is a beast kept at the gates, necessary but feared, a silent storm waiting for a reason to tear the sky apart.

​And then, look up. Higher. Past the dust, past the wooden beams of the paddocks, up to the high, arched balconies where the stone is carved into lace so delicate it looks like frozen foam.

​There she sits. A creature made of milk and rosewater, of crushed jasmine and silk so fine it can be drawn through a finger ring. Her skin has never known the bite of the midday sun. It is cool and flawless, kept hidden behind curtains of heavy velvet and laws of strict modesty. Her hair is a dark, heavy river that smells of hibiscus and cold rivers, falling over shoulders that have never carried a burden heavier than a string of pearls. Her voice is a low, soft melody—not because she is weak, but because she has been taught that to speak loudly is to sin. ​She is a bird in a golden cage, fed on sweets and taught to look only at the floor.

​But two hearts do not care for the thickness of stone walls. They do not care for the decrees of kings or the pride of wealthy fathers.

The distance was between the dirt and the roof, yet their eyes met, and both walked toward their destruction the moment the walls trembled.

He desired to touch the silk with his dirt-stained hands,

And the mistress’s purity bloomed within the very definition of sin.

​Think of the longing. It is not a gentle thing.

It is not the sweet ache of a song sung by the riverbanks. No, this longing is a disease. It is a slow, burning fever that starts in the belly and moves into the throat until you are suffocating in your own skin.

​It is the hunger of skin for skin.

​When he looks up from the dirt, his eyes—dark, deep-set, and wild—do not seek forgiveness. They do not bow. They strike the balcony like a lightning bolt. And when she looks down through the stone lattice, her large, kohl-rimmed eyes do not turn away in shame. She drinks him in. She drinks the sight of his bare, sweating torso, the raw power of his arms anchoring a thrashing horse, the sheer, unadulterated masculinity of a man who owns nothing but his own strength.

​She watches his chest rise and fall. She feels a phantom heat against her own skin, a desperate, forbidden urge to feel those rough, calloused hands—hands that break wild stallions—press against her soft, unblemished waist. She wants to be broken by him. She wants the dirt under his fingernails to leave marks on her white skin, to stain her purity with his reality.

​And he? He looks at her high up there and does not see a goddess to be worshipped from afar. He sees his Destiny. He sees a woman he wants to drag down into the hay, to wrap his massive, scarred arms around her until her silks are torn and her sighs are swallowed by his mouth. He wants to possess her so completely that even if separated, the only song she would know from this day on would be the sound of his breath on her lips and the sound of his heart in her ears.

​It is an erotic madness. It is the obsession of two people who know they are standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down at a jagged valley of rocks, and choosing to jump anyway. Because a life lived in that golden cage is no life at all, and a life spent merely toiling in the mud is just a slow death. To touch each other, even once, is to ensure their own annihilation.

​But oh, what a beautiful annihilation it will be..

​Listen closely to the horses below. Hear how they neigh, their chests lathered in white sweat, their muscles trembling with a desperate desire to break free from the leather straps. They are the mirror of the hearts inside this fortress. Wild, stubborn, and furious.

​The sun is setting now, bleeding a deep, violent crimson across the sky, painting the courtyard in the color of a fresh wound. The air is growing thick, heavy with the scent of ozone and wet earth. A storm is coming..

In this game of destruction, no one won and no one lost.

Let the spoken poetry fade into the reality of the morning. Let us step into the haveli, where the silver anklets are clinking, where the kohl is being applied, and where a crimson veil is about to be torn away by the Storm.

​Listen to the story of Vinaash...

There was a specific shade of lavender that painted the sky just before the sun breached the horizon of the Aravalli hills.

For a long time, that hour had belonged to Jaskirat alone—a time when the world was too quiet to lie to him, and the coolness of the air reminded him of the mountains he had left behind.

But lately, the dawn had changed its shape. It had taken on the sound of a soft, cotton salwar dragging lightly across stone floors, and the rhythmic, comforting clink of a brass pot being filled at the courtyard tap.

Every morning, without fail, you were there.

He would be sitting on the edge of his cot, already dressed in a simple kurta, his dastar tied with the geometric perfection of a man who treated his identity as a shield. The room would smell faintly of the eucalyptus vapor your mother burned to clear the air, but the moment you crossed the threshold, the room smelled of you—of fresh soap and the sweet, earthy scent of almond oil.

"Sit still Jaskirat.." you would murmur, not waiting for him to object as you set down your tray of clean gauze and antiseptic solution.

He would shift his weight, his broad frame taking up most of the small cot, but he would obey. He had stopped arguing. He had learned that your kind heart was backed by an iron stubbornness that no amount of military discipline could break.

You would sit on the stool beside him, your fingers moving with a practiced, feather-light precision as you peeled back the edges of the linen tape on his ribs. The wound was no longer a weeping, angry crater of purple and red; it had closed into a thick, jagged ridge of silver-pink scar tissue. It looked like a tear in a canvas that had been meticulously stitched back together.

"It’s healing well.." you said softly, your thumb lightly tracing the edge of the healthy skin around the scar. "Papa says by next week, you won't even need the light dressing."

Jaskirat’s breath hitched—a tiny, imperceptible hitch that only someone who spent hours watching him would notice. His muscles corded slightly beneath his skin. It wasn't the pain of the wound; it was the sheer, terrifying proximity of you. You were so close he could see the amber flecks in your eyes, the tiny ink stain on your index finger from your late-night grading, and the absolute, unforced tenderness written across your face.

He was forty-seven years old. His skin was a map of betrayals, torture marks, and the deep, weathered lines of a man who had lived three lifetimes in the dark. You were 19 years younger, your life just beginning, your heart so large and unblemished that it frightened him more than any target he ever had to fight.

"Then you should stop wasting your time with these trays.." he said, his voice carrying that low, gravelly rasp of a man who didn't use his throat enough. He looked away, his gaze fixing on the window. "I can wash myself now."

"I’m not wasting my time." you replied calmly, taping a final, clean square of gauze over the silver ridge. You didn't pull your hand away immediately. You let your fingers linger on his side for just a second, feeling the steady, rhythmic thump of his heart. "And besides, if I don't drag you out of this room, you’ll sit here until noon pretending you don't exist."

You stood up, picking up the dirty linen, and gave him a small, challenging smile. "Breakfast is ready. And Maa is already waiting in the veranda for you to join us for the morning Ardas. Don't make my mother come fetch you."

Jaskirat watched you walk out, his hand instinctively rising to touch the spot on his ribs where your fingers had just been. The skin was cool from the antiseptic, but beneath it, the flesh felt hot. Burned.

He took a deep breath, adjusted the front of his kurta, and followed the routine he had surrendered to.

The dining table was the center of the household, a noisy, chaotic space where tea was poured from a heavy brass kettle and debates about the village council were settled over stuffed paranthas. But since Jaskirat had begun sitting at the end of the bench, the noise had found a rhythm.

He sat quietly, his hands folded in his lap, waiting for everyone to have gathered and started eating befire he touched his food.

He had learned the exact cadence of your family’s faith—a faith that matched the one he had before he had to erase himself.

When your father spoke the words of the Gurbani, Jaskirat’s lips would move in absolute silence, his heart acknowledging a God he thought he would have to keep hidden in his heart forever.

"Eat more, Jaskirat..!" your mother said, sliding a third potato parantha onto his plate with a heavy dollop of white butter. "A man of your size cannot live on air and silence. Look at him, beti, he’s still too thin..!"

You looked up from your own plate, immediately reaching for the honey jar. "He likes it with honey, Maa.. He won't ask for it, but he likes it." You poured a generous golden stream onto the corner of his plate, your face bright with that instinctive, nurturing care that had become your second nature.

Jaskirat stared at the honey. He didn't look at you, but his shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch.

Across the table, your father and Rohan exchanged a long, quiet look. It was a look you didn't see, but one that carried the weight of parental realization. Dr. Rathore adjusted his spectacles, his eyes softening as he watched the way you naturally anticipated the stranger’s needs—the way you kept his water glass filled, the way you subtly shielded him from Rohan’s loud questions, the way your entire posture leaned toward him like a flower seeking the light.

"The school inspection is tomorrow, isn't it?" your father asked, breaking the silence.

"Yes.." you said, your attention temporarily shifting. "The district officer is coming. I’ve been rewriting the lesson plans all night."

"You shouldn't work so late." Jaskirat said suddenly.

The table went still. It was rare for him to volunteer an opinion during family conversations. He kept his eyes on his plate, his fork tearing off a piece of the bread with mechanical precision.

"The light in your room stays on until three in the morning.." he continued, his voice low and steady. "It makes you clumsy during the day..You almost dropped the water pitcher twice this week. A tired mind makes mistakes."

Rohan let out a snort of laughter, shaking his head. "See that? Even the guest thinks you work too hard..!"

You felt a warm flush creep up your neck, but your eyes stayed locked on Jaskirat. He wasn't looking at you, but the fact that he had noticed the light under your door—that he had counted the hours you slept—felt like a secret code whispered only to you.

But for every inch closer you gained, Jaskirat seemed to build a mile of stone.

Later that afternoon, the dry heat of the desert settled over the village like a heavy blanket. The school had closed early for the inspection preparations, and you found him in the courtyard, sitting under the deep shade of the neem tree. He was holding a small piece of sandpaper, slowly smoothing down the rough edges of a wooden shelf Rohan had brought home from the market.

You walked out with two glasses of cold buttermilk, the ice clinking against the glass.

"Here.." you said, sitting on the wooden bench beside him, handing him the drink.

He took it, his rough fingers brushing against yours for a brief second before he pulled back, his hand wrapping around the glass like a vice. He took a long, disciplined drink, then set it down on the dirt floor beside his boots.

"Jaskirat..?" you said quietly, your voice dropping to that soft, intimate register you only used when the two of you were alone. "Why do you do that?"

He didn't look up from the wood. The sandpaper made a rhythmic, grating sound. "Do what?"

"Pull away..." you said, your heart aching with a raw, authentic honesty.

"Every time I get close, every time my family treats you like a son, you look like you’re preparing to jump out of a moving train. You’re safe here. Why do you keep your heart behind a locked door..?"

The sandpaper stopped.

Jaskirat let his hands fall between his knees. He stayed silent for so long you thought he hadn't heard you, or that he was going to stand up and walk back into his room to escape the conversation. The wind rustled through the leaves of the neem tree, dropping a small, white blossom onto the dirt between his boots.

"You have a kind heart." he said, his voice so quiet it was almost lost to the breeze. He finally turned his head to look at you, and the sheer weight of his forty-seven years hit you like a physical blow. His eyes were beautiful, but they were filled with the ancient, unmovable dust of a graveyard.

"It’s not a door, beti." he said, using the respectful, distancing term that felt like a bucket of ice water over your chest. "It’s a wall. And I didn't build it to keep you out. I built it to keep the rot inside from spilling onto others."

"I don't care about the rot..." you said, your voice trembling, your hand reaching out to touch his arm. "I care about the man under it...!"

Before your fingers could make contact with his sleeve, Jaskirat stood up. He didn't do it violently, but the movement was final. He picked up the wooden shelf and the sandpaper, his posture rigid, the crimson dastar he wore making him look like a king who had just passed a sentence of exile on himself.

"You should care about someone who has a future." he said, his voice returning to that cold, dead stone you hated. "I am just a passenger in your father's house. When the tracks clear, the passenger leaves."

He walked away, his long strides taking him back into the shadows of the clinic room before you could gather the words to stop him.

You sat alone on the bench, the cold glass of buttermilk sweating in your hand. The sun was beginning to drop, casting long, lonely shadows across the courtyard. It felt hopeless. Every time you tried to show him that he was allowed to be human, he reminded you that he was a weapon that had been retired from service.

But as you looked down at the dirt where his boots had been, you saw the small, white neem blossom. He hadn't stepped on it. Even in his haste to pull away, he had carefully moved his foot to avoid crushing something beautiful.

You picked up the flower, your fingers closing around its fragile petals.

He’s still in there, your heart whispered, refusing to give up the fight. He’s still here, and I won't let him crawl back into the dark...

Though, his words did somehow hurt you.

Your mind was a chaotic whorl of questions, spinning so fast it made your chest ache.

Why was he like that? What had they done to him?

You had seen the map of his survival written in the silver ridges on his ribs, the dark, jagged bruises on his shoulders, and the deep, haunting ring around his throat that looked like it had been carved by a rope or a wire. He was a man who belonged to the shadows, a man who had been hollowed out until there was nothing left but a name he called a corpse..

For a wild, fleeting second, you considered asking your father...but..

Asking was a weapon. Prying into the locked drawers of his memory would be a violation, an act of disrespect to a man who had surrendered his very name just to find a corner where he could stop bleeding. He didn't want to be dissected. He didn't want to be pitied.

You took a deep, steadying breath, the cool desert air filling your lungs. If he wouldn't give you his past, you would simply have to build him a present so heavy, so solid, and so undeniably warm that he wouldn't be able to lift his feet to leave it. He thought he was a passenger in your father's house. You were going to make him an want to stay.

The next three days became a silent masterclass in gentle, unyielding persistence. You didn't mention the bench under the neem tree. You didn't look hurt by the word beti, that term that he had used to create a chasm between you. You simply readjusted your strategy, shifting from an active force to an atmospheric reality he couldn't evade.

If Jaskirat wanted to be a ghost, you would make sure the house was a place where ghosts were given a seat at the table.

On Saturday morning, the kitchen was alive with the sharp, rich scent of parched flour and ghee. Your mother was preparing Karah Prasad for the weekend, her hands moving with the rhythmic grace of a woman who had spent her life transforming devotion into food.

Jaskirat stood by the doorway, his broad frame casting a shadow across the threshold. He didn't enter—he never entered without an explicit invitation—but his eyes were fixed. The sweet, heavy scent seemed to act like a time machine, pulling his shoulders down from their military stance.

"Don't just stand there like a pillar, Jaskirat..!" your mother scolded gently, not looking up as she stirred the thick, golden paste. "My wrists are old, and this flour needs to be turned constantly before it burns. Come here."

Jaskirat blinked, surprised. He looked toward the courtyard as if searching for an excuse, but you were sitting at the dining table, your schoolbooks spread before you, watching him with a calm, encouraging smile.

He stepped into the kitchen. His large, scarred hand closed around the long wooden handle of the spatula, covering your mother's smaller fingers for a brief second before she stepped back, wiping her hands on her apron.

"From the bottom.." she instructed, her voice softening. "Fold it over. Don't let the heat settle in the center."

You watched him work. It was a beautiful, contradictory sight—the elite operative, the man who had torn through the underworld of Karachi like a scythe, now standing over a domestic stove, his face illuminated by the low, orange flame, carefully folding sweet flour for a family that wasn't his own. He did it with the same absolute, focused discipline he applied to everything. He didn't waste a single movement.

When the prasad was finished, thick and gleaming with ghee, your mother took a small portion on a stainless-steel plate. She didn't offer it to your father first, nor to Rohan. She handed it directly to Jaskirat.

"Taste it.." she said. "Tell me if the sweetness is right."

Jaskirat looked at the plate as if it held a fragile, living thing. He took a small piece with his fingers, blew on it softly to cool it, and placed it in his mouth. For a fraction of a second, his eyes closed. The memory of a kitchen in Pathankot, of a mother who had loved him before the darkness took him, seemed to wash over his face, smoothing out the deep, bitter lines around his eyes.

"It is perfect.." he whispered, his voice thick.

"Good." your mother said, her eyes crinkling with a deep, maternal satisfaction. "Then you will be the one to distribute it after the evening prayers."

By involving him in the sacred rituals of the house, your family was doing what you had hoped for: they were weaving him into the fabric of their lives, one thread at a time, until the pattern was too intricate for him to untangle himself from.

That evening, the routine continued, but the distance between you felt less like a wall and more like a bridge that was currently under construction.

You had stayed up late again, the light from your small desk lamp cutting through the blue darkness of the house. The school inspection had gone well, but the paperwork was endless. Your eyes were burning, your shoulders aching with the tension of the week.

A soft, rhythmic knock rattled the frame of your door. It was so quiet it could have been the wind, but you knew his touch.

"Come in.." you said, straightening your spine.

The door swung open silently. Jaskirat stood there.

"You are still awake.." he said. It wasn't a question; it was an accusation, but the tone was devoid of the cold stone he had used under the neem tree.

"Just a few more pages." you said, offering a tired smile.

He walked into the room, his bare feet making no sound against the floorboards. He set the cup down on the corner of your desk, far away from your inkwell so it wouldn't spill. "The light is a distraction. The whole house is dark except for this corner. Eat this. It has turmeric and almonds. Your mother said your throat sounded dry during dinner."

You reached out, your fingers wrapping around the warm clay of the cup. The heat felt wonderful against your cold palms. "Thank you, Jaskirat."

Instead of turning to leave immediately as he usually did, he stayed. He stood by the edge of your desk, his eyes scanning the neatly stacked textbooks, the small brass inkpot, and the framed drawing of a peacock one of your students had given you.

"You teach them well," he said suddenly, his gaze dropping to the notebook you were grading. "The children in the street... they speak of you with respect. They call you Didi as if you belong to all of them."

"They are good children..!" you said, looking up at him. "They just need someone to stay. Most teachers take the government salary and run back to the cities after six months. They think this place is a dead end."

Jaskirat looked at you, his dark brown eyes catching the yellow glare of the lamp. "And you don't?"

"No.." you said, your voice ringing with an authentic, grounded clarity. You set the cup down and leaned forward, your eyes locking onto his with an intensity that forced him to stay anchored. "I think a place is only dead if the people in it refuse to grow roots. I love this town. I love this house. And I love the people who find shelter behind that blue gate."

The implication was heavy, hanging in the narrow space between you like an unspoken vow.

Jaskirat’s hand, resting on the edge of the wooden table, flexed. He looked at your face—at the absolute sincerity, the lack of guile, the total absence of the suspicion that had defined his entire life. You were offering him a home, not as a reward for his service, not as a safehouse to hide from the Goverment or Omar, but simply because he was Jaskirat. Because you believed he was worthy of a tomorrow.

He swallowed hard, the muscles of his throat cording. For three years, his inner monologue had been a constant repetition of run, hide, forget. But looking at you in the warm glow of the lamp, the script felt old. Outdated.

"You are a dangerous girl." he murmured, his voice dropping to a rough, intimate whisper that sent a shiver straight down your spine.

"Why?" you asked, your breath catching.

"Because.." he said, taking a half-step closer, his large shadow swallowing yours against the wall. "You make a man think he can survive the things he has done. You make a man want to stay in the light."

Before you could reach out, before you could close the tiny, remaining inch between your fingers and his hand, he took a step back into the darkness of the hallway.

"Goodnight." he whispered.

The door closed softly behind him, the latch clicking into place with a sound that felt like a promise. You sat alone in the quiet room, the warm cup of turmeric milk cradled in your hands, a bright, beautiful smile breaking across your face.

He was still resisting, yes. He was still keeping his distance. But the wall was a wall of stone anymore, but of resistance. With every morning prayer, every shared meal, and every look shared in the dawn, you were washing it away. Piece by Piece. He wasn't going to leave. You would make sure of it..

The next morning, at the Gurudwara:

The sacred words of the Ardas echoed softly against the white marble walls of the Gurudwara, the sound carrying a profound, ancient weight that seemed to ground the very air. Inside the hall, the atmosphere was thick with the scent of burning ghee, fresh rosewater, and the sweet, heavy aroma of Karah Prasad.

Sunlight filtered through the ornate arched windows, cutting through the haze of incense in long, golden shafts that illuminated the dust motes dancing in the air.

Jaskirat stood in the second row, his tall, imposing frame squared, his hands folded tightly in front of his chest. The crimson dastar he wore was immaculate, a striking contrast to the simple white kurta your brother had given him. His eyes were closed, his long lashes dark against his cheekbones. For the first time in years, the lines on his forehead were smooth. He wasn't scanning the exits. He wasn't looking for a weapon. He was listening to the Guru’s word, his lips moving in a silent, desperate harmony with the granthi's chant.

You stood beside him, your head covered completely by a soft saffron dupatta. Every few moments, your eyes would drift from the holy book toward him. Watching him pray felt like witnessing a miracle. The man who had stood on a chair in a dark shack, completely swallowed by the desire to end his existence, was now standing in a house of God, his spirit reaching out for a redemption he had long thought impossible.

The trouble began in the courtyard, near the edge of the sarovar where the holy water rippled under a gentle breeze. Your family had stepped ahead to speak with the head granthi, leaving you and Jaskirat to walk slowly behind, carrying the steel plates from the prasad distribution.

An elderly woman, her face a beautiful map of wrinkles and her hair completely silver under her white veil, stopped in front of you. She looked at Jaskirat’s tall, commanding form, then at the protective, gentle way you walked right beside his shoulder. A warm, maternal smile broke across her face.

"Jeeti raho, beta..!" she said, her voice rich with the casual, affectionate blessing of an elder. She looked up at Jaskirat, her eyes twinkling. "Aapki jodi bohot pyaari hai. Waheguru aap dono ko hamesha khush rakhe, bilkul ek doosre ke liye bane ho."

The words hit the air like a sheet of ice.

Jaskirat went entirely rigid. His breath didn't just hitch; it stopped completely. He stared at the elderly woman, his eyes widening with a sudden, suffocating panic that you had never seen in him before—not even when he was facing a loaded gun in the slums.

"Mata-Ji-, aap galat—" you began frantically, your face burning with a sudden, intense heat as you tried to correct her.

But the woman had already patted your cheek with a soft, blessing hand and moved along into the crowd, completely unaware of the bomb she had just detonated in the quiet space between you.

You turned to look at Jaskirat. The change in him was instantaneous, terrifying, and total.

The warmth that had been building in his face over the last two weeks was entirely gone, replaced by a cold, gray mask of absolute horror. He wasn't looking at you; he was looking through you, his mind racing backward at a frantic, desperate speed.

In that single, agonizing second, Jaskirat realized something that chilled him to the bone. The old woman hadn't just made a random guess. She had seen the way he looked at you when you handed him the prasad. She had seen the protective, soft micro-expressions he thought he had buried deep beneath his skin. She had seen affection in his eyes—an affection so visible, so real, that a complete stranger could read it on his face in a house of prayer.

'I got too close.' his inner monologue screamed, the old, feral survival instincts slamming into his consciousness like a tidal wave. 'I let my guard down. I forgot who I am. I forgot what I carry.'

He didn't speak. Not a single word. When you reached out to touch his sleeve, his arm flinched away automatically, pulling back into his chest as if your fingers were made of fire. He turned on his heel and began walking toward the exit, his strides long, mechanical, and fast..

The walk back to the house was a nightmare of absolute silence.

Your father and Rohan tried to make conversation, mentioning the weather and the upcoming harvest, but Jaskirat didn't offer even a nod. He walked three paces ahead of the family, his back straight as an iron rod, his eyes fixed firmly on the dusty road before him. The crimson dastar, which had looked like a crown of dignity in the morning, now looked like a target.

When you reached the blue gate, he didn't wait for anyone. He walked straight through the courtyard, ignoring your mother’s offer of afternoon tea, and entered the clinic room. The heavy wooden door closed behind him with a dull, final thud

You stood in the kitchen, the clay cup of tea shaking in your hand. "He's just tired.." you whispered to your mother, though the lie tasted like ash in your mouth. "The walk was long for his ribs..."

Your mother looked at you, her eyes filled with a deep, sorrowful understanding that she didn't voice. She simply squeezed your shoulder, letting you go as the clock chimed, signaling it was time for you to leave for your afternoon remedial classes at the school.

During the entire three hours of teaching, your mind wasn't on the geography lessons or the grammar rules. It was in that quiet, dark room at the back of your house. You kept replaying the look of sheer panic in his eyes. You realized then that his distance hadn't been a lack of feeling; it had been a desperate attempt to protect you from himself. And now that the line had been crossed—now that the world could see he cared for you—the weapon had panicked.

The sun was setting by the time you pushed open the blue gate again, casting long, bruised shadows of purple and orange across the dirt courtyard. The house was unnaturally quiet. The steady, comforting sound of his sandpaper under the neem tree was missing.

You set your books down on the veranda bench and walked straight toward the clinic room, your heart hammering a frantic, irregular rhythm against your ribs.

"Jaskirat?" you called out softly, knocking on the frame.

There was no answer.

You pushed the door open. The air inside was cold, devoid of the eucalyptus scent and the warmth of his presence. The room had been scrubbed clean—cleaner than it had ever been.

The low wooden cot was stripped bare, the sheets folded into a perfect, military square at the foot of the mattress. The gray shirt Rohan had lent him was washed, pressed, and laid neatly on top of the linen. On the small wooden table beside the bed sat the five-meter length of crimson cotton cloth—the dastar you had given him—folded with absolute, heartbreaking reverence.

He hadn't taken a single thing that belonged to your family. He had left exactly as he had arrived: a man with nothing but the clothes on his back and the scars on his skin.

He was gone.

He had left without a word, without a signature, without a single footprint in the dust to show he had ever been there. He had fled the light the moment he realized it was beginning to warm him.

You walked over to the table, your knees trembling so violently you had to grip the edge of the wood to keep from collapsing. Your fingers brushed over the smooth, crimson cotton of the dastar. It was cold.

A hot, stinging tear spilled over your eyelid, tracking down your cheek and hitting the fabric, creating a single, dark circle on the cloth. The loneliness of the room rushed in to fill the void he had left behind, a suffocating, heavy weight that made it hard to breathe.

"Why?" you whispered into the empty space.

But the ghost had already retreated into the wilderness, choosing the familiar torment of his exile over the terrifying possibility of being loved. He had broken the circle you had built around him, leaving you with nothing but a folded piece of cloth and the echo of a name he had called a corpse..

The screen door creaked open.

A soft, hurried step crossed the threshold. Your mother was beside you in an instant

"He was healing, Maa.." you choked out, your fingers gripping the fabric of her apron. "He was learning to pray again. Why did he have to go back to the dark..?"

Your mother didn't answer. She only held you, tightly, as the room darkened from lavender to blue, the oil lamp on the kitchen counter outside casting a long, lonely finger of light across the floorboards.

By the end of the small Town, where the dirt roads dissolved into the jagged, broken stone of the dry creek bed, Jaskirat walked with his head down against the biting gale.

His left arm was pressed firmly against his side, his thumb hooking into the waistband of his trousers to keep his ribcage from shifting too violently. The walk from the village had been grueling; his body was still weak from the weeks of sepsis, the internal stitches pulling with a sharp, hot reminder that he was still made of breakable flesh.

But his mind was clear. The fog of the last two weeks had been burned away by the cold terror of that moment in the Gurudwara courtyard.

The old woman’s words rang in his ears like a sequence of gunshots. He had let his guard down. He had sat at their table, eaten their bread, and let the gentle, nurturing hands of a woman wash the grime from his knuckles until he forgot what those knuckles had done in the cornees of Karachi. He had looked at her with something resembling hope, and the world had seen it.

If a simple village elder could read the affection on his face, then everyone could. The Goverment could read it. If he stayed behind that blue gate for one more week, the people who hunted him would find the house, and they would tear it apart to get to him. He would not let her become a target. He would not let her kind heart be the reason a bullet entered that peaceful kitchen.

He stepped through the crooked doorway of his old shack. The corrugated tin roof groaned under the weight of the wind, making that rhythmic, metallic clink-clink-clink against the rotting wood.

The room was exactly as he had left it the night he had tried to die. The overturned wooden chair still lay in the corner, its legs pointing toward the ceiling like a dead animal. Jaskirat didn't look at it. He walked straight toward a loose brick in the back wall, his fingers reaching into the dark cavity behind it.

He pulled out his remaining belongings—the tiny things that constituted the sum total of his unregistered existence.

He slipped the items into the pocket of his thin linen coat. He was done. He would walk toward the highway, catch a night bus toward Gujarat, and disappear into the salt flats where nobody would ever ask his name or offer him honey for his bread.

He turned back toward the exit, his hand ready to push past the swaying door.

He didn't even make it to the Road.

The crooked door didn't swing open; it was kicked violently inward, the rusted hinge snapping with a sharp, metallic crack that echoed off the tin roof.

Jaskirat reacted instantly, his tactical instincts slamming through the exhaustion of his body like a jolt of electricity. His knees bent, his center of gravity lowering as his hands rose to form a defensive guard. But before his feet could find their purchase on the packed earth, three figures filled the narrow frame of the doorway, blotting out the pale moonlight.

They weren't drifters. They weren't seasonal laborers from the grain market.

In the center stood the young thug from Tuesday night—the one whose throat Jaskirat had crushed with his elbow in the alley. His neck was wrapped in a thick, dirty gray brace, his breathing a harsh, wheezing rattle that sounded like a broken bellows. His face was twisted into a manic, vindictive sneer, his eyes bloodshot and wide with a chemical, unhinged fury.

But he wasn't alone. Flanking him were two older men—heavy-set, hard-faced men from the local highway gangs, their clothes smelling of cheap country liquor, grease, and old sweat.

More importantly, the man on the right wasn't holding a stick or an iron pipe.

He was holding a heavy, black Soviet-era TT-33 pistol, the metal scratched and dull under the faint light of the stars. The barrel was broad, dark, and perfectly level, pointed directly at the center of Jaskirat’s chest.

"Going somewhere?" the young thug wheezed, his ruined voice cracking as he spat a mouthful of paan juice onto the dirt near Jaskirat's boots. "You thought you could just walk away? You thought you could break my throat and then go play house with the little schoolteacher behind the blue gate?"

Jaskirat stayed perfectly still. He didn't look at the gun; his eyes measured the distance between his boots and the shooter—five feet. Too far. In his current state, with his ribs still bound and his strength half-depleted, he would be dead before his weight shifted to lunge. The architecture of the room was against him. He was trapped in a box of mud and tin.

The man with the pistol took a slow step forward, the iron barrel never wavering. He didn't look like he wanted a conversation; he looked like a mechanic handling a routine piece of maintenance. He flicked his thumb downward, and the sharp, heavy click of the weapon being unsafed cut through the howling of the wind outside.

"Back up." the gunman muttered, his voice a flat, low rumble. "Inside. Move."

Jaskirat looked at the black circle of the muzzle. He felt a sudden, strange coldness settle over his skin—not the frantic panic of a victim, but the grim, mathematical acceptance of a soldier who had finally run out of options. The past had caught him before he could even reach the highway. The shadows hadn't waited for him to leave Rajasthan.

He looked past the three men, out toward the dark, empty horizon where the blue gate lay four miles away. 'She’s safe,' he thought, his heart regularizing into a slow, heavy beat. 'She’s with her mother. She’s crying, but she’s alive. This stays here.'

Slowly, deliberately, Jaskirat lowered his hands. He didn't raise his voice, and he didn't beg. He simply turned his body back toward the dark interior of the shack, his long coat rustling against the rotten wood of the frame as he took his first step backward into the room.

The three shadows followed him in, the door swinging shut behind them, cutting off the last sliver of the moonlight.

The interior of the shack became an oven of compressed violence the moment the door clicked shut. The howling of the desert wind outside was instantly replaced by the wet, erratic breathing of four men trapped in a box of mud and corrugated tin.

Jaskirat did not look at the faces of the men. To a trained asset, a face was an emotional distraction; he looked at the shoulders, the weight distribution of their hips, and the slight, telltale twitch of the gunman’s index finger against the curved trigger of the gun.

The heavy-set man with the pistol took one final step into the room, his boots crunching on the loose gravel. He was confident. He had the iron, he had the numbers, and he was looking at a man who had spent the last two weeks being carried around by a village doctor.

"On your knees." the gunman grunted, his voice flat, his left hand reaching out to grab Jaskirat’s shoulder to force him down.

He never finished the movement.

Jaskirat’s surrender had been a tactical ruse, a way to close the five-foot gap that kept him at the mercy of the bullet. The moment the gunman’s left hand entered his peripheral vision, Jaskirat’s entire posture shifted from a broken, defeated mam into the lethal shadow these past years formed him into.

He didn't scream. He didn't waste oxygen.

Jaskirat exploded upward and inside the gunman’s guard. His left hand shot out like a piston, his thumb and forefinger driving violently into the unprotected hollos of the gunman’s throat— The impact made the heavy-set man’s eyes roll back instantly, his nervous system short-circuiting from the sudden drop in blood pressure.

At the same time, Jaskirat’s right palm slammed upward against the bottom of the gun barrel, redirecting the weapon toward the tin roof just as the gunman’s dying reflex pulled the trigger.

BOOM

The explosion inside the enclosed shack was deafening, a physical shockwave that shattered the remaining glass in the small window frame and filled the air with the sulfurous, blinding sting of cordite. Before the shell casing could even hit the dirt, Jaskirat twisted his wrist, his calloused fingers locking around the gunman’s thumb and snapping it backward until the bone splintered through the skin with a wet, distinct pop

The gun fell from the ruined hand. Jaskirat caught it with his left hand mid-air, but he didn't use it to shoot. A gun was loud; a gun invited the village. Instead, he used the heavy iron butt of the pistol like a hammer, swinging it downward with a short, brutal arc into the temple of the second heavy-set thug who had lunged forward with a thick wooden club.

The metal connected with a horrific, hollow crunch. The second man’s legs turned to water instantly. He collapsed sideways, his face slamming into the overturned wooden chair in the corner, his body twitching in a violent, unconscious seizure as a dark, thick stream of red began to pool under his hair.

Two seconds. Two men down.

But the cost to Jaskirat’s own fractured body was catastrophic. The violent, sudden rotation of his torso had torn the internal sutures across his right ribs completely apart. A white-hot, paralyzing bolt of agony ripped through his side, so intense it turned his vision into a sheet of pure gray. He stumbled backward against the low wooden cot, his breath catching in his throat as a warm, heavy rush of his own blood began to soak through the linen of his shirt, turning the gray fabric instantly black.

"You bastard!"

The young thug with the gray neck brace didn't have the discipline of a soldier, but he had the feral, unhinged adrenaline of a coward who realized he was about to die. He didn't reach for the dropped pistol. He grabbed the heavy, seasoned willow cricket bat he had hidden behind the door and swung it horizontally with the full weight of his manic fury.

Jaskirat tried to raise his left arm to block, but his muscles refused to obey the command, paralyzed by the screaming nerves in his spine.

The flat wood of the bat connected directly with the left side of Jaskirat’s face.

The sound was a sickening, wet thwack The impact shattered Jaskirat’s cheekbone, splitting the skin from his temple to his jawline. The sheer momentum lifted his tall frame off his feet, launching him sideways. He crashed heavily into the rotten wooden pillar of the shack, the structure groaning as his weight broke through the old wood, before he hit the packed earth floor with a heavy, dust-raising thud.

He was on his hands and knees, his head hanging low, a thick torrent of blood pouring from his split nose and jaw, splattering against the dirt like heavy rain. He was drowning in his own fluid. His vision was a chaotic, spinning blur of shadow and orange light.

The young thug stepped over the body of his unconscious partner, his breath coming in ragged, high-pitched wheezes through his ruined trachea. He raised the cricket bat vertically, his face twisted into a demonic, sweating mask of pure hatred.

"Get up!" the thug screamed, his voice cracking into a high, thin screech. "Get up, you giant piece of shit! Look at me! Look at what I'm going to do to you!"

He brought the bat down with a frantic, rhythmic brutality.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

The wood hit Jaskirat’s shoulders, his back, his thighs. Every blow was accompanied by a dull, wet sound as the muscle tissue bruised and tore beneath the linen coat. Jaskirat didn't scream—he had been trained in black sites where screaming only fed the interrogator—but his body convulsed with every impact, his fingers clawing uselessly into the cold dirt of the floor, his nails ripping until they bled.

The thug stopped, gasping for air, his hands shaking so violently he dropped the splintered bat. He reached down and grabbed Jaskirat by the long hair at the back of his head, hauling his face up out of the mud.

Jaskirat’s eyes were completely bloodshot, the left eyelid swollen shut and purpling rapidly He looked entirely broken—a monument of flesh and history finally brought down by the small, petty malice of the street.

"You're done.." the thug hissed, his breath foul against Jaskirat’s ear as he dragged him backward, against the low cot. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a long, rusted folding knife, the blade clicking into place with a sound that felt like a final sentence. "I'm going to carve you open right here. And then I'm going to that blue gate to find that girl."

At the mention of your name, a final, desperate ember tried to ignite in Jaskirat’s chest. He tried to lift his right hand to grasp the thug’s throat, to use the last ounce of his weight to crush the windpipe.

But the body had reached its limit.

The thug saw the movement and simply drove his heavy, steel-toed boot into the center of Jaskirat’s chest, directly over his sternum.

The young thug smiled, a hideous, unhinged expression, and raised the knife above Jaskirat’s throat.

Jaskirat let his head fall back against the wooden frame of the cot. The room was growing dark again, the spinning shadows finally slowing down into a cold, peaceful silence. He couldn't fight anymore.

He closed his one working eye, preparing himself..

The path to the dry creek bed was a blur of dust and fading gray light.

Your parents’ voices still echoed in your ears, frantic and heavy with fear, calling your name across the courtyard as you had bolted past the blue gate. “Don’t go, beta! If he left, he chose to leave! You can't run into the dark!” your father had shouted, his medical mind calculating the sheer danger of the desert at twilight. Your mother had reached for your shawl, her fingers slipping against the wool as you tore yourself away from her embrace.

But your mind had become a single, roaring engine of intent. You didn't care about the rules of the house. You didn't care about the propriety of a schoolteacher running through the village alleys with tears tracking through the dust on her cheeks.

All you knew was that a man who had forgotten how to live had just walked out into the winter gale with nothing but a broken body and a pocket full of ghosts. He was weak. His ribs were unstitched. He was going to die somewhere in the scrub oaks, and you refused to let the earth swallow him without a fight.

Your heart hammered against your ribs, a frantic, desperate rhythm. He wouldn't go to the highway yet. A man like him goes to the ruins to look at his wreckage one last time.. you were sure he went to the shack.

The wind bit through your thin kurta, freezing the sweat on your collarbone, but you didn't slow down...

You didn't see Jaskirat first; you saw the shadows.

You had just reached the perimeter of the abandoned brick-kiln, your breath coming in ragged, painful gasps, when you caught the movement near the crooked wooden door of his shack. You instinctively dropped behind a crumbling stack of rejected bricks, your fingers digging into the rough, sandy clay to steady yourself.

Through the deep twilight, you saw Jaskirat. He was standing on the threshold, his long linen coat billowing slightly in the wind, his tall frame instantly recognizable against the pale sky. But he wasn't alone. Three men had materialized from the darkness of the kiln structures, surrounding him like a pack of lean, hungry wolves.

You saw the flash of silver under the moonlight—the broad, brutal barrel of a heavy pistol leveled directly at his chest. You saw the young thug with the thick gray neck brace, his posture manic and twitching with a toxic, vindictive joy.

Your breath caught in your throat, a cold, paralyzing terror locking your jaw. You wanted to scream, to call out for Rohan, to run back toward the main road to find the village night watchman. But before you could even draw air into your lungs, the man with the gun shoved the iron barrel forward, forcing Jaskirat backward into the pitch-black maw of the shack. The crooked door slammed shut behind them with a dull, final crack that felt like a coffin lid clicking into place.

Then, the world inside the box exploded.

BOOM.

The gunshot was a physical shockwave that tore through the quiet of the creek bed, the sound so violent it made the brick stack beneath your hands vibrate. The single window of the shack shattered, shards of old glass raining down into the dry dirt like silver teeth.

Panic, pure and unadulterated, surged through your veins. They shot him. He’s dead..!

But as you lunged forward from your hiding spot, your boots throwing up silent plumes of dust, you didn't hear a body hit the floor. Instead, through the jagged, open frame of the broken window, you witnessed the horrific, compressed geometry of the combat.

You saw Jaskirat move. Even through the blur of your tears and the smoky, sulfurous haze of the cordite, his movements were terrifyingly fast. You saw his hand flash like lightning, striking the gunman's throat, saw the pistol drop, saw him swing the heavy iron butt of the weapon into the temple of the second attacker with a sickening, hollow sound.

For a single, breathless second, your heart leaped with hope. He’s going to win..!

But then, the illusion fractured.

The violent rotation of his body had undone everything your father had spent two weeks repairing. You saw Jaskirat stumble, his face going deathly white under the moonlight as he clutched his right side, his gray shirt instantly turning black with a sudden, heavy rush of his own blood. He was staggering, his balance gone, his breath coming in a wet, desperate wheeze.

And the young thug was already moving.

You watched in absolute, helpless horror as the cricket bat swung through the air. The flat willow connected with the side of Jaskirat’s face with a loud, wet thwack. The giant was launched sideways, his broad shoulder shattering the central wooden pillar of the shack before he hit the dirt floor like a felled oak.

"No..." you whispered, the word dying in your throat as you reached the exterior wall of the shack, your hands pressing flat against the cold mud brick.

Through the window, the violence became a rhythmic, mindless slaughter. You witnessed the bat coming down, over and over again, hitting his shoulders, his back, his spine. *

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

Every impact was a physical blow to your own chest. Jaskirat didn't scream, but his body convulsed, his fingers clawing uselessly into the dirt, his nails ripping until they left dark streaks in the mud. He was losing. The man who had protected you in the alley was being systematically broken into pieces before your eyes.

The thug stopped, gasping for breath, and hauled Jaskirat up by his hair, slamming his broken down body against the cot. Jaskirat’s face was unrecognizable—split open, blood bubbling from his mouth, his left eye swollen shut and purpling under the moonlight. He looked entirely emptied of the will to fight. He had given up. He was letting the dark take him.

Then, the thug pulled the knife.

The long, rusted folding blade clicked into place, catching the silver light of the moon. With a hideous, breathless laugh, the thug drove his boot into Jaskirat's chest and lowered the point of the iron directly toward the soft, exposed skin of his throat.

The metal pressed down. A single, thin line of bright crimson instantly broke through his dark beard, tracking down his neck like a red thread.

In that microsecond, the schoolteacher, the gentle girl who mended books and filled cups with honey, died.

A blinding, monochromatic, furious red flooded your vision, swallowing the fear, swallowing the logic, swallowing every lesson your father had ever taught you about peace. The sight of his blood—the blood he had tried to keep away from your house—ignited a primal, chemical fire in your soul. Your heart didn't beat; it roared. You weren't going to let them take him. You weren't going to watch him die in the dirt.

Your eyes dropped to the ground beside your boots, searching the debris of the old kiln for a weapon, a stone, anything.

There, half-buried in the sandy dirt near the foundation, lay a heavy, discarded piece of structural timber—a thick, weathered block of sal wood left behind by the roofers. It was split at the end, heavy enough to break a man’s shoulder, but that wasn't what caught your eye.

Embedded deep into the grain of the wood, rusted but unbroken, was a massive, four-inch iron spike—a thick, square-headed structural needle used to bind the old beams together. The jagged, pointed tip of the iron protruded fully two inches from the side of the wood, glinting like an executioner’s tooth in the pale light.

Your breath came in a sharp, feral snort. Your hands, usually so careful with ink and paper, dropped down. Your fingers closed around the rough, splintered grain of the timber, your grip tightening until the wood bit into your skin.

You lifted it. The weight was massive, straining the muscles of your forearms, but the adrenaline made you feel like you were made of stone. You stood tall in the shadows of the broken window, your eyes fixed on the back of the thug’s neck, your teeth bared in a silent, murderous snarl as you prepared to bring the fire into his dark.

Through the swelling, dark purple slit of his right eyelid, Jaskirat watched the final sequence of his life assemble itself.

The heavy, black pistol layed on the dirt floor three feet away, its metal barrel reflecting the pale, dusty moonlight. Near it, the second heavy-set thug—the one who had taken the iron butt of the gun to his temple—was beginning to stir. The man was groaning, a low, guttural animal sound, his large hands clawing weakly at the earth as he pushed himself up onto his knees.

Two of them.. Jaskirat’s tactical mind calculated, the thought slow, heavy, and distant, like an anchor dragging through deep mud. I missed the mark. The strike wasn't deep enough.

The young thug with the gray neck brace was hovering directly over him, his face twisted into a manic, sweating mask of absolute triumph. The rusted tip of the folding knife was pressing harder into the soft flesh of Jaskirat's throat. He could feel the thin, hot trickle of his own blood tracking down into his collar, warm and wet against his cold skin. He didn't blink. He didn't pull away from the blade. His body was a ruined temple; the internal sutures across his right ribs had liquefied into a hot, pooling agony that made it impossible to gather the oxygen required to strike.

He was waiting for the final thrust. He was preparing his spirit to leave the flesh behind, hoping against hope that his death here would satisfy the blood-debt, that these wolves would take their prize and leave the village without ever looking toward the blue gate.

Then, the window frame behind the thug didn't just rattle—it disintegrated.

There was no warning cry. There was only a sudden, catastrophic explosion of movement as a shadow burst through the ruined doorway, carrying a heavy, splintered block of sal wood like a weapon of divine vengeance.

Before the thug could even turn his head, the timber connected with the side of his skull.

The impact was horrific—a dull, splintering * crack that sounded like a melon being dropped from a roof. The sheer momentum of the strike tore the thug completely off Jaskirat's chest, launching his body sideways. He crashed heavily into the dirt floor, the folding knife flying from his grip and clattering against the rusted iron stand of the cot.

Jaskirat’s working eye widened in absolute, paralyzed disbelief.

It was you.

Your dupatta had fallen to your shoulders, your dark hair whipped into a wild, tangled mane by the desert gale. Your face was unrecognizable, distorted into an expression of pure rage. Tears were streaming through the thick layer of dust on your cheeks, leaving dark, muddy tracks, but there was no weakness in your stance. Your chest was heaving with short, feral snorts of air.

You didn't wait for the thug to stand. Before he could even lift his hands to wipe the blood from his shattered ear, you lunged forward, bringing the heavy block of wood down with the full, desperate weight of your body.

The four-inch iron spike embedded in the grain did its monstrous work.

Thwack.

The square-headed iron needle tore through the skin of the thug's cheek, biting deep into the jawbone with a sickening, wet crunch

"Leave him alone!" you screamed—a raw, jagged shriek that ripped from your throat, sounding less like a human voice and more like a wounded animal protecting its young. "Leave him! Leave him!"

The violence inside you had become an absolute, blinding red flood. As you raised the timber again, your mind didn't see the small shack; it flashed violently back to that night. You remembered the heavy iron pipe swinging toward your ribs, the terrifying, predatory grip of their fingers on your clothes, the suffocating panic of realizing no one was coming to save you. You remembered the sheer, disgusting audacity of these men—the monsters who had tried to tear your life apart, and who were now here, in the dirt, trying to extinguish the only light that had stood between you and the grave.

The anger was older than the night. It was the collective, ancient fury of every gentle thing that had ever been backed into a corner by a beast.

You brought the wood down again. And again. And again.

Crunch. Splash. Thwack.

With every blow, your screams grew wilder, a mix of frantic, childlike terror and protective fury. The iron spike tore through flesh, cartilage, and bone. The thug’s face ceased to look human within seconds, transforming into a horrific, dark crimson crater under the pale moonlight. Thick, dark blood splattered upward, catching you across the throat, painting your pale kurta in a frantic, irregular pattern of red rain. He tried to put his hands up, his fingers twitching in a useless, defensive reflex, but the heavy timber snapped his wrists like dry twigs.

"Don't touch him!" you sobbed, your voice breaking into a ragged, bloody whisper as you swung the wood one final time, driving the iron spike deep into the center of his forehead until the metal lodged firmly in the skull. "Don't you dare touch him!"

The thug’s body gave one final, violent convulsion, his remaining eye rolling back into his head before his limbs went entirely limp against the packed earth. He was dead. The silence that followed was deafening, filled only by the rapid, whistling rattle of your own lungs and the steady, heavy drip-drip-drip of red from the splintered wood onto the dirt.

The heavy piece of timber slipped from your fingers, hitting the floor with a dull, hollow thud. Your hands remained suspended in the air, your palms bright red, sliced open by the rough grain of the wood, your fingers hooked into claws as the adrenaline began to drain from your system, leaving behind a cold, paralyzing clarity.

You looked at the corpse. You looked at the blood on your sleeves.

A violent, involuntary heave shook your stomach, but you didn't let the horror take you. The madness didn't dissolve into panic; it redirected itself toward the only thing that mattered.

You dropped to your knees in the dirt, completely ignoring the red pooling around your feet, and rushed to Jaskirat’s side.

"Jaskirat.." you sobbed, your bandaged hands hovering over his chest, terrified to touch him, terrified that the slightest pressure would break what was left of his life. Your face was inches from his, your hot tears falling like rain onto his torn cheek, washing away the dark crust of blood beneath his eye. "Jaskirat, please... look at me. Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay."

The giant lay against the cot, his breathing a shallow, wet whistle, but as your fingers finally settled gently against the uninjured side of his jaw, his eye opened. He didn't look at the dead man. He didn't look at the blood on your clothes. He looked only at you—at the girl who had entered the mouth of hell just to pull him back from the edge.

Jaskirat lay against the splintered frame of the low cot, his breath coming in shallow, wet whistles that tasted of copper and cold desert dust. Through the narrow, blood-rimmed slit of his right eye, your face was the only thing that held any focus. You were kneeling in the dirt beside him, your hands shaking so violently that the blood on your palms was splattering against his torn kurta like heavy rain. Your tears were hot, tracking clear lines through the mask of soot and grit on his skin, and your voice was a broken, frantic looping of his name.

He wanted to tell you to run. He wanted to raise his heavy, calloused hand to push you back toward the doorway, back to the safety of the blue gate and the ordinary world where girls did not have to smell the iron reek of a fresh kill.

But the air in his lungs was too heavy, and the silver ridge of his ribs felt as though it had been replaced by a red-hot iron bar.

Then, the floorboards behind you groaned.

A shadow shifted in the corner of the shack. The second heavy-set thug—the one who had taken the blunt force of the pistol to his temple—had fully regained consciousness. He was on his feet, his massive, square frame swaying unsteadily as his eyes adjusted to the pale moonlight cutting through the broken window.

The man looked down at the dirt. He looked at the horrific, unrecognizable mass of red and splintered wood that used to be his partner.

For one long, agonizing second, the remaining thug was completely frozen by the sheer, unadulterated shock of what you had done. He stared at the discarded piece of timber, at the iron spike still dripping with his friend's life, and then his gaze snapped to you—a twenty-three-year-old girl in a torn white kurta, weeping over a broken soldier.

The shock didn't make him run. It turned into a manic, desperate panic.

"You bitch!" the man roared, his voice a deafening, echoing screech inside the tin walls. He didn't look for his club; he simply launched his entire heavy-set bulk forward, his hands hooking into thick, claw-like shapes as he charged blindly across the five feet of mud separating him from your back.

He was fast, driven by the frantic survival instinct of a cornered animal. But to a man like Jaskirat, a running man was just a target with predictable geometry.

The soldier didn't need oxygen to wake up. The moment the thug’s roar hit the air, Jaskirat’s nervous system overrode the paralyzing agony in his body. The gray fog in his vision vanished, replaced by the cold, crystalline math of an active engagement.

Before you could even turn your head to see the threat behind you, Jaskirat’s left arm shot out.

His hand, broad and scarred as iron, closed around the fabric of your clothes. With one sudden, fluid, and violent jerk, he hauled your entire weight toward him. He didn't push you away; he pulled you in, tucking your head firmly beneath his chin, dragging your body flat against his broad chest. His right arm came over your shoulders like a heavy shield, locking you into the crook of his collarbone, burying your face in the clean, familiar scent of his cotton shirt so you wouldn't have to see the next second of the night.

At the exact same time, his bare right foot slid through the dust, his toes hooking into the trigger guard of the black pistol that lay discarded on the earth.

With a practiced, instantaneous flick of his ankle, he kicked the weapon upward into the air. His right hand released your shoulder for a fraction of a second, catching the checkered grip of the pistol mid-flight with the absolute, unthinking muscle memory of a man who had held a thousand guns in the dark.

The thug was already upon you, his heavy boots throwing up clods of dirt, his face twisted into a sweating, furious snarl just two feet from the edge of the cot.

Jaskirat didn't flinch. He didn't shift his weight, and he didn't adjust his stance to protect his broken ribs. He lay flat against the wooden frame, his left arm holding you so tightly against his heart that you could feel the violent, rhythmic thumping of his pulse against your cheek.

He brought the heavy iron barrel of the pistol up in a single, vertical line.

There was no hesitation. No warning. No human emotion in his working eye. He looked at the running man the way a carpenter looks at a nail.

BOOM.

The explosion inside the enclosed room was a physical hammer blow, a flash of orange fire that illuminated the cracked mud walls for a microsecond. The bullet left the muzzle at twelve hundred feet per second, traveling the short, ridiculous distance between them with absolute, unerring accuracy.

It entered the center of the charging thug's right eye socket.

The impact was instantaneous and final.

The momentum of his charge carried his dead weight forward for one more half-step, his boots dragging through the dirt, before his knees buckled inward. He crashed heavily to the floor, his face slamming into the earth just inches from the edge of the mattress, his body sliding into a still, heavy lump of denim and leather.

The pistol remained leveled at the space where the man's head had been, a thin, lazy wisp of blue cordite smoke curling from the hot muzzle.

Jaskirat’s hand didn't shake. His breathing didn't quicken. He held the weapon steady for exactly three seconds, his ears tuning past the ringing of the gunshot to listen to the perimeter outside.

Slowly, deliberately, Jaskirat lowered the hammer of the gun. He didn't drop the weapon; he let his arm fall limp against his thigh, his fingers remaining loosely wrapped around the iron grip, ready for a ghost that wouldn't come.

Down in the dark of his chest, you were still shaking, your fingers gripping the fabric of his kurta so tightly your knuckles were white. You had heard the explosion, had felt the sudden, massive jolt of his muscles as he fired, but you hadn't seen the blood. You had only felt the unyielding, solid weight of his body protecting yours from the storm.

"It’s over.." Jaskirat murmured into your hair. His voice was incredibly soft, a low, gravelly hum that vibrated directly against your collarbone. The cold stone of the soldier was gone, replaced by that deep, grounded warmth you had spent weeks looking for in the dawn. "He’s down. Don't look behind you."

He tightened his left arm around your waist, pulling you slightly higher until your head rested against his shoulder. His chin brushed the top of your hair, his breath coming in slow, disciplined exhalations that were trying to teach your own frantic lungs how to slow down.

The silence inside the shack was absolute now, broken only by the steady, dark pooling of fluid on the dirt floor and the sound of your own quiet, trembling breaths against his skin. You were safe. The wolves had been broken against the threshold, and the man who had tried to run into the desert was still sitting right there, his heart beating steady and loud beneath your hand, refusing to let the dark take either of you.

The smell of burnt gunpowder and wet earth faded into the background, leaving only the fierce, thumping reality of his heart beneath your cheek.

You didn't look at the floor. You didn't look at the shadows. With a ragged, trembling gasp that tore from the very bottom of your lungs, you leaned into him, sinking into the broad, broken expanse of his chest as if trying to disappear entirely into his skin. Your hands, still caked with dirt and the slick, drying heat of the timber, clawed into the fabric of his kurta.

It was an intimacy born of the wreckage, a silent collapse of the twenty years that separated your lives. Every boundary he had meticulously built—every cold word, every protective wall, every beti he had used to push you away—was completely washed away by the tide of your tears.

You were hyper-ventilating, your shoulders heaving in small, violent hitches, your forehead pressed against the hollow of his collarbone as you let the horror of what you had done finally break through your chest.

Jaskirat didn't pull away. He didn't warn you about his shattered ribs or the sharp, agonizing pull of his unstitched flesh.

Slowly, his right hand relinquished its grip on the heavy black pistol, letting the iron weapon drop silently into the dirt. He raised his large, scarred hands—the hands that had survived the dark world of Karachi—and cradled your face. His palms were rough against your skin, but his touch was incredibly gentle, his thumbs wiping away the muddy tracks of tears and dust on your cheeks with a reverent, trembling delicacy.

He leaned down, his forehead resting against yours for a long, breathless second. Then, deliberately, he pressed his split, bleeding lips against the center of your brow.

The kiss was long, heavy, and solemn—a silent, sacred seal placed upon your skin in the dark of a ruined shack. It wasn't just comfort; it was a surrender.

In that quiet, breathing space, the world shifted on its axis. The girl who entered the creek bed with a kind, nurturing heart was gone, replaced by a woman who had looked into the abyss and realized exactly what she was capable of to keep this man breathing. You had spilled blood for him. You had torn a life away to keep his from being extinguished. And as you held his face in the moonlight, a cold, unshakeable clarity settled into your bones:

I will protect his tomorrow. I will build a wall around him that no country, no police officer, and no ghost can ever breach.

And Jaskirat knew it.

He looked down into your amber eyes, his own dark gaze filled with a profound, terrifying devotion. For three years, his entire existence had been a calculation of flight—a constant, rhythmic chanting of run, hide, forget. But as he looked at the crimson stains on your kurta, the ancient script of the spy was erased forever. He could never leave you now. To leave you would be to leave his own soul behind in the dirt. He was no longer a passenger in your father's house; he was your anchor, bound to the soil of this village by a covenant written in red.

He didn't speak. There were no vows to exchange, no explanations that could match the absolute certainty of the silence.

Slowly, groaning with a deep, guttural pain that he forced back down his throat, Jaskirat pushed himself up from the low cot. He stood tall, his broad shoulders squared against the howling wind, though his frame trembled with the sheer, catastrophic exhaustion of his injuries. He looked down at you, his right hand extending into the space between you, his fingers open.

You reached out, your wrapped, bleeding palm sliding perfectly into his. His fingers closed around yours, a tight, unyielding grip of solid iron and warm flesh.

Together, you stepped through the ruined doorway, leaving the dead to the dark.

The long walk back to the village was an excruciating, beautiful test of endurance. Jaskirat limped heavily, his right leg dragging through the sand, his body leaning dangerously sideways as the internal sutures pulled at his chest. But he wasn't walking alone. Your arm was wrapped tightly around his waist, your shoulder wedged firmly beneath his armpit, your smaller frame bearing the immense, crushing weight of his stance. You became his spine, your feet digging into the loose gravel, steadying his stride every time his knees threatened to buckle under the pain.

As the pale very specific, lavender light of the pre-dawn began to bleed through the blue of the horizon, the village appeared before you like a sanctuary. The dry creek bed gave way to the packed dirt of the alleys, and there, at the end of the lane, stood the blue gate of your father's house.

The gate was unlatched, swinging slightly in the morning draft, a single oil lamp still burning on the veranda to guide you home. Hand in hand, bound by a secret the world would never understand, you walked toward the light, ready to finally begin the slow, quiet work of healing him—inside, and out..

The dark was never just dark. For a man like Jaskirat, the dark was a theater of ghosts, and the fever burning through his veins was the price of admission..

He layed in a comfortable bed in the quiet House, but his mind had slipped the leash of the present. It plunged backward into a red, suffocating abyss where time didn't exist—only the weight of the things he had done, the things he had seen, and the blood that refused to wash out from under his fingernails.

Suddenly, he wasn't in the clean, safe room behind the blue gate. He was standing in a derelict hut on the outskirts of a forgotten village, the air thick with the metallic stench of a slaughterhouse. His hands were dripping. His chest was covered in someone else's blood.

Jasleen..

The memory tore through his fever-addled brain like a jagged shard of glass. His youngest sister. They had taken her. They had dragged her into the dark, torn her dignity away, and locked her in a tomb of wood and mud.

In the dream, he relived the fury. It wasn't the disciplined, tactical precision of an operative; it was the raw, animalistic rage of an elder brother turned butcher.

He remembered the door splintering beneath his boot. He remembered the faces of the family that had shielded her abusers—the men, the cousins, anyone who stood between him and his blood. He had used everything. A rusted sickle he’d torn from the wall. A heavy-caliber pistol that kicked like a mule, shattering wrists and blowing holes through brick. He had hacked and fired until the walls were painted crimson, until the family that had dared to touch his blood lay in a mangled, silent heap at his feet.

And then, the quiet after the storm. He remembered dropping the gun, his knees hitting the dirt as he crawled toward the corner of the hut. There she was.

Bound. Broken. Her eyes wide with terror. He had reached out to pull her to his chest, but in the dream, her skin turned to ash, slipping through his fingers like sand.

The scenery shifted The smell of copper faded, replaced instantly by the suffocating reek of open sewers, melting asphalt, and cheap diesel.

Lyari.

His first day in the sweltering, lawless belly of Karachi. He was an Indian spy playing a part, wearing the skin of a new Man.. Hamza. He was entirely alone in a city that ate outsiders alive. The memory focused on the dusty threshold of Aalam’s shop. He had been tired, his guard lowered by the sheer exhaustion of crossing borders and changing identities.

Then came the shadows. Babu Dakait’s men.

They had smelled the foreignness on him, misinterpreting his silence for weakness. In the dream, the memory became claustrophobic. Rough hands grabbing his collar. The laughter of men who ruled the slums with iron and depravity. They had touched him, their breath foul, their fingers tearing at his pants. They didn't just want to rob him; they wanted to break him, to violate the very core of his manhood to show him who owned the streets of Lyari.

He remembered the paralyzing conflict in his own chest—the spy fighting the survivor. He had hesitated only a moment,He had been seconds away from tearing the throat out of the man closest to him with his bare teeth..but then he stopped seeing Aalam-Bhai. He was beat, men holding him down, about to pull down hos pants when the shrill, sudden wail of a police siren cut through the alley. The men had scattered like rats, leaving him gasping in the dust, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

Even now, under the cool sheets of the house, his fingers twitched against the mattress, flexing as if searching for a throat to crush..

The heat of Karachi intensified, turning into the blinding white light of a celebration. A wedding. The sound of dhol drums clashing with the sudden, terrifying roar of automatic gunfire.

Naeem.

Jaskirat’s chest heaved as the fever twisted the memory into a mockery of joy. He had been given a mission: save the boy. Use the rescue of the gang lord’s son to buy his way into the inner sanctum of Rehman’s syndicate. It was supposed to be his ticket into the heart of the enemy.

But the calculations of didn't account for the chaos of that night, or Faisal, the younger son.

In the dream, the sequence played out in agonizing slow motion. He saw Naeem—a boy who was barely old enough to shave, caught in the headlights of a rival gang’s ambush, there was also the younger one, scared, alone. He tried to safe them, safe then both, and he almost succeeded..but when he went to look after Naeem once the shots fell silent, it was too late.

He had failed. The boy was dead.

The fire of the wedding morphed into a cold, suffocating silence. The air became heavy with the scent of expensive tobacco and aged leather.

Rehman.

This was the wound that ran deeper than the bullet graze on his ribs. Rehman wasn't just a target. He was a warlord, a criminal, a man who had ordered deaths with the casual nod of his head. But to Jaskirat, during those long, bleeding years in Pakistan, Rehman had been something else. He had been a mentor. A man who looked at the man that saved his son and gave him a place at his table, a strange, distorted kind of love that Jaskirat had never expected to find in the house of his enemy.

Killing him was supposed to be easy. Jaskirat had so much hate in him that he was sure he wouldn't be affected.

In the dream, he was back in these woods, beating down a man that danced at his wedding.

Jaskirat had carried a dying, bleeding Rehman to the emergency room, his finger stuck deeply into the wound on his throat to prevent him from dying before they reached the Hospital, before "Hamza" could be seen trying to save him.

The adrenaline had carried him through the act, making it clean. The 'tearful act right after was a masterpiece of emotions..

But after, the Adrenaline had stopped working.

He watched Rehman die, his face full of hate, betrayal, like it screamed at Hamza "Why you? Why you?"

The crimson stain spread slowly, Jaskirat tried to walk away, to run back toward the Indian border, but his boots were stuck in the blood flowing from Rehmans neck to his boots.

He had hated Rehman for what he was—a monster who bled his country dry, who brought the weapons to kill innocent people, a man that betrayed his own Baloch community for money and influence..

But as he stood over the corpse, the realization hit him with the force of a tidal wave: the monster had loved him. The enemy had given him a home when his own country had turned him into a weapon and thrown him away...

"Stop... please..." Jaskirat muttered, his head thrashing violently from side to side on the pillow.

The ghosts were converging now. Jasleen was crying, her hands reaching out from the ashes. Babu’s men were laughing in the dark corners of the room. Naeem was falling, over and over again, his blood splashing against the walls, And Rehman sat in his chair, bleeding quietly, staring at him with those heavy, disappointed eyes.

He was drowning in them. He wanted the darkness to win. He wanted to let go of the cot, to let the sepsis pull him down into the quiet where the ghosts couldn't reach him anymore.

But then, through the smoke of the burning village and the roar of the Lyari streets, a new sound pierced the chaos.

It wasn't a scream of terror. It wasn't a gunshot. It was a soft, steady murmur—a voice that smelled of rain and cool earth, a voice that didn't belong in Pakistan or his past.

You’re safe. Stay with me. Please, just stay.

A hand—cool, gentle, and remarkably steady—pressed against his burning forehead. The touch was a shock to his system, a thin, silver wire dropped into the depths of his hell. He reached out in his mind, his soul clawing its way toward that coolness, away from the blood of the hut and the guilt of the study.

He didn't wake up. The fever still held him fast, but the thrashing slowed. The ghosts retreated into the shadows, waiting for the night to deepen, but for now, the weapon layed still, anchored to the world of the living by nothing more than the touch of a stranger who refused to let him die.

The transition from the fire to the frost was violent.

One moment, Jaskirat was suffocating under the weight of Rehman’s blood, the screams of the Lyari slums ringing in his ears like a deafening siren. The next, the noise stopped. The crimson haze vanished, shattered by the sharp, clinical smell of rubbing alcohol and the steady, rhythmic ticking of a wall clock.

His eyes snapped open.

The light was blinding—a soft, golden morning sun filtering through sheer curtains, casting long shadows across a whitewashed ceiling he didn't recognize. Instantly, his body went into a defensive lock. Every muscle, still stiff and screaming from the fever, coiled like a spring.

Where am I? Safehouse? Safehouse in Karachi? Did the goverment find me?

Panic—cold, sharp, and rare for a man of his training—surged through his veins. He tried to sit up, but a jagged, white-hot lance of agony tore through his right ribs, dragging a harsh gasp from his throat. He looked down. His chest was wrapped in tight, professional layers of white gauze. An IV line was taped to the back of his left hand, the clear tube snaking up to a plastic bag hanging from a makeshift stand.

He wasn't in his shack. He wasn't in a cell.

His heart hammered against his ribs—a frantic, irregular beat that threatened to rip open his stitches. He frantically scanned the perimeter of the room, his eyes wild, darting toward the window, the door, calculating escape routes, looking for a weapon, looking for a threat.

"Hey... hey, stop. Please don't move."

The voice came from his left. It was the same voice from his dream—the cool, steady rain that had pulled him out of the fire.

Jaskirat whirled his head around, his jaw clenched, his hand rising instinctively to strike or defend.

You stepped backward slightly, your hands raised in a universal gesture of peace. You looked exhausted; there were dark circles under your eyes, and your hair was pulled back loosely, a few stray strands framing a face that was still holding the faint, fading yellow bruise from Tuesday night. You were holding a fresh bowl of water and a clean rag.

He froze. His hand stayed suspended in the air, his fingers trembling—not from fear, but from the absolute sheer exhaustion of a body that had just fought off a mortal poison.

He stared at you. The wild, predatory glare in his bloodshot eyes began to fracture, replaced by a slow, dawning comprehension. The memories of the alleyway, the three men, the heavy iron pipe, and the young woman who had refused to leave him behind came rushing back, filling the blanks in his fractured mind.

"The... the blue gate.." he rasped. His voice was barely a whisper, a dry, grating sound like sandpaper on stone. His throat felt like it was coated in ash.

"You're behind it." you said softly, taking a cautious step closer to the bed. "You're safe. My father... He cleaned your wound. The fever finally broke a few hours ago."

Jaskirat let his arm fall back to the mattress. The tension didn't entirely leave his body—men like him never truly unpack their bags—but the lethal edge evaporated. He slumped back against the pillows, closing his eyes as a wave of dizziness washed over him.

"You shouldn't have brought me here.." he muttered, his eyes still closed. "I told you... to forget me."

"And I told you I don't forget my debts." you replied, your voice gaining a fraction of its usual warmth as you saw him settling. You moved to the side of the bed, dipping the rag into the cool water, wringing it out with practiced care. "You were dying in that shack. If we had waited one more day, the infection would have reached your heart. You survived a bullet just to let dirt kill you?"

He didn't answer. He kept his eyes shut, but he didn't pull away when you gently pressed the cool, damp cloth against his forehead. A long, shuddering breath escaped his lips at the contact. The contrast between his harsh, violent world and the quiet tenderness of your touch was almost too much for him to bear. It felt dangerous. It felt like something that could make a man soft, and softness in his line of work meant a shallow grave.

For several long minutes, the room was silent save for the chirping of early morning birds outside the window. You wiped the sweat from his temples, your movements slow and deliberate, giving him the space to breathe, to realize he wasn't under attack.

When he opened his eyes again, the redness had cleared a bit, revealing the deep, dark brown depth of his gaze. He looked at you with a quiet intensity that made your breath catch.

"Your family.." he started, his voice still thick. "They know about me?"

"They know you saved my life." you said simply. "My brother Rohan helped Papa carry you into the truck. My mother has been making broth for you since dawn. They don't care who you are running from. They only care that you are alive."

Jaskirat looked away, staring at the sunlight shifting across the floor.

They don't care who I am..

he thought bitterly. Because they don't know what I've done.

If they knew about the bodies in the Lyari slums, about the blood on his hands from his years in Pathankot and Pakistan, they wouldn't have let him cross their threshold. They would have locked the blue gate against him.

"You talked in your sleep.." you murmured, placing the cloth back into the bowl.

Jaskirat’s entire body went rigid again. His eyes snapped back to yours, cold and sharp. "What did I say?"

"Names.." you said gently, refusing to flinch from his glare. "You sounded... like you were in a war."

Jaskirat closed his eyes again, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the edge of the sheet. The ghosts had followed him here. They were sitting in the corners of your room, bleeding into the pristine space.

"You shouldn't ask questions about things you don't want the answers to.." he warned, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous growl.

"I’m not asking for the whole story." you said, stepping closer, your hand hovering over his blanketed shoulder before gently resting there. The warmth of your palm seeped through the layers, a silent anchor. "But I think... if I am going to keep a man in my home, if I am going to watch over him while he heals, I should at least know what to call him when the nightmares come back, Mhh?"

You looked at him, your eyes steady, filled with an unshakeable resolve that surprised him. You weren't a soldier, but you had a different kind of courage—the kind that stood its ground against a broken beast.

Jaskirat stared at your hand on his shoulder. For three years, the only contact he had had with another human being was the violent collision of fists, or the casual exchange of dirty rupee notes at the grain market. No one had touched him like this. No one had looked at him as if he were a man worth saving rather than a tool to be used.

The wall he had built around himself—the fortress of anonymity he had build, shaked at your kindness. He was tired. He was so incredibly tired of being a ghost.

He swallowed hard, the movement painful in his dry throat.

"Jaskirat." he whispered.

The word was small, almost lost to the breeze coming through the window, but to your ears, it sounded like thunder.

You smiled, a soft, relieved expression that made the corners of your eyes crinkle. "Jaskirat.." you repeated, testing the weight of it on your tongue.

"Don't wear it out.." he muttered, turning his head away to hide the sudden, unfamiliar tightness in his chest. "It’s a dead man’s name."

"Then we'll just have to bring him back to life." you replied quietly.

You stood up, picking up the bowl of water, but as you turned to leave the room to let him rest, you felt his gaze following you. For the first time since you had met him in the dark alley of the slums, the shadow in his eyes didn't look like death. It looked like a spark—faint, buried deep beneath the ash, but undeniably alive..

A man like Jaskirat did not know how to occupy a quiet room.

For the first forty-eight hours after his fever broke, he remained trapped in a state of hyper-vigilance that was more exhausting than the sepsis itself. Every time a door clicked, every time a crow landed heavily on the tin roof outside, his eyes would snap open, his muscles locking into a rigid, defensive stance. He was a creature of the dark, suddenly dragged into a space defined by white linen, the scent of parandhas, and the soft, domestic rhythms of a family home.

He tried to leave on the second night.

You had caught him sitting on the edge of the bed, his feet hovering over the cold stone floor, his face white with pain as he tried to detach the IV line from his hand. The gauze over his ribs was already leaking a fresh, dark circle of crimson where the stitches had strained against his stubbornness.

"Where do you think you’re going?" you had asked from the doorway, holding a tray of warm lentil broth.

He hadn't looked at you. He had kept his eyes fixed on his own hands, his jaw clenched so tightly the muscle ticked. "I’ve stayed too long. A man in my position... I bring shadows with me. Your father has done his duty. Let me go."

"You can barely stand." you had said, crossing the room with a quiet, unyielding authority that surprised even yourself. You placed the tray on the side table and stood directly between him and the door. "If you walk out that gate, you’ll collapse before you hit the main road. And then my brother will have to carry you back again, and he’s already complaining about his back. Sit back up."

He had looked up then, his green eyes flashing with a spark of the old, dangerous operative—the man who had killed to survive, the man who had torn through Lyari like a gale. But you hadn't flinched. You had stayed right there, meeting his gaze until the fire in his eyes died down, replaced by that deep, heavy exhaustion you were beginning to understand.

With a low, defeated groan, he had leaned back against the pillows.

From that night onward, a silent pact was formed. Jaskirat stopped trying to run, and you became his shadow.

Because your father had the clinic to run and Rohan was busy with the grain market, the task of tending to the stranger fell entirely on your shoulders. You became the guardian of his isolation. You watched the sunrise from the chair beside his bed, and you watched the moon climb over the Aravalli hills from that very same spot.

The days fell into a quiet, repetitive rhythm.

Every morning began with the changing of his dressings. Your father would supervise the deep wound on his ribs, but the smaller injuries—the split knuckles, the dark, purple contusions across his shoulders where the iron pipe had struck, the deep, rope-burned ring around his neck—those were yours to tend.

You would sit on the edge of his cot, a bowl of antiseptic solution between you. Jaskirat would remain perfectly still, his eyes fixed on the ceiling or the distant window, refusing to look at his own battered body.

You would take his hand—the heavy, calloused hand of a soldier—and gently dab the cool cotton against his torn knuckles. The first time you did it, his fingers had twitched violently, his instinct screaming at him to pull away from the vulnerability of a soft touch. But by the fourth day, he let his hand lie limp in yours, his fingers slightly curled, trusting you with the split skin.

"You have the hands of someone who has worked the fields.." you murmured one afternoon, your thumb brushing over a thick scar near his wrist.

"I’ve worked whatever job didn't require a name." he said, his voice a low, gravelly hum. "Wood, iron, dirt. It all feels the same after a while."

"And before that?"

The room went instantly cold. Jaskirat didn't move a muscle, but the silence that stretched between you was heavy with the weight of the things he wouldn't say.

"Before that.." he said quietly, "I didn't have hands. I had weapons."

You didn't push further. You simply dipped a clean cloth into the water and wiped away the dried blood from his wrist, your touch lighter than a breath. You were learning to read his silence. A tightening of his jaw meant the pain was spiking; a sudden shift of his gaze toward the door meant he was remembering a ghost; a soft, nearly imperceptible sigh meant the medicine was finally taking hold.

Feeding him was another battle entirely.

Jaskirat ate like a man who expected his plate to be taken away at any second. He ate quickly, efficiently, and without pleasure.

"Slow down.." you scolded him on the fifth day, sitting on the chair with a bowl of your mother’s specialized vegetable khichdi. He had already finished half the bowl in three massive, mechanical bites. "Nobody is going to steal it from you. My mother made it specifically to help you regain your strength.."

Jaskirat paused, his spoon halfway to his mouth. He looked at the steam rising from the bowl, then at you.

"...Food was a rare luxury the last three years." he said, his voice dropping to that dry, historical tone that always made your chest tighten. "I learned to swallow before tasting..for..many reasons."

The realization of what he had endured hit you like a physical blow. You looked at his broad shoulders, now slightly hunched under the cotton shirt your brother had lent him. You thought of the sheer volume of history buried under his skin—the secret wars, the black sites, the absolute isolation of a deep-cover asset who had crossed borders and erased his own existence for a flag that had ultimately left him to rot..

You reached out, your fingers gently covering his wrist, forcing the spoon down slightly.

"You're not there anymore, Jaskirat," you said, your voice thick with an authentic, grounded warmth. "You're in my father's house. The doors are locked. Eat your food."

He stared at your hand on his wrist. His skin was dark, weathered by the sun; yours was paler, softened by ink and the pages of schoolbooks. The contrast was beautiful, a striking reminder of the two entirely different worlds that had collided.

Slowly, deliberately, Jaskirat took a smaller bite. He chewed slowly.

"It’s good.." he whispered, his eyes dropping to the bowl. "Tell your mother... thank you."

It was the first time he had expressed gratitude for anything other than the "annoying noise" of your scream. A small, triumphant smile broke across your face, and for a fleeting second, Jaskirat’s gaze caught the light in your eyes.

By the seventh day, Jaskirat was able to sit up without assistance. The angry red streaks of the sepsis had faded into a dull, brownish shadow beneath his skin, the antibiotics having successfully driven the poison back into the dark.

He spent hours just watching you.

You would bring your grading to his room, sitting in the corner by the window, the red ink scratching rhythmically against the notebook pages as you corrected the grammar of the village children. You thought he was sleeping, but every time you looked up, you would find his deep, analytical gaze fixed on you.

He was studying you the way an operative studies a target, but there was no malice in it. He was fascinated by your normalcy. He was captivated by the way you hummed under your breath when you found a particularly funny mistake in a child's essay, the way you tucked a stray lock of hair behind your ear, the way you treated the world as if it were fundamentally safe.

"Why do you stay here?" he asked suddenly, breaking a three-hour silence. The sun was setting, painting the room in deep shades of amber and violet.

You looked up from your grading, blinking. "What do you mean?"

"You are young. You have an education.." he said, gesturing vaguely toward the stack of books. "You could be in Jaipur.. Delhi. Somewhere with paved roads and libraries. Why are you teaching children in a village where the electricity cuts out three times a day?"

You smiled, leaning back in your chair. "Because someone has to teach them that there is a world beyond the dry creek, Jaskirat. If everyone who can read leaves, who stays to help the ones who can't?" You looked at him significantly. "Besides, if I were in Delhi, who would have been in that alleyway to make an annoying noise?"

A low, rumbling sound came from his chest—a sound you had never heard before. It took you a second to realize that Jaskirat was laughing. It was a rusty, unused sound, like an engine turning over after years in a garage, but it was the most beautiful thing you had ever heard.

"You are stubborn.." he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

"I have to be." you replied, closing your notebook and standing up to check his IV line. "I’m dealing with a very difficult patient."

As you reached up to adjust the plastic clamp on the tube, your hip brushed against the edge of his mattress. Jaskirat didn't move away. He stayed right there, his breathing steady, his presence a warm, solid reality in the darkening room.

You lowered your hands, finding yourself inches from his face. The smell of him—antiseptic, clean cotton, and the faint, musky scent of woodsmoke—filled your senses. You looked into his eyes, and for the first time, you didn't see the soldier. You didn't see the ghost of Rehman or the pain of Jasleen.

You saw Jaskirat. A man who was slowly, agonizingly, remembering how to live...

Who knew a simple look like that could forever change your life?

The first time Jaskirat walked out of the clinic room on his own, the entire house seemed to hold its breath.

It was a Tuesday, exactly two weeks after the night your father and brother had hauled his burning, delirious body out of the abandoned brick kiln. He stood in the doorframe, his hand bracing against the chipped wood, wearing a pair of Rohan’s old linen trousers and a faded gray shirt that hung loosely over his freshly bandaged ribs. He was thinner, the severe angles of his jawline sharper than before, but the dead weight of the sickness was gone.

Your mother, who was rolling out dough for rotis in the kitchen, froze. Rohan stopped mid-sentence as he cleaned his boots on the veranda.

You were sitting at the dining table, a stack of vocabulary tests spread before you, and your heart leaped into your throat. You rose instinctively, stepping toward him, your hand extending to offer support.

Jaskirat looked at your hand, then up into your eyes. There was a faint, stubborn flicker of pride in his gaze, but it wasn't the cold, aggressive armor he had worn when he first woke up. Slowly, deliberately, he shook his head.

"I have to do it.." he said, his voice still carrying that low, gravelly weight. "If I don't walk now, the ground will forget my feet."

He took a step forward. It was a hesitant, uneven thing, his left leg dragging slightly to compensate for the sharp pull of the stitches in his side. But he didn't fall. He crossed the threshold of the clinic room and entered the main house, his eyes taking in the framed photographs of your grandparents on the walls, the colorful hand-woven rug in the sitting area, and the small brass temple tucked into the corner where a single oil lamp flickered.

Your father stepped out of his office, stethoscope draped over his shoulders, and watched the man take his fourth, agonizingly slow step. A quiet, satisfied smile touched the doctor's face.

"The architecture of a house is different from a shack, Jaskirat." your father said, his voice rich with a calm, professional warmth. "There are chairs here. Use them when your body tells you to."

Jaskirat didn't sit immediately. He walked all the way to the screen door leading to the veranda, looking out at the small courtyard where a neem tree cast dappled shadows across the packed dirt. He stood there for a long time, just breathing the air of a functional, living home. He had spent three years treating the world like a combat zone where he was an unauthorized combatant.

Over the next week, the stranger slowly, almost invisibly, became part of the geography of the house.

Jaskirat was not a man who knew how to be a conventional guest. He didn't sit on the sofa waiting to be served; he couldn't endure the sensation of being taken care of without giving something in return. Because he was still too weak to lift heavy crates at the market or return to the labor that had broken his skin, he found small, silent ways to make himself useful.

Your family, possessing the deep, intuitive emotional intelligence of people who had lived in a small community for generations, didn't question him. They simply opened the circle.

It started with your mother. She was a woman who expressed her love through the quantity of food she forced onto people's plates, but she was also fiercely protective of her kitchen. Yet, on the fourth day of his mobility, she found Jaskirat standing by the back door, silently gathering the dried red chillies that had been spread out on a jute mat to dry in the sun. His movements were steady, his scarred hands handling the spices with a strange, respectful delicacy.

Instead of shooing him away, your mother had simply handed him a wicker basket.

"If you're going to do that.." she had said, not looking at him as she stoked the chulha, "make sure you separate the stems. The stems make the powder bitter."

Jaskirat had nodded once, sat on the stone floor of the veranda, and spent three hours sorting chillies. By the end of the week, he was the one who woke up before dawn—a habit hispast would never let him break—to sweep the courtyard before your mother even set foot outside. He did it with a quiet, sweeping rhythm that became the first sound of the morning, replacing the anxious silence that used to hang over the house.

Rohan, who had been the most suspicious of the man, broke on a Thursday night. He was struggling to repair the rusted chain of the family bicycle, swearing under his breath as the grease stained his knuckles.

Jaskirat had walked out, leaning against the wooden pillar of the porch. He didn't offer advice; he simply reached down, took a small wedge of scrap wood from the woodpile, and jammed it beneath the rear tire to elevate the frame, allowing the chain to slip perfectly into the sprocket.

Rohan looked up, wiped his brow with the back of his arm, and let out a short, surprised laugh. "You've fixed things like this before."

"Worse things." Jaskirat replied quietly.

He had knelt in the dirt, his side giving a small, warning throb that he completely ignored, and held the iron steady. That night, when dinner was served, Rohan sat next to him, complaining loudly about the grain merchants but casually sliding the larger portion of the potatoes onto Jaskirat’s plate.

Through all of this, you remained his constant center. Even as he integrated into the house, his eyes always sought you out the moment you entered a room. You were the one who knew the exact depth of his nightmares; you were the one who had heard the names of the dead whispered in the dark.

He became your shadow in a different way now.

Jaskirat’s stride grew surer, the dangerous limp fading into a measured, grounded walk. He was still a man carved from granite—he still slept with his back to the wall and woke before the birds—but the permanent white-knuckle clench of his jaw had softened. He had stopped looking at your family as a logistical complication and began looking at them as people.

One night, during dinner, he even talked about himself, just a bit. Mentioning seasonings from Punjab, the warmth of the sunlight filtering through the endless fields of yellow flowers near his home.

The room had fallen into a warm, stunned silence. It was the first piece of his identity he had volunteered without being begged. You had looked at him, your heart swelling as he quietly confessed his roots. He was Punjabi. He was a Sikh. To find out that he shared the same cultural bloodline, the same ancestral rhythm as your own family, felt like a missing puzzle piece snapping into place.

After that night, the distance between you didn't disappear, but it changed. It became a respectful space rather than a defensive wall. When you walked beside him in the courtyard, his shoulder would occasionally brush yours, and instead of flinching, he would linger in the contact for just a second longer. He was accepting your attention, letting your warmth melt the edges of his frost.

The real shift happened on a Friday morning.

"We are going to the Gurudwara in the next town.." you told him, standing by his door. In your hands, you held a neatly folded, five-meter length of fine, unstitched cotton cloth. It was a deep, rich crimson—the color of a life renewed. "..I want you to come with us."

Jaskirat stared at the fabric. His eyes went remarkably dark, a profound, heavy emotion passing over his features that he quickly tried to swallow down. He hadn't worn a Dastar since he returned to India.. not in three years. To wear it meant to stand tall. To wear it meant to reclaim the honor he thought he had drowned in the blood of his revenge..

"I am not fit for a house of prayer.." he whispered, his voice trembling a fraction. "My hands..."

"Your hands saved me." you interrupted firmly, stepping into his space and placing the cloth into his palms. His fingers closed around it instinctively. "Your hands are healing. Let the past stay in the dirt, Jaskirat. Come with us."

He looked at you for a long, agonizing moment. Then, with a slow nod, he took the fabric.

An hour later, he stepped out onto the veranda. Your breath caught in your throat. He stood tall, his broad shoulders squared, his posture commanding and regal. The crimson dastar was tied with a flawless, practiced precision, crowning his sharp features and dark beard. He no longer looked like a broken ghost hiding in a shack.

Your father looked at him and simply nodded in deep, silent respect. Your mother wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. As you walked down the dusty path toward the main road, Jaskirat walked close to your side. For the first time, he didn't look back at the perimeter. He looked ahead, his hand occasionally brushing against your sleeve, tethered to the present.

For a few beautiful hours, the ghost was at peace.

When you returned and you sat on the veranda in the late afternoons to grade papers, he sat down on the lowest step, a small piece of sandstone in his hand, using it to sharpen your father’s old garden shears. He didn't speak , but the steady, scraping sound of the stone against metal became a comfort to you. It was the sound of a warrior repurposing his skills for peace.

"You're doing that thing again.. " you said, looking up from an essay.

Jaskirat paused, the sandstone hovering over the metal blade. "What thing?"

"The scanning.." you said, pointing your red pen at him. "Every three minutes, your eyes go to the main road, then to the side gate, then to the roof line of the neighbors. We've lived here twenty years, Jaskirat. The only thing that comes down that road at this hour is the milkman's goat...you were much more relaxed during prayer."

The corners of his beard twitched in that faint, elusive ghost of a smile you had come to look for. "Old habits. If you don't look at the perimeter, the perimeter changes without you."

"The perimeter is safe." you said softly, leaning your chin on your palm. "My father is inside reading his journals. My mother is making tea. You can lower your guard. Just for an hour."

Jaskirat looked out toward the blue gate. The sun was setting, casting a long, amber glow across the dirt courtyard. The light caught the silver threads in his dark hair and the deep lines around his eyes. He looked like a man who had spent his entire life in a storm, suddenly waking up on a calm shore, completely unsure of what to do with the lack of wind.

"It’s hard.." he whispered, his voice dropping so low the wind almost took it. "When you spend 20 years living like i did, you are just..aware of everything around you..the silence feels like a Trap.."

You stood up from your chair, walked down the three wooden steps, and sat directly beside him on the stone. The fabric of your kurta brushed against his arm. He didn't move away. He didn't tense.

"Then let us be the trap, Jaskirat." you said, your voice filled with a grounded, unshakeable warmth. "Let the tea, the chillies, and the vocabulary tests trap you here. There are worse places to be caught."

Jaskirat looked down at your hands, which were resting on your knees. Slowly, with a hesitation that broke your heart, he laid his hand flat on the stone step, just an inch away from yours. His pinky finger brushed against your skin—a tiny, microscopic point of contact that felt louder than a gunshot in the quiet afternoon.

"Yes.." he murmured, his eyes fixing on the horizon where the first stars were beginning to bleed through the blue. "There are far worse places..."

900 miles away, Karachi, Pakistan;

In Karachi, the air was thick with the suffocating reek of sea salt, humidity, and political unrest. Inside the fortified walls of the Central Police Office in Lyari, the ambient noise of a sprawling metropolis was muted, replaced by the rhythmic clicking of ceiling fans and the sharp, military bark of orders.

Omar stood by the wide window of his office, staring down at the labyrinthine slums below.

He was no longer the frustrated inspector who had chased shadows through the alleys three years ago. The brass stars on his shoulders were new, gleaming under the fluorescent lights. He was now the Superintendent of Police—the SP of the City. He had more power, more men, and more resources than ever before.

Yet, his office felt like a cage. Because no matter how many gangs he broke, or how many criminals he threw into the barracks, one file remained open on his desk. A file that didn't officially exist.

The file of the Indian spy. The man who had torn through Lyari, killed, and vanished into thin air like a phantom, or more - was simply let go by the government after a bit of pressure. He had tried everything, even talking to Yalina, only to be shut down by her Father, Jameel Jamali, a politician with enough influence to shut down his requests.

A heavy knock rattled the door. Omar’s deputy stepped inside, looking anxious, holding a leather folder " They told us to drop it..again.. They said the case is closed, the target is presumed dead, and any further investigation will strain diplomatic channels, besides..Uzair Baloch faces the death penalty for his crimes.."

Omar didn't turn around. His hands stayed clasped behind his back, his fingers tightening until his knuckles turned white.

"Presumed dead-" Omar repeated, his voice a low, dangerous purr. "They think because he crossed back into India, he simply ceased to exist. They don't know him like I do. A man like that doesn't just die quietly in a ditch...that Baloch guy is a criminal yes, but not a spy..they all know that."

"But sir, the higher-ups—"

"The higher-ups are politicians in uniforms!" Omar snapped, turning around violently. His eyes were sharp, fueled by a relentless, obsessive fixity. Three years of silence hadn't dulled his memory; it had only made the itch worse. He had been humiliated by a man who had played his entire department like a violin.

He walked over to his desk, ignoring the official memos, and picked up a personal ledger. Inside were handwritten notes, tire tracks, coordinates, and informal intelligence gathered from the black markets of Sindh and Punjab.

"He ran.." Omar whispered, his finger tracing a line on a map that led straight toward the border. "He ran.. He’s hiding where nobody asks his name, doing manual labor, trying to pretend he’s just another face in the crowd.."

"Sir, if you go across the line without authorization... if the Ministry finds out..."

Omar slammed the folder shut, the sound echoing like a pistol shot in the small room. He looked at his deputy, his face a mask of unyielding, rogue determination. He didn't care about the brass stars on his shoulders. He didn't care about the peace treaties or the chain of command.

"I don't need their permission to find a dead man, do i?" Omar said, his voice cold and final. "Assemble the trusted boys from the special cell. No uniforms. No official vehicles. We are going to find out where the ghost went to sleep.."

The hunt was back on. And while Jaskirat was learning to pray in the warmth of a quiet village, the iron hounds of his past were already catching his scent in the wind...

The floorboards didn't creak. They were as tired as he was, settled into a permanent, sagging silence.

Jaskirat stood on the wooden chair—a cheap, rickety thing he’d found in a junkyard—and looked at the wall. It wasn't a wall he saw, but a void. The ceiling fan above him hummed with a low, rhythmic vibration that felt like a heartbeat he no longer wanted to share. The coarse hemp of the rope was a rough caress against the skin of his neck, a stark contrast to the softness of the life he had once known. Before he had to bury himself under Hamza, a man that was driven by Revenge. A man he buried 3 years ago, right next to Jassi, a 21 year old boy with a soft smile and big dreams..

He stood perfectly still. His breathing was shallow, disciplined—the breath of a soldier, a ghost, a man who had mastered the art of being invisible.

Outside, the wind whipped through the desolate plains of this nameless town, rattling the corrugated tin roof of his shack. But inside, there was only the gravity of his own existence, pulling at his heels, begging him to just finally kick.. To let go. To end the noise.

His mind, usually a fortress of iron-clad focus, began to fracture.

He wondered about the Government. The men in dark suits who had once kidnapped him from the Police Transport. Did they still look for him? Or had they finally checked a box in a dusty file, marking him as 'Expendable Assets Lost'?

Maybe they knew he was alive. Maybe they let him run because a broken tool is of no use to a machine. He had been their finest blade, sharpened in the fires of vengeance and tempered in the blood of his enemies. But even the strongest steel snaps if you bend it too far. They had pushed him until he wasn't a patriot anymore—just a hollowed-out shell filled with the echoes of screams. He hoped they had forgotten him. He hoped they had accepted his disappearance as a final act of desertion, a silent respect, perhaps.

But the government was a shadow. His family... they were the sun. And the sun burned.

Yalina...

Her name felt like a laceration. He could almost smell the faint scent of jasmine on her skin, hear the way her breath hitched when he laughed. He had left her in the dark. To her, he was a martyr or a criminal—a man buried in a Pakistanj prison or a grave in a foreign land. He had let her believe he was dead because the truth was more dangerous. If he were alive, he was a target. If he was a target, she was leverage.

He closed his eyes, and he could see Zayan..

His son would be older now. Would he remember the way Jaskirat’s hands felt—those same hands that were now reaching for the rope? Would Zayan grow up hating a father who chose a flag over a family? Or would he simply grow up with a hole in his heart where a man’s shadow used to be?

And his mother. His sister. They were mourners of a living man. He imagined them on festival days, perhaps lighting a lamp for him, perhaps whispering his name in prayers meant for the departed. They would never know he was standing in a shack in a small town, 400 miles away, preparing to make their nightmare a permanent reality. They would never know he survived the police, the betrayals, Lyari, Rehman Dakait, Major Iqbal..and the revenge, only to be defeated by a Tuesday night in a room that smelled of dust and despair.

The loneliness wasn't a feeling anymore; it was a physical weight. It sat on his shoulders, heavier than any weight he’d ever carried. For three years, he had been a man with no name. He had worked in fields, cleaned grease from engines, anything where people wouldn't ask his name.

He had spoken fewer than a thousand words in three years.

He was a ghost haunting his own life. Every night, the silence of the shack grew louder, screaming at him about the things he had done—the necks he had snapped, the lies he had told, the blood he had spilled in the name of a 'greater good' that now felt like a punchline.

What was a warrior without a war?

What was a man without a home?

The chair beneath him felt unstable. He liked that. He liked the honesty of it.

He looked at his hands. They were calloused, scarred, and steady. Even now, at the edge of the abyss, his body refused to tremble. It was a soldier’s body, trained to endure. But his soul was tired. It was frayed at the edges, unraveling into nothingness. He had fought for his country, he had fought for revenge, and he had fought to survive.

But he had nothing left to fight for now.

He took a deep breath, the rope tightening slightly. The air was cold. He thought of the endless fields, the fresh punjabi air of his hometown, and the warmth of a kitchen that was now a thousand lifetimes away. He thought of the man he used to be—the one who believed in honor, in justice, in the future.

That man was gone.

"Forgive me.." he breathed, to Yalina? His son? Perhaps his Mother and Sister? To his best friend, Pinda? Which he had lost in the battle? Maybe to all of them..?

He looked ahead, his gaze fixing on a knot in the wood of the wall. One movement. A shift of weight. A release.

The world stayed quiet. No one was coming to save him. No one even knew he was there.

He shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, the chair groaning in anticipation.

"Just one step," he thought. "Just one step to go home."

A scream.

It wasn’t the wind. It wasn’t the phantom echo of his own nightmares or the screams of the men he had left behind. It was real. It was high, sharp, and jagged—a sound that tore through the silence of the Town like a rusted blade.

Jaskirat froze. His muscles, honed by decades of survival, reacted before his mind could catch up.

"Ignore it." his soul whispered. "It’s not your war. You’re already dead."

He closed his eyes, tightening his grip on the rope, forcing his weight back onto the center of the chair. He waited for the silence to return, for the void to reclaim him.

"Nahin! Chhodo mujhe!"

The voice came again, closer this time, followed by the sickening sound of a heavy blow—meat hitting meat—and the clatter of something metal hitting the cobblestones. Then came the laughter. It was a guttural, jagged sound—the laughter of men who knew no one was coming. In these backstreets, in the labyrinthine shadows, a scream was just background noise. People closed their shutters. They turned up their radios. They minded the business of staying alive.

Jaskirat stared at the wall. "Let it go.." he told himself.

But the woman’s sob wasn't fading. It was turning into a wet, desperate wheeze.

Something inside Jaskirat’s chest—something he thought he had successfully killed three years ago when he crossed the border back into India, only to realize he no longer fit in the world he had fought to protect—snapped. It wasn't a sense of duty. It wasn't patriotism. It was a primal, ugly instinct...the instinct of a son, of a brother, of a true man.

He didn't untie the noose. He reached up, his fingers moving with a terrifying, mechanical speed, and sliced through the hemp with a small, sharpened piece of scrap metal he kept in his pocket.

The rope fell. Jaskirat stepped off the chair.

Everything went do fast, almost like in a trance.

He didn't use the door. He moved through the back window, his boots hitting the dirt with the silence of a predatory cat. The air in Toen was thick with the smell of fear. He moved through the shadows, making sure to stay unoticed.

He rounded the corner of the alleyway behind his shack.-

The scene was bathed in the flickering, sickly yellow light of a dying streetlamp. It was exactly as his intuition had mapped it.

Three men. They were young, fueled by a toxic mix of cheap chemicals and the arrogance of the predator. One held a knife, spinning it casually. The second held her down—a young woman, her clothes torn, her face a mask of terror and blood. The third was unbuckling his belt, his face twisted into a grin that made Jaskirat’s vision turn a searing, monochromatic white.

She looked so small. She looked like the world he had failed. She looked like the innocence he had traded for a gun and a fake passport....she looked like Jasleen.

Jasleen... the flashback to that night he found her in that tiny hutt.. alone- hurt.. like this girl right now. She had no facial similarity to his sister whatsoever, but the scenery...something in him snapped.

Jaskirat didn't shout. He didn't give a warning. A spy doesn't announce his presence; he merely changes the environment.

The man with the knife was the first to feel it. He didn't even hear Jaskirat approach. One moment he was laughing, and the next, a hand like a vice gripped his wrist, twisting it until the bone screamed. The knife dropped, but before it hit the ground, Jaskirat caught it in mid-air.

With a fluid, horrifying grace, Jaskirat drove the butt of the knife into the man’s temple

Not a killing blow, but enough to shut his world down. The man crumpled like a suit of empty clothes.

The other two froze. The one holding the woman looked up, his eyes widening as he saw the silhouette of a man who looked like he had crawled out of a grave.

"Kaun hai tu?!" the man stammered, scrambling to rise.

Jaskirat didn't answer. He didn't have a name to give.

He stepped into the light. His face was a mask of cold, dead stone. He grew older, on the edge of 50 by now, but he didn't loose his bite, the hard work on the fields kept him in shape.

The second man lunged, swinging a heavy iron pipe. Jaskirat didn't flinch. He stepped into the strike, narrowing the distance. He took the blow on his shoulder—a dull thud that would have broken a normal man’s collarbone—but Jaskirat didn't even blink. He buried his elbow into the man’s throat.

The sound was like a dry branch snapping. The man fell back, clutching his neck, gasping for air that wouldn't come.

Then there was the third. The one who had been touching her.

He had backed away, pulling a snub-nosed pistol from his waistband. His hands were shaking. "Peechay hat! Main goli maar doonga!"

Jaskirat kept walking. His heart wasn't racing. It was steady. For the first time in three years, the noise in his head had stopped.

"Dar se kaanp rahe ho?" Jaskirat said. His voice was a low, gravelly rasp—the first time he had spoken in months. It sounded like grinding stones.

"Main keh raha hoon, ruk ja!"

"You won't pull that trigger.." Jaskirat said, his voice devoid of emotion. "Because if you do, you lose your only chance to run. And I am the only thing you should be running from."

The man fired.

The bullet grazed Jaskirat’s ribs, tearing through his shirt and leaving a red-hot trail across his skin. Jaskirat didn't even break his stride. He was on the man in a heartbeat. He gripped the gun, his thumb jamming behind the hammer so it couldn't fire again. With his other hand, he seized the man’s throat and slammed him against the brick wall with a force that cracked the masonry.

He held him there, inches off the ground. The man’s legs kicked uselessly.

"She was crying." Jaskirat whispered, his eyes boring into the man’s soul. "And you liked it..!"

He could have killed him. It would have been so easy. A sharp twist, a sudden thrust. He could feel the familiar pull of the abyss, the hunger of Hamza to finish the job. The government had spent millions of rupees to turn him into a weapon that didn't know how to mercy.

But then, he heard a small, trembling gasp from behind him.

He looked back. The woman was huddled against a crate, her eyes wide with a different kind of fear. She wasn't just afraid of the men who had attacked her. She was terrified. Terrified of seeing something gruesome.

He didn't kill the man. He slammed his head against the brick once, twice, until the man went limp, and then he dropped him like the trash he was.

The alley fell silent, save for the heavy, ragged breathing of the two survivors.

Jaskirat stood in the center of the carnage. His rib was bleeding. His shoulder was screaming in pain. The noose was still waiting for him in the shack, but the cold, clinical clarity of the mission had replaced the fog of that thought.

He turned slowly toward the woman.

You flinched, pulling your torn shawl tighter around your shoulders. Your hair was a mess, and a dark bruise was already forming on your cheek.

She's young— he thought. Too young to know the kind of darkness that lived in the heart of the man standing before her.

Jaskirat reached out a hand, then immediately pulled it back, realizing how terrifying he must look. He cleared his throat, the sound painful.

"Are you..." he paused, the word 'okay' feeling like a lie. "Can you walk?"

You stared at him, chest heaving. You looked at the three broken bodies on the ground, then back at the man who had appeared from the shadows like a vengeful deity.

"Who... who are you?" You whispered, your voice trembling.

Jaskirat looked toward his shack, toward the life he had tried to end, and then back at the woman he had accidentally saved. The government didn't know he was here. His family thought he was a ghost. He was a man with no country, no name, and no future..

"Nobody." he said, his voice softening just a fraction.

He moved toward you, not with the predatory grace of a soldier, but with the hesitant, broken gait of a man trying to remember how to be human. He reached down and picked up your fallen bag, handing it to her with a hand that—for the first time in three years—was finally beginning to shake.

"Come.." he said. "You can't stay here."

As he helped her up, your fingers brushed against his calloused palm. The contact felt like an electric shock. To him, it was a reminder of a world he had abandoned. To you, it was the first anchor in a world that had just tried to tear you apart.

​"You're bleeding.." you said, your voice small but clear.

The silence between your two started right after he had helped you up, and lasted until you finally found your voice again.

​Jaskirat didn't turn around. "It’s nothing.."

​"It’s not nothing. That bullet... it hit you. I saw it."

​"Keep your head down and keep walking." he rasped. His tone wasn't cruel, but it was thick with a finality that discouraged conversation. It was the voice of a man who had spent years giving orders that meant the difference between life and death..

​You fell silent for a moment, but the adrenaline pulsing through your veins wouldn't let you stay quiet. You were a teacher; you spent your days explaining the world to children, finding logic in chaos. But there was no logic to this man. He lived in a shack that looked ready to collapse, yet he fought like a storm.

​"I’ve lived in this neighborhood my whole life.." You started again, stepping over a puddle of stagnant water. "I’ve never seen you. And I would have noticed someone like you."

​Jaskirat’s jaw tightened. "That was the point."

​"Why did you help me..?" You asked, your curiosity finally outweighing your fear. "Most people... they would have just closed their doors. Especially here. Especially tonight.."

​Jaskirat stopped so abruptly she nearly ran into his back. He turned, and the yellow light of a distant moon caught the scars on his face—scars that told stories of wars and betrayals he would never put into words.

​"I didn't help you to start a conversation." he said, his eyes hard. "I helped you because the noise was annoying. Now, keep moving. We are three blocks from the main road. Where do you live?"

​You flinched at his coldness, but you didn't look away. There was something beneath the frost in his voice—a deep, resonant exhaustion that you recognized. It was the look of someone who had seen the end of the world and was frustrated that it was still turning.

​"The blue gate near the dispensary.." you whispered. "My father... he’s the doctor there."

​Jaskirat nodded once and resumed walking, his pace slightly faster.

​

​As they neared the edge of the residential district, where the houses were built of sturdier brick and the streetlamps actually worked, you felt a strange shift. The terror was being replaced by a profound sense of debt. You looked at his hand—the one that had held the gunman by the throat—and saw that his knuckles were split and raw.

​"My father..!" You began again, more confident this time. "He can help you. If you come inside, he can stitch that wound properly. He won't ask questions. He’s used to people who need help without being asked who they are.."

​"I don't need a doctor," Jaskirat said.

​"You might. Infection in this heat is a death sentence. And you took a blow to the shoulder with an iron pipe. You aren't even flinching, but I know it hurts."

​Jaskirat stopped again, this time turning fully to face her. He looked at you—really looked at you—for the first time. Young..around 25, eyes filled with an earnestness that felt like a physical weight on his chest.

​"Listen to me.." he said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous hum. "I am not a man to worry about, I am not a neighbor. I am a ghost. You go inside that house, you lock the door, and you forget you ever saw me. You tell your Father about these boys, but you do not mention the man from the shack. Do you understand?"

​"I can't do that." You challenged, your voice trembling but firm. "You saved my life. I don't care if you think you're a ghost, Ghosts don't bleed, and they don't save a girl from being hurt. Only living good people do."

​Jaskirat felt a spike of genuine irritation, masked by a deeper, more uncomfortable emotion. She was digging into him, her words acting like a probe into a wound he’d spent three years cauterizing.

​"What is your name?" You asked suddenly.

​The question hit him like a physical blow. Jaskirat. The name felt heavy, forbidden. It belonged to a soldier of India. It belonged to a husband in a fading photograph. It belonged to a man who was supposed to be dead.

​"I don't have one." he said.

​"Everyone has a name."

​"Not tonight."

​You stepped closer, refusing to be dismissed. "Fine. Then keep your name. But remember this: the blue gate. If the wound gets worse, if you find yourself with nowhere to go, or if those men have friends who come looking... you come to the blue gate. My family owes you.. I.. owe you this."

​

​They reached the end of the alley. Ahead of them stood a modest but well-kept house. A sturdy blue iron gate stood at the entrance, a symbol of safety in a neighborhood that offered very little of it. A light was on in the upper window; someone was waiting up for her.

​Jaskirat stayed in the shadows of the last building, refusing to step into the light of your home. He watched you stand by the gate, your hand on the latch.

​"Go inside." he commanded.

​You paused, looking back at the dark silhouette he had become. You looked at the blood soaking into his shirt, and then at his eyes.

​"Thank you.." she whispered. "For the noise being annoying."

​A ghost of a smile—something so faint it might have been a trick of the light—touched Jaskirat’s lips for a fraction of a second before his face returned to its stony mask.

​"Lock the gate, be safe." was all he said.

​He stood there, motionless, as you pushed the heavy iron open. He watched ypu walk to the front door, heard the frantic voices of your family as they saw her torn clothes and bruised face. He heard the door slam and the bolt slide into place.

​Only then did Jaskirat turn away.

​He walked back toward the darkness, his hand clutching his side. The adrenaline was fading, and the pain was beginning to bloom—a sharp, hot fire in his ribs and a dull, throbbing ache in his soul.

​He thought of the noose hanging in his shack. He thought of the chair.

​But as he looked at his hand—the hand you had almost touched—he realized he couldn't go back to the rope. Not tonight..

4 days later;

It had been four long days since the night in the alley..

For you, those four days were a blur of whispered conversations and stifled gasps. Your mother had spent the first forty-eight hours hovering over you, applying cooling pastes to the bruise on your cheek and weeping silently into her dupatta. Your older brother, Rohan, had spent that same time pacing the porch, his hand white-knuckled around a cricket bat, cursing the men who had laid a hand on his sister.

But your father, Dr. Rathore, had been the quietest of all. He had listened to your story with the clinical intensity of a man used to diagnosing hidden traumas. He didn't ask about the attackers; he asked about the man who had stopped them.

"You said he didn't use a weapon?" your father had asked on the second night, his brow furrowed as he cleaned your minor scrapes.

"He was the weapon, Papa" you had whispered. "He didn't move like someone who was angry. He moved like someone who was... certain."

Every afternoon, after the school bell rang and the children dispersed into the dusty streets of the village, you took the long way home. You walked past the row of dilapidated shacks on the outskirts—the place where the seasonal laborers and the drifters lived.

You looked for a man with a beard matted with dust. You looked for a man with a shoulder that should be sagging and a side that should be burning with the fire of an untreated bullet graze.

But there was nothing.

The worry was a constant, low-frequency thrum in your chest. You knew the reality of wounds in this heat. You knew that even a man made of iron could be felled by a microscopic infection. You pictured him lying on a dirt floor, his body shivering with a fever he refused to acknowledge, his pride keeping him from the blue gate you had promised him safety behind.

Dinner on the fourth night was a quiet affair. The house felt smaller than usual, crowded by the unspoken presence of the stranger.

"He hasn't come," your mother said, placing a bowl of dal on the table. She looked at your father, her eyes pleading. "If he is as badly hurt as she says, he might not be able to come."

Rohan looked up from his plate, his jaw set. "I’ve been asking around at the grain market. Nobody knows a man like that. A few people mentioned a 'silent one' who works for them from time to time, but they say he hasn't shown up for work since Tuesday."

You felt a cold knot tighten in your stomach. Tuesday was the day after the attack..

"Men like that don't want to be found.." your father said softly, stirring his tea. "In my years of practice, I’ve seen them before. Soldiers who have seen too much. Men who carry wars inside them long after the guns have gone silent. They think that by staying alone, they keep the world safe from the darkness they carry."

"But he’s not the darkness," you argued, leaning forward. "He saved me. He took a bullet for a stranger. Papa, if he dies in some corner of this town because he’s too proud or too broken to ask for help, how can we live with that?"

Your father looked at you, really looked at you. He saw the way your hands trembled when you spoke of him—not with fear, but with a desperate, protective urgency.

The room fell into a heavy silence. The ceiling fan whirred, cutting through the thick, dry air.

Your father stood up suddenly, his chair scraping against the floorboards. He walked over to the corner of the room and picked up his worn leather medical bag. He checked the seal on the antibiotics, the rolls of sterile gauze, and the bottles of antiseptic.

He looked at the bruise on your face, now fading to a dull yellow, and then at the door.

He reached out and squeezed your shoulder, a silent acknowledgement of the bond you had formed with a man you didn't even know.

"A doctor’s duty doesn't stop at the doorstep," your father said, his voice firm. He looked at you, then at the coat hanging by the door.

"You're the only one who knows exactly where he must live" he said.

He stepped toward the exit, his shadow long against the wall. He paused at the threshold, the moonlight catching the grey in his hair, before turning back to you.

"Bring me there."

You didn't wait another second.

The dry creek bed was a graveyard of discarded industry. Stacks of cracked bricks stood like jagged tombstones under the pale, indifferent light of a Rajasthani moon. Here, the air didn't just feel dry; it felt dead.

"Is this it?" your father whispered, his voice hushed as if afraid to wake the spirits of the place.

You nodded, your heart hammering against your ribs like a trapped bird. "The one with the corrugated tin roof. He... he appeared fron the shadows behind it that night..!"

Rohan walked slightly ahead, a heavy flashlight in his hand. The beam cut through the darkness, illuminating swirling dust and the skeletal remains of rusted machinery. When the light hit the door of the small, square hut, your breath hitched.

The door was slightly ajar. It hung crookedly on a single hinge, swaying a fraction of an inch in the breeze with a rhythmic, metallic clink-clink-clink

"Stay behind me." your father commanded, his professional mask slipping into place.

As you stepped onto the threshold, Rohan swung the flashlight into the room.

The beam swept over a floor of packed earth, a single wooden chair that had been shoved violently into a corner, and a length of hemp rope lying coiled like a dead snake in the center of the room. Finally, the light landed on a low, wooden cot in the corner.

Him.

He was sprawled on his back, his legs hanging off the edge of the thin mattress. His chest was bare, his skin a terrifying, sickly grey. Even from the doorway, you could see the dark, angry streaks of red creeping upward from his ribcage—the telltale map of sepsis marching toward his heart.

"Oh, God.." you gasped, rushing forward despite your father’s warning.

He didn't move. The man who had moved like a hurricane in the alley was now as still as a fallen statue. His eyes were closed, the lashes dark against his sunken sockets. His breathing was shallow, a ragged, wet sound that rattled deep in his throat.

Your father was on his knees beside the cot in an instant. He pressed two fingers to Jaskirat’s neck.

"His fever is high.." your father muttered, his hands moving with practiced speed. He peeled back the blood-stiffened rag Jaskirat had used to bind his side.

You recoiled. The graze from the bullet had turned into an ugly, weeping crater. The surrounding flesh was swollen and purple, pulsing with the poison of the street-level filth that had entered his bloodstream.

"Rohan, help me..!" your father barked. "We have to get him into the truck. Now. If he stays here, he won't see the sunrise."

Rohan moved to the head of the cot, his initial suspicion of the man replaced by a grim, soldierly respect for the state of his injuries. Together, they began the grueling task of lifting him.

Jaskirat groaned—a sound of pure, unadulterated agony that seemed to come from the very marrow of his bones. For a brief second, his eyes flickered open. They were bloodshot, unfocused, and wild. His hand shot out with a speed that shouldn't have been possible for a dying man, his fingers locking around Rohan’s throat.

"No!" you screamed, grabbing his arm. "It’s us! We're helping you!"

The sound of your voice seemed to act as a tether. His gaze drifted toward you, the predatory fire in his eyes fading into a confused, glassy haze. His grip loosened, his hand falling back to the dirt with a heavy thud.

"Yalina...?" he wheezed, the name barely a ghost of a sound.

"No.." you whispered, your heart breaking for a woman you didn't know. "It’s me, From the alley. Please, let us help you..!"

He didn't speak again. He slumped back into unconsciousness, his body becoming a dead weight in their arms.

The drive back to the house was a nightmare of silence and speed. You sat in the back of the truck, Jaskirat’s head resting in your lap. He was burning. You could feel the heat radiating off him through your clothes, a dry, searing fever that made him tremble in violent, sudden jolts.

You used a corner of your dupatta to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Up close, without the mask of his terrifying competence, he looked so...hurt.

"Who are you..?" you whispered to the wind as the truck rattled over the uneven roads. "What did they do to you...?"

You thought of the rope you had seen on the floor of the shack. You realized with a jolt of horror that he hadn't been annoyed by noise, he was distracted from taking his life.

When you arrived at the blue gate, your mother was already there, holding it wide. She didn't ask questions. She saw the state of the man and immediately began clearing the table in the small clinic room attached to the house.

The next few hours were a blur of antiseptic and blood.

Your father worked with a grim intensity. He didn't have the equipment of a major hospital, but he had the hands of a man who had spent forty years stitching the world back together. You stood by his side, handing him instruments, cleaning the sweat from his brow, and holding Jaskirat’s arm steady when his body convulsed in a fever-dream.

"The sepsis is deep.." your father said, his voice tight. "The bullet didn't stay in, but it took pieces of his shirt with it. It’s been festering for days."

He began the process of debriding the wound—cutting away the dead, infected tissue. Jaskirat didn't wake up, but he began to thrash. His muscles corded like steel cables, his body fighting the very hands trying to save him.

"Hold him!" your father shouted.

Rohan leaned over Jaskirat’s chest, pinning his shoulders, while you gripped his hands. His palms were rough, covered in scars..

"He's fighting a war in there.." Rohan muttered, struggling to keep the man down.

Jaskirat began to mutter in his delirium. It wasn't just Hindi. There were snatches of Urdu, Punjabi, fragments of a dialect you didn't recognize, and names—so many names.. Yalina...Zayan, Rehman-Bhai, Uzair...Pinda, Jasleen..

There was the same question in everyones eyes at this moment;

What in gods name happened to this poor man?

As the first streaks of lavender and gold began to bleed across the Jaipur sky, the chaos in the clinic finally subsided.

The wound was cleaned and dressed in thick layers of white gauze. An IV drip was hanging from a makeshift stand, slowly pumping high-dose antibiotics into his veins. The fever hadn't broken yet, but the terrifying grey tinge of his skin had faded into a pale, exhausted white.

Your father slumped into a chair, his surgical mask hanging around his neck. He looked older than he had that morning.

"He's stable.." your father said, his voice raspy. "For now. But the next twenty-four hours will tell us if his heart is as strong as his will."

Rohan and your mother had gone to get some rest, leaving you alone in the quiet room with the man who had no name. The only sound was the steady drip... drip... drip... of the IV and the distant call of a morning bird.

You pulled a chair close to the bed. You watched the way his chest rose and fell—slow, steady, and stubborn. He was a stranger.. He was a man who had tried to die, and yet, here he was, breathing the air of your home.

You reached out, hesitantly, and touched the back of his hand. It was still warm, but the unnatural heat was gone.

"You're save now.." you whispered.

In the quiet of the morning, you stayed there, a silent guardian over a fallen warrior. You knew that when he woke up, he would likely be angry. He would be confused. He would maybe even try to run... But as the sun rose over the blue gate, you knew one thing for certain: the silence of neither his or your life would ever, ever be the same again after this night..

"You’re chasing a ghost, Jaan.." he rasped, his knuckles bruised and trembling. "The man you love died in the blood of revenge; there is nothing left here but the wreckage."

​You stepped into his space, pressing a hand to his frantic heart. "Then let me love the wreckage.."

Ankaha.

The untold.

Three years of silence. Three years of scrubbing blood from his soul in a nameless town where the wind howls louder than his past.

Jaskirat has buried the man he used to be, trading his blades for the quiet anonymity of a nameless man with no home and no stories to tell.

He made a vow: No more violence. No more names. No more looking back.

...But vows are fragile things when a scream pierces the midnight air.

He saved your life. Now, you might be the only one who can save his soul.

Coming Soon.