Chapter 3: The Red Mirror

Priya was running, but she didn’t know from what.

The world was an abyss. No sky, no earth, only a thick, suffocating darkness that felt like wet velvet against her skin. She was blindfolded, or perhaps the world itself had gone blind. She stumbled forward, hands outstretched, her fingers grazing cold, damp stone.

"Ma? Nanna?" she called out. Her voice didn't echo; it was swallowed by the void.

Every snap of a twig, every rustle of unseen leaves made her heart lurch. She felt like a tethered goat in a forest of predators. Then, a sliver of light appeared—a jaundiced, flickering glow bleeding from under a heavy, wooden door.

She pushed it open, and the smell hit her first. Iron and rot.

It was a bathroom, but the tiles were slick with something dark. A lightbulb overhead hummed and flickered, casting rhythmic shadows. In the center of the room, a man sat on the floor, his back to her. He was hunched over, his hands moving with a wet, rhythmic sound. He was washing his hands, but the water in the basin was thick, dark crimson.

Priya wanted to scream, to run, but her feet were leaden. She was a spectator in her own nightmare.

The man rose slowly. He didn't look at her. He walked toward a bathtub filled to the brim with dark fluid. From the edge of the tub, a pale, slender hand draped limply over the side, fingers dripping onto the floor.

A voice drifted from the tub—a girl’s voice, fragile and hollowed out by terror.

"Please... let me go," the girl whispered. "I won't tell anyone. My mother... she’s waiting for me. I don’t even know how many months I’ve been here. Please... I did everything you asked."

The man leaned over the tub. He didn't speak. He reached down and began to strike the girl’s face. Not with a weapon, but with a calculated, rhythmic brutality that turned her pleas into wet, gurgling gasps.

A spray of warm, metallic-smelling liquid hit Priya’s cheek.

She bolted upright in bed, a scream dying in her throat. Her heart was a drum, beating against her ribs so hard it ached. She was drenched in sweat, her breath coming in jagged gulps.

"Priya? Priya, wake up!"

Her mother, Raji, was over her, shaking her shoulders. "You’re shaking like a leaf! What happened? You’re going to be late for college."

"Ma... there was a girl," Priya gasped, clutching her mother’s arm. Her fingernails dug into Raji’s skin. "He was killing her. He’s going to kill me, too. He’s coming for us."

Raji sat on the edge of the bed, wiping the sweat from Priya’s forehead with her pallu. "It was a dream, thalli. Just a bad dream. Look, the sun is up. You’re safe in your room."

"It didn't feel like a dream," Priya whispered, her eyes darting to the shadows in the corner. "I felt the blood on my face."

"Hush now," Raji said firmly. "I had a dream once that I was a little girl again at the exhibition, riding all the big swings. Does that mean I’m going to wake up five years old? No. Dreams are just our brains cleaning house."

Raji tried to lighten the mood. "Anyway, why are you so stressed? Is it about that boy? Karthi?"

Priya looked away, the memory of the nightmare fading into the dull ache of yesterday’s reality. "He’s... he’s just sensitive, Ma."

"Sensitive?" Raji snorted. "He sounds like a headache. Tell me what happened at the mall. You’ve been acting like a ghost since you got back."

Priya sighed, recounting the evening. She told Raji about the shopping trip, about the feeling of being followed, and then the explosion at the mall—Karthi, surrounded by security, a cigarette dangling from his lips in a non-smoking zone, his eyes searching for her like a searchlight.

"Vaani says he’s stalking me," Priya whispered. "She says he doesn't love me, he just wants to own me."

Raji’s face clouded. "Your friend Vaani has a sharp tongue, but she isn't always wrong. A man who follows you in the dark isn't a protector, Priya. He’s a shadow."