CHAPTER 1 : The Echo of Unmoored Hours
The monsoon had arrived in Islamabad long before Bilal ever crossed the threshold, bringing with it a torrential downpour that seemed intent on drowning the city’s sins. The rain did not merely fall; it threw itself against the windowpanes of the small apartment like frantic, impatient fingers, drumming an erratic rhythm that made the concrete walls feel closer, suffocating, and impossibly small. Outside, the capital’s wide avenues and gridded sectors shimmered under the pale, jaundiced glow of streetlights, drowning in grey mist. Inside, however, the shadows did not rely on the weather. They gathered organically in the corners of the rooms, heavy and thick, like soot from an old fire that refused to be swept away.
Zareena stood motionless in the middle of her bedroom, her fingers curled tightly around a porcelain cup. The steam rising from the spiced chai had long since vanished, leaving the liquid dark, stagnant, and cold. She did not drink. She simply stared into the dark surface, watching her own fractured reflection warp with every distant roll of thunder. The physical remnants of her life were etched into her skin in varying shades of violet and yellow. The bruise on her left forearm was nearly a week old, fading into a dull, sickly green. The one hidden beneath the thick fabric of her sleeve, just above the elbow, was fresh—a sharp, blooming purple that throbbed in time with her pulse. But the deepest bruise, the one she carried beneath an agonizingly practiced smile, was the oldest of all. It was a wound woven from years of quiet endurance, an invisible fracture that threatened to give way with the next breath.
From the adjacent living room, the soft, melodic sound of Zara’s laughter drifted through the doorway, cutting through the heavy silence like a silver blade. Zareena turned her head slowly, her eyes softening as she watched her six-year-old daughter. The little girl was entirely absorbed in her own sanctuary, sitting cross-legged on the faded rug, carefully arranging her stuffed animals in a perfect, solemn circle. Zara was hosting a tea party. Her guests of honor included a plush rabbit missing its left button eye, a brown teddy bear whose fur had been worn smooth by years of tears, and a plastic doll with uneven, jagged hair—the casualty of a pair of safety scissors and a child’s creative impulse.
Zareena watched her daughter from the shadows of the kitchen, a profound sadness tightening around her throat. Children possessed an uncanny, almost terrifying talent for alchemy. They could construct vast, impenetrable empires out of the most pathetic scraps left behind by adults. Zara could forge a majestic kingdom from a discarded cardboard box, a vibrant family from broken toys, and a sense of absolute security from a home that was actively splintering into pieces. It was a beautiful, devastating sight. Zareena realized, with a sharp pang of guilt, that the illusion could not last forever. Sooner or later, the fragile glass of childhood would shatter, and Zara would begin to notice the massive, jagged cracks marring the real world around her. She wondered, with a sinking heart, if the child had already seen them and was simply pretending the floor wasn’t burning beneath their feet.
The heavy wooden front door did not just open; it slammed against the wall with a violence that vibrated through the floorboards.
Instantly, the laughter died. The transition from pure childhood innocence to absolute, suffocating terror was instantaneous. The silence that blanketed the apartment was unnatural, heavy and thick with adrenaline. It was the absolute stillness of the wilderness—the paralyzing quiet that takes over a forest when a prey animal senses the distinct, lethal approach of a apex predator. Bilal had returned.
His heavy, deliberate footsteps echoed down the narrow hallway, each thud sounding like a death knell. Before his physical form even materialized, his presence announced itself through the oppressive, acrid stench of cheap cigarette smoke and stale rain. Zareena’s stomach tightened into a painful, suffocating knot. There were some forms of terror that became so deeply ingrained in the human psyche that they ceased to feel like psychological emotions. They bypassed the mind entirely, mutating into primal, visceral instincts. Her body prepared for impact before her brain could even process the danger.
The bedroom door swung open with a harsh creak. Bilal stood framed in the doorway, a towering, ominous silhouette soaked to the skin by the unrelenting storm. Strands of dark hair clung to his forehead, and his eyes, wild and severely bloodshot, scanned the room with a volatile intensity. For a moment, his expression remained unreadable, a terrifying calm before the inevitable squall. Then, his gaze shifted downward, landing squarely on the half-packed suitcase resting covertly beside the old wooden wardrobe.
The shift in his countenance was immediate and terrifying. It was not shock that washed over his features, nor was it the confusion of a man realizing his domestic life was fracturing. It was rage—pure, unadulterated, intoxicating malice that contorted his face into something monstrous.
"Yeh kya hai?" Bilal’s voice was dangerously low, a guttural growl that vibrated in the base of his chest.
Zareena swallowed hard, the dryness in her throat making the movement agonizing. She forced herself to stand tall, though every nerve in her body screamed at her to shrink into the floorboards. "Aur kitna chalega yeh sab, Bilal? Main thak gayi hoon."
His jaw clenched so tightly the muscles bunched beneath his skin, his eyes narrowing into slits. "Main ne poocha yeh kya hai! Mujhe jawab do!"
"Aik suitcase hai," Zareena replied, her voice trembling despite her best efforts to anchor it. "Hum ja rahe hain."
"Mujhe andha samjha hai tum ne?" Bilal’s voice suddenly erupted, breaking from a low hiss into a deafening roar that seemed to shake the very foundations of the apartment.
From the threshold of the living room, every remaining ounce of childhood warmth vanished. A small, frail figure appeared at the end of the dark hallway. Zara stood barefoot on the cold tile, her small hands clutching the one-eyed stuffed rabbit against her chest like a shield. She did not cry. She simply stood there, her wide, terrified eyes fixed entirely on her mother. She was watching, as she always did, absorbing the trauma in absolute, heartbreaking silence.
Bilal’s predatory gaze snapped toward the child instantly. "Apne kamre mein jao, Zara! Abhi!"
The little girl did not move an inch. Her tiny feet seemed rooted to the floor, her frantic gaze pleading with her mother for protection.
The argument escalated with the terrifying velocity of a wildfire fed by dry timber. Years of accumulated resentment, bitter disappointments, and unexpressed agony erupted into the small bedroom. It was an avalanche of broken promises, apologies that had been repeated so many times they had lost all linguistic meaning, and accusations sharpened by the cruel passage of time. The air became thick, unbreathable, and toxic.Then came the strike.
The sound of his palm connecting with Zareena’s cheek was a sharp, sickening crack that echoed like a gunshot in the confined space. The sheer, brutal force of the blow snapped her head violently to the side. Her vision blurred into a smear of grey and black, and a high-pitched, deafening ringing filled her ears, isolating her from the sound of the storm outside. For a fraction of a second, the world became distant, floating away from her as if she were drowning beneath deep water.
When her vision finally stabilized, the first thing she saw was Zara. The little girl wasn’t sobbing; she wasn’t even hyperventilating. That was the most soul-crushing part of the realization. Zara wasn’t surprised by the violence. She had expected it. She stood there with a hollow, detached acceptance, as if this brutal display was merely another predictable, miserable chapter in a horrific book she had been forced to memorize by heart.
Something inside Zareena snapped. It wasn't a violent, explosive break, but rather something quiet, absolute, and permanent. It was the sound of an ancient, frayed rope finally giving way under the weight of an impossible anchor. The fear that had dictated her every movement for years evaporated, replaced by a cold, crystalline clarity.
Bilal took another menacing step forward, his chest heaving, his right hand rising once more to deliver another blow.
But this time, Zareena did not cower. She did not raise her arms to shield her face. Her hand dropped blindly to the side table, her fingers wrapping around the cool, smooth surface of a heavy ceramic vase. In that desperate microsecond, the object felt strangely, impossibly light in her grasp. Before her conscious mind could analyze the consequences, her survival instinct took absolute control. She swung the vase with every ounce of buried strength she possessed.
The sound of the impact was dull and sickeningly heavy. The ceramic shattered into a hundred glittering shards, raining down on the carpet like porcelain snow. Bilal staggered backward, his eyes widening in absolute, profound shock as a thin line of crimson began to bloom across his temple. He stared at her, unable to comprehend that the prey had finally turned. Then, the light left his eyes, replaced by a sudden, heavy darkness. His large body collapsed forward, crashing onto the floor with a resounding thud.
The apartment fell into an absolute, breathless vacuum. Even the torrential rain outside seemed to hold its breath, the pounding against the glass dulling into a faint murmur. For several agonizing seconds, neither mother nor daughter moved. They stood frozen in the wreckage of their old life, staring at the unconscious man on the floor.
Then, Zara’s tiny, fragile voice cracked through the silence. "Ammi...?"
Zareena looked down at Bilal’s still form, watching the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of his back to ensure he was still breathing. Then, she looked up, meeting the haunted eyes of her daughter. In that silent exchange, a profound understanding passed between them. She knew with absolute, terrifying certainty that if they stayed past the dawn, nothing would ever change. Not tomorrow, not next month, not next year. The cycle would continue until there was nothing left of either of them but dust.
People in the outside world always spoke of freedom as though it were a grand, cinematic event—something that arrived with the booming triumph of fireworks and celebrations. They were wrong. Zareena realized then that freedom often arrived shivering. It arrived terrified, bleeding, covered in sweat, and barely able to draw a clean breath.
"Zara," Zareena’s voice trembled, but beneath the shaking lay a core of pure steel. "Hum yahan sey ja rahe hain. Jaldi karo."
Within fifteen chaotic, breathless minutes, the entire trajectory of their lives had been violently compressed into two large, weathered suitcases. They packed with a frantic, desperate efficiency, grabbing only the absolute essentials of their existence: practical clothes, Zara’s school textbooks, a handful of faded photographs from a time before the darkness settled in, a few cherished toys, and their legal identification documents.
Deep within the lining of Zareena’s winter coat lay the true key to their escape: twenty lakh rupees, painstakingly hoarded over five agonizing years in a secret bank account Bilal never knew existed. It was money stolen from grocery budgets, birthday gifts, and hidden jobs—a fortune built from pennies and sheer willpower. That was all that remained of her youth. Years of human existence, suffering, and survival had been reduced to nylon luggage. The sight was profoundly, beautifully tragic. A whole life, Zareena thought, should have weighed so much more than this.
By the time the old sedan - the one her family had owned for years, cleared the toll plazas of Islamabad,, the pale, slate-grey fingers of dawn were beginning to bleed across the horizon. The sprawling city, with all its concrete ghosts and traumatic memories, slowly dissolved into the rearview mirror, swallowed by the rising mist.
Zara lay curled in the passenger seat, her tiny body swaddled in a warm shawl, her arms locking her one-eyed rabbit against her chest as if her life depended on it. She was not peacefully asleep; her slumber was fitful and defensive. Every few minutes, her small body would twitch, her eyes snapping open in a panic to ensure her mother was still gripping the steering wheel. Only after reaching out to touch Zareena’s sleeve would she sigh, her eyelids fluttering shut as she drifted back into the shadows of exhaustion.The mountain road stretched out ahead of them like an endless, winding ribbon cutting through the jagged Margala hills and into the deeper, untamed territory of the north. The rain followed them, sweeping across the windshield in great, blinding sheets that the wipers struggled to clear. The future remained entirely obscured, buried beneath thick, impenetrable layers of mountain fog. For the first time in her adult life, Zareena possessed absolutely no plan, no safety net, and no destination. She possessed only a direction. Forward. Always forward, away from the shadow of the man who had nearly destroyed them.
By late afternoon, the urban landscape had completely vanished, replaced by dense, primeval forests of pine and deodar that clung to the steep cliffs. The air grew biting and cold, carrying the sharp, clean scent of wet earth and pine resin. Exhaustion had begun to dull Zareena’s reflexes, her eyes burning from lack of sleep. Seeing a small clearing ahead, she pulled the car onto a gravel turnout near a perilous, winding mountain bend.
Perched precariously on the edge of the cliff was an ancient, weathered roadside tea stall. The structure looked as though it had grown out of the mountain itself, constructed from rotting wooden benches and a rusted, corrugated tin roof that rattled violently under the weight of the rain. A thin, fragile plume of grey smoke curled lazily from a makeshift brick hearth, rising into the gloomy sky.
Behind the wooden counter stood an elderly tea seller, his form shrouded in a coarse wool khaddar shawl. He was a man of impossible age; his long beard was completely white, resembling the winter snows that capped the peaks above. His dark, deeply lined eyes carried the peculiar, heavy sadness of an elder who had lived long enough to outlast his peers, his family, and the very era he was born into.
Zareena walked up to the counter, holding Zara tightly by the hand. The warmth of the burning coal hearth was an instant comfort against the mountain chill. "Assalamualaikum, Baba," she said softly, her voice raspy from exhaustion. "Do cup chai milegi? Aur thoda sa paratha agar ho toh."
The old man looked up, his expression gentle as he observed the pale, bruised face of the woman and the wide, haunted eyes of the child. "Waalaikumassalam, Beti. Baitho, baitho. Chai abhi tayaar hoti hai."
They sat on a low wooden bench beneath the overhang of the tin roof, watching the old man deftly pour milk and black tea leaves into a battered brass saucepan. Desperate for any information about the remote valley they were entering, Zareena leaned forward slightly. "Baba... hum yahan sey agay ja rahe hain. Jo purani haveli hai, pahaad ke us paar... kia aapko maloom hai woh raasta thik hai?"
The moment the word haveli left her lips, the old man’s hands froze. The practiced, rhythmic motion of his tea strainer stopped completely. The gentle, welcoming smile vanished from his face, replaced by an immediate, stark stillness that bordered on absolute terror. The atmosphere beneath the tin roof shifted, turning icy cold.
"Aap wahan ja rahi hain?" The old man’s voice had lost its warmth, replaced by a strained, hollow tone. "Uss manhoos jagah? Khuda ke liye, Beti, wahan mat jao."
Zareena’s heart skipped a beat, but she forced a calm facade. "Ji, humein wahan jana hai. Meri dadi ki zameen hai wahan. Hamara aur koi thikana nahi hai."
The old man remained silent for several long, excruciating moments, staring down at the boiling tea as if reading omens in the white foam. Slowly, with trembling hands, he poured the steaming liquid into two chipped, mismatched porcelain cups and set them before Zareena and Zara. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely a whisper, competing with the howling wind.
"Shukriya, Baba," Zara murmured, taking the warm cup in her small hands. The heat seemed to revive her slightly, and she sat up straighter, her curiosity piqued by the old man’s ominous demeanor. Like all children who had known too much sorrow, she possessed a deep, insatiable love for stories—tales where the monsters were tangible and could be defeated, unlike the monsters of reality.
The tea seller turned his gaze toward the dark, jagged peaks of the mountains, his eyes clouding over as if he were peering through the fabric of time itself. "Long before Pakistan existed, before the British surveyors cut these roads through the living rock of the hills, there was a powerful landlord who built a magnificent haveli in that isolated valley. He was a man of immense stature, with wealth that could buy the allegiance of kings. He had vast tracts of land, thousands of loyal servants, and absolute power over life and death in these mountains."
The wind whistled sharply through the cracks of the wooden stall, mimicking a distant, mournful wail.
"But," the old man continued, his fingers tightening around his own wooden stirring spoon, "he did not possess the one thing he wanted most desperately."
Zara leaned forward, her tea forgotten, her eyes wide. "Woh kya chahta tha, Baba?"
The old man looked directly into the child’s eyes, his expression solemn. "Waqt, meri jaan. Unhein waqt chahiye tha."
It was a strange, enigmatic answer. The kind of statement that did not merely pass through the ear, but lingered in the mind, growing heavier with every passing second.
"They say his youngest wife, whom he loved to the point of madness, fell ill with a mysterious wasting disease," the tea seller explained, his voice dropping into the low, rhythmic cadence of a traditional folklorist. "Every renowned hakim failed. Every prayer offered at the shrines returned unanswered. Every medicine turned to poison in her throat. Desperate, and driven mad by the thought of losing her, the landlord turned away from the light. He went searching for things that human beings should never seek. He sought out the ancient secrets buried in the roots of these mountains."
The rain outside intensified, hammering against the tin roof with a deafening fury that made the small stall feel like an isolated island in a chaotic sea.
"My grandmother believed that he went into the deepest caves, searching for a Djinn—a being that did not belong to our world, a creature that lived between the ticking of moments, in the blank spaces between yesterday and tomorrow. He begged this entity for more time. He offered his wealth, his lands, his very soul, just to buy his wife a few more years of breath."
"Aur... kya unhein waqt mila?" Zara whispered, her voice filled with a mixture of childlike wonder and innate dread.
The old man’s face darkened, the deep lines on his forehead casting long shadows in the firelight. "That depends entirely on which version of the legend you choose to believe, Beti. Some say his wife survived, but she was no longer human—she became a hollow shell, moving through the house without casting a shadow or breathing air."
He leaned closer across the counter, his eyes reflecting the dying embers of the hearth. "Others say the house itself became a living, breathing entity, devouring the life force of anyone who crossed the threshold. And a few... a few old souls believed that the haveli stopped obeying the laws of time altogether. It became unmoored from the world. A place where the past, the present, and the future exist in the same room, at the same moment."
A sharp, icy chill crawled across Zareena’s skin, completely unrelated to the mountain wind. She tightened her grip on her teacup, her knuckles turning white. The old man’s words felt uncomfortably heavy, vibrating with an ancient truth that her logical mind wanted to reject.
"The villagers of the old valley spoke of impossible, terrifying things," the tea seller continued, his voice dropping so low they had to lean in to hear him. "They spoke of children hearing the laughter of playmates who had died fifty years prior. They saw the hands of old grandfather clocks running backward with furious speed, while the sun remained fixed in the sky. They spoke of vast, ornate rooms appearing where empty stone walls had stood only a moment before."
The old man’s gaze locked onto Zareena’s, holding her captive with the sheer intensity of his warning. "Within my own lifetime, a young shepherd entered the grounds of the haveli to seek shelter during a sudden, violent blizzard. He was missing for days. His family wept, believing he had frozen to death on the peaks."
"Phir kya hua?" Zara asked, her breath catching in her throat.
The old man hesitated, a sad, bitter smile playing on his lips. "He returned to the village three days later, completely unharmed, his sheep trailing behind him."
"Yeh toh achi baat hai," Zareena reasoned, trying to shake off the oppressive dread tightening around her chest.
"Nahi, Beti," the old man whispered, his eyes wide with a lingering, ancient horror. "Wohan ke logon ke liye teen din guzre thay. Magar us charwahe ke liye? For him, only ten minutes had passed. He had stepped inside the grand foyer, wrung out his wet shawl by the fireplace, and walked right back out. To him, the world had aged three days in the blink of an eye. He lost his mind within a month, screaming that the clocks in his head wouldn't stop ticking. He never went near the valley again."
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the rain seemed to alter its tone, sounding less like falling water and more like a chorus of distant, whispering voices trying to break through the tin roof.
The old man turned back to his hearth, his shoulders slumping under the weight of the memory. "My grandmother always ended her warning with the same words, words passed down from her ancestors." He turned his head slightly, his gaze piercing through the gloom. "'Beware of houses that remember more than people do."
A violent shiver ran through Zareena’s spine. For reasons she could not logically explain or articulate, the old man’s story did not feel like ancient folklore or a campfire tale designed to scare travelers. It felt like an omen. It felt like a direct, explicit warning meant specifically for her. But as she looked at the dark road ahead and thought of the broken man waking up in the apartment in Islamabad, she knew there was no turning back. The monsters behind them were real; the monsters ahead were still only stories.
"Aapka bohot shukriya, Baba," Zareena said, rising from the bench and placing several crumpled notes on the counter. "Magar hamare paas koi aur rasta nahi hai. Humein jana hoga."
The old man did not touch the money. He simply closed his eyes and nodded slowly, a look of profound pity in his gaze. "Khuda aapki hifazat kare, Beti. Khuda hafiz."
Night had fallen completely by the time the rented sedan finally crawled into the isolated valley where the ancestral estate lay hidden. The storm had reached a terrifying crescendo, lightning ripping across the black sky in jagged, blinding veins of violet and blue, illuminating the landscape for fractions of a second.
The haveli emerged from the absolute darkness like a monstrous, forgotten deity rising from a nightmare. Its colossal silhouette towered against the weeping sky, a massive, sprawling structure of ancient black stone, intricate wooden balconies, and towering minarets that seemed to pierce the underbelly of the clouds. It stood entirely alone, surrounded by a dying orchard of twisted, barren trees. It was silent. It was ancient. It was watching.
A brilliant flash of lightning fractured the sky, bathing the entire front facade of the mansion in a stark, terrifying white light. And in that fleeting, minuscule microsecond, Zareena’s heart stopped completely. She would have sworn, on her own soul, that she saw movement in one of the high, arched windows of the third floor. A dark silhouette. A human figure, standing perfectly rigid against the glass, staring down at the approach road. Staring directly at them.
The lightning vanished, plunging the world back into pitch-black darkness. The window became an empty, unreadable void once more.
Zareena’s breath hitched, her heartbeat quickening into a frantic, erratic rhythm against her ribs. She gripped the steering wheel so tightly her wrists violently shook. It was just a shadow, she told herself desperately, her mind clawing for any logical explanation. A trick of the light. A reflection of the rain against the old glass. Nothing more. But deep within her gut, a voice whispered that she was lying to herself.
The car approached the massive, towering wrought-iron gates that guarded the perimeter of the estate. They were choked with thick, thorny vines that looked like tangled nests of black serpents. Zareena shifted the car into park and stepped out into the freezing rain, her hands trembling as she approached the lock. To her surprise, the ancient, rusted chain lay broken on the ground, snapped by time or something far more deliberate.
With a heavy, straining push, she forced the gates open. The metal did not merely swing; the hinges groaned and shrieked against the rust, a high-pitched, agonizing scream that echoed across the desolate valley like a dying animal. The wind howled through the iron bars, a cold, violent gust that nearly knocked her off her feet.
The trees within the estate grounds swayed violently under the assault of the storm, their bare, jagged branches scratching against one another with a dry, rhythmic clattering. It sounded precisely like a gathering of old, withered spirits engaging in a hurried, malevolent whispered conversation, passing the news of the newcomers from branch to branch.
Zara slowly stepped out of the passenger side, her tiny shoes sinking into the thick, dark mud of the driveway. The little girl tilted her head back, her wide eyes taking in the immense, terrifying scale of the black haveli. The rain soaked her hair, plastering it against her pale forehead. She did not look amazed by the grand architecture; she looked profoundly unsettled. She frowned, her small lips parting as she turned to her mother.
"Ammi," Zara’s voice was small, but it carried an eerie clarity that cut through the roaring wind.
"Hmm? Kya hua, beta?" Zareena asked, wiping the rainwater from her own eyes as she grabbed their heavy suitcases from the trunk.
"Yeh ghar... yeh ghar bohot udaas lagta hai," the child whispered, her eyes never leaving the dark windows above.
The words sent an instantaneous, inexplicable chill straight through Zareena’s veins. It was a terrifyingly accurate observation. The haveli did not look abandoned. It did not even look traditionally haunted, like the broken ruins of old ghost stories. It looked lonely. It looked profoundly, agonizingly lonely. It bore the heavy appearance of a structure that had spent decades, perhaps centuries, trapped in a state of perpetual suspended animation, waiting in the dark for someone to arrive. Anyone.
A powerful, unnatural gust of wind suddenly swept across the overgrown courtyard, carrying with it the faint, impossible scent of blooming jasmine—a flower that had no business blooming in the dead of a mountain storm. The wind slammed against the heavy front doors of the mansion.
Somewhere deep within the dark, cavernous interior of the house, a heavy wooden door slammed shut with a resounding boom.
A second later, another door slammed on a higher floor. Then another. Then another.
The consecutive thuds echoed through the empty halls of the haveli in a perfect, rhythmic sequence. It did not sound like accidental drafts moving through an old house. It sounded like heavy, deliberate footsteps walking down a long corridor. It sounded like an echo of a life lived long ago. It sounded, with terrifying clarity, like a welcome.
Mother and daughter exchanged a long, terrified glance in the pouring rain, the shared trauma of their past tying them together in this new, incomprehensible nightmare. There was no going back. The road behind them was swallowed by the dark, and the man they fled was a monster of flesh and bone.
Behind them, without warning, the massive wrought-iron gates began to move. Slowly, deliberately, the heavy metal frames swung inward.
The iron groaned and shrieked one final time before the gates slammed shut with a deafening, metallic crash that vibrated through the very earth beneath their feet. The broken chain rattled against the bars, a sound that felt absolute, permanent, and entirely unavoidable. It was the sound of a trap snapping shut. It was as if the valley itself, or some unseen, ancient intelligence residing within the stone walls, had quietly, firmly decided that they belonged to this place now. They were no longer guests; they were residents.
And high above them, in a forgotten, dust-covered room hidden deep behind walls that time had forgotten, a dark shadow stood perfectly still beside the rain-streaked window. It did not move. It did not breathe. It simply watched the mother and child standing in the courtyard below, waiting with an infinite, terrifying patience.
Because some stories in this world begin the moment people make a conscious choice to enter a house. And some stories—the ones born from the dark folklores of an ancient land—begin because the house has finally, patiently found the exact people it has been waiting for across the centuries.
DRUMROLLSSSSS 🥁🥁🥁 Finally done with the first chapterrrrr yayyyyyy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Requests are closed, as I need to complete this series (it's long af 😭)...
Y'all... this is officially my first ever horror AU 😭✋
I usually live in the land of angst, emotional damage, found family, and people staring dramatically into the rain, so writing actual horror had me side-eyeing my own draft at 2 am💀
Also, if the haveli starts giving red flags... trust me, it's only getting worse 😭
Anyway, please be nice to me because I'm entering my horror era for the first time 🫡🕯️
Happy haunting besties 👻✨
Send prayers for Zara and Zareena 🙏🙏🙏
✨ Wrote this extra poetically because apparently horror wasn't enough and my brain decided to use every fancy word in its vocabulary 😭✋
I hope you enjoyed the spooky vibes, emotional damage and the unhealthy amount of metaphors and shashi tharoor level vocab 👻 📖 💀☠️
No hate comment/ask please 🥺
Ananya (hereforfanfictionsfr) :)
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