The journal in my hands smelled of time—musty, brittle, its pages whispering secrets in ink that had faded to ghostly gray. My mother's notes coiled along the margins like serpents of knowledge, symbols I couldn't decipher, equations that felt less like science and more like incantations. She had always been brilliant, but this... this was something else. The kind of brilliance that scorched.
Then—a tap on my shoulder.
I flinched.
Ross stood behind me, his face taut, eyes darting toward the far corner of the blueprint room where the shadows clung too thickly, too deliberately. The air here was stale, thick with the scent of old paper and something else—something metallic, like the aftertaste of fear.
"Dev." His voice was a blade slicing through the silence. *"We need to go. Now."
I hesitated. The journal in my hands felt alive, pulsing with answers I wasn't ready to understand. Pages fluttered as if breathing.
*"Ross, I think—"
"I don't care what you think." His grip on my arm was iron. *"This place isn't right."
A draft slithered through the room, lifting the edges of blueprints like spectral fingers. The flickering bulb above us stuttered, casting jagged shadows across Ross's face. Something in the corner shifted—or maybe it was just my imagination trying to give form to the unease curling in my gut.
I swallowed hard and shut the journal. It groaned slightly as I slid it back onto the shelf.
Outside, the Berlin night was a slap of cold clarity. The wind carried the distant hum of the city, the scent of wet pavement and diesel. I inhaled deeply, trying to shake the cloying dread that had settled in my lungs.
But the questions followed me like a second shadow.
Back at the mansion, the library loomed—a mausoleum of my mother's obsessions. Shelves groaned under the weight of leather-bound tomes, their spines cracked with age and grief. I pulled one down, then another. Each revelation darker than the last.
Her research wasn't just medicine.
It was control.
Human behavior rewritten through pharmacology. Neural pathways manipulated like code. Emotions suppressed or heightened with tailored compounds. Evolution no longer natural but engineered.
The words blurred as my pulse quickened. This wasn't science. It was madness.
Then—the doorbell.
A sharp, shrill sound that shattered the silence like glass.
I moved on instinct, my body tense, fingers curling as if expecting a fight. The hallway seemed too long. The floorboards beneath my feet too loud. My hand hovered over the doorknob for just a second longer than necessary.
I opened the door.
And the world tilted.
Krithi.
Wind tangled in her hair, a suitcase at her feet, and that smile —the one that could dismantle empires and disarm warlords.
"What the hell?" My voice cracked. *"How did you—?"
She tilted her head, mischief glinting in her eyes, and nodded toward Ross, who stood sheepishly behind me with the look of someone caught feeding the stray dog he swore he wouldn't.
"She called me bhaiya," he muttered, rubbing his neck. *"You know I can't say no when she does that."
"You gave her the address?" I hissed. *"This is a classified—"
"She brought brownies," he offered weakly, holding up a box like a peace offering, as though chocolate could absolve all sins.
I exhaled, the tension unraveling all at once. Of course she had.
Krithi stepped forward, her fingers brushing mine as she stole the box from Ross. "Chocolate walnut," she announced, as if that explained everything. *"Now let me in before I freeze to death."
For days, the investigation faded into the background like a half-remembered nightmare.
Berlin became ours.
We wandered its cobbled streets like ghosts from a different time, our laughter echoing off ancient stone. We ate at dimly lit bistros along the Spree, Krithi stealing bites of Apfelstrudel from my fork, her laughter blending with the clink of wine glasses and soft jazz.
We danced under the amber glow of streetlamps, her hand in mine, our footsteps echoing on cobblestones older than some nations. Ross complained we were giving him cavities.
At a flea market near Mauerpark, she unearthed treasures. A moth-eaten velvet jacket for Ross ("You look like a disgraced aristocrat in exile"), a vintage leather satchel for me ("Now you can brood in style, Dr. Moody").
In the evenings, the mansion transformed.
Krithi turned the decaying garden into her personal canvas. The once-forgotten statues became muses for her graffiti—neon vines twisting up the trunks of ancient oaks, surreal flowers blooming under the moonlight. One night, I caught her painting tiny stars across the backs of sleeping garden gnomes.
The air smelled of cinnamon tea, fresh paint, and laughter. The halls, once heavy with silence, now throbbed with her playlists, her stories, and that infectious, unstoppable energy.
She brought light.
I hadn't realized how dark it had been until she arrived.
And yet—
Sometimes, when the house was quiet and Ross was snoring in one of the guest rooms, I'd pass the library.
Its door would be left ajar.
Always ajar.
Like a warning. Or an invitation.
Sometimes, I'd hear something. Not voices. Not quite. Just… breathing. Pages fluttering when there was no wind. The low creak of a chair shifting under invisible weight.
I told myself it was just old wood. Drafts. My mind.
But I knew better.
The secrets hadn't left.
They were waiting.
Watching.
And somewhere, deep beneath the laughter, beneath the streetlights and stolen desserts, I knew I would return to that room.
To the journal that pulsed with forbidden truth.
To the blueprint that didn't match any official design.
To the whispers that called me by name when no one else was around.
But for now—
I let her light fill the spaces where my mother's shadows once lived.
Because sometimes, the only way to survive the darkness…
Is to hold on to the girl who brings the dawn.