Recap:
Ansh, Ishu, and Vaishnavi follow the vision to Sompur Woods, where Ansh sees the mysterious woman again. She warns him: "They're coming for you now, Ansh. You opened the door." A tall, gliding shadow looms behind her.
The sound returned before sight.
A hum. Low, electric. Almost melodic, but unnatural. Then came the cold—not the chill of wind or weather, but the kind that seeped into bone and memory.
Ansh couldn't move. His limbs were frozen, his voice trapped in his throat. The shadow behind the woman pulsed with an energy he couldn't describe—like it was both there and not there. A hole in the world.
The woman looked back at it, then to Ansh.
"Run," she whispered.
Light exploded.
He woke to hands shaking him.
"Ansh! Hey! Wake up, man!"
Ishu's face hovered above him, pale and scared.
"What happened?" Vaishnavi's voice came next.
Ansh sat up, gasping. He was lying across the abandoned railway. The flashlight was on the ground, flickering. The forest around them buzzed with silence again.
"You passed out," Ishu said. "Just collapsed. You were whispering something... something about a door."
Ansh's throat was dry. "They're coming."
"Who?" Vaishnavi asked.
"I don't know. But they... they saw me. That thing, the shadow... it saw me."
Vaishnavi knelt beside him. "Describe it."
"It wasn't... human. Not really. It moved like it was underwater, but the air around it burned. The woman told me I opened something. A door."
Ishu checked his phone. "We need to go. It's almost 2 AM."
They helped Ansh to his feet, and the trio stumbled out of the woods, barely speaking. None of them wanted to say it out loud, but something had changed.
Something had begun.
Back home, Ansh dreamed again. But this time, it wasn't a vision.
He was floating in a dark space, infinite and formless. Around him, voices whispered in languages he couldn't understand. Then—a flash. A circle of stone. Symbols carved into it, glowing red. And in the center, the same woman stood, holding a lantern that didn't cast light.
"You saw one of them," she said. "Now they see you."
"What are they?"
"Watchers. Custodians of the in-between. And they hate interference."
"Why me?"
She looked away. "Because you carry the mark."
Then she raised her hand.
Ansh looked down.
A symbol was burned into his palm—a jagged circle with intersecting lines.
He woke screaming.
The next morning, his palm still throbbed.
There was no mark. No scar. But the pain lingered.
At college, he showed Vaishnavi the sketch he made from memory.
She froze. "I've seen this. In one of my visions. On a door in a cave. A door that screamed when it opened."
"Where?"
"I don't know. But I can try to dream again. If I can find it... maybe we can find out what you opened."
Ishu shook his head. "This is escalating. We need help. A priest. A psychic. Hell, even a conspiracy Reddit thread."
Ansh looked at both of them. "No. This is ours. It started with us. And it ends with us."
Vaishnavi met his eyes. "Then we need to go deeper."
That night, they gathered at Vaishnavi's again. This time, she led a meditation ritual. Candles. Salt circles. Old chants from her grandmother's notebook.
They joined hands.
The air thickened.
The room trembled.
Then—a gust of wind, though the windows were closed. The candles blew out.
And the wall behind them shimmered.
Another vision began.
But this time, they all saw it.