Arjun's Pov
The ache from the dream still lingered in my chest, like a wound that hadn't fully closed. Even as I followed Karn down the stairs, still half-lost in the weight of those green eyes and the tears I couldn't wipe away, the sharp sound of my father's voice cut through the fog in my mind.
"We've found her. We've found that witch."
And just like that — every thought of the Mystery Girl vanished.
The warmth that had been clinging to me, the silent ache of longing, turned cold. My heart clenched tight, not with pain but with the bitter, familiar hatred that had been fed to me my whole life. The witch. The same bloodline that had ruined us. The same curse that had chained every Raisinghani man to an early grave. The same curse that had carved grief into every corner of this house.
I stood there, silent, as the room filled with sharp, clipped voices. Faces around me were taut, eyes burning with something close to hope but tainted by too many years of suffering.
For as long as I could remember, the story had been the same — the curse of the witch. A punishment placed upon my family long before I was born. A woman, scorned and vengeful, who had sealed our fate. No Raisinghani daughter would ever survive the womb, and every Raisinghani man would die before seeing sixty.
My uncle had been the first proof of it. He had barely seen fifty-five. My mother had suffered through three pregnancies, all three daughters lost before they could even be born. I had watched her break a little more each time, her smile growing thinner, her heart quieter. My father — a strong man, now counting the days to his own death, as the number fifty-nine sat on his shoulders like a countdown.
And all because of her. Or rather, her daughter. The witch's bloodline.
As my mind darkened with these thoughts, the sharp sound of a chair scraping back broke the tension. My father stood, his voice steady, commanding the room.
"She's in Varnalok," he said, and the room fell into an even deeper silence.
Varnalok. I had never heard of the place. A small, quiet village near Jaipur, barely a name on the map — but now it sounded like the epicenter of every misfortune we had ever lived through.
"Our people saw her mother there," my father continued, the words heavy with certainty. "The same woman who cursed us. After all these years, she has surfaced. And the daughter... the one who carries the blood of that witch — she's there too."
I felt my fists clench at my sides. The daughter. The key to ending this curse. The answer to every unspoken question in this house. The solution to a lifetime of pain.
And the target of every ounce of hatred I had learned to swallow.
My father's voice dropped low, steel sharpening every word. "We'll end this. No more sons dying before their time. No more daughters stolen from their mothers. No more."
As those words settled into the walls of the house, I felt something shift inside me. That dream, that face — the tears, the ache to help her — all of it crumbled under the weight of this moment. I had been raised on this hatred. Molded by it. The witch and her cursed bloodline had stolen everything from us.
And now we had a chance to take it back.
The announcement hit like a tidal wave, sweeping everything else aside. My father, with his usual air of authority, had just dropped a bombshell: someone from the family would be sent to Varnalok to capture the witch's daughter. As the words settled over the room, a gnawing hunger to act surged within me, a need to finish what had been started long ago.
Without thinking, I stood up, my voice cutting through the silence before I could stop myself.
"I'll go."
The room fell dead silent. Everyone turned to look at me, and for a moment, I could see the uncertainty in my father's eyes. He was the head of the family, the one who made decisions, who kept everything in control. He wasn't used to me stepping forward like this.
"I'm not sending you," he said, his tone firm, almost as if trying to brush aside my words. "It's dangerous. We don't even know what we're dealing with yet."
But I wasn't about to back down. The rage inside me was too strong, too consuming. How could I sit back when the woman who had cursed us all — the woman who had killed my uncle, ruined my mother's life, and destroyed our entire family — was still out there?
"Please, Dad," I said, my voice colder than I meant it to be. "You don't understand. I have to do this. I can't just sit around and let this curse continue. I can't watch my father die like this, knowing that nothing will change."
The room grew heavy with tension. I could see my family's worried faces — but none of that mattered. They had all suffered too much. They had all lost too much. I needed to do this for them. For myself.
The argument went on for what felt like forever. My father tried to reason with me, to stop me, but I could hear only one thing in my mind: the sound of my mother's cries, the image of my uncle's early death, the constant reminder that every male in our family would meet the same fate.
Finally, my father relented, though it was clear that he hadn't wanted to.
"Fine," he said, his voice tinged with reluctance. "But you'll have to be careful. And you'll do it with the full backing of the family. This is not something to take lightly."
The rest of the night passed in a blur of preparation. My mind, however, was racing. I barely slept. How could I? After everything that had just happened, the weight of what I had just volunteered for was pressing down on me. But somehow, I still managed to fall asleep — or maybe I just passed out from the exhaustion of it all.
The sleep I had hoped would offer some relief only took me deeper into the abyss. My mind seemed to drown in the nightmares that followed.
This time, there was no mystery, no allure. Just cruelty.
I was in a dark place, a void filled with echoes of suffering. The dream started with my mother's weeping. Her sobs pierced the air, heart-wrenching and raw, as she collapsed into grief. I could see her, her face streaked with tears, mourning yet another loss — another daughter taken from her.
But standing over her was a figure I couldn't fully make sense of — a girl, her features twisted in a cruel smile. Her eyes, dark and void of any warmth, glowed with malice. Her face was far from beautiful; it was grotesque, marked by deep scorn. And as my mother cried, she only laughed, a hollow, mocking sound that made my blood run cold.
The girl didn't show the slightest empathy, didn't even seem human. Her laughter echoed, venomous and sharp, as she stood there — a mocking observer to my mother's grief. It wasn't funny; it wasn't light. It was as if the pain itself fed her, like it was her only source of joy.
And I couldn't do anything. I watched as my mother curled into herself, helpless. The tears spilled from her eyes, each one a silent cry for the child she could never keep. The girl's laughter only grew louder, more distorted, as if she were feeding off the suffering — a sick, twisted joy.
I wanted to scream, wanted to rush to my mother, to stop this nightmare from continuing. But I couldn't move. All I could do was watch, helpless, as that girl stood above her, her laughter drowning out everything else.
And in that moment, I understood. This was the curse. This was the pain caused by the witch's daughter, the one who cursed my family. The one responsible for all of this.
Hatred, pure and undiluted, burned through me. I could feel the rage building inside me, suffocating me with its intensity. I couldn't take it anymore. This nightmare — this nightmare had to end.
The rage was suffocating, overwhelming. But there was no action I could take. Only anger, endless anger.
And then, as the dream flickered and shifted, the image of the girl faded away. But her laughter still echoed in my mind, the mocking sound following me even as I woke.
The next morning, I took my parents' blessings, though my mind was far from grateful. It wasn't a moment of peace. It was a moment of duty, of moving forward in the only direction I could see — to end the nightmare once and for all.
I could barely look at my father's face as I said goodbye, knowing that the man who had always protected me, who had been the stronghold of this family, was the one who was going to die soon if nothing changed. It was that thought — that cold, cruel fact — that drove me forward. That kept me from feeling any peace.
Varnalok was at least six hours from Jaipur, but it felt as though we were stepping into a different world. The village wasn't even on Google Maps, and that alone stirred a deep curiosity in me. What kind of place could exist in 2025 and still remain hidden from the digital world? Why was it so secret, so... untouched?
But curiosity wasn't enough to stop the deep anger churning in my gut. It wasn't enough to put out the fire in my heart. I had no interest in what I might find in Varnalok. I wasn't going to ask questions. I wasn't going to make discoveries. My one mission was to find her — the witch's daughter — and end it all.
But as the car rumbled along the winding roads, my mind drifted. There was a gnawing feeling at the back of my mind. The anger had begun to fade, replaced by something I couldn't quite identify. Something softer. Something almost... regretful?
I tried to shake it off. There was no time for that. No time for weakness.
But then, as the hours passed, it came to me again.
I missed her.
The Mystery Girl. The one who had haunted my thoughts the past few days, the one whose eyes had pierced into me, whose presence had made the world stop for just a moment.
What would it have been like to walk into that club again? To find her there, to speak to her? Could I have asked her who she was? Could I have learned her name? Would I have found out she was part of this twisted web of fate, or was she just a figment of my own tortured mind?
The thought lingered in my chest, unwanted but undeniable. She had been a distraction. But now, the closer I got to Varnalok, the more I wondered if I'd ever see her again. If the strange connection I'd felt with her
was ever real or just another part of the curse.
Could fate really be so cruel?
I didn't know.