Jai didn't sleep.
He sat against the wall of his tiny room, knees pulled to his chest, the FIXED GAMES script lying a few feet away like it might bite him if he got too close.
His body was here.
But his mind was still in that Glass House.
Still hearing the tick of the metronome.
Still seeing the cracks in the wall.
Still feeling the cold, inhuman calm of Vardhan Oberoi moving through him like a second spine.
Jai pressed his palms to his eyes.
"I cleaned a murder," he whispered.
Even though it wasn't real.
Even though it was a story.
Even though it was a role.
His stomach twisted with moral disgust. Vardhan didn't see people — only problems to erase. He turned death into logistics. Pain into procedure. He didn't rage. He didn't shout.
He organized horror.
Jai had felt that mindset from the inside.
And it terrified him.
---
But beneath the horror…
There was something else.
Understanding.
Not sympathy. Never sympathy.
But access.
He knew how Vardhan breathed before speaking. How he blinked slower when thinking. How his shoulders tightened when symmetry was disturbed. How his control wasn't confidence — it was fear of chaos.
This wasn't acting knowledge.
This was lived experience.
Jai looked at the script again.
"Is this… a blessing?" he muttered. "Or a curse?"
Because as sick as he felt…
He also knew something with absolute clarity:
If he walked into that audition room now, he wouldn't be pretending to be Vardhan.
He had been him.
---
Slowly, cautiously, Jai crawled toward the script.
He didn't touch it yet.
"What are you?" he asked the silence.
No answer.
Just the ceiling fan humming overhead.
His hand hovered over the pages. The skin of his palm tingled in anticipation, like a magnet pulling toward metal.
He took a breath.
And touched it.
---
The burn came instantly.
But this time, he didn't panic.
The room dissolved again — not violently, but like ink spreading through water.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
He was back.
But not in the Glass House.
Not in the hotel.
This time he stood in a dim underground parking lot.
Vardhan's car was parked in a corner. Black. Clean. Anonymous.
Jai felt himself leaning against it, speaking on the phone.
Vardhan's voice. Calm. Rhythmic.
"Yes… it's handled."
Pause.
"Three days. Delete everything."
Pause.
"No loose ends. I don't leave stains."
Jai felt the double meaning. Stains weren't just blood.
They were memories. Witnesses. Digital trails.
He understood something new:
Vardhan didn't just clean crime scenes.
He curated them.
He chose which evidence to keep.
A trophy system.
Control through secrets.
The Ghost Folio wasn't just blackmail.
It was a collection.
And Vardhan saw himself not as a criminal…
But as a curator of human rot.
---
The scene shifted again.
A small, sterile apartment.
Minimal furniture. Perfect alignment. No personal photos.
Vardhan sat alone at a dining table.
Three plates.
Three glasses.
Three sets of cutlery.
All unused.
Jai felt it then — the loneliness beneath the ritual.
The Rule of Three wasn't just obsession.
It was a structure built to hold a fractured mind together.
Without rules…
There would be chaos.
And chaos meant facing whatever broke him long ago.
Jai tried to push deeper into the memory—
A flash.
Hospital corridor.
White lights.
A child's voice crying.
Then darkness.
Vardhan's mind shut the door.
Hard.
Jai was thrown out of the memory like an intruder.
---
He gasped—
Back in his room.
Sweat trickled down his temple.
"So I only see what he allows…" Jai murmured.
This wasn't just entering a story.
This was entering a mind.
And Vardhan's mind had locks.
---
Over the next few hours, Jai tested it.
Each time he touched the script, he entered a different unseen moment from Vardhan's life.
• Watching him polish the metronome with almost religious care
• Seeing him arrange crime-scene souvenirs in a hidden vault
• Feeling his pulse spike violently when he saw a broken chair leg
• Noticing how he counted breaths under stress — always to three
Jai began to map him.
Not as a villain on paper.
But as a human being twisted into something monstrous.
And the strangest part?
The power only worked with villains.
He tried touching the heroine's scenes.
Nothing happened.
The hero's parts?
Nothing.
Only when his fingers rested on Vardhan's presence in the script did the pull begin.
"Why villains?" Jai whispered.
Was it because of his own darkness? His anger? His years of rejection? The way he had started seeing himself as the villain of his own story?
Or was it something else…
Something the forest had chosen?
---
Despite the nausea, despite the guilt…
Jai couldn't deny the truth.
This power — whatever it was — gave him something no acting school, no workshop, no director could ever give:
Truth from inside the monster.
He didn't excuse Vardhan.
He didn't forgive him.
But he understood the mechanics of his evil.
And that understanding made the character real.
Terrifyingly real.
---
Evening light filled the room by the time Jai finally stood up.
The audition for FIXED GAMES was tomorrow.
For the first time in five years…
He wasn't going to beg for a chance.
He was going to walk in carrying a man's broken mind inside him.
He looked at his palm.
The strange markings shimmered faintly under the skin, like ink waiting to surface again.
"Okay," Jai said quietly.
"You showed me the villain."
His jaw tightened.
"Now let's see if the world is ready to meet him."
And somewhere deep in the silence of the room—
He could almost hear it.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.