It was exactly two o'clock at night. In the valleys of Kashmir, the snow hadn't just fallen; it had frozen solid. Chetan sat at the dining table of his ancestral mansion. Five plates were set on the table, and five glasses were filled with water, yet there was no one in the room except Chetan.
Suddenly, the chair opposite him slid back slightly. The sound of wood scraping against the floor—a sharp "charrrrr"—pierced through the silence.
Chetan didn't look up. He said softly, "You're late, Krish."
But Krish had been dead for three whole years.
As soon as Chetan picked up his spoon, he noticed something slowly emerging in the empty plate in front of him. It wasn't blood, nor was it water. It was a dark stain that kept spreading, and in the center of that stain lay an old, rusted key. The very same key that Chetan had buried in the ground along with Krish's corpse three years ago.
Chetan's fingers were trembling. He picked up the rusted key. It was cold—so cold that Chetan's skin began to stick to it. He washed the key, but the dark stain on the plate did not vanish. It looked as though the stain had been absorbed deep into the marble itself.
"Krish?" Chetan called out in a stifled voice.
The silence offered no answer. But just then, the sound of a heavy object falling came from the upper floor of the mansion. Thud! Like a heavy suitcase hitting the ground.
Chetan grabbed an old flashlight and headed toward the stairs. With every step, the creaking of the old wood paced with the beating of his heart. When he reached the top, he saw that the room belonging to his old friend, Darshan, was standing open. Darshan, who had mysteriously vanished after that heist three years ago.
The sight inside the room nearly made Chetan drop his flashlight.
The walls of the room were covered in ice. The Kashmir chill was outside, but where did this much ice come from inside a closed room? And it wasn't just ice... something had been etched into the frost on the wall:
"Installment Number One: Darshan. "
Terrified, Chetan tried to turn back, but then his eyes fell upon the floor. There, imprinted in the frost, were bare footprints. The tracks started from the room's window and ended directly atChetan's feet.
It was as if someone was standing right in front of him.
Chetan lashed out into the air, but there was nothing there. Only a cold, putrid stench drifted through the air—the exact smell that wafts out when an old grave is opened.
Suddenly, the old gramophone kept in the hall downstairs began to play. It wasn't a song; instead, the sounds of someone weeping and pleading emerged from it.
Chetan... let me out... it's so dark in here, Chetan!"
That voice belonged to Darshan.
Chetan bolted downstairs. In the hall, the gramophone was spinning, but the needle wasn't resting on a record—it was perched on an old photograph. It was a group photo of the four friends. In the photo, Darshan's
face had turned completely black, as if someone had burned it away.
Just then, a message arrived on Chetan's phone from an unknown number.
"Found the key, didn't you? Now open the chest you hid in the library. Darshan's share is in there."
Chetan's throat went dry. He hadn't hidden any chest in the library. He knew every wall and every corner of this house. But as he turned toward the library, he saw that the large clock on the wall had stopped at 2:15.
And beneath that clock, on the floor, those same bare footprints were now leading inside the library door.