As Rudra investigates the scene, he is approached by Priya Dasgupta, a soft-spoken but uncanny woman in widow's garb. She says she dreamed of Rudra standing beside the Ashta-Kala Sutra before she even met him. She holds up her arm and shows a page with the same texture and ink as Rudra's—but the image on hers depicts Mudra Two.
---
She stood in the doorway like a shadow the hut had chosen to wear.
Her white cotton sari, stained along the hem with street mud and ash, clung to her thin frame. No bangles. No vermilion. Ankles bare. Her hair was tied back severely, revealing a face neither young nor old—just exact. Every line placed with quiet purpose.
Her voice, when it came again, seemed to bypass the room and settle straight behind Rudra's ribs.
"He said you'd come late. But not too late."
Rudra didn't move.
His hand hovered near his satchel.
The wrapped manuscript vibrated faintly. As if it recognized something.
She stepped into the hut, glancing once—without flinching—at the sadhu's open body.
She knelt beside the entrail lotus. Her fingers hovered above the seed in the center but did not touch it.
"Tapan never believed in permanence. When I told him you'd be the one to carry the spine, he laughed until he wept."
Rudra finally found his voice.
Low. Rough.
"Who are you?"
She didn't answer immediately.
Instead, she turned her left arm toward him and rolled up the sleeve.
There, tied to her wrist with a length of dark thread, was a single palm-leaf page.
Charred around the edges. Bound to her flesh with care.
She untied it and handed it to him.
Rudra reached out without thinking, hands trembling slightly.
The moment his fingertips touched the leaf—
The manuscript in his satchel twitched.
He felt it, like a heartbeat against his hip.
He stared down at the page she'd given him.
It bore the same uncanny ink, the same bone-dry grain as his own fragment.
But the figure inked upon this one was different.
Still skeletal. Still genderless.
But this one stood upright—its back arched unnaturally to the left, head turned sideways, spine forming a question-mark curve. Its arms were bent behind its back, hands gripped in a locked fist. The glyphs around the figure were different too—curled tighter, like calligraphy under pressure.
Beneath the image, faint but visible, was a word.
Mudra Two
Rudra looked up slowly.
The woman was watching him—not with hunger or curiosity.
But with recognition.
Like someone finally identifying a face from a forgotten dream.
He stepped back. His voice caught again.
"You're one of them."
"No. I'm one of you."
She didn't blink.
"I dreamed of you two weeks ago. You were standing on the bones of the Sutra, in a circle of fire, holding a mirror that reflected nothing. The Yogi spoke through you. Your mouth didn't move, but I heard his voice."
Rudra swallowed.
His mouth was dry.
"Why would he show me anything?"
"Because you haven't chosen yet. And he adores possibility."
Outside, the wind shifted.
A bell from the temple rang three times. Each clang duller than the last.
Rudra looked down at the two pages now in his hands.
His heart beat hard against his ribs.
They didn't feel like documents.
They felt like parts.
Of something not yet whole.
Something that wanted to be.
The woman turned to the sadhu's body again and traced the air just above the lotus of his entrails.
"We shouldn't stay here."
She rose in one smooth motion.
"The seed in his chest isn't symbolic. It's bait. The monks will come looking for it by dusk."
"Monks?"
She walked to the door.
Paused.
Looked back at him with eyes so calm they bordered on the ancient.
"If you want to know what your father truly died for… you'll come."
Then she stepped into the alley and was gone.
Rudra stood frozen for a full minute.
Then he looked down at the new page in his hand.
The glyphs shimmered.
And began to hum.