The tears flowed freely then, a torrent of pent-up emotions that I could no longer contain. I sobbed, a raw, heartbroken sound that echoed through the garden.

The woman smiled, a radiant, heartbreaking smile. She pulled me close again, her arms a haven. "Oh, my daughter. Don't cry, Ira. You will soon be home. Kumara will finally be at peace, knowing his wife is home."

My mind reeled. Wife? Kumara? Who were these people? What did she mean by "home"?

Before I could voice my questions, the world began to shift. The vibrant colours of the garden blurred, the woman's face dissolved into a swirling vortex of light and shadow, the man with the dreadlocks faded into nothingness. The ground beneath my feet trembled.

Panic flared within me. I reached out to her, desperate to hold onto the warmth, the love, the sense of belonging I had found in her embrace.

"Maa, what's happening?" I cried, my voice laced with fear.

Her voice, though distorted by the collapsing reality, remained clear, soothing. "Don't worry, Ira. Everything is as it should be. You are loved. You will be home soon."

And then, everything dissolved. The garden, the woman, the warmth, the love... all vanished, leaving me in an abyss of cold and darkness.

I gasped, my lungs burning, my heart pounding against my ribs. I was back.

Back in the cold, sterile darkness of Histoire.

Had it all been a dream? A hallucination brought on by the stress of my escape? But the lingering warmth on my skin, the scent of sandalwood clinging to my clothes, the phantom echo of a mother's embrace... it felt too real to dismiss.

I looked down at my hands, calloused and scarred from years of forced labour in the data mines of Histoire. And then I saw it. A tiny rose petal, crushed and faded, clinging to the ripped end of my aanchal.

It was real. It had to be. I was Saroshi, wasn't I?

The dust swirled around me, a gritty haze mirroring the chaos in my mind. I fell to my knees, weeping loud until it all went out. The confusion, the lost memory, these fragments and this one where all those people knew me. Why couldn't I remember everything?

The scenes swam in my mind, a chaotic kaleidoscope of faces and places I couldn't grasp. Who were those people, smiling at me like I was family? Why did their warmth feel so foreign, so agonizingly arm? The author... the word echoed with a hollowness that chilled me to the bone. Discarded. Was that all I was? A character carelessly tossed aside, her story unfinished, her memories erased?

Before I could even try to stabilize myself, to gather the scattered pieces of my existence, a scream pierced through the silence. It was Lalita. I knew it with a certainty that bypassed logic, a deep, visceral understanding that resonated in the marrow of my bones.

Without thinking, driven by an instinct I couldn't explain, I scrambled to my feet and ran towards the sound. We were still in that strange, ever-shifting marketplace, the stalls now deserted, shrouded in an unnatural twilight. The air thrummed with an energy that made my skin crawl.

I followed the piercing cry, dodging overturned carts and piles of discarded merchandise. The stench of incense and rotting fruit hung heavy in the air, a grotesque parody of the vibrant aromas that had filled this place moments before.

Then I saw it.

And what I saw froze me in my tracks, a primal fear gripping my heart like a vice.

Fire. But not the familiar, comforting warmth of a hearth fire. This was a virulent, sickening green, a consuming blight erupting from Lalita herself. It pulsed with a scary energy, casting grotesque shadows that danced and writhed on the surrounding buildings.

Lalita. But not the Lalita I knew, the gentle woman with kind eyes and a ready smile. This Lalita was...other. Her skin had taken on a bronze, metallic sheen. Four arms sprouted from her shoulders, each wielding a horrifying object. Two held a veena, its strings shimmering with that same eerie green fire. One cradled a wickedly curved sword, its edge glinting like polished obsidian. And the last...the last held a human skull, its empty sockets staring into the void.

A hooded figure cowered before her, kneeling in the dust, his form trembling. I couldn't see his face, but the sheer terror radiating from him was palpable.

Lalita laughed.

It wasn't her soft, melodic giggle. This was a harsh, maniacal sound, a chilling symphony of madness that echoed through the empty marketplace. It was the laugh of a deity scorned, a vengeful force unleashed upon the world.

Lalita's gaze didn't fall upon me. Her dark eyes, now burning with an unnatural light, were fixed on the hooded figure. A cruel smirk twisted her lips.

"How dare you presume to erase... Mahamaaya?" Lalita's voice resonated with power, laced with an ancient, otherworldly quality. The words seemed to vibrate in the air long after she spoke them. "Oh, poor soul. Though my hand could end you, your fate is not mine to command. Your thread is woven by another, and she will soon unravel it."

The air crackled with power. My head swam with conflicting emotions - terror, confusion, and a strange, nascent sense of responsibility. Who was Mahamaaya?

And then, everything went dark. A suffocating blackness enveloped me, swallowing the marketplace, the fire, Lalita's horrifying form. I felt like I was falling, tumbling through an endless void, the echoes of Lalita's laughter ringing in my ears.

How long I was lost in that abyss, I couldn't say. It felt like an eternity, a timeless realm of nothingness.

Then, slowly, tentatively, the rectangles started to glow again. My vision flickered, struggling to focus. The green fire was gone. Lalita, in her transformed state, was gone.

But the hooded figure was still there, kneeling in the same spot. And slumped on his shoulder, limp and lifeless, was the old Lalita. The gentle woman I knew, her face pale and peaceful, as if she were merely sleeping.

Rage, hot and blinding, surged through me. It was a primal fury, a protective instinct roaring to life within my chest. I didn't understand what was happening, but I knew, with unwavering certainty, that this hooded figure had taken something precious from me.

I surged forward, intent on stopping him, on ripping the truth from his throat. But it was too late. He was already moving, faster than I could have imagined, melting into the shadows between the stalls.

"Stop!" I screamed, my voice cracking with desperation. But he didn't heed my cry. He vanished into the labyrinthine alleys, swallowed by the encroaching darkness.

I stood there, frozen, my body trembling. The dust swirled around me, a mocking reminder of my helplessness. Lalita was gone. Taken.
And I, Ira, or whoever I was, had failed to protect her.

The river frothed with icy urgency, its current roaring against the jagged rocks that jutted from its belly.

Saroshi stood at the river's edge, trembling. Her chest heaved as she tried to steady her breaths, her lifeblood staining her saree in vibrant red. The gash just below her collarbone throbbed cruelly, a wound inflicted not by mischance but by intent.

Behind her, the villagers closed in, a sea of accusatory faces twisted by fear and anger. Their torches flickered and hissed in the damp air, the flames casting shadows that danced eerily across Saroshi's ashen face.

"She bewitched us!" Cried one.

"Cursed our childs!" Yelled another.

"A demon!" Shrieked an old woman at the back, her voice shrill and cracking like dry wood.

Saroshi's voice caught in her throat as she tried to defend herself, but it was drowned out by the crowd's venomous chants. "Drown the demoness! Drown her!" they barked in unison, their hatred swelling in fervour.

Saroshi could rewrite destinies. But Virinchi... Virinchi had wanted to be the sole weaver of destinies.

Virinchi stood off to the side, at the periphery of the torchlight, his hands clasped serenely behind his back, the very picture of detached observation amidst the raging chaos. His sharp, angular face was partially obscured by the shadow, but the moonlight, filtering through the frantic torchlight, revealed the faint, chilling curve of a smile tugging at his lips. He had orchestrated this masterfully, patiently, with the meticulous precision of a weaver crafting a deadly pattern.

He had envied her, loathed her power. How dare she get the powers which were his to begin with? He was a scribe, respected, certainly, one with a gift for writing destiny, for spinning words into captivating tapestries of living beings. But who listened to the tales of a mere writer when the stars themselves, interpreted by Saroshi, had already spoken? Carefully, methodically, he had turned the tide against her, like a slow poison seeping into the village consciousness.

A lost child here, a sudden illness there, and his cunning whispers, seeded with doubt, nurtured by fear, blossomed into raging suspicion. Carefully planted "evidence," whispers of dark magic, subtle manipulations - it had all led to this.

"Push her! Let the river take her!" Virinchi called now, his voice calm but commanding, cutting through the frenzied shouts of the mob. His words rippled over the crowd like the deadly current below, solidifying their intent.

Saroshi staggered to her feet, despite the agonizing pain splitting her chest. Her wide, dark eyes, shimmering with unshed tears, flicked to Virinchi. Realization struck her with the force of a physical blow. He had really done this. All of it. Her lips trembled, parting as if to utter his name, to scream his treachery to the sky, but no sound emerged. Her voice faltered, choked by pain and betrayal. Her strength, like her blood, was rapidly slipping away, draining into the thirsty earth.

The crowd surged forward, hands outstretched to finish the job. Saroshi stumbled back, and her heel grazed the edge of the riverbank. The ground crumbled slightly beneath her weight, pebbles skittering into the churning waters.

"Stop!" she managed to rasp, barely audible.

But they wouldn't-couldn't. They had been whipped into a frenzy, blinded by the lies that Virinchi had fed them. She was no longer Saroshi, the wise and kind voice who had guided them. To them, she had become a blight, a usurper of their fates.

A ruddy-faced man lunged, curling his calloused hands around her wrist. He yanked her forward, his strength overpowering her fragile resistance. She gasped, but the crowd surged again, a wall of hate pressing her closer to the edge.

And yet, as her heels slid farther into nothingness, Saroshi's eyes never left Virinchi's. There was no hatred in her gaze, no accusation. Just a chilling calm, like the stars themselves had whispered a defiance into her ear.

"You can't rewrite the stars," she whispered, her words barely carried over the roar of the river.

And then, shocking even herself, she ripped free of the man's grasp. Agony shot through her chest as the motion tore at her wound, but it didn't matter. With one final breath, she leapt.

The villagers gasped in unison as her figure disappeared into the icy torrent. For a moment, the river seemed to growl louder, a hungry beast swallowing its prey, and then... silence descended abruptly, broken only by the relentless, mocking sound of the current.

"She's gone," someone murmured, their voice wavering, the afterglow of their rage already fading, replaced by a chilling emptiness.

"We're free now," said another, but the forced bravado in their words was undercut by a palpable undercurrent of uncertainty, of disquiet.

Virinchi watched from the shadows, his chest warming with a surge of satisfaction. No more Saroshi. No more whispering stars. No more meddling with destinies that were not hers to touch. Now, only his quill could determine paths, chart fates, weave tales into the fabric of the villagers' lives. Only him. He was finally in control.

But even as he turned to leave, to melt back into the darkness and claim his victory, something tugged at his mind-a sliver of unease, a gossamer thread of doubt that refused to break. He paused, his triumphant stride faltering, his gaze drifting back to the churning, unforgiving river.

Somewhere in the depths of the darkness, carried along by the relentless current, battered but stubbornly alive, a girl drifted, waiting.

Because some fates, woven deep within the cosmic tapestry, cannot be rewritten, not even by the most cunning of scribes, not even by the most fervent mob, not even by the cold, indifferent river itself.