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The air was still as we climbed higher.
I was trying not to wheeze out loud as the path turned steeper, the trees grew darker, and the sky above shifted from blue to a foggy grey. Harshad and Manu were a few paces ahead, chatting about mushrooms or something. Vihaan, as always, was scribbling in his little notebook like this was a school field trip. I tried to stay focused, but something about the silence in the air was off. It wasn't just the wind anymore.
And then Vihaan suddenly stopped.
"Did you hear that?"
Harshad turned around. "The bird?"
"No," Vihaan said, his voice low. "The echo. It's not… right."
Manu raised a brow but said nothing. I didn't hear anything weird at first. But when we kept walking, yeah. There it was. The sound of crunching leaves behind us, just a beat off from our own footsteps. Like someone was copying us but slightly late.
I turned slowly.
No one was there.
Harshad laughed it off, but I saw the look Manu gave Vihaan. A sharp, knowing kind of glance. They'd been here before. They'd felt this before.
We moved on, faster this time, until we reached a clearing. There was an old rest stop, half-broken stone benches and a moss-covered fountain that hadn't worked in decades. I was about to sit down when I noticed something scratched into the stone wall behind it.
Symbols.
Circles. Flower shapes. And insects. Beetles, butterflies, spiders, carved in a pattern like a web.
I blinked.
"Ojaswi," Vihaan said suddenly, "don't touch that."
I pulled my hand back. "Why?"
He hesitated. "I've seen this before. These markings… they don't belong to anyone from this village. But people talk about them."
"What do they say?" I asked.
Harshad jumped in. "They say there's something that roams the upper paths. A creature with tattoos, flowers, bugs, strange symbols. People think it's a spirit. Or worse… a demon."
I froze.
I knew Sallos was sealed in the mirror Miss Kaur kept. That meant this wasn't him.
Right?
Then Manu, quiet until now, said, "He doesn't hurt anyone. But he watches. And sometimes… he speaks in old dialects. Like he's from centuries ago."
My heart was pounding.
Because something about that made sense. Too much sense.
.
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That night, I couldn't sleep.
We set up camp a little lower down the mountain. The guys told me we weren't safe sleeping too close to the summit. I didn't argue. But even wrapped in my blanket with the fire flickering nearby, I kept thinking about those symbols.
That man.
The stories.
I sat outside the tent, looking up at the moon again. It was cloudy, not as clear as the night before. I pulled the blanket tighter around me. And that's when I saw it.
A figure.
Not approaching. Just standing between two trees. Not tall, not short. Not glowing or monstrous. Just… watching.
I didn't scream.
Instead, I stood up slowly, walked a few steps forward and whispered, "I know you're not him. You're not Sallos."
The figure didn't move.
I swallowed. "If you wanted to hurt us, you already would've."
Still, nothing.
But then, he spoke.
Not loud. Not soft. Just… steady.
"You're the seventh."
My breath caught.
"What?"
"You carry her blood. And hers."
It took me a second, but then I realized, he was talking about the ancestors. My ancestor. Miss Kaur's ancestor.
I stepped closer. The fire behind me crackled. "Who are you?"
He paused.
And then, slowly, he walked into the moonlight.
His body was wrapped in layers of old clothes, torn but carefully arranged. His skin, the parts I could see, was covered in tattoos, wildflowers curling along his throat, beetles on his hands, spiders along his collarbone. His hair was long and black, tied loosely behind his back.
He looked… young. Maybe twenty.
But his eyes?
His eyes were centuries old.
"I was their son," he said. "Adopted. Hidden. Raised between two legacies that destroyed each other."
I couldn't speak.
"I saw her die," he continued. "Miss Kaur's ancestor. I saw yours fight until her heart stopped. I saw the demon burn the earth between them."
I stepped back.
"I tried to stop it," he whispered. "But I was just a boy. And after that… I became something else."
He rolled up his sleeve. More tattoos. A black snake coiled around a lotus, its tongue dipped in red ink.
"I learned rituals. I found the old ways. I drank what I had to drink. Took what I had to take. And now… I wait."
"For me," I said, breathless.
"Yes."
.
.
.
He told me everything.
That after the battle, he survived, but he couldn't live with it. He became obsessed with stopping Sallos for good. But demons don't die the way people do. You can't just stab them or burn them. They linger. They echo. So he studied. Learned every forbidden spell and ritual he could find. Until one day, he glimpsed the future.
Only bits.
But enough.
He saw a boy. Seventh generation. A curse boiling in his blood. A soul that flickered between two fates: destruction… or salvation.
He saw me.
And he waited.
"I tried to reach you once," he said. "But your mind was guarded. There were spells around you. Old ones. Set by her."
"Miss Kaur?"
He nodded. "She didn't want me near you. She thought I was dangerous. And maybe I was. I've forgotten who I used to be. I only remember the mission."
"To seal Sallos?"
"No," he said softly. "To free him."
I flinched. "What?"
"Not the way she wants," he said. "She trapped him. But didn't destroy the bond. The curse is still in your blood. And he's still being forced to suffer. You think he's evil, but he's in pain."
I blinked hard.
Everything felt like it was making sense, miss kaur too wanted to free the demon I was going to say it but then he said something.
"I want to end it the right way," he whispered. "And for that… I need your help."
End it? Maybe he knows how to end it, i won't argue.
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I returned to the tent before sunrise. My brain was mush. My heart was pounding. But I knew something had changed.
This wasn't just about surviving.
This was about choosing who I wanted to be, how I wanted to end this story. In the faint glow of dawn, I looked at the village, thousands of thousands in my mind.
Sallos was trapped.
But the curse?
That was still alive.
And if I didn't do something…
It would take me too.
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