"Ahh... Fuck..."
Deepak groaned as his eyes fluttered open, his head pounding and his limbs aching. Everything around him was dark. oppressively so. His vision was blurred, shadows swimming at the edges of his sight. The air was thick, damp, and smelled faintly of moss and old stone.
He blinked a few times, trying to make sense of his surroundings. For a moment, he couldn't remember where he was. Then, instinctively, he looked upward. High above, a faint circle of light shone like a distant moon through a tunnel of darkness. Beyond that—clouds, drifting lazily across a blue sky. The world outside seemed so far away, almost unreachable.
Suddenly, a wave of clarity crashed through his dazed mind.
"Oh... No. I fell... in that well," he muttered, realization dawning with a cold shiver.
It all came rushing back. Just hours ago—or was it longer?—he had been laughing and joking in the car with his two best friends, Kapil and Lalit. They were on one of their impulsive road trips, blasting m kiusic and chasing boredom through winding country roads. On the way, they had spotted an old, crumbling fort tucked behind wild overgrowth. Time-worn walls, broken stone towers, and mystery—exactly the kind of thing that screamed adventure to the three of them.
They had parked on a whim and ventured inside. Among the ruins, they discovered a dark, gaping well—ancient, deep, and echoing. Of course, being the idiots they were, they turned it into a game. A challenge. A test of courage.
"Whoever jumps over the well without falling wins!" someone had shouted. Probably Kapil.
Kapil went first. He ran with confidence and leaped clean across, grinning like a maniac. Lalit followed, his landing less graceful but still safe.
Then it was Deepak's turn.
He remembered the moment his foot slipped on the loose gravel, the way his heart sank even before his body did. Gravity grabbed him by the chest and yanked him down into darkness. And now—here he was.
"Kapil! Lalit!" he cried, his voice echoing off the damp stone walls. "Is there anyone up there?!"
His words bounced back to him, distorted and hollow. Only silence answered. His voice sounded small in the vast emptiness below, swallowed by the well's cold breath.
Panic began to settle in his chest like a weight. He wasn't sure how far he had fallen or how badly he was injured. His back hurt, and his left leg throbbed, but nothing felt broken. Still, he was trapped—alone, underground, with only a pinhole of light to remind him the world still existed above.
A sudden chill ran down Deepak's spine.
It wasn't the kind of cold that came from the damp stone around him—it was deeper, unnatural, like something brushing against his soul. The air turned still, as if the well itself were holding its breath.
He turned slowly, every nerve in his body alert.
There, hidden behind a curtain of vines and loose rubble, he noticed a faint glow—pale and flickering—leaking out of a narrow crevice in the wall. Light, soft and golden, like a dying candle flame.
Swallowing hard, he crouched and began to clear the rocks away with trembling fingers. Each piece he moved revealed more of the glow, until the gap was wide enough for him to slip through. The narrow passage led into a hidden chamber no larger than a closet, its walls carved with symbols he couldn't understand, strange spirals and twisted eyes that seemed to pulse when he looked at them.
In the center of the room, on a flat stone pedestal, lay a single piece of parchment. A letter.
It hovered just above the stone, suspended in the air and radiating an unnatural golden light. The glow illuminated the chamber with a sickly hue that made the shadows dance like they were alive.
Deepak's instincts screamed at him to leave it alone.
But his hand moved on its own.
The moment his fingers touched the parchment, the golden light flared—then vanished. The letter felt warm in his palm, like it had a heartbeat. Something about it felt wrong. He didn't dare open it. Not yet.
He backed out of the passage, his heart hammering in his chest.
Then, from above...
"Deepak! You alive?!"
It was Lalit's voice, echoing faintly from the circle of light. Moments later, a rope dropped down, swinging just in front of him.
"Hold tight!" Kapil shouted. "We'll pull you up!"
Deepak tucked the glowing letter into his jacket and grabbed the rope. As he began to climb, the walls around him seemed to press in closer, the stone whispering with voices just beyond hearing.
Then something tugged at his ankle.
He froze, nearly losing his grip.
He looked down.
Nothing there.
Just blackness.
He started climbing faster, panic rising in his throat like bile.
But again—a pull. This time stronger.
He looked down once more—and saw a pale, skeletal hand reaching out from the shadows below, its fingers impossibly long, its nails scraping against the stone. Another hand followed. Then a face.
A face without eyes.
Hollow sockets stared up at him, its mouth opening wide in a silent scream.
"Faster!" Deepak screamed. "Pull me up now!"
"What? What happened?!" Kapil yelled.
"JUST PULL!"
He scrambled up the rope, arms burning, chest heaving. The creature below was climbing after him, skittering up the stone wall like a spider, its face stretching and twisting as it came.
Then, just as its clawed hand brushed against his foot, a burst of light from above blinded him.and strong hands gripped his arms.
Lalit and Kapil dragged him out of the well, gasping and pale. The rope fell limp behind him.
Deepak lay on the ground, panting, eyes wide with horror.
Deepak sat hunched on the dusty ground outside the well, still trembling. The sun hung low in the sky now, casting long shadows over the broken fort. Birds had fallen eerily silent, and even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
Kapil handed him a bottle of water. "What the hell happened down there, man? You look like you saw a ghost."
"I… I think I did," Deepak muttered. "But that's not all. Look."
He reached into his jacket—and to his shock, the letter was there again. The parchment was warm against his chest, as if it had been waiting. The golden glow had returned, though now it pulsed slower, like it was alive… but sleeping.
"Wasn't it gone before?" he whispered.
Kapil and Lalit leaned in as Deepak slowly unrolled the ancient scroll.
It was written in Sanskrit, the letters shifting slightly on the page like they were resisting being read. Yet somehow, they understood every word. The meaning seemed to speak directly into their minds, bypassing language altogether.
Kapil frowned. "This is… this is addressed to Lord Rama."
"What?" Lalit muttered. "That's impossible. This thing's thousands of years old."
They read it aloud—together—as if the words were guiding their voices.
"To the Most Righteous, Shri Ramachandra, Son of Dasharatha, Avatar of Vishnu—
I beg you to reconsider your path.
Do not strike down Ravana, for though his pride is monstrous, his soul is that of a Brahmin.
To kill a Brahmin, even a corrupt one, is to stain the very laws of Dharma.
Imprison him.
Let time teach him humility. Let karma shape him. In the Age of Darkness to come, he will be needed.
For when Kali rises and the final avatar descends, even the most fallen must stand beside the light.
Do not sever his future. Let him live—for the end has already begun."
The letter ended with a name—not signed in ink, but etched in a blackened burn mark:
"Written by: Lobhasura, The Demon of Greed"
The parchment seemed to hum with a deep, resonant tone, like a tuning fork struck in the marrow of their bones.
Lalit's mouth hung open. "Ravana... helping Kali fight against Kalki? That makes no sense. Kalki is supposed to end evil, not fight alongside it."
Kapil looked disturbed. "But think about it. This demon was trying to rewrite fate. Trying to stop Rama from killing Ravana, maybe to delay the balance of the ages."
Deepak stared at the letter, suddenly unsure if they should be reading it at all. "But Rama did kill Ravana. Which means… this letter never reached him."
"That's what it says," Lalit said, voice low. "It was meant to reach him, but it fell… lost. Buried. And now we found it."
Kapil stood up, agitated. "Then maybe it was meant for us to find. Maybe this was supposed to stay buried. What if we brought something out with it?"
As he spoke, a gust of wind blew through the ruins, sharp and cold like a whisper at the nape of their necks. The well behind them let out a deep, groaning sound—like something exhaling from the dark.
Then came the faintest whisper from below.
"You chose to open it…"
The letter burst into golden flames in Deepak's hand. It didn't burn his skin—but the words vanished into ash and wind, as if never written.
All three stood in stunned silence.
Lalit finally said, "What the hell do we do now?"
Deepak looked at his palm, where the ashes had left behind a black mark—a tiny spiral of flame and script.
"We find out what this means," he said grimly. "Because I think… this isn't over."