Chapter 7 The Daughter’s Sin

When Rudranath came out of the gate, an empty warehouse welcomed him. Multiple containers were stacked along the walls. The glass in the small windows was broken. Moonlight poured into the warehouse through holes in the old tin roof. He stared at the rusted shutter ahead.

“Basement two was the hospital. Basement one was the prison…”

Rudra looked around the warehouse.

“…and this is the ground floor?”

His eyes narrowed as he knocked against the shutter from inside. With a loud groan, the rusty shutter pulled up. Two men stood outside in formal attire, just like Sekhar. One of them extended his hand forward.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Bhattacharyay.”

He shared a glance with his partner.

“We are your escorts to D.O.S.A.M.”

Rudra shook hands with him. His eyes drifted behind them toward the black SUV parked inside the boundary wall circling the warehouse. The instant he stepped out of the warehouse, his jaw dropped. He was looking at the sky. His breathing quickened.

The night sky was full of stars that night. But it looked like a painting trapped inside a broken glass frame. The cracks across the sky were spreading with every passing second. Through those cracks, a white light was shimmering. He clearly saw a few creatures, the same as the ones around Sekhar’s throne, slipping into the world.

The air was filled with the same smell of burnt ash and marigold. The temperature had dropped sharply, far below what was normal for Kolkata at this time of year. It felt as if winter had arrived in the middle of June.

Rudranath swallowed hard.

“Is this what he meant by Aarohi’s sin?”

The escorts led him forward. One of them opened the back-seat door for him.

“There you go, sir.”

Rudranath took his seat and leaned his back against soft leather. His eyes were locked onto the sky through the open window. A warning came from the driver’s seat.

“Sir, please pull up the glass.”

Rudranath turned his head forward.

“Why?”

The second escort seated in the passenger seat beside the driver looked back with a smile.

“Kolkata is not the same as you knew.”

Rudranath tilted his head.

“What do you mean?”

The escorts buckled their seat belts. Their voices rang out in unison inside the car.

“You will see once we get out of that boundary wall.”

Without further question, Rudranath pulled up the glass. The engine roared to life, shattering the silence of the night. The car moved out of the boundary wall. Rudranath glanced back at the warehouse, growing smaller behind them. Its boundary wall glowed in golden light from the Sanskrit inscriptions carved on its surface.

“This is not sector-v…”

Within a few minutes, the car took a left turn onto Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Road. Through the windshield, Howrah Bridge loomed ahead. He looked at the dashboard. The digital clock in it read 11:45 p.m.

He leaned back once more as the SUV soared through the empty night street. It crossed the New Howrah Approach Road and turned onto the Strand Road. The streets were exceptionally empty. There was not a single homeless person sleeping on the footpaths. Not even a street dog could be seen.

It felt as if living beings had deserted the city. He was looking at the tiny fragments of the cracked sky, falling like pieces of glass and dissolving in the air. A scream rang out from the driver’s seat.

“What the hell?”

Rudranath snapped his gaze forward. Through the windshield, he saw a woman sitting alone in the middle of the road. The driver slammed on the brakes. Rudranath’s head crashed against the back of the driver’s seat.

Screech!

The car skidded across the tram line and stopped inches away from the woman. Rudranath’s vision became blurry. He looked at the escorts in the front seats. Both of them had lost consciousness. One remained motionless, leaning against the dashboard. And the other one in the driver's seat rested his head on the steering wheel. Blood dripped down both their cheeks.

Rudranath pushed the door open. The car had spun around during the skid. His legs trembled as he stepped onto the road. Through the blur of his vision, he saw the woman swaying from side to side. Her head remained lowered. Her long black hair covered her face, swaying with every movement. His head was still spinning when he crouched before her.

“Hey, you alright?”

He shook her shoulder. The woman raised her head. Skin was peeling off the right side of her face. Maggots crawled through the exposed flesh. Bones of her skull were protruding in places as a rotten stench filled Rudranath’s senses. Her right eye was missing. Blood oozed out of the cavity where that eye should have been, sliding down her face. He clamped a hand over his nose and staggered back.

Then a sharp cry tore free from her jaw. Rudranath’s heart hammered inside his chest. This was the same type of voice he had heard in his apartment. But instead of a chorus of screams, it was a single cry, filled with bloodlust. Before he could blink, the woman slithered toward him across the asphalt.

Her bloody jaw dug into his left shoulder.

“Aargh!”

Rudranath grabbed her by the hair and punched her in the face. Her fragile body wrapped in white cloth flew backward, rolling across the asphalt. A chunk of flesh tore free from his shoulder. He stood up, clenching his shoulder.

“What’s this madness?”

A gasp escaped him. She was neither walking nor slithering. Instead, her feet left the asphalt. Her rotten body rose into the air, drifting like a mass of condensed white smoke. Her jaw had snapped from his punch, yet she kept chewing. Rudra’s voice trembled.

“Is she eating my flesh?”

She tilted her head, looking at him. Both of her hands touched her snapped jaw and fixed it with a cracking twist, as if nothing had happened. The system screen flickered to life before his eyes.

[Trishna Detected.]

[Threat level: F]

Rudranath narrowed his eyes at the screen.

“Trishna?… They have different names?”

[No. The dead are divided into different ranks based on their strength. Trishna is the weakest of them all.]

His eyes widened. The system had replied to his question. This had never happened so far. He scratched the back of his head, looking at the screen. The system screen flashed with a new message.

[Wishing you luck in your first purification.]

Purification? But he couldn’t dwell on his thoughts for longer. Another sharp cry of the Trishna made him look ahead. The moment that cry ended, she stretched her arms wide. The nails on her fingers elongated, their tips curving into sharp hooks.

Before Rudranath could even blink, those nails flashed before his eyes in a diagonal slash.