The darkness was alive.
Pravash stood frozen in the old police archives, his pulse hammering against his ribs. The single flickering bulb overhead had gone out, plunging the room into total blackness.
But it wasn’t just dark.
It was thick. Heavy, like it had weight. Like the shadows had curled inward, closing around him.
His fingers twitched toward his gun, but he already knew—it wouldn’t help.
Something else was here.
He reached for his flashlight instead, clicking it on—but the beam barely cut through the gloom. The walls, the filing cabinets, the records—all still there, but distorted. Blurred at the edges, as if reality itself was slipping.
Then—a whisper.
Not a voice. A presence.
Behind him.
Pravash turned slowly.
The filing cabinets stretched longer than they should have, the aisles twisting in impossible directions. The air was wrong. Cold, but not natural cold—the kind that seeped into your bones, that made you feel like you were standing at the edge of something vast and hollow.
And then—movement.
A shape shifted between the stacks.
Tall. Too tall. Its body blurred in and out of existence, like it wasn’t fully in this world.
Pravash’s grip tightened around the flashlight. His breath stayed steady, but his gut screamed.
He had seen things like this before.
At the shrine. At the temple.
Between the moments when the mask had whispered to him.
A low sound rumbled through the air—not quite a voice, not quite a growl.
Pravash didn’t wait to hear more.
He turned and ran.
The Other Side
The building was wrong.
Pravash moved fast, pushing through aisles, turning corners that shouldn’t exist. The filing cabinets had shifted, stretching into endless rows, like a labyrinth folding in on itself.
But there was a door.
At the far end of the hall, barely visible through the gloom—a rusted iron door, covered in old carvings.
Not police markings. Tantric symbols.
Pravash’s gut clenched. This wasn’t part of the station.
His feet didn’t stop.
The whisper behind him grew louder.
A rattling inhale. A wet, clicking exhale.
It was closer now.
He reached the door. Pushed.
It gave way.
And he fell through.
He Wasn’t in Kathmandu Anymore.
The city was there—but not.
Pravash stood in the middle of Kathmandu Durbar Square, but the sky above him was black. No stars. No moon. Just an endless, stretching void.
The temples were still standing, but their colors were drained, desaturated. The air was heavy, filled with a low, whispering hum that he could feel in his teeth.
And the streets?
Empty.
No people. No life.
Not abandoned. Erased.
Then—a voice.
“Detective.”
He spun.
And there, standing in the middle of the empty square, was a woman.
Her sari was torn, her hair wild, her feet bare.
But it was her eyes that made Pravash’s breath catch.
They weren’t dead.
They weren’t hollow.
They were pleading.
“Help us.”
And then, from the shadows behind her—
Something moved.
The woman’s voice barely reached him.
“Help us.”
The words felt like they had been dragged across broken glass, thin and raw, desperate.
Pravash took a step forward.
And the city breathed.
The air shifted, the black sky rippling as if something massive had stirred above them. The ground beneath his feet didn’t feel right—too soft, too weightless, as if he were standing on the edge of something vast and unseen.
Then, from the alleys behind the woman—
Something moved.
Not one thing.
Many.
Shapes twisted and curled in the darkness, pulling free from the temple walls, unfolding from the gaps between the bricks. Human figures—but wrong.
Their bodies stretched at the edges, blurred like ink spreading through water.
Their faces—absent.
Where there should have been eyes, a nose, a mouth—there was nothing. Just smooth, featureless skin, a blank slate where identity had once been.
Pravash’s stomach twisted.
He had seen corpses before. He had seen the dead.
But this?
This wasn’t death.
This was erasure.
And they were moving toward him.
The Forgotten Ones
The woman staggered back, her breath ragged. They were hunting her.
Pravash’s fingers curled toward his gun, out of instinct.
“No!” Her voice snapped through the air, sharp, urgent. “That won’t work here!”
He hesitated.
And in that second, the first figure lunged.
It didn’t run. It didn’t jump.
It snapped forward.
One moment, it was five feet away—the next, its faceless head was inches from his own.
Pravash barely had time to move before something cold coiled around his wrist.
Not a hand.
Not a limb.
Something shapeless. A void.
It poured into him, sliding through his skin like smoke, crawling toward his ribs, his lungs, his mind—
A single, deafening sound rang in his skull.
A name.
“Arjun—”
His vision blurred. His knees buckled.
Then—
The mask.
It hummed in his bag, vibrating against his back, a sharp pulse of heat that cut through the freezing weight of the creature’s touch.
His body reacted before he could think.
Pravash wrenched himself free and took three staggering steps back. The air around him warped, the buildings bending at impossible angles for a second before snapping back.
The faceless things stopped.
They didn’t speak. Didn’t make a sound.
But they were watching.
And then, as one—they knelt.
Pravash’s breath caught.
Not in fear.
In realization.
They weren’t attacking. They were bowing.
To him.
His pulse thundered in his ears. His mouth felt dry.
The woman was staring at him now, her face pale, her hands shaking.
“You’re wearing it, aren’t you?” she whispered.
Pravash didn’t answer.
The faceless things knelt lower.
Like they were waiting.
Like they were his.
And somewhere deep inside him, the mask whispered back.
“They remember you.”
The kneeling figures didn’t move.
Pravash’s breath came slow and shallow. His mind screamed at him to run, to fight, to move—but his body refused.
Because somehow, in some twisted way, he understood.
They were bowing to him.
Not out of worship. Not out of loyalty.
Out of recognition.
The faceless things—these forgotten souls—knew what he had become.
His pulse thundered in his ears. His hands felt light, weightless.
Then, behind him, the woman spoke again.
“You don’t belong here.”
Her voice was softer now. Not afraid. Not pleading. Just… sad.
Pravash turned.
She stood near the edge of the square, her bare feet barely touching the black stone. The wind didn’t touch her sari. The shadows didn’t cling to her.
She wasn’t like the others.
“Who are you?” Pravash asked.
She swallowed, her throat bobbing.
“The last one who remembers.”
His fingers curled. “Remembers what?”
She hesitated. Then—
“The one who wore the mask before you.”
A cold weight settled in his chest.
His mind flashed back to Bhante Rigdzin’s words.
“It was once worn by a protector… until it consumed him.”
Pravash exhaled sharply, pushing the thought aside. Focus.
“The people who were taken,” he said. “The missing ones. Are they here?”
She nodded once.
“Most of them.”
“Where?”
“Deeper.” Her voice wavered. “In the temple. Where the name-eater waits.”
Pravash’s stomach twisted.
Guru Kaalo.
Before he could speak again, the air shifted.
The kneeling figures trembled. Their smooth, empty heads turned upward, toward the sky.
A whisper slithered through the darkness.
Not from the woman. Not from the souls.
From somewhere else.
Something was coming.
The woman’s face tightened. “You shouldn’t stay here.”
Pravash’s jaw clenched. “I’m not leaving without them.”
She stared at him for a long moment.
Then, finally, she sighed.
“Then at least don’t go alone.”
She turned, motioning for him to follow.
And for the first time, Pravash noticed what lay behind her.
A crumbling stone archway. Carved with fading symbols of Yaksha warriors.
And beneath it—a staircase spiraling down into the dark.
The stone steps spiraled downward, disappearing into blackness.
Pravash followed the woman in silence, his hand hovering near his gun—not that it would do him much good. The walls around them were etched with carvings—figures wrapped in chains, mouths open in silent screams. The further they descended, the colder it became.
But it wasn’t just cold.
It was absence.
Like the very air was being drained of warmth, of light, of memory itself.
“Where does this lead?” Pravash asked.
The woman didn’t turn. “To the ones you’re looking for.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “And what about you?”
She hesitated, just for a second. “I never left.”
Pravash didn’t ask what she meant.
He already knew.
They reached the bottom of the stairs, stepping into a vast underground chamber.
And Pravash’s blood turned to ice.
The floor was covered in bodies.
Hundreds of them. Maybe more.
Men, women, even children—all lying motionless. Their chests rose and fell in slow, shallow breaths, their lips slightly parted. They weren’t dead.
But they weren’t alive, either.
Their eyes were open—blank, staring, empty.
And at the center of it all, standing atop a black stone dais, was him.
Guru Kaalo.
The air around him shimmered, twisted, warped.
He was tall—too tall. His black robes clung to his withered frame, his hands folded in front of him like a priest before an altar. His skin was stretched tight over his bones, paper-thin and stained with something dark.
But it was his eyes that made Pravash stop breathing.
They were black fire.
Not burning—devouring.
A hunger so deep it could not be filled.
Guru Kaalo lifted his head, and the very air hummed in recognition.
“Detective.”
His voice was a whisper, a thousand voices layered on top of each other.
“You’ve come far.”
Pravash’s fingers curled into fists. His name.
The cult leader had spoken his name—and it felt like something had been stolen the moment he did.
Guru Kaalo tilted his head. His hollow gaze drifted toward the bodies at his feet.
“Do you know where they are?”
Pravash said nothing.
The whisper curled through the chamber like smoke.
“They are here. And yet… they are not.”
Guru Kaalo stepped forward.
“Their bodies remain. But their names, their memories—those belong to me now.”
He gestured with one skeletal hand.
A nearby body—a young man—twitched violently.
Then his lips moved.
But it wasn’t his voice that came out.
It was a dozen voices at once. Overlapping, broken, desperate.
“Who am I? Where am I? Please—”
Pravash’s stomach turned.
The man was speaking—but there was no identity left inside him.
Nothing but a jumble of stolen names, stolen voices, trapped inside a body with no past.
Guru Kaalo smiled.
“This is the price of being forgotten.”
The whisper slid into Pravash’s mind, smooth and cold.
“Soon, detective… it will be yours as well.”
The air trembled.
The mask at Pravash’s side burned.
And in the shadows—something began to wake.
The chamber shuddered.
Pravash’s body tensed as the air around him grew thick, suffocating. The stolen voices still echoed, rising and falling in a chaotic chorus of names that no longer belonged to anyone.
And at the center of it all—Guru Kaalo watched.
Silent. Patient.
“You feel it, don’t you?”
The whisper slithered through Pravash’s skull, smooth as oil.
“Your name is already fading.”
His jaw tightened.
Move. Now.
He reached for his gun, but before his fingers even brushed the grip—the air cracked.
Something unseen slammed into his chest.
Pravash’s body whipped backward, his ribs exploding with pain as he crashed against the stone wall. His vision blurred. His lungs refused to work.
Guru Kaalo hadn’t even touched him.
The cult leader’s head tilted slightly, his blackened fingers hovering in the air.
“You still think this fight belongs to you.”
Pravash gritted his teeth and forced himself up. His muscles screamed, but he ignored it. He had to move.
The prisoners.
They were still alive. Still breathing. If he could pull them out of here, if he could—
“They are already gone.”
Pravash turned just in time to see Guru Kaalo raise his hand.
The bodies on the floor convulsed.
All at once.
Their backs arched violently, their mouths stretching wide in silent screams.
Something black began to seep from their skin.
Not blood. Not shadow. Something worse.
Their memories.
Pravash’s stomach twisted.
“No.”
He moved.
His hand shot to his bag, ripping the mask free.
It was hot against his palm, pulsing with something ancient and waiting.
The last time he put it on, it had stolen something from him.
But this time, if he didn’t—
They would all vanish.
Pravash slammed it onto his face.
And the world shattered.
The Mask’s Wrath
Darkness exploded outward.
The chamber twisted, the air itself splintering as shadows poured from Pravash’s skin.
His body lurched forward, but it wasn’t his anymore.
He wasn’t his anymore.
For the second time, he felt the shift. The moment where flesh stopped mattering, where gravity lost its hold.
His legs didn’t move—he simply appeared.
One moment, he was at the wall. The next—he was standing over Guru Kaalo.
The cult leader’s black eyes flickered with something unreadable.
“So… you choose oblivion.”
Pravash didn’t answer. He couldn’t.
His hands—now smoke, now solid, now something in between—reached out.
And the shadows obeyed.
They surged forward, slamming into Guru Kaalo like a wave. The very walls of the chamber buckled, twisted.
The bodies on the floor stopped convulsing.
And for a second, just one—it was working.
Then—
Everything went wrong.
The darkness stopped.
The wave froze.
And Guru Kaalo laughed.
“You don’t understand, do you?”
His voice wasn’t human anymore.
“You wear a mask, detective.”
His eyes burned.
“But I am the void itself.”
And then—the mask screamed.
It wasn’t a sound. It was a ripping.
Like something inside Pravash’s mind had just been torn away.
His body collapsed.
The shadows recoiled, twisting violently away from him. The pressure in his skull was unbearable—like something was clawing through his thoughts, unmaking him.
Guru Kaalo watched.
He didn’t need to strike. Didn’t need to lift a finger.
Because Pravash was already breaking.
His name.
He couldn’t—
Couldn’t remember—
Couldn’t—
“Not yet,” a voice whispered.
Not Guru Kaalo.
Hers.
The woman.
Her hands were suddenly on his shoulders.
And then—everything pulled.
Pravash felt his body yanked backward.
The chamber—the temple, the prisoners, Guru Kaalo’s hollow eyes—all of it blurred, twisted, vanished.
And then—
Light.
Durbar Square
Pravash gasped.
The air hit him like a punch to the chest. He was on his back, sprawled across the cold stone of Durbar Square.
It was night again.
The real world.
The sky was heavy with monsoon clouds, the city buzzing with distant street noise. The market lights flickered in the distance.
No temple.
No Guru Kaalo.
Just him.
And her.
She knelt beside him, her breathing ragged.
“You’re lucky I pulled you out,” she said, shaking her head. “Another second and he would have—”
She stopped.
Her face fell.
Pravash frowned, still struggling for breath. “What?”
She swallowed.
Then, barely above a whisper—
“What’s your name?”
The words hit him like ice.
Pravash opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
He tried again.
Nothing.
His stomach turned, his hands curling into fists. He could feel it—the absence.
It wasn’t his mother’s name this time.
It wasn’t someone else’s memory.
It was his own.
Pravash Bajracharya.
His name.
His own damn name.
Gone.
The mask had taken it.