“Piya, why are you looking so sad?” the warden asked softly, stopping in the middle of the quiet corridor.
Her brow furrowed with genuine maternal concern.
“It clearly seems that this is not just because of tiredness. Are you okay?”
Piya froze, the heavy silence of the hallway pressing down on her lungs.
A suffocating whirlwind of dark thoughts violently spun in her head, threatening to break through her carefully maintained mask.
She forced herself to swallow the massive, painful lump in her throat.
“Ah… yes, ma’am, I am okay,” Piya lied, her voice hollow and trembling slightly.
“Actually, I am just really tired. That is why I need some rest.”
The warden sighed, looking at her with deep pity.
“Oh, okay. I am sorry I disturbed you. Go and take a rest. But tell me, what do you want to eat? I will send something to your room—”
“No, ma’am,” Piya interrupted quickly, her chest tightening.
“I don’t want to eat anything.”
“But Piya, you haven’t eaten since morning…”
“No, ma’am, really. I just want to take a rest, please,” Piya pleaded softly, her eyes glued to the floor.
“Alright. Take care of yourself,” the warden said, giving her one last worried glance before turning and heading toward her office.
Piya was finally alone.
As she dragged her feet down the empty corridor, her shoulders slumped under an invisible, crushing weight.
Every slow, agonizing step she took felt like walking through quicksand as the brutal flashbacks of her childhood hit her with full force.
The memories tore through her mind—the agonizing day her dad walked out on her and her mother.
She remembered her mother’s naive, tearful voice constantly repeating, ‘”He loves us very much, Piya.”‘
If he loved them so much, then why did he abandon them?
Why did he only bother to show his face after her mother was already dead?
Her hand shook uncontrollably as she pushed open the heavy door to her dorm room.
She stepped inside and stopped dead in her tracks.
The room, which had been completely trashed and torn apart by the police just hours ago, was now spotlessly clean.
Every single item was placed perfectly in its right place, and a cool, deeply refreshing scent lingered in the quiet air.
But Piya’s mind was far too shattered to even process the mystery of who had cleaned her room.
The night air was thick and cold.
Pale, silver moonlight poured directly through the glass, illuminating Piya’s devastated face.
Her eyes instantly filled with burning tears, the whites turning a pained, fiery red.
Her trembling lips parted, and a single, shattering word slipped out into the empty room.
“Dad…”
A harsh, agonizing sob tore from her throat.
“Why did you do this? I always thought you loved me… but today…”
Her knees completely gave out.
Piya collapsed onto the hard floor, the sheer agony of her hidden reality tearing her apart.
She wrapped her arms around herself and started crying loudly, her heart-wrenching sobs echoing off the pristine walls.
“I only have one friend in this entire city… my best friend, Misha,” Piya wept, her voice cracking with raw, unbearable devastation.
“And today, you snatched her away from me too. How am I supposed to call my best friend my step-sister? How? How am I supposed to call my own dad ‘Uncle’?”
She gasped for air, the tears streaming relentlessly down her cheeks as the image of Mr. Singhaniya smiling at Misha burned in her mind.
“I always thought you only loved two girls in your entire life… my mom and me. But I was wrong. You never loved us truly. You had a whole other family.”
She slammed her trembling hand against the floor, her chest heaving as she let out a broken, agonizing cry.
“I hate you, Dad. I hate you.”
“You always said that I was your princess… your entire world,” Piya whispered to the empty room, her voice breaking into a ragged, pathetic sob.
“But you just went and built a whole another world for yourself. You completely forgot us.”
She curled into a tight ball on the freezing floor, her heart shattered into a million irreparable pieces.
“But today, I promise you one thing,” she choked out, her red, swollen eyes glaring at the shadows.
“I will never, ever tell you the truth. I will never tell you that I am your daughter. I will never tell you that I am Siya’s daughter.”
The name of her late mother hung heavily in the dead silence of the room.
Exhausted by the sheer force of her own grief, Piya’s eyelids grew heavy.
Deep within the forest, right around the time Piya had broken down crying over her father, an entirely different scene was unfolding.
Hidden far away in the densest part of the woods stood a grand, imposing bungalow.
Inside its lavishly decorated living room, a man dressed in an immaculate black suit stood pouring dark wine into a crystal glass.
“Raichand,” he murmured softly.
They both took their seats on a plush leather sofa.
“What about Raichand?” the woman asked, her voice smooth and calculating.
“Raichand is our new identity,” the man explained, a proud, sharp smile forming on his lips.
“Everyone in the entire city knows this name now. We are famous. And under this powerful name, yesterday… our son officially started at Mount College.”
He swirled the dark liquid in his glass, staring into the roaring fireplace.
“I have bought half the properties in this city. Hotels, estates, businesses—we are now ranked among the absolute wealthiest people here. It is because of this immense wealth that our son can attend college, and it is how we will live among these humans… completely normal, without raising a single doubt.”
“So, who am I?”
A sudden, chilling voice cracked through the quiet warmth of the burning fire.
A figure descended the grand staircase.
He wore a flowing black silk night robe, and his movements were impossibly smooth—his speed distinctly abnormal, a blur that no human eye could naturally track.
He walked over to the table and poured himself a drink.
“You are our son,” the older man answered calmly, not bothered by the sudden entrance.
The young man lifted the glass to his lips and took a single, disinterested sip.
Without waiting even a second, he hurled the expensive crystal glass straight into the roaring fire.
The flames flared violently, casting a bright, dancing light across his sharp features.
It was him.
The mysterious, dangerous stranger with those cold, hypnotizing blue eyes.
She lay trembling on the hard, cold floor until the tears dried on her cheeks, and a dark, dreamless sleep finally pulled her under.Hours later, the bright, golden rays of the morning sun pierced through the window.
The cheerful, melodic chirping of birds outside slowly coaxed Piya out of her deep slumber.
She fluttered her eyes open, blinking against the harsh sunlight.
But as her senses slowly woke up, a wave of profound confusion washed over her.
The surface beneath her wasn’t the freezing, hard tiles of the floor.
It was soft.
Warm.
She was lying perfectly in the center of her bed, carefully tucked in, completely covered up to her chin by a heavy, incredibly warm blanket.