Through the Flames
It was an ordinary day in January, the sky cast in shades of gray and the winter wind biting at the edges of the streets. Aadhav, a young man in his late twenties, was just another office worker, living a monotonous life. His days were spent immersed in numbers, accounts, and financial reports. But the day of the incident was anything but ordinary, though Aadhav had no way of knowing then that his world would spiral into a terror he could neither understand nor escape.
Aadhav was out for his usual evening walk. He had taken this walk daily for years, a way to clear his mind after a long day at work. As he wandered through the quiet streets, a thought crossed his mind about his stagnant life, his monotonous routine. The sound of leaves crunching beneath his shoes and the distant calls of birds offered an eerie calmness. But then, a peculiar sight stopped him in his tracks.
There, beneath the thick trunk of an ancient banyan tree, was a lifeless body. A man, slumped against the tree, his eyes wide open, staring into nothingness. His clothes were tattered, and a crimson stain marred his shirt. Aadhav's heart skipped a beat, and for a moment, he froze, unsure of what to do. There was no one else around. The body was cold, and the scene gave off an unsettling energy.
It wasn’t just the body that caught his attention. There was something else—something deeper. An invisible force, cold and heavy, seemed to pull him closer. He could feel a strange energy, a presence, almost as if the dead man’s soul was reaching out to him.
Aadhav knelt beside the body, his breath shallow and fast. For a moment, his mind went blank, and then, as if something took control of his body, he stood up. Without a thought, he dragged the lifeless body across the ground, feeling its weight but also, strangely, a sense of urgency as if he was being guided.
The journey took him to the quiet banks of the Ganga. Aadhav didn’t know why he had come here, or why he was carrying the body. All that he could focus on was the strange compulsion pulling him onward. As he reached a secluded spot by the river, he laid the body down and found a thick cloth nearby. He wrapped it, his hands moving mechanically, as though guided by invisible strings.
Aadhav knew of the customs here—the importance of cremation. The fire. The ashes. It was part of the tradition, the release of the soul. But why had he, an ordinary man, brought this body here? Why was he involved in this ritual?
Without a second thought, he set the cloth on fire. The flames devoured the body slowly, crackling and licking at the fabric. Aadhav stood motionless, watching the burning figure before him. But something went wrong. The fire seemed to struggle, its glow uneven and weak, as though the very air around them resisted the process.
And then, suddenly, it was over. The fire died, leaving only half of the body charred and blackened. The other half remained untouched, frozen in a grotesque state of lifelessness. Aadhav, still under the strange influence, panicked. Without thinking, he grabbed the half-burnt body and, as if urged by an unseen hand, threw it into the Ganga.
He stared at the body floating down the river, his mind now clear. What had he done?
His breath caught in his throat as fear swept through him. His pulse quickened, and he felt his legs buckle beneath him. He stumbled back to the street, his heart racing, his mind unable to comprehend the horror he had just witnessed.
The next morning, Aadhav tried to shake off the feeling of dread that clung to him like a shadow. He dressed quickly, the usual numbness of office life settling in. He sat in his cubicle, surrounded by the noise of phones ringing and colleagues talking. But he couldn’t focus. His mind kept drifting back to the body. The river. The fire.
He tried to dismiss it, but it was hard to ignore when the news brought everything crashing back. The headline caught his eye: “High-Profile Murder Investigation in the City: Police Search for Answers”.
The story detailed the murder of a prominent businessman, someone whose name Aadhav had heard of but never met. The gruesome details left a chill in his spine. The body found in the woods—the one he had stumbled upon—was identified as the missing man.
Aadhav’s blood ran cold. His breath became shallow, and he felt his pulse race. The body he had burned—half-burned, in fact—was the same man now at the center of a high-profile investigation. The same man whose soul had somehow entered him, possessed him, guided him to the banks of the Ganga.
He was terrified. How could he have not known? Why didn’t he see it sooner?
Days passed, and as the investigation into the businessman’s murder progressed, more disturbing details emerged. The man had been killed in a meticulous, planned manner. But as Aadhav watched the news, his terror grew. The investigators were piecing together clues that suggested the murderer had left no trace, no sign of struggle. The case felt like a puzzle with missing pieces, but every day, the picture became clearer. The businessman’s death had been part of something larger. Someone had orchestrated it with the utmost care.
And Aadhav had unwittingly played a role.
It was a week later when the police showed up at Aadhav’s office. He was sitting at his desk, trying to ignore the dark thoughts that had been haunting him since that night by the river. Then, the door opened, and two officers entered. They asked him to come with them.
Aadhav’s heart skipped a beat. He felt as though the floor had vanished beneath him. His mind raced, and his breath quickened as he tried to process what was happening.
“Mr. Aadhav, we need to speak with you about a matter related to the recent murder case,” one officer said.
He was escorted to the station. Questions were fired at him from all sides, but Aadhav couldn’t understand what was happening. They accused him of being involved in the businessman’s murder, of disposing of the body. His protests, his confusion, were ignored. Evidence had been found—fingerprints on the half-burned body, traces of his DNA near the crime scene. Everything pointed to him.
His defense was simple, but no one believed him: he had not killed the man. He had never even met him. He had only found the body, and in a moment of irrational panic, he had disposed of it.
But it didn’t matter. The evidence was damning.
Weeks later, Aadhav found himself behind bars. The trial had been swift, the evidence overwhelming. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for a crime he didn’t commit, though the world saw him as guilty. The man’s soul, the one that had possessed him, had seemingly disappeared into the shadows. Aadhav was left to rot in a cell, haunted by the visions of that body, the flames, and the cold, empty stare of the dead man.
But the truth was darker than he could have ever imagined.
Months later, an old friend from his past came to visit him in prison. Ananya, a former classmate, had heard about his conviction and wanted to see if there was anything she could do. She listened as Aadhav told her his story, and though she was skeptical, she believed something was wrong.
She started her own investigation, digging into the details of the case. She uncovered something chilling. The businessman’s murder had been a part of a much larger conspiracy, a series of killings that seemed to follow a strange pattern.
And then, she discovered something that made her blood run cold.
Aadhav’s name had not been chosen by coincidence. The businessman, it turned out, had been involved in a secret project—one that had links to ancient rituals, to possession, and to the transfer of souls.
Ananya’s investigation took a darker turn when she discovered an old journal, hidden in the businessman’s personal effects. It detailed a ritual, a dark, twisted practice that involved the exchange of souls between the living and the dead.
The man Aadhav had burned wasn’t just a victim of murder—he was part of something far older and far more sinister. And Aadhav? He had been chosen. He had been the unwitting vessel in a deadly game that stretched across time, using him as a pawn in a ritual far beyond his understanding.
But Ananya never had the chance to share what she had learned. She disappeared without a trace, her last words echoing in Aadhav’s mind: “The soul is still with you, Aadhav. You’ve been marked.”
And Aadhav? He was left alone, in his prison cell, where the shadows whispered—and where the dead man’s eyes still followed him, even though he couldn’t see them.
As the years passed, the case went cold, and the mystery surrounding the businessman’s death remained unsolved. But for Aadhav, the truth was something far worse than any conviction. The soul had not left him.
It was still there, inside.
And Aadhav could feel it, every day, as if the dead man was watching, waiting for something… waiting for him to remember the final part of the ritual. The part that would unlock everything.
But by then, it was too late.
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