Some nights, she didn't want to sleep.
Not because she wasn't tired. But because sleep meant waking up again.
And waking up meant starting over.
She lay still, listening to the ceiling fan cut the air into soft, uneven pieces.
One-two-three-four, pause.
One-two-three.
Her room smelled faintly of rain left over from the evening.
Wet clothes. Dust rising from the ground, then settling again.
July had that peculiar smell—a scent of damp, but somehow there was salt in it too.
Like the sky had wept an ocean, and no one had noticed.
Her phone, an outdated Android with chipped and rotten edges, usually lay flat under her pillow.
Tonight, the screen burned hot against her palm.
She stared at it, eyes wide, breathing shallow, like someone hypnotized.
Nothing new. No message.
Just the same empty brightness staring back at her.
She told herself it didn't matter.
But it did.
God, it did.
It was an old habit now—checking, waiting, swallowing the disappointment like medicine that never worked.
Her chest tightened.
Her eyes stung.
"Damnit," she whispered, her throat catching.
Sometimes she imagined her life as a folder on a desktop.
If only she could select-all and press delete.
Photos from the last year.
Conversations left half-finished.
That one fight with her father.
The word she said that she wasn't supposed to say.
The version of herself she tried to delete, but that still sat there in the recycle bin, grinning at her.
Her name was Meher. Meher Shekhawat.
She said it quietly now, into the air.
"Meher."
As if the word might change shape.
As if saying it softer could make her forgive herself for carrying it.
A name that was more than a sin.
"What will you name her?"The midwife's hands were slick, trembling, cradling the blood-wet infant. The baby's cries cut sharp through the stale air of the room.
Outside, someone was already pulling the bedsheet over the mother's face.
The man didn't answer right away.
He stood at the doorway, chest heaving, sweat sticking his shirt to his back.Eyes hollow. Jaw tight. Like he was clenching something between his teeth—rage, or grief, or both.
"Name her something," the midwife said again, voice firmer now.Her bangles clinked as she shifted the baby in her arms.
"I don't know."His voice sounded empty. Like his throat had dried up.His eyes didn't move from the corner of the room where his wife had just gone still.
"She's your daughter."
The man's lips twitched. Not quite a smile. Not quite anything.
"Is she?"A raw sound left him—half laugh, half sob, all bitter.
"She killed her mother just to get born. What kind of daughter does that?"
The midwife didn't flinch. She'd heard worse.Grief twists people. Makes them say shit that burns the air.
But still—this one stung.
She spat softly to the floor.
"All babies do that," she muttered. Her fingers tightened on the small, slippery body. "That's how birth works. Someone always pays with life or with devotion"
The man wiped his face with the back of his hand, rough and trembling.
"Not like this," he whispered. His voice cracked wide open, like dry earth splitting. His eyes stayed on the floor.
"She came here to ruin."
The midwife sighed. Her arms rocked the baby gently, like it was possible to soothe guilt right out of the air.
Her bangles sang quietly.
"They all come to take something," she said under her breath. "But they give something back too."
The man shook his head, tears slipping down his sharp cheekbones.
"Not this one," he whispered again. "She's just… devil's reincarnation"
And so it was left at that.
A girl born into grief.
Unnamed for days.
Until someone scribbled Meher on the hospital slip because the ward needed something to write down.
Mercy.
That's what Meher meant.
A plea stitched into her skin.
A prayer for the sins she had scribbled over her own forehead, in a language no one taught her but everyone seemed to know.
A name no one really meant.
Not her father.
Not the midwife.
Not even the boy she once loved, because he made her believe she could be loved at all.
"You are worthless," he spat, distaste thick on his lips, like poison he needed to get out fast.
Mridul.
Senior boy.
The one who smiled like he had all the answers, then used her like she was nothing but a gap in his time.
A filler. A placeholder.
A body he could unzip and leave behind.
He took her trust like loose change from a table.
Spent it on his own loneliness.
Then left.
Now the canvas was blank again.
And she was left staring at herself.
What did I do wrong?
"Maybe my existence was sin."
The thought came soft.
Then sharper—cutting its own echo.
"What's maybe?!"
A bitter laugh stuck to her lips, dry and cracked.
"It is a sin."
Her phone slipped from her hand.
A small sound, like a stone dropping into a pond.
She didn't bother picking it up.
She sat up slowly, legs heavy beneath the blanket, heart knocking inside her chest—that strange, hollow knocking, like footsteps in a hallway no one visits anymore.
The moon-bathed mirror stood at the far end of the room.
Leaning against the wall. Slightly tilted.
As if it were always watching from the side.
Tonight it gleamed brighter, soaking in the milky rays of Purnima's full moon.
A pale eye.
A silent witness.
She got up and walked toward it.
Her reflection blinked back—pale, moon-lit.
Hair unbrushed.
Eyes glassy, rimmed red from too much crying in secret.
She touched the mirror's surface with her fingertips, pressing lightly.
The glass was cool.
But beneath it, her own face seemed warmer.
Alive in a way she no longer felt.
Her lips parted.
"Who are you, really?" she whispered.
The girl in the mirror didn't answer.
Of course not.
She never did.
She only knew how to question.
To circle the drain of doubt.
Searching for answers?
That was just another way of asking the same question, again and again—until the question mark itself became the answer.
And there it was.
A cold, brutal answer.
'Nothing.'
A girl orphaned by her mother's death.
Abandoned by a father who never wanted to stay.
Unfavored. Unchosen.
Until Mridul came along—and for a moment, she thought someone had finally picked her.
But all he did was use her as a chip.
A gamble.
A game for his own pleasure.
Now he was gone too.
The canvas left blank again, smeared with silence like a night in the cooling desert.
"I don't want this," Meher whispered, her voice smaller now.
"I don't want to be here."
Her hands pressed harder against the mirror, fingers trembling.
Her breath fogged the glass, then disappeared.
Like all the happiness she'd ever experienced.
Her throat tightened.
Her eyes burned like embers of the fire flower, but she let the tears fall this time.
No wiping them away.
No pretending.
"I don't know how to be this person anymore," she said, pressing her forehead against the glass.
"And I don't want to keep trying.
To try only to skip and fall back into this black hole of self-loathing."
Her legs crumbled beneath her, like ancient pillars eroded by time.
Her forehead pressed harder against the cold surface.
Her throat rasped from sobs that couldn't be contained by the peaceful night.
"Maybe I wasn't meant to be here," she thought again.
This time the words came without shaking.
Almost as if someone else had spoken them through her.
"Again…what's maybe?"
There was no storm in her voice.
No thunder.
Just simple words, like pebbles galloping down a rift, thrown by someone who no longer cared where they landed.
Her reflection blinked back at her, thinner now.
Like she could fall through.
"I don't fucking want to exist any longer."
And then she closed her eyes for good.
. . .
"Hiss—"
A sound escaped her lips.
She wouldn't remember the exact moment she did it.
But in the drawer beside the mirror was the thing she'd kept for months without touching.
A small, sharp piece of glass from when the window broke last winter.
She held it between her fingers now.
It gleamed under the Purnima moon, delicate as a sliver of ice.
"It's okay…" she whispered, breath shaking.
She pressed it to her wrist.
Not deep at first. Just to feel the cold.
Then deeper.
"Nff… it's okay now."
The skin opened.
A thin line.
A single, red sentence.
The world tilted softly, like a boat pushed out to sea.
No alarms.
No bright lights.
Just the soft sound of breath leaving her lungs, like steam rising from a kettle and disappearing into air.
Her last thought was not of pain.
It was of relief.
"Finally."
But life—or something like it—had other plans.
When she opened her eyes again, the ceiling fan was gone.
So was her bed.
So was her body.
She was standing in a place she didn't know how to name.
A vast, soft darkness, lit from somewhere beneath the floor.
Above her, the sky wasn't sky—it was velvet stitched with slow-moving symbols.
Like someone had taken the constellations apart and rewired them.
Her hands were still trembling.
But they were also glowing faintly at the fingertips, like the ends of burnt matches.
A voice—not loud, but everywhere—spoke gently.
"You left the world behind, but you're still breathing inside your plumped soul"
Meher blinked. Her lips were cold.
Her throat still raw from crying.
"Am I dead?"
"No," came the reply. The voice clipped and metallic.
"You're in the in-between, on the bridge of life and death. And there is work to do."
A pause.
Then:
Karmic System Installation:Initiated
"What work?!"Her voice broke, thin as paper.
"Where am I—"
2%
A flicker appeared at the edge of her vision.Numbers. Cold, mechanical. Crawling up the dark like static ants.
She spun around, heart racing.
"Stop!" she gasped, backing away, her hands out in front of her—but there was nothing to touch, no wall, no floor she could trust. Just that soft, glowing void beneath her feet.
Her legs moved fast, but the space swallowed all direction.Left? Right? There was no left or right. No up or down.
Her body trembled harder.
10%
The numbers kept climbing.
"No—I didn't agree to this!"
She tried to shut her eyes, tried to scream the process away, but the countdown burned behind her eyelids, scrawling digits into the black of her mind.
25%
Her feet pounded the invisible ground, each step like running in wet sand.
She sprinted nowhere.
Her breath came fast now, but the air tasted strange—like ashes soaked in milk, bitter and soft at the same time.
"Let me go back."
Her voice cracked.
"Let me disappear. That's what I chose—"
The system did not answer.It only continued.
53%
Her fingers scraped her own arms, nails digging into her skin, but even pain wouldn't wake her.She wasn't dreaming.
The velvet sky above her pulsed—symbols rearranged themselves, blinking like slow, alien code.
78%
"What work?!" she cried again, throat raw, salt heavy in her mouth.
"I don't want to work. I don't want to fix anything! I was done—"I'm done!"
But the universe wasn't.
93%
And the system had no intention of letting her off easy.
100%
Ding-dong!
A flat, cheery sound echoed through the void—wrongly cheerful, like a ringtone at a funeral.
Karmic System: Successfully Installed.
A soft hum vibrated beneath her feet.
Then came the line—simple, almost casual, like it wasn't about to ruin her understanding of reality.
"Transmigration to the Epic of Mahabharata: In Progress."
Meher froze.
Her mouth went dry.
"…What?"Her voice came out small. Croaked.
"Mahabharata timeline selected," the system chirped again."Due to karmic imbalance and unresolved soul cycle, corrective journey has been assigned."
"No—wait, wait—what the hell do you mean Mahabharata?"
Her eyes darted around, but there was no escape button. No backspace.Only the dark sky overhead, symbols rearranging like ancient code.
"This is a mistake—put me back! I was supposed to disappear!"
Her voice cracked against the empty air. Her hands shook.
The system, unbothered, went on:
"Host has been granted entry into Dharmic Correction Arc."
"Beginning transfer in—3…2…"
Meher's stomach flipped.
"Stop! STOP! I don't know Sanskrit! I don't know any of that shit!"
Her breath hitched.She wasn't ready for epics. Or dharma. Or war.
She just wanted to be nothing.
But the system had other plans.
And before she could scream again, the world beneath her folded inwards like a page being turned.
"Hey, you comeback--"
The void beneath her feet opened in abrupt action and she was freefalling into a sky of darkness,
"Ahhhh! let me die peacefully!"
This maybe defined as the karmic turn of events...Anyways, isn't death a punishable offense itself?! well, what's 'maybe' in this again?