The next morning, Aarin arrived at school early again.
The hallway looked the same. Dusty windows. Flickering lights. The water cooler humming softly near the wall.
But the symbol was gone.
No sign of it. No burn marks. No glow. Just ordinary plaster, cracked in places but blank. Aarin stared at the spot, feeling strangely disappointed.
He reached into his bag and opened the notebook. His sketch of the mark looked rough, but now it felt like the only proof he had.
As the bell rang and students began to fill the hall, Aarin turned away and walked to the library.
The librarian barely looked up. Aarin went straight to the old section—where unused files and outdated textbooks gathered dust on the shelves.
He wasn't sure what he was looking for.
But something… pulled him.
His fingers stopped on a thin, unlabeled file wedged between two broken dictionaries. The folder was worn, the paper inside yellowed and curling. No barcode. No stamp. No reason for it to still be there.
He opened it.
Inside were pages of notes, diagrams, and symbols. One of them matched his drawing exactly.
Aarin's heart skipped.
At the bottom of the page, written in faded ink, was a single sentence:
"Only the Marked may hear the Voice."
Aarin read it twice. Then again.
The next page showed something else—a list of names. All of them crossed out… except for one. His eyes froze when he read it:
Keshav A.
His last name. And the first letter of his name.
His hands trembled.
He shoved the file into his bag and looked over his shoulder. No one had seen him. No one had noticed.
But someone had written his name in this file…
long before he ever found it.
Aarin couldn't concentrate in class.
The file in his bag felt heavier than his books. Every time the teacher turned to the board, he'd sneak a glance at the folder, trying to read more without being caught.
The symbols didn't match any language he knew. Some looked like stars, others like bent arrows or broken circles. But they weren't random—there was structure, almost like a code.
At lunch, he sat under the neem tree near the school's old playground. It was a quiet corner, mostly ignored.
He flipped another page.
That's when he heard a voice behind him.
"You found it too?"
Aarin turned sharply. A girl stood a few steps away, holding a sandwich in one hand and a sketchbook in the other.
She had sharp eyes and a quiet face—someone you wouldn't notice twice unless you were really looking.
"What?" he asked.
She stepped closer and opened her sketchbook. On the first page was the same mark—the circle, the lines.
"The one on the wall," she said. "It spoke to me last week."
Aarin froze.
He had told no one.
The girl sat down beside him like she already belonged there.
"I'm Ira. I think we're both marked