Pakhi reached home just as the evening light thinned into something tired and dull. The sky was still colored-pink fading into bruised purple-but it felt distant, like scenery behind glass, untouchable and indifferent.

She paused at the door, not because she was afraid, but because her body had learned caution long before her mind could understand it. Every nerve seemed to hum with the memory of past silences, past wrong steps.