Long before the Raizada mansion rose from the earth, the villagers spoke in hushed tones of women who walked among them yet were not of them. They called them daayans—creatures who could curse with a glance, whose very presence turned laughter into screams and light into shadow. It was said that a daayan's eyes held the color of illness: yellow like poisoned water, staring from a face that seemed almost human but always carried something profoundly wrong.
The elders warned of their peculiarities. A daayan walked with reversed feet, silent on even the most creaking floors. Her nails were black and curved, like talons, glinting in candlelight. A single braid hung down her back, impossibly long, moving as if it had a life of its own. Some nights, geckos were seen crawling her skin, drawn to her unnatural aura, as though even animals recognized her darkness. But these were minor daayans; dangerous, yes, but predictable in their malevolence.
Mohana was different. Her eyes were red, glowing faintly like embers hidden in darkness—a mark of her age, five hundred years of life spent weaving curses and drinking fear. Where other daayans' yellow eyes could unsettle, her red eyes could paralyze. They bore centuries of malice and a hunger that had grown with time. Villagers whispered that her braid alone could strangle a man if commanded, moving as fluidly as a river yet as deadly as a whip.
On a storm-laden night, under a sky choked with clouds, she walked with deliberate silence. The wind seemed to bend around her, the trees recoiling from her path. Geckos clung to the walls, to the windows, to the doors, following her passage like tiny shadows of her will. The air itself seemed heavier, almost sentient, warning those nearby that something unnatural had arrived.
Voiceover echoed as though from the wind itself: "She has lived five centuries… watched empires rise and fall… and waited for this night."
Her gaze fell upon the Raizada household in the distance, pale candlelight flickering in the windows. Her long braid swayed, a shadow in the storm, and her red eyes glimmered with anticipation. Mohana's story was about to begin, a slow-burning horror that would entwine with the life of an unsuspecting family, leaving no heart untouched by terror.
Even the moon dared not shine upon her face.
Happiness has a scent.
It is warm ghee at dawn, jasmine crushed between fingers, laughter soaked into old walls. Daayans learned long ago to follow it the way vultures follow heat rising from the earth.
The Raizada house breathed contentment.
From the banyan tree outside its gates to the tulsi planted in the courtyard, everything spoke of protection—mantras etched into stone, vermilion smeared faithfully every morning, bells that rang on time. It was the kind of house elders boasted about. The kind mothers prayed their daughters would marry into.
It was exactly the kind of house that invited a gaze.
Mohana watched from the shadow of the neem tree across the road. She did not blink. Five centuries had taught her patience—how to wait until a family's guard softened, until faith became routine instead of devotion.
Her reversed feet left no sound on the damp soil as she stepped closer. A gecko scurried up the outer wall, then another, then many—drawn to her presence, clinging where she passed as if the house itself were being measured.
Inside, lamps flickered.
A woman laughed, unaware that the sound tightened something unseen around her throat.
Mohana's black nails traced the air, not touching the wall, only sensing it. The protection was old. Strong. But everything old eventually cracked.
Her single braid slid down her back, long and heavy, brushing the ground like a living thing. With a slow, deliberate motion, it lifted—testing, tasting the air. Somewhere inside the house, a bell rang twice instead of once.
The first sign.
A child began to cry.
Mohana's lips curved—not into a smile, but into recognition. She tilted her head, and her red eyes burned brighter, reflecting the house as it would soon become: fractured, doubting, afraid.
"Not tonight," she whispered, her voice barely more than breath.
Daayans did not rush calamity.
They planted it.
As she turned away, the tulsi leaves trembled though there was no wind. A fine crack appeared at the base of the courtyard lamp—small enough to be ignored, fatal enough to grow.
From the shadows, Mohana marked the house.
And once a daayan's eyes claimed a home, its happiness began to die— not with screams, but with silence.