Raya's POV
The days after the hospital did not pass. They dissolved.
Time lost its edges, turning soft and shapeless, like fog clinging to the walls of our house. I learned how to breathe again in pieces — shallow inhales, careful exhales — as if my lungs were afraid of committing fully to life. Everyone called it recovery. I called it surviving the quiet.
Ammi said it was a miracle.
Abba said it was God's mercy.
I said nothing.
Miracles don't ache. Mercy doesn't leave bruises on the soul. What I had was a pause — a fragile ceasefire between storms that had not finished arguing over me yet.
I swallowed my medicine obediently. I smiled when relatives visited. I laughed softly at jokes I didn't understand. I let everyone believe I was grateful to still be here.
Wanting to live and pretending to want it are two very different things.
When Aaqib came back, I thought I was hallucinating.
He stood outside our gate like someone waiting for judgment, flowers clenched tightly in one hand, his shoulders tense as though the air itself might accuse him. He looked thinner. Older. Guilt had carved something sharp into his face.
"Raya," he said, quietly.
Just my name. Nothing else.
Two words I had waited months to hear followed — I'm sorry — and somehow, they landed too late to matter and too early to heal.
We sat in the living room while Ammi pretended not to listen from the kitchen. Aaqib spoke the way people do when they want forgiveness more than truth — slowly, carefully, arranging his words so they sounded honest.
He told me he had lied.
About where he went at night.
About who he spent time with.
About messages he deleted before I could see them.
He admitted he had exaggerated stories to seem stronger, braver, more desirable. That he let people believe things about him that weren't true — and hid the parts that were.
"I thought if you knew everything," he said, voice shaking, "you'd leave. I thought you only loved the version of me I invented."
I wanted to scream. To ask why loving someone meant lying to them. To ask why my trust was always the price of someone else's fear.
But then he cried.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just tears slipping down his face like something finally breaking through a dam he'd built too well.
"I never meant to hurt you."
People always say that after the damage is done.
"I'm broken," I whispered. The truth tasted bitter on my tongue. "I've been broken ever since."
He reached for my hands, hesitant, like touching glass. "Then let me fix what I can. If you'll let me."
I should have said no.
Instead, I nodded.
We rebuilt ourselves out of small things.
Walks around the neighborhood where no one asked questions. Late movies where the darkness hid my trembling. Ice cream that melted faster than we could eat it, dripping down our fingers like time refusing to wait.
He made me laugh again — not the loud kind that cracks open your chest, but quiet laughter that reminded me my body still remembered joy.
At the cinema, he held my hand as though it might disappear if he squeezed too hard. When he kissed me, it was gentle, apologetic, careful.
For a moment, I thought this might be what being alive felt like.
But even inside those perfect moments, something watched.
A heaviness sat behind my smile. A pressure at the back of my skull. A whisper that did not belong to me.
It began at night.
At first, it was only a hum — a low vibration in my thoughts, like a memory trying to surface but refusing to show its face. Then words formed, slow and deliberate.
A man's voice.
Deep. Calm. Intimately familiar.
"You're mine, Raya."
My entire body went cold.
I told myself it was a dream. Stress. Trauma. The mind breaking under too much weight.
But the next night, it returned.
"You don't need him."
The words slid through my thoughts like smoke.
"You promised yourself to me."
I pressed my palms against my ears until they hurt. Stop. Stop. Stop.
The voice laughed softly — not cruelly, not mocking. Knowing.
"I've waited too long to lose you again."
I tried to pretend nothing was wrong.
I smiled at my parents. Answered my siblings. Let Aaqib hold my hand. Let him talk about the future like it wasn't something fragile and dangerous.
But every time he touched me, a chill crawled up my spine — the unmistakable feeling of being observed.
Jealousy lingered in the air like a presence with breath.
At night, my veins burned. Not pain — something worse. Awareness. As if something beneath my skin had awakened and was stretching after a long sleep.
"You carry me," the voice whispered.
"Don't you remember?"
The breaking point came quietly.
Aaqib was laughing, showing me something stupid on his phone. The lights flickered once — twice — then steadied.
My vision blurred. My heartbeat thundered in my ears.
"Raya?" His smile faltered. "Hey… what's wrong?"
The voice rose inside me, louder than ever.
"He's not yours."
The room felt too small.
"He's a distraction."
My hands trembled. "Please," I whispered. "Stop."
Aaqib's face drained of color. "Who are you talking to?"
The voice laughed — and for the first time, it felt like it was laughing through me.
Then darkness swallowed everything.
When I woke up, I was in my bed.
Aaqib sat beside me, eyes red, hands clenched together like he was praying.
"You scared me," he said softly. "You fainted. Your mom called the doctor."
My throat burned. "Did I say anything?"
He hesitated. "You kept repeating a name. I couldn't understand it."
I didn't tell him I hadn't been asleep.
That night, the voice returned — quieter now. Almost sorrowful.
"You shouldn't fight me."
"Promised?" I whispered into the dark.
"Your great-grandfather made a vow," the voice said. "To protect his bloodline, he offered me something precious."
My breath caught.
"You."
The truth settled into my bones like ice.
"You think your suffering was random?" it asked gently. "Every loss. Every ache. Every moment you felt alone — I was there. Watching. Waiting."
"Why me?" I whispered.
"Because you were chosen."
By morning, my reflection no longer felt familiar.
My eyes looked darker. Distant. As though someone else was learning how to wear my face.
The Poison Tree. The shadows. The whispers.
They had never been random.
Aaqib held my hand at the café later, telling me he loved me.
Under his words, another voice answered.
"No," it whispered.
"I love you."
And I knew — whatever lived inside me was ancient, bound, and awake.
And it was not done with me yet.