It was a skeletal hand.
For a brief moment, his heartbeat slowed.
Beneath the bones, something seemed trapped. He knelt down and carefully moved the soil aside, revealing a small folded note. He opened it and began reading.
“They gave me fifteen days to escape this place.
Every day I tried to escape from this place … but somehow I always returned to the same spot.
They didn’t kill me. They only reminded me how much days I have left... and then they disappeared.
Now only the last day remained. I had already lost hope.
Then suddenly… I saw something.
The mansion gate was open.
Without caring about anything else… I ran toward it.”
Kunal lowered the paper slowly.
“Poor guy…” he murmured under his breath.
The wind around them had completely stopped.
An unnatural silence filled the forest.
The tiger cub was still walking beside him.
Suddenly, the cub noticed a butterfly and began chasing it playfully. It ran a short distance away, moving in an unknown direction behind the butterfly. After a moment, kunal realized the cub was no longer beside him.
He turned back...
The butterfly had landed on a flower. The cub was moving slowly, almost silently, toward the butterfly — like a hunter stalking its prey.
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Then—
The cub leaped forward with all its strength toward the butterfly.
At that exact moment, the butterfly vanished.
And the ground ahead was not solid.
It was a massive pit.
For a second, the cub froze in the mid air, as if accepting its fate. It closed its eyes and let out a faint, trembling sound.
But it didn't feel like he was falling.
The cub slowly opened its eyes.
It was suspended in midair.
Kunal had caught it, his expression was intense, and his heartbeat was racing violently.
The cub’s breathing was rapid. Its tiny body trembled uncontrollably.
Kunal pulled it safely back onto the ground.
“You were supposed to stay with me,” he said firmly, almost scolding it.
The cub didn’t understand the words, but it understood the emotion.
Fear.
Concern.
Protection.
After walking a little farther, the mansion finally came into view.
Kunal paused.
In his mind, he had imagined it would be a small mansion... but what he saw now looked more like a massive abandoned facility.
A rusted iron gate blocked the entrance.
An old lock hung from it.
He grabbed the lock and twisted it with his hand.
The metal snapped with a sharp cracking sound.
The gate creaked open.
As he stepped inside, he noticed the cub hadn’t followed him. It stood outside, looking upward nervously.
Kunal followed its gaze.
Nothing was there.
Still, he picked up the cub and carried it inside.
The garden was overgrown with wild plants. The mansion walls were decayed, and every window on both the ground and first floors was shattered.
Then he noticed something.
A well.
Before approaching it, he picked up a nearby stone and threw it inside.
He expected that if there were bats inside, they would fly out... but instead, he heard what sounded like a splash of water from deep within the well.
An unexplained chill crawled up his spine.
His instincts — the same instincts that had saved him countless times in combat — were warning him.
Something about this place defied logic.
Frowning slightly, he moved closer and shined his flashlight inside.
He froze.
There was no water inside the well.
The well was completely dry.
Now he think something and stepped back slightly, maintaining some distance from the well.
To confirm, he threw another stone.
But this time—
No sound except the dull impact.
A strange uneasiness settled in his chest.
Maybe I imagined the earlier sound, he thought.
At that moment, the cub ran ahead and returned, dragging something in its mouth.
A rusted sword.
It dropped the weapon near Kunal’s feet and then ran toward the left side of the mansion.
Curious, Kunal followed.
The cub stopped near an open area and began digging furiously.
Kunal reached behind it and looked up.
His eyes widened slightly.
It was a graveyard.
And the cub was digging at one of the graves…
<
? Kunal Singh
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