Inside the room, everything wore the same polite calm — the clock ticked, the curtains trembled a little, the air smelled faintly of blood — but beneath that ordinary surface there was a storm. The kind that didn’t announce itself with thunder; it arrived like a blade.

Vedant was on the floor. He lay half-turned, head tilted at an impossible angle, eyes glassy and fixed. The neat collar of his kurta had soaked through with a dark, spreading stain. A thin rivulet of dried blood curled along the hollow of his throat where the skin had been torn — clean, efficient. He was dead.