The mountain did not care that Rohan was from Delhi. It did not care about his expensive, multi-layered, breathable-fabric jacket, his GPS-enabled satellite phone, or the cheerful confidence he’d carried up from the plains. When the blizzard hit, it hit with the ancient, indifferent fury of a god, and all of Rohan’s modern certainties were scoured away by ice and wind.
He was on the third day of a solo trek, a self-prescribed antidote to a life he felt was becoming too predictable. He’d told his friends he was going to "find himself." Now, lost in a blinding whiteness, visibility reduced to the length of his own arm, he knew with a terrifying clarity that he was more likely to be found as a frozen corpse in the spring thaw.
The temperature plummeted. The wind howled, a predatory, hunting sound. His GPS was a dead screen, the cold having murdered its battery. Shivering violently, his thoughts turning thick and slow, he stumbled onward with no direction but a primal need to move.
It was when the last sliver of hope had been flensed from his spirit that he saw it. A dark shape against the screaming white. Not a cave, but a structure. He staggered towards it, his snow-caked eyelashes making it hard to see. It was a monastery, carved from the mountain's own dark stone, with a heavy wooden door that looked as ancient as the rock around it. It wasn't on his map. It wasn't on any map he'd studied. It simply was.
With the last of his strength, he beat a gloved fist against the wood. The sound was swallowed by the storm. He slumped against it, a wave of blackness washing over him, and thought, So this is it.
The door opened.
He was helped inside by silent, saffron-robed figures. The world within was a stark contrast to the chaos without. The air was still, thick with the scent of burning juniper, yak butter lamps, and something else… something heavy and old, like the smell of a sealed tomb. The wind’s scream was silenced, replaced by an oppressive, profound quiet. Rohan was guided down a stone corridor, the only sound the soft slap of his hosts' felt boots. They placed him by a fire, unwrapped his frozen gear, and gave him a bowl of steaming, salty tea that sent a shock of life through his veins.
The head monk approached. He looked less like a man and more like a gnarled, wizened root pulled from the earth. His skin was a tapestry of wrinkles, his head bald and spotted, but his eyes were unnervingly clear and calm. They held the stillness of a deep, glacial lake.
“You were lost,” the monk said. It wasn’t a question. His voice was a dry rustle of leaves.
“Yes,” Rohan croaked, his throat raw. “Thank you. You… you saved my life.”
The monk gave a slow, deliberate nod. Rohan spent the night there, wrapped in thick wool blankets. He slept fitfully, his dreams filled with unsettling images: a desiccated hand with long, yellowed nails, a whispering sound that seemed to come from inside his own skull. He dismissed it as trauma from the storm. The hospitality was genuine, yet he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being constantly watched, not just by the silent monks who moved like ghosts in the periphery, but by the very stones of the monastery itself.
The morning came with a sudden, unnatural peace. The blizzard had vanished. The sky was a brilliant, painful blue, and the snow-draped peaks looked serene, as if the storm had been a mere illusion.
As Rohan, dressed in his now-dry gear, prepared to leave, the head monk approached him.
“You are grateful,” the monk stated, his calm eyes fixed on Rohan’s.
“Immensely,” Rohan said, bowing his head slightly. “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”
“A repayment is not necessary. But a favor, perhaps,” the monk said, his voice smooth. He produced something from the folds of his robe. It was a locket, fashioned from ornate, tarnished silver, covered in intricate carvings of interlocking knots and snarling faces. It was beautiful but vaguely sinister. A thin silver chain was looped through its top.
“A former visitor, much like yourself, left this behind in his haste,” the monk explained. “His home is in Delhi. We have no way of reaching him from this place. Our vows forbid us from leaving these mountains.”
He held the locket out. It seemed to suck the warmth from the air around it.
“Will you promise to deliver it to its owner? A simple promise. A simple ‘yes’ is all that is required.”
Rohan looked at the locket, then at the monk’s placid face. A debt of life for a simple delivery it was nothing. He felt a profound sense of obligation, a need to validate the life he’d been given back.
“Of course,” Rohan said, his voice full of sincere gratitude. “Yes. I promise.”
He reached out and took the locket. The moment his fingers closed around the cold silver, a tremor went through him. He saw the monk’s eyes flicker with an emotion he couldn’t decipher. It wasn't gratitude. It was a complex, deep-seated expression that looked, for a fleeting second, like a mixture of pity and profound, soul-deep relief. The monk handed him a small, crumpled piece of parchment. On it was an address, the script unfamiliar, ending simply with the word "Delhi."
Rohan pocketed the locket and the note, gave a final, grateful bow, and stepped out into the blinding sun, feeling lighter than he had in years. He didn't see the head monk step back into the monastery's shadows, his shoulders slumping as if a great, invisible weight had just been lifted from them.
Back in the clamor of Delhi, the mountains felt like a dream. Rohan was swept back into the tide of traffic, deadlines, and social obligations. The locket and the promise were relegated to the bottom of his backpack, forgotten beneath dirty laundry and trekking souvenirs.
The first oddity was minor. A persistent flicker in his apartment lights that no electrician could find the source of. Then came the shadows, flitting at the edge of his vision, always vanishing when he turned to look. He attributed it all to post-trip fatigue.
A week later, while unpacking, his fingers brushed against the cold, hard shape of the locket. He pulled it out. It seemed darker than he remembered, the silver tarnished to a dull pewter.
The air in the room felt suddenly colder. He placed it on his desk, the intricate carvings seeming to writhe and twist if he didn’t stare directly at them. He smoothed out the parchment with the address. The script was even more illegible now, like scratches from a dying bird. A Google search of the strange name yielded nothing. Annoyed, he tossed the locket into a drawer and decided to deal with the "favor" later.
The whispers began that night. Faint, sibilant sounds, like sand skittering across glass, that seemed to come from just behind his ear. He’d jolt awake, heart hammering against his ribs, to find his apartment silent and empty. The bone-deep chill started, a cold that no blanket or heater could warm.
The locket would not stay put. He’d locked it in his desk drawer; he found it on his bedside table the next morning. He buried it under a pile of books; it appeared in his jacket pocket at work. A cold, creeping dread began to take root in his gut. This was not normal.
The first death was a stranger. A man in a beat-up sedan cut Rohan off aggressively in rush hour traffic, leaning out the window to scream a string of obscenities. Rohan felt a surge of white-hot rage, gripping the steering wheel, wishing a moment of pure, unadulterated harm on the man.
The feeling passed, replaced by the usual urban frustration. That evening, he saw it on the news. A freak accident on that very same stretch of road. A car, matching the description of the one that had cut him off, had swerved inexplicably into the central barrier, the driver killed instantly in a fiery crash. Coincidence, he told himself. A ghastly, horrible coincidence.
But he couldn't shake the memory of his own flash of fury.
The second incident erased all doubt. His landlord, a greedy, perpetually scowling man, had been harassing him for weeks over a fabricated claim of property damage. He cornered Rohan in the hallway, his voice rising, threatening him with eviction.
Rohan felt that same cold rage bubble up inside him, a venomous whisper in his mind wishing the man would just fall and break his neck. The next morning, the building was swarming with police. The landlord had fallen down a full flight of stairs. He wasn’t dead, but he was in a coma, his neck and spine shattered.
Rohan leaned against his apartment door, his blood turning to ice water. It wasn't a coincidence. It was the locket. It was the promise. The entity in the silver cage wasn't just haunting him. It was feeding on his anger, his fear, his hate. And it was acting as his monstrous, silent protector.
Panic set in, a frantic, scrambling terror. This was a curse, and he was its epicenter. He had to get rid of it.
He drove to the Yamuna river, the locket heavy in his pocket, radiating a palpable cold. Under the cover of dusk, he hurled it with all his might into the murky, polluted water. He watched it sink, a small offering to the river's filthy depths. He felt a moment of relief, but it was shallow, fleeting. That night, he woke up gasping, a weight on his chest. The locket was there, resting on his sternum, its silver chain looped loosely around his neck.
He tried to destroy it. He placed it on his concrete balcony and struck it with a hammer. A loud crack echoed in the night air, but it was the hammerhead that had shattered, sending shards of steel flying. The locket lay there, untouched, not even a scratch on its dark, gleaming surface.
His desperation led him online. He spent sleepless nights falling down rabbit holes of obscure folklore, mythology, and paranormal forums. He searched for "haunted Tibetan artifact," "Himalayan curse," "monastery spirits." Most of it was fantasy, but then he found it: a digitized academic journal from the 1920s, written by a British anthropologist who had studied the esoteric practices of secluded Tibetan sects.
One entry described a ritual to contain a Dakini not the benevolent sky-dancer of popular myth, but its malevolent shadow, a parasitic entity that fed on human life force and negative emotions. The text described how monks would trap these spirits in a consecrated vessel, a "soul cage," which would then be guarded for eternity.
The anthropologist wrote:
...The cage cannot be destroyed, for the spirit's essence is bound to it. It cannot be discarded, for it will always return to its bearer. The burden is a life sentence, a torment passed from one guardian to the next. The transfer can only be achieved by a consensual act, a willing acceptance of the responsibility. The entity's curse can only be passed if the new bearer makes a sacred, unbreakable promise to take it... a simple vow of acceptance... a simple 'yes.'
Rohan dropped his phone. The screen cracked. The room spun. The pieces clicked into place with the horrifying finality of a coffin lid slamming shut.
The blizzard. The impossible appearance of the monastery. The monk’s kindness. It was all a lie. A carefully constructed trap for a desperate soul. He hadn’t been saved out of compassion; he had been selected. The look in the old monk’s eyes was not pity, it was the triumph of a prisoner who had finally passed on his chains after a lifetime of servitude.
Rohan was the new jailer.
He descended into a new kind of hell. He quit his job and barricaded himself in his apartment, terrified of human contact. Every flicker of irritation, every moment of frustration, was now a potential death sentence for some unsuspecting person.
The whispers grew louder, no longer just sibilant sounds but coherent words, a sweet, venomous voice goading him, telling him to embrace the power, to use it, to let it protect him, to let it feed.
He grew gaunt, his eyes wide with a permanent, hunted look. He was a prisoner in his own mind, a monster chained to his own soul. He knew he had only two choices left: live out his days in this solitary, waking nightmare, slowly going insane as the entity grew stronger… or do what the monk had done to him.
Weeks later, a changed Rohan walked through the chaotic crush of the New Delhi Railway Station. He was thin, his clothes hung off his frame, but the frantic terror in his eyes had been replaced by a cold, sharp resolve. He was no longer the prey. He was now the hunter.
He scanned the faces in the crowd, bypassing the weary and the cynical. He was looking for a specific type of person—someone young, bright-eyed, filled with the kind of naive optimism he himself once had.
He found him near platform 3: a young backpacker, probably a student from Europe, looking at the departure board with a wide, trusting smile, excitement radiating from him.
The perfect mark.
Rohan approached him, forcing a look of harried distress onto his own features.
“Excuse me,” Rohan began, his voice practiced and smooth. “I’m so sorry to bother you, my phone just died and I’m in a bit of a situation. I’m supposed to meet my sister here.”
The young man’s face was immediately open and helpful. "Oh, of course. Can I help?"
Rohan fed him a believable, tragic story. Then, he reached into his pocket. The locket felt warm now, almost eager. He held it out. It gleamed under the station’s fluorescent lights, its intricate carvings mesmerizing.
“Look,” Rohan said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial, sincere tone. “Someone helped me out earlier today, a complete stranger. I want to pay that kindness forward. This is an old family heirloom, but I want you to have it. A good luck charm for your travels.”
The backpacker looked stunned, his eyes wide. “I… I can’t accept that. It’s too much.”
“It’s nothing,” Rohan insisted, pushing it gently towards him. “I don’t need it. But I need to know it’s with someone who will appreciate it. It would mean a lot to me. I just need one small favor in return.”
He leaned in, his eyes locking with the young man’s trusting blue ones.
“Can you just promise me you’ll take care of it? That’s all. A simple promise is all I need.” Rohan held his breath, pushing all his will into the final, damning words.
“Just say yes.”
React
