He stared at the empty road.
“What changes is whether a person reaches that moment alone or surrounded by love.”
The words entered him cleanly.
“He did not leave alone. His family stood around him.”
His throat closed.
“A son who stayed,” she went on quietly. “A son who still carries him.”
He swallowed.
“Do you know how rare that is now? Children inherit everything and move forward as if nothing precious turned to ash.”
The headlights swept across another turn.
“You are still grieving him,” she stated softly. “Still angry. That means his life left love behind. That is never meaningless.”
The silence drew closer.
Her eyes moved toward him once more. “You are angry because you could not protect him.”
The truth struck at once. His jaw hardened.
“And now,” she continued gently, “you fear you cannot protect her either.”
His grip on the wheel turned painful. Meera’s face rose clear in his mind.
She motioned toward the left. “Turn here.”
He obeyed.
Chapter 32
The tires left asphalt for gravel. Gravel turned to stone.
Abhinav felt something strange.
The pressure in his chest eased, inch by inch. He drew in a sharp breath, air filling lungs that had stayed clenched for hours, as if he had forgotten what it meant to breathe without pain.
His gaze, however, sharpened.
The streetlights had disappeared. Not flickering out. Simply… gone.
Stone walls rose on both sides, old in design yet untouched by time. The carvings were fresh, sharp, as if shaped that morning.
He recognized them. They were the motifs from old Rajput records he had only seen in books, now standing before him in full detail.
‘What is this place?’
His eyes dropped to the dashboard.
The GPS had frozen. The screen showed a single unmoving point at the center. No roads. No markers. No map. The system behaved as if the car existed in the middle of nowhere.
He tapped the screen. Nothing. Tried to zoom out. No response.
His forehead creased in confusion.