23 March 2013 the hotel's heart beats like a closed fist.

She runs in a long white gown, raven hair unbound and streaming behind her like a flag of surrender, down the hotel's grand staircase a vast, baroque spiral that yawns like a labyrinth. Each bare footfall on the marble risers echoes through the mausoleum of corridors, an irregular percussion swallowed by the cavernous vestibule.

The only light is the guttering procession of decorative candles set in iron sconces; their flames tremble, painting the balustrades in a tremulous chiaroscuro that makes the mahogany panels seem to breathe. Shadows pool in the stairwells, and the air tastes of cold wax and old secrets.

Behind her, male voices split the silence rough, amused, laced with a languid appetite that makes her skin crawl. "Catch her," one commands, the syllables stretching with cruel patience. "Stop running, Poorvi. You won't get far with that wound." Their laughter is a slow, viscous sound that slides along the corridor like oil; it mocks the cadence of her panicked breath.

She calls for help, the plea fracturing on the marble: "S-Someone please h-help me." But the hotel is a cathedral of emptiness.

The corridor answers only with its own hollow reverberation. For hours she has fled through its antechambers and corridors, a fugitive pursued by a ritual of cruelty.

Exhaustion wedges into her limbs the fight has leeched from her like a tide. She knows, with the cold certainty of the condemned, that on this date the building is sealed by superstition and silence and that silence is the conspirator of her fate.

A hand seizes a fistful of her hair before she can descend another flight. Her breath stutters; the world narrows to the iron tang of pain and the press of a hand that is both proprietor and predator.

He pulls her back by the nape, and as she staggers, the bruise-darkened cut on her lip and the crusted blood on her brow speak of a struggle long endured. Her fingers, knotted and raw, are testament to the resistance she has mounted.

They close around her like an audience around a spectacle. One man, his face a shadow beneath a mask, descends with a carriage of mockery and low chuckles.

His gloved hands are clinical, rehearsed. "Bold of you to think you could expose us in my territory by entering in this place on this day," he intones, voice flat with contempt. "Poorvi, you were entertainment. I am satisfied by ruining your tempting body." The men watch with a satisfaction that is both banal and terrible, their eyes are reflective surfaces that betray no remorse.

She looks at them at their satisfaction, at the cavernous void where mercy should be and words, ragged and defiant, tumble from her: "D-Do whate-ver you w-want. But remember: I-I curse you. Your end will be unbearable. Punis-shment will find you for ev- every sin." Her voice is thin but indomitable; it threads through the dark like a bell.

A slap answers her defiance, a percussion that rings through the stairwell and then recedes into silence. She collapses against the cold stone; blood beads and trickles, a dark punctuation on the pale fabric.

Then the masked man kneels, his presence small and measured, a predator blessing his quarry. His hand moves with clinical finality; a needle flashes in the candlelight, and the injection is administered like a verdict. "This will be another accident of the Black March," he murmurs, voice devoid of mercy.

They laugh a cascade of noise that seems to fill the hotel's empty ribcage and she lies very still, the candlelight skittering across her face as if reluctant to witness.

The stairwell resumes its indifferent stillness. Room 219's darkness closes around the echo of her last breath, and the hotel, patient and ancient, keeps its secrets like a thing that has never been asked to answer.

___________________________

Author's note:- You've to wait a week for the next chapter.✨

• This chapter's English is written in this way to give classic past vibe but from next chapters the English will be classy but easy to understand. 📚