The road ended three hours ago. Now, only a trail cut through frost-covered moss, winding up the side of the mountain like a scar.

  Ira Sen pulled her coat tighter as wind whipped against her cheeks, her breath clouding the air in erratic bursts.

  She’d been walking alone for hours, guided only by a half-charged GPS device and a blurry satellite printout. The village wasn’t even supposed to be on the map.

  Dharmagaon. No official record. No postal code. Just a name whispered by a dying professor at her university last winter, delirious and shaking:

  "They sing to the soil. Don’t let them sing to you."

  She’d laughed then. A side effect of fever, she’d thought. Now, every rustle in the trees made her spine twinge.

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  The forest around her felt too still—no birdsong, no animal tracks, no wind. Just an unnatural silence, like a breath being held.

  Then she saw him.

  A figure in ochre robes standing perfectly still by a fork in the trail, hood shadowing his face.

  He raised a hand slowly and pointed to the left path—unmarked, overgrown, almost invisible.

  In his other hand, he held a folded square of yellowed cloth. When Ira stepped closer, he extended it without a word.

  She took it cautiously. A hand-drawn map. Red ink. One place circled again and again until the paper thinned—KALA KUAN.

  She looked up to ask—but the monk was gone.

  Not down the path. Not hiding. Just... gone.

  Only the brittle leaves rustled faintly behind her.

  Something inside her whispered: This is where the story should end.

  But Ira kept walking.