chapter - 0.2 First Impressions

Morning came, though it felt more like an afterthought.

The sun didn’t rise that day — it merely appeared, pale and unsure, like it too was afraid to look at what the night had left behind.

I hadn’t slept. Couldn’t. My thoughts played on repeat — coins, candle, smile, the number 1987.

Every time I closed my eyes, the symbols rearranged themselves in my mind, forming new shapes, whispering new meanings.

By the time I reached the precinct, my coffee had gone cold. The corridors were silent, just the faint hum of ceiling lights. Crime boards lined the walls, each case neatly labeled, boxed, solved. Except mine.

“Sector 12, victim identified,” said Meera, my junior officer, sliding a file toward me. “Name: Sana Verma. Thirty-four. Teacher. Lived alone. No signs of forced entry.”

Her voice was steady, but I noticed her hands trembling. She’d seen the scene. Everyone who did carried it afterward — like smoke that clings to your skin no matter how hard you wash.

I opened the folder.

Photographs stared back at me — the smile, the coins, the candle. I studied them carefully, the way I used to study faces in the mirror: looking for something that wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Sir, could it be a ritual killing? Religious motive maybe?”

Question drifted, but I wasn’t listening.

Something in the photo caught my eye — the shadow beneath the candle flame.

It wasn’t round. It was shaped like an eye.

I blinked, looked again.

Gone. Just wax.

I pushed the photo away, my pulse quickening.

Hallucination? Maybe. But I’d learned not to dismiss what the mind sees — sometimes, it sees before reason catches up.

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Back in my office, I pinned the pictures to the wall.

Every case I’ve ever worked begins like this: chaos first, then the quiet order of patterns emerging.

I took a red marker and drew my first web.

Victim: Sana Verma.

Occupation: teacher.

Date: October 8th.

Symbol: 1987.

Candle. Coins. Crimson lipstick.

In my mind, the connections glowed like threads in the dark. Each detail hummed with something familiar, like a forgotten melody trying to play itself again.

The year 1987 — that was the key.

Back then, the killer had left poems at each scene, not numbers. But the structure was identical.

Ritual. Message. Silence.

At noon, I drove back to the scene. The police tape fluttered like yellow ribbons in the wind. The banyan tree towered above me, ancient and still, its roots curling around the earth like veins.

I walked the perimeter, noting footprints in the mud — too many to separate. But near the roots, I noticed something strange: a chalk outline, faint, circular, drawn beneath the candle’s place.

No one had mentioned it. Forensics hadn’t reported it.

I crouched closer. The circle wasn’t random. It was perfectly symmetrical, drawn by someone meticulous. In its center, I found a small indentation — as if something heavy had been placed there and then removed.

“Sir?” Meera’s voice cut through the silence behind me.

“What is it?”

“We found something in the victim’s house. You should see it.”

Apartment smelled of old perfume and burnt incense. Everything was clean, organized, untouched. Too untouched.

On the study table, a single book lay open — The Psychology of Ritual Behavior.

Beside it, a hand-drawn map.

At first glance, it looked like a city layout. But when I looked closer, I realized — it wasn’t a map of streets.

It was a map of memories.

Words circled in ink: Fear. Obsession. Guilt. Control.

And at the very center, one word repeated three times —

Arin.

My name.

I froze.

“Who else has been in here?”

“No one, sir. The door was locked when we arrived.”

The walls seemed to shift. The shadows lengthened. I could almost hear the sound of the marker scratching paper — slow, deliberate, as if someone had drawn that name with purpose.

My heart pounded. Logic tried to reason — maybe she was a student of mine once, maybe coincidence. But instinct whispered otherwise.

The case wasn’t about her.

It was about me.

That night, I stayed late at the precinct, staring at the board.

The lines I’d drawn in red now looked like veins.

The photos — eyes.

The candle — still burning in my memory, though it should have melted long ago.

Sleep didn’t come. Instead, I saw flashes: the banyan tree swaying without wind, the number 1987 pulsing like a heartbeat, and a voice — faint, rhythmic — repeating from somewhere behind the walls.

“To see the pattern again…”

I woke up at my desk, sweating, nails digging into my palm.

On the board, someone had drawn a new line.

Connecting my photo — to hers.

And beneath it, scrawled in red:

“First impression is the last.”

I didn’t remember writing it.

But the handwriting was mine.

And for the first time in years, I felt something colder than fear —

recognition.

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