Siya had never felt the night so restless, not even in the years when grief used to sit on her chest like a living shadow. But today, something was different. Something had shifted quietly inside her the moment Keshav’s words touched her,words that had not been an order, not even advice, but a spark. A reminder that mourning did not have to be silent. That hope did not have to be passive. And that faith, if it wanted to breathe, needed movement.

She sat alone in her room that night, the soft yellow lamp lighting only half her face, the other half swallowed by the kind of darkness that mirrored her last eight years. She opened Shashwat’s last letter again, tracing his handwriting with trembling fingers. Instead of breaking her, the words seemed to anchor her, as if he were standing behind her, hand on her shoulder, urging quietly.