---
She moved without sound.
Through narrow lanes slick with evening rain, past incense-thick temples and laughter-filled courtyards, Saanvi moved like dusk itself—soft, grey, unnoticed until it settled fully around you. By the time you realized she was there, she had already wrapped herself around your memory.
The women of Dharigaon whispered about her in spices. Men stared too long when she passed and forgot what they were supposed to fear. She wasn't beautiful in a way one could describe. She was beautiful in a way that made you forget where you had placed your sword.
But behind that veil of incense, behind the kohl-lined eyes and the dance that turned kings to dust, was a mind sharper than Pasha's coin-scales and more silent than Arjun's mask.
And now, she was ready to move.
Dharigaon's power was tilting—and she felt it.
Arjun had climbed the mountain of mud and whispers and blood. He now stood on top, his mask not of mourning, but myth. And while men feared him, they did not understand him.
But Saanvi did.
She had watched him. Not like the others. Not with awe or envy. She watched him like a predator watching a trap trigger—measuring the angles, the tension, the moment the spring would snap.
She didn't want to destroy him.
She wanted to become inevitable.
---
It began in the women's quarters—places Arjun could never enter. Saanvi wove stories over neem oil and turmeric paste, tales of kindness buried beneath cruelty, rumors of a boy broken too early, made sharp too young. She turned Arjun into poetry.
"He doesn't speak," she said, painting a widow's fingernails, "because he's still listening to the screams of his past."
In another house, while washing brass pots, she whispered, "He wears the mask not to hide, but to protect you—from the fire behind it."
The Daughters' Circle, once quiet, now hummed with her narrative. Soon, women began quoting Arjun's lines as scripture. Some even sent their children to wait near the banyan—to glimpse the shadow of the mask. The legend grew.
She wasn't building affection. She was building dependence.
They would turn to her, not Arjun, when the time came. Because she made him human, not holy. She turned a weapon into a wounded boy. A boy they could fix. A boy they could control—through her.
---
Then came her second step: silence.
She vanished from public view for five days. No dances. No public visits. No whispers. In a village that fed on gossip, her absence screamed.
On the sixth day, she returned, dressed not in silks but in widow's white.
"Who died?" asked one merchant.
"No one," said her cousin. "She said she's mourning the future."
That night, she sat beside the well, where Arjun once schemed with Rishi. She lit a lamp, placed it in the water, and let it drift.
Arjun came.
He watched her in silence. She didn't look up.
"I hear you've been telling stories," he said.
"I don't speak," she replied softly. "I just make sure the right people hear the right things."
He approached, wary.
"What do you want, Saanvi?"
She turned. Her eyes were calm.
"You think power is earned through fear. But fear fades. Beauty fades. Even truth fades."
"Then what lasts?"
"Memory," she said. "And I will be inside every memory they have of you."
She stood, barefoot in the mud, and walked past him. As she did, she leaned close.
"When the spider dances," she whispered, "even gods get caught in her silk."
---
By morning, Arjun found himself playing defense.
Women approached him in public, offering advice, concern, pity masked as praise. A weaver asked if he ate enough. A girl left flowers at his door. The temple keeper's wife said she dreamt of his mask cracking—and gold pouring from the wound.
Saanvi had made him vulnerable.
But more than that—she had made herself the keeper of his myth.
Surajmal visited Arjun in secret.
"You think you lead Dharigaon," he said. "But she's turned the Circle. Even Pasha's wives speak in her riddles now. They think you're tragic. And tragedy needs a priestess."
"Then what is she?"
"A flame that doesn't burn," Surajmal said. "Until you're wrapped in it."
---
Vishrath was not surprised.
"She's begun her own game," he said. "Good. Let her weave. Spiders don't know how to deal with fire until it reaches the web."
"What do I do?" Arjun asked.
"You wait. And you bleed just enough to make them think she's healing you."
Arjun closed his eyes. The game had changed. He had built power through dread. Now, Saanvi was turning that dread into romance. Into prophecy. Into seduction.
He opened his ledger.
"When fire cannot burn the spider, become the storm that tears down the web."
And in the quiet that followed, the boy who once feared faces now learned what it meant to be loved against your will.
The spider danced.
And Dharigaon followed the rhythm.