He didn’t call it murder.

He called it offering.

Beneath a crumbling building on the outskirts of Old Town, hidden behind rusted metal shutters and broken tiles, lay the room he called the Lotus Chamber. Once a textile warehouse, it now bore no trace of its past—just silence, shadows, and the scent of dried blood masked by incense.

The floor was painted in concentric red circles—handmade with a brush carved from a victim’s hair. In the center, a raised wooden platform, stained dark with old blood. Along the walls, mementos: earrings, ribbons, ID cards, even a child’s shoe—each one pinned like trophies beside lotus drawings scorched onto the concrete.

He believed the city was infected.

Impure.

And women were the vessels through which it rotted.

But some women… some were chosen.

The ritual always began with silence. He’d sit across from the girl, studying her breathing. Their eyes always screamed before their mouths did. But he never rushed.

First came the ablution—he’d wash their feet with rose water, humming an old Odiya lullaby his mother used to sing. Then, with calloused hands, he would paint a lotus on their wrist using red sindoor mixed with goat’s blood. The symbol had to be perfect. If it wasn’t, he’d start again—with a new canvas.

Once the lotus was complete, the girl would be blindfolded and tied upright. He’d recite verses from a faded manuscript—handwritten pages he believed were sacred, stolen from an abandoned matha. They spoke of cleansing fire and flesh as offering.

Finally, he would whisper in her ear:

"Bhubaneswar must bloom again."

Only then did the blade come out—curved, worn, and reverently cleaned before each use. The kill was swift. The mutilation afterward was… art.

But tonight, something different stirred in him.

He had seen Nikita Rao’s article online. She had published a piece connecting the lotus tattoo to the unsolved cases. Brave girl. Reckless, too.

She would make a perfect offering.

And Jagendra?

He would be the witness.

The killer smiled beneath his mask.

He wasn’t just purging now.

He was sending a message.