The rain hadn’t stopped for two days.

Jagendra stood at the edge of the railway tracks, staring at the chalk outlines already blurred by the downpour. The girl’s body had been removed, but the crime scene still hummed with the memory of violence. A few constables smoked under a plastic sheet nearby, disinterested and half-asleep.

He crouched beside the bush where the killer had likely watched his prey.

That’s when he saw it.

A piece of paper—soaked, nearly pulp—wedged between two stones, fluttering weakly. Most would’ve dismissed it. But Jagendra had been trained by silence, by the subtle wrongness in the details.

He plucked it out carefully, unrolling it with slow fingers. The ink had mostly bled out, but a few characters remained legible.

“... jibanara mukti…”

Freedom through life. Or was it from life?

It was written in an ancient Odia script—archaic, almost pre-Sambalpuri in structure. Not something you'd find on the street or in a killer’s casual possession.

Jagendra pocketed the slip and got on his bike. There was only one man in Bhubaneswar who might be able to make sense of that script:

Pandit Narayan Shastri, a retired temple priest who now lived in seclusion near Dhauli Hills.

Shastri was waiting for him, as if he'd known Jagendra would come.

He looked up from a bundle of turmeric roots, eyes milky but sharp beneath their haze. “That paper you carry,” he said, voice gravelly, “is not from this time.”

Jagendra handed it over in silence. Shastri scanned it with trembling fingers.

“This verse... it’s from the Kamya Tantra. Forbidden. Burned in temples centuries ago.”

He traced the lines with reverence and fear.

“It speaks of purification through sacrifice. Of the lotus blooming only when fed by sin.”

Jagendra’s stomach tightened. “Do you think it’s connected to the murders?”

Shastri met his eyes. “No. This is not about murder.”

He paused.

“This is worship.”