Nikita Rao hadn’t slept. Not properly. Not since she received the photo of the bound girl. That image haunted her more than she wanted to admit. The police weren’t talking, and her editor had warned her off the case.

But she didn’t listen to warnings. Not when girls were dying.

She sat cross-legged on her bed, laptop open, coffee gone cold beside her. She wasn’t searching the web. She was digging through her own drafts—the ones that never got published. The ones that scared her editor into silence.

And there it was: “Padma Mandir: Where Devotion Meets Darkness”—an article she wrote 14 months ago and was told to “pull immediately.”

She remembered visiting the temple during an old story on abandoned heritage sites. But something had felt... off. The villagers had refused to talk. An old woman had even whispered, “That temple eats women, beti. Don't go close.”

In her draft, she'd detailed rumors of secret rituals and unregistered pilgrims visiting the site during moonless nights. There was even mention of a missing priestess from the 90s. No investigation had ever been launched.

Nikita’s fingers danced across the keyboard, pulling metadata from the photos she’d taken back then. One image stood out—faint graffiti scrawled on the base of a crumbling pillar.

It matched the symbol from the crime scene.

A lotus, wrapped in thorns.

She zoomed in, enhancing the grainy image. Below the symbol were faded letters, half-erased by time:

“B.P.S.”

Her heart skipped.

She knew those initials.

Bhakta Padma Sangha—an obscure, supposedly-defunct spiritual society known for fringe tantric practices. They had once operated out of Bhubaneswar before vanishing from public records.

But if this killer was reviving their ideology… it meant the murders weren’t random.

They were rituals of ascension.

She sat back, breath shallow. Suddenly, every warning she’d ignored came rushing back. Every piece of this puzzle felt more dangerous now.

She had to find Jagendra.

Because if what she was thinking was true…

She was next on the list.