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道に迷いました

𝐋' 𝐀 𝐏 𝐏 𝐄 𝐋   𝐃 𝐔   𝐕 𝐈 𝐃 𝐄

──── Kaliyah Vimala Rai ────

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道に迷いました

𝐂   𝐎   𝐍   𝐓   𝐄   𝐍   𝐓   𝐒

────── ♰ ──────

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playlist⠀⠀⠀⠀ info

excerpt⠀⠀⠀⠀ rudiments

psyche⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ aspect

condition⠀⠀combat info

ménage⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ archive

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道に迷いました

𝐏   𝐋   𝐀   𝐘   𝐋   𝐈   𝐒   𝐓

────── ♰ ──────

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❛ destroy nor Protect ❜

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道に迷いました

𝐀 𝐃 𝐌 𝐈 𝐍   𝐈 𝐍 𝐅 𝐎

────── ♰ ──────

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STATUS:⠀finished

AVAILABILITY:⠀open

TRIGGERS: Domestic abuse (emotional & psychological), Implied maternal disappearance / presumed homicide, Childhood emotional trauma, Recurrent themes of parental invalidation, loss of caregiver safety, forced silence, and hyper-independence from a young age. Complex PTSD symptoms, Mentions of self-neglect, violence, death.

PAIRINGS:⠀GXB, and GXG

CLAIMS:⠀fc: KaaviKiwi

HASHTAGS:⠀#ocreview

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道に迷いました

𝐄   𝐗   𝐂   𝐄   𝐑   𝐏   𝐓

────── ♰ ──────

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❛ The Seventh Day ❜

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The flame didn’t flicker. It recoiled, retracted, reserved, like it recognized her.

Kaliyah sat still on the floor, Salwar bunched around her legs, the edge of her braid damp against her spine. Her knees ached from the tile, but she didn’t shift. She wouldn’t dare. Not with the room watching. Not with the goddess looking back.

Seven wicks. One for each night. One for each shadow.

The lamp burned low and steady, casting its glow in slow, trembling circles across the marigold-draped altar. Smoke clung to the corners of the ceiling like something alive, thick, slow-moving, reluctant to rise. And behind it all, framed in gold leaf and cracked glass, was her.

Kalaratri.

Hair like a monsoon. Tongue like a warning. Eyes that had seen too much and still didn’t blink. She didn’t smile. She didn’t soothe. She didn’t welcome. She waited. Kaliyah’s mother knelt on the other side of the diya, shoulders drawn like a bowstring, lips moving in a whisper too quiet to catch. The flame lit her face from below, carving her into someone else, older, harder, almost holy. Kaliyah kept staring at the image. Her chest felt too tight for how still she was sitting.

“Why does she look like that?”

The question came out dry. Not afraid. Just… too loud.

Her mother didn’t respond. She traced a slow circle in the air with the incense stick, clockwise, then again, then once more. The scent of jasmine and smoke curled down Kaliyah’s throat like a secret.

“Why does she look so angry?”

Another silence. This one longer. Her mother didn’t look up. But her voice, when it came, was soft enough to shatter bone.

“She’s not angry, she’s just not waiting anymore. She’s our mother”

Kaliyah’s eyes snapped back to the painting. To the sword. The garland of severed heads. The bare feet, dusted in red. Something twisted beneath her ribs, cold, then hot, then still again.

“But… why her?” she asked. “Why do we worship her?”

This time, her mother didn’t pause. She reached for the first flame. Tilted her breath against it. And blew. The light blinked out in a breath.

“Because she doesn’t ask.”

Another breath. Another flame gone.

“Because she doesn’t beg.”

A third. Smoke bloomed from the plate.

“Because she terrifies them.”

Kaliyah didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. And when she looked up at the goddess again, the painting seemed different. No longer a picture. No longer a myth. Something closer. Something waiting.⠀⠀

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道に迷いました

𝐑 𝐔 𝐃 𝐈 𝐌 𝐄 𝐍 𝐓 𝐒

────── ♰ ──────

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❛ 𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐈𝐊𝐄𝐑𝐒 ❜

birth name⠀៸៸⠀nickname⠀៸៸⠀alias

name meaning

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Her mother named her Kaliyah. Not because it sounded pretty, but because it sounded like a warning. Something dangerous, maybe it was for safety?

Kali-yah.

Not the goddess of love, or luck, or gold-tipped blessings. The goddess who wore skulls as jewelry and spilled blood for balance. The one who opened her mouth and didn’t shut it for centuries. That Kali. The one they kept in the back of temples. Hidden. Framed in glass. Because she scared the wrong kind of people. She is the mother who will do terrible things to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Kaliyah was born under that name like a prophecy. No middle name. No initials. Just the kind of name that sharpens you before the world gets the chance.

Her father called her “this girl.” Never “beta.”

Her mother once called her Liya, softly, when brushing knots out of her hair, but that was before she vanished, and Kaliyah buried the name with her.

These days, she signs things as K. Not mysterious. Just careful. Careful people live longer.

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❛ 𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇 𝐈𝐍𝐅𝐎 ❜

written age⠀៸៸⠀birthday⠀៸៸⠀zodiac

place of birth (city, country etc.)

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She doesn’t being born. But she re the house. The coldness of it. The rituals that didn’t touch the floor. The tray of tulsi leaves on the altar that always wilted too fast. The way her father would read the paper like scripture, and her mother would serve tea like a silence offering. The television never too loud. The windows never wide open. The rules folded neatly into every corner.

She was born in Pune. Upper floor of a private hospital. C-section. No family photos. No relatives flying in with laddoos. Just her mother weeping quietly behind a curtain and her father asking if the nurse could turn off the chanting.

Her birthday falls in late October. Kalaratri. The seventh night of Navaratri. The night of the dark goddess.

Every year, the date ed like a hush. Her mother would light a diya. Her father would walk past them without looking. No candles. No cake. Just a flame, a stare, and silence.

If anyone had asked her zodiac, she would’ve said “whatever sign is born when a woman breaks.”

She doesn’t believe in horoscopes. But she believes in timing. She believes she was born in a rupture.

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❛ 𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑 ❜

gender⠀៸៸⠀amab/afab⠀៸៸⠀pronouns

presentation (eg. masculine)

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Woman. AFAB. She/her

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❛ 𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐓𝐘 ❜

race⠀៸៸⠀nationality⠀៸៸⠀species

list languages spoken/known

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South Asian. Indian.

She doesn’t say “proud.”

She doesn’t say “ashamed.”

She just says, “It’s where I’m from. Not where I’m going.”

She learned Hindi the way some kids learn piano, repetition, pressure, performance.

Marathi by ear, not heart. It still lives in the back of her throat like a stone.

English was survival. She polished it. Sharpened it. Let it slip between her teeth like a blade that sounds expensive.

Sanskrit, she learned on her own. Not enough to recite slokas. Just enough to translate the names of demons. Just enough to write mantras backwards in tattoo ink across people’s spines.

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❛ 𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐘𝐋𝐄 ❜

occupation⠀៸៸⠀class⠀៸៸⠀religion

housing type (eg. apartment)

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She tattoos for a living.

Not the delicate kind. Not Pinterest florals or infinity loops drawn for girls who still text their exes at 2 a.m. No. Her work hurts. Snakes with open mouths. Eyes that never blink. Weapons disguised as geometry. Prayers that read like curses, inked low on spines, across ribs, into the skin where shame used to live.

The studio’s underground. Unlicensed. Cash-only. You don’t find it unless someone tells you. Her chair’s in the back corner. A black stool. One lamp. No music. Clients come in talking big. Most don’t talk at all on the way out.

Outside of that, she picks up whatever pays, fixing wiring, fake IDs, once helped dig a hole she didn’t ask questions about. The city’s full of rich men with dirty hands and s they think are clever. She’s cracked better for less.

She stays just above broke. On purpose. The more you have, the easier they are to find you.

Her apartment’s on the second floor of a gym that smells like sweat and regret. One mattress. No frame. A hotplate. Three knives tucked in places no one thinks to look.

No photos.

No décor.

Just the hum of fluorescent lights and a growing list of names taped to the back of a drawer.

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❛ 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 ❜

sexuality⠀៸៸⠀romantic or⠀៸៸⠀lean

monogamous or polyamorous

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Bisexual.

She’s touched more skin than she’s let touch her. Kaliyah doesn’t do “types.” She does moments. A look that lingers too long. A hand that doesn’t flinch when she pulls away.

She’s not incapable of love. But love, to her, feels like walking barefoot through a room full of glass. And she knows herself too well to think she won’t end up bleeding.

Romantic? Rarely. Carefully. In pieces.

She believes in monogamy the way some people believe in ghosts:It’s terrifying. And most people wouldn’t survive it anyway.

She stays loyal, until she doesn’t. Until she smells fear in the space between conversations. Until someone says forever like they don’t know what that costs. Then she disappears. Always before dawn. Always before it can be taken from her.

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道に迷いました

𝐏     𝐒     𝐘     𝐂     𝐇     𝐄

────── ♰ ──────

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❛ 𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐋 ❜

mbti⠀៸៸⠀enneagram⠀៸៸⠀alignment

first impression (brief ver.)

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MBTI: INTJ - the Architect

They say she’s calculating. Cold. Quiet. That’s what people call things they don’t understand. But Kaliyah isn’t cold. She just doesn’t let the heat show until it burns. She watches the way others blink. Breathes slower than the room. Times her silences like landmines. She doesn’t ask questions, she waits for you to reveal the answers. You will. You always do. Her mind is a locked room with no windows. Not empty, just too full to let anyone in. Plans stacked like matchsticks. Grudges folded sharp as blades. Memories arranged spine-up, so she can re-read the pain when she needs to why she never lets go.

Enneagram: Type 8 with a 5 wing, The Challenger / The Observer

Control is safety. Information is protection. Vulnerability is… rarely worth the cost. Kaliyah isn’t afraid of conflict. She expects it. Lives two steps ahead of it. She doesn’t take orders. Doesn’t beg for forgiveness. Doesn’t offer excuses. And she doesn’t do second chances.

Chaotic Good

(but if you ask her, she’d say “aligned with nothing except consequence.”). She doesn’t believe in law. She believes in balance. The kind that doesn’t need permission. Yes, she’s dangerous. Yes, she bends rules until they break. But everything she does has purpose.

FIRST IMPRESSION

She walks in like she’s been here before, wherever here is. Doesn’t announce herself. Doesn’t smile. Doesn’t make eye unless you force her to. And if she does look at you? You’ll wish she hadn’t. Her stare is slow, silent, surgical. Like she’s weighing your worth. Like she already knows what you did and is trying to decide whether it’s worth her time. Most people don’t her name after the first time. They just how they felt when she ed, like something sharp brushed too close to the skin.

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❛ 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐒 ❜

trait one⠀៸៸⠀trait two⠀៸៸⠀trait three ៸៸ trait four

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Trait One: Disciplined

Kaliyah doesn’t believe in chaos. Not because it isn’t real, but because she’s lived it, slept beside it, watched it move through the halls of her childhood home wearing her father’s cologne. So now? Now she folds her clothes like apology. She lines her boots at ninety degrees by the door. She triple-checks locks, wipes down blades in silence, eats in patterns, breathes in fours. Because discipline is the only god that’s never failed her.

Trait Two: Observant

She sees everything. Not because she wants to, because she has to. Kaliyah learned early that pain doesn’t come from the loud places. It comes from the glance that lingers too long. The footstep that’s too soft. The smile that doesn’t meet the eyes. She watches body language like it’s a second language. She knows how long you hesitate before speaking. She knows what you really meant when you laughed too hard. And when you think you’re being subtle?

Trait Three: Loyal (but never blindly)

She doesn’t love often. But when she does, it’s warpaint. Not perfume. Kaliyah’s loyalty is a silent thing. It won’t post about you. It won’t write poems. It won’t ask you to prove yourself. It will your name when no one else does. It will hide the body. It will walk beside you into ruin and only ask once: Are you sure?

Trait Four: Ruthless (but never without reason)

She stopped apologizing for keeping herself alive. There’s no softness in her touch unless she puts it there. No forgiveness unless it’s earned. No mercy for the kind of pain that talks sweet in public and stabs in private. Kaliyah doesn’t believe in “good people.” She believes in people who don’t get away with it this time.

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❛ 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄𝐒 & 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄𝐒 ❜

like one⠀៸៸⠀like two⠀៸៸⠀dislike one

dislike number two

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𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄𝐒

Boxing

the sound of gloves hitting heavy bag. Not the fight. Not the crowd. Not the blood. Just impact. Leather meeting resistance. Force made visible. There’s something in that rhythm, hit, breathe, hit again, that feels cleaner than therapy. More honest than apologies. The bag doesn’t flinch. It doesn’t talk back. It doesn’t pretend to love her. It takes. And she gives.

Forgotten books

Libraries no one goes to. Back rooms of secondhand stores. Spines with dust in their teeth. She runs her fingers along the shelves, like maybe one of them will split open and show her how to forget. She doesn’t even read half of them. She just likes that they’re still standing.

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𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄𝐒

Waiting Rooms

Hospitals. Offices. Clinics. Anywhere with ticking clocks and people whispering about things they can’t control. She can’t sit still in them. Can’t breathe right. Too many chairs. Too much paperwork. Too many ghosts in the corners pretending to be furniture. The smell of disinfectant makes her jaw clench. If you ever see her in one, you won’t have to ask how bad it is. She wouldn’t be there unless there was no other choice.

“you’re just like your mother”

She’s heard it said with pity. With accusation. Once, with awe. Each time, it lands differently. Sometimes it burns. Sometimes it breaks her. Sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps her from becoming like her father. But she still hates it. Because no one ever says it like a blessing.

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道に迷いました

𝐀     𝐒     𝐏     𝐄     𝐂     𝐓

────── ♰ ──────

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❛ 𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐈𝐀𝐋 ❜

eye colour⠀៸៸⠀hair col⠀៸៸⠀feature

defining feature number two

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eye colour

Dark brown, almost black. But not flat. Her eyes are layered, like soil that’s been turned over too many times. When she looks at you, it feels less like she’s seeing you, and more like she’s reading what you’re trying to hide. And often wears coloured lenses

hair colour

Black. Not the dyed kind. The kind that absorbs light and doesn’t give it back. Thick, heavy, always a little windblown, like it’s just come from a fight or a prayer.

features

Her mouth is almost always expressionless. Not resting. Guarded. People expect it to break into a smile. It doesn’t. But when she does smile, rare, deliberate, it’s sharp. No teeth. Just threat.

The scar beneath her right cheekbone. Faint, pale. You’d miss it unless you were close enough to deserve her fury.

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❛ 𝐏𝐇𝐘𝐒𝐈𝐐𝐔𝐄 ❜

height⠀៸៸⠀body type/shape⠀៸៸⠀feature

defining feature number two

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height

5’8” barefoot. She walks taller.

body type/shape

Lean, built like someone who trains to withstand. Everything about her body speaks of tension stored, not released

feature

Her hands. Rough palms, ink-stained knuckles, faint calluses on each finger. They’re not dainty. They’re useful. When she touches you, it feels like being chosen. When she pulls away, it feels like punishment.

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❛ 𝐒𝐓𝐘𝐋𝐄 ❜

tattoos⠀៸៸⠀piercings⠀៸៸⠀style/aesthetic

signature aroma (eg. perfume)

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tattoos

A spine full of Sanskrit. Each vertebra marked with one syllable of a prayer that reads like a threat if you translate it right. On her ribs: her mother’s handwriting, traced from a line in the hidden notebook. “     ” Her fingers? Clean. Her arms? Scarred but empty. She tattoos for others. Not herself. Not anymore.

piercings

Nose ring, gold, thin, kept from her mother’s last jewelry box. Three piercings in her left ear. One in her right. Nothing flashy.

style/aesthetic

Combat boots with cracked soles. Black hoodies that hang off her like armor. Fitted tanks. Faded jeans. She dresses like someone who can run. Or fight. Or vanish.

signature aroma (eg. perfume)

She smells like sandalwood ash, worn leather, and wind over concrete. A ghost of incense. A hint of metal.

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道に迷いました

𝐂 𝐎 𝐍 𝐃 𝐈 𝐓 𝐈 𝐎 𝐍

────── ♰ ──────

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❛ 𝐏𝐇𝐘𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐋 ❜

status (eg. healthy)⠀៸៸⠀allergies

list medical conditions

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Kaliyah is, by most standards, healthy. But she doesn’t treat her body like a temple. She treats it like a blade, useful, honed, and occasionally cracked from overuse. Sleep comes irregularly, food comes when she re, and water comes only when she feels the burn of a headache she can’t outrun. Her body has learned to live in states of almost: almost fainting, almost healed, almost burning out. But never broken. She won’t allow it. She has no major allergies, unless you count weakness. But she does avoid scented oil. Not because it harms her. Because it smells like her mother’s wrists. And some ghosts aren’t worth inhaling. Her medical records are minimal. Purposefully. What’s real stays unwritten. She carries chronic tension in her shoulders, like her body’s still bracing for a slap that never came.

She has occasional dizzy spells when she hasn’t eaten, or when she’s spent too long pretending she’s not exhausted. And there’s an old, untreated fracture in her left hand, from a night she doesn’t talk about.

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❛ 𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐋 ❜

status (eg. healthy)⠀៸៸⠀phobias

list mental health conditions

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There’s no therapist on her call list. No prescriptions lined up in the cabinet. No paper trail that says what she is or isn’t coping with. But if you watched her long enough, you’d see it. The way she keeps her back to walls in public places. The way she startles, not visibly, just in the eyes, when footsteps approach from behind. The way she goes days without answering her phone, not because she’s busy, but because sometimes even existence feels too loud. Call it what you want: hypervigilance. Complex trauma. PTSD. She just calls it survival. Her mind is a locked door with a mirror on the other side. She knows what lives there, grief with a new face, guilt that doesn’t ask permission, memories too sharp to touch. But she doesn’t open it. Not all the way. She’s not afraid of heights, or blood, or fire. But she can’t stand the sound of heavy keys jangling behind her. Or the feeling of her hands being held down, even in play. There’s something ancient in the way she flinches at kindness. Like her body still thinks it’s a trap.⠀

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道に迷いました

𝐂     𝐎     𝐌     𝐁     𝐀     𝐓

────── ♰ ──────

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❛ 𝐅𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐒𝐓𝐘𝐋𝐄 / 𝐒𝐊𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐒 ❜

style (eg. hands on, magic)⠀៸៸⠀skill

insert skill⠀៸៸⠀insert skill

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Style: hands-on, low and close.

Kaliyah doesn’t fight like she’s trying to win. She fights like she’s trying to end it, fast, clean, without fanfare. No high kicks. No spinning theatrics. Just knees, elbows, broken rhythm, and a shoulder to the throat when you least expect it. It’s not elegant. It’s efficient. She learned in back alleys, sweat-stained gyms, and silence. Her style is all about precision. She studies patterns the way some people study scriptures, then breaks them with surgical violence.

Skill – Hand-to-hand combat (close-quarters)

She’s been trained enough to be lethal, but not enough to be predictable. She’s built her own system from what worked, boxing footwork, Krav Maga ts, pure instinct. She aims for ts, throats, ribs. She never throws the first punch. She just throws the last one.

Skill – Knife handling

Not theatrical. Not showy. She’s not a blade dancer. She keeps one hidden in her boot, one in the side of her jacket, and one in the seam of her bag. She’s cut rope, skin, tires, and once,quietly, a man’s seatbelt after he locked her in. She doesn’t spin it in her hand. She just makes sure you don’t see it coming.

Skill – Lockpicking & stealth movement

She doesn’t kick down doors. She disappears before you realize they were ever opened. She’s been slipping out of windows since she was a child. Now, she slips through security systems like breath through cracked glass.

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❛ 𝐖𝐄𝐀𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒 + 𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐎𝐔𝐑 ❜

weapon⠀៸៸⠀weapon⠀៸៸⠀

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Weapon – Folding knife

Worn, matte black. She’s had it for years. The handle’s carved with three notches, she won’t say what they mean. The blade doesn’t shine anymore. That’s how she likes it. It’s not for show. It’s for stopping things.

Weapon – Brass knuckles

Small. Sleek. Slips into her pocket like a secret. She keeps them for when someone gets too close. They leave marks. She doesn’t.

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道に迷いました

𝐌     𝐄     𝐍     𝐀     𝐆     𝐄

────── ♰ ──────

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❛ 𝐆𝐔𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐍 ❜

Vimala Rai⠀៸៸⠀34 (at time of disappearance) ⠀៸៸ Mother

Presumed deceased. Officially: “absent.”

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Vimala moved like she had music in her bones, even when the house was silent. She used to dance, once. Before marriage. Before her husband insisted the world was watching. Before her ankles learned to stop ringing with silver and started learning how to keep still. She wasn’t loud. That was the first thing everyone said. She wasn’t loud, wasn’t bold, wasn’t the kind of woman who started wars. Vimala knew how to disappear into the edges of a room, and still hold the center with just a glance. She wore jasmine/sandlewood oil on her wrists. Lit incense in the early hours. Whispered prayers under her breath even after Kaliyah stopped believing they worked. She taught her daughter how to braid hair, how to sharpen pencils with a blade instead of a sharpener, how to keep secrets tucked behind locked teeth. She wasn’t weak.

That’s the part that makes Kaliyah ache most. Because everyone thinks she left. They don’t know about the floorboard. The notebook. The bruises that never bruised right. The way she kissed Kaliyah’s forehead too hard the night before she vanished, like a goodbye disguised as routine. Kaliyah never found a body. But she keeps the ring her mother hid in her pocket like an unspoken sentence. She never says her name out loud.

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❛ 𝐆𝐔𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐍 ❜

Vikram Rai⠀៸៸⠀ 42 (at time of estrangement)⠀៸៸ Father

Alive. Somewhere. Untouched.

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If you ask the city who Vikram Rai is, they’ll say “doctor.” “Philanthropist.” “Man of great discipline.” If you ask Kaliyah, she’ll say nothing at all. Because naming monsters gives them power, and he already took too much. Vikram didn’t shout. That would’ve made things obvious. He spoke in precise disappointment. Smiled in ways that made your stomach twist. He held affection like a scalpel: cold, sharp, clinical. To the world, he was charm and pressed collars. To his wife, he was law. To his daughter, he was a slow undoing dressed as routine. He never hit her. Not with hands. Just with absence. Just with expectation. Just with the kind of silence that told her she was a burden he was tolerating.

He called her “this girl.” Rarely “Kaliyah.” Never “mine.” He erased Vimala like a smudge. Didn’t file a report. Didn’t cry. Just packed her things in cardboard like old invoices. She still dreams about his voice. Not like a memory. Like a threat she hasn’t finished answering.

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❛ 𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 ❜

Noor Ameen⠀៸៸ 19 (at time of death) ⠀៸៸ Almost

Deceased.

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Noor was the kind of person Kaliyah could never quite define. Not a best friend. Not a lover. Not a sister. Something in between. Something more dangerous. She met Noor in a basement studio where someone was learning to tattoo and someone else was learning to run drugs. Noor wasn’t doing either. She was sketching a phoenix on a napkin, barefoot on a milk crate, chewing on the end of a pencil like it had betrayed her.

They spoke once. Then again. Then not at all for six months.

Then one night, Noor stitched the side of Kaliyah’s palm after a fight went wrong, wanted to draw something. She did. Kaliyah let her. Noor never asked for explanations. She just watched. Listened. Waited for the cracks. And when Kaliyah didn’t give them, Noor smiled like she already knew where they were. She was messy. Loud. All bangles and chipped polish and too many opinions. She walked into danger like she’d been dared. She wore grief like it was part of her wardrobe, switched in and out, day by day. Kaliyah didn’t trust her. But she didn’t push her away either.

Not until Noor did it for her. Three years ago, Noor got in a car with the wrong man. Someone she thought she could read. Someone who wore promises like perfume. The cops said “overdose.” The morgue said “accident.” The city said nothing at all. Kaliyah never bought any of it. She carved Noor’s name into her list. Not under targets.

Not under regrets. Just a single word: Unfinished.

Noor’s sketches still live at the bottom of Kaliyah’s drawer. Some nights, she takes them out just to remind herself that some people saw her and stayed. And others didn’t get the chance.

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道に迷いました

𝐀    𝐑    𝐂    𝐇    𝐈    𝐕    𝐄

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❛ Backstory ❜

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There was a silence in that house that would make your skin itch.

Not the peaceful kind, not the hush of pages turning or mothers humming in the kitchen. No, this bared its teeth, watched you, crawled up your spine and whispered, Be still, be still, don’t break the silence. It hung in the hallway like smoke after a fire no one spoke of. It curled behind picture frames and inside drawers and in the delicate places where girls learned too early how to fold themselves small.

That was where Kaliyah grew up. In a house full of ghosts that hadn’t died yet.

Who once danced like a flame, bright, so bright had been thrusted into the puddles of duty, extinguished. Vimala, her mother, had wrists like reeds, always bending, always holding. She was made of jasmine oil and soft eyes and all the apologies her mouth could no longer form. She never raised her voice. Not once. Not even when things broke. Not even when her husband’s words came down like knives and there was nothing left to sew herself shut with.

And her father?

The bloody man who performed surgeries out of kindness? The man that would be desperate to receive adoration at parties yet be ruthless behind closed doors. The man who wore his aggression like a wedding ring, it fit perfectly, shined brightly, too bright. He never struck. No, not him. That would be considered inelegant. Instead assessed. He dismissed.

He expected.

Everything.

And his own blood gave him nothing.

She learned quickly that in a house like that, survival was a hidden art. How to eat without making noise, how to smile at guests and sit up straight and never, ever ask where the bruises went in the morning. She learned how to become invisible by thirteen. By fifteen, she didn’t need to be told when to leave a room. She. Just. knew.

There was a particular night she re. Not because anything happened, but because it didn’t. Her mother moved like glass that night, floating from stove to sink to table, never looking up. Her father sipped his wine like blood and hummed under his breath. Kaliyah had the sudden, dizzying thought that she might still be asleep. That the stillness had slipped past silence and into unreality. And then she looked at her mother’s eyes, eyes that were once fireworks, but only the residue of ash remained.

The next morning, she was gone.

No note. No suitcase. No door slammed or plates broken or scream left behind to hold onto. Just gone. Like vapor. Her father told her, in the same voice he used to recite recipes, that Vimala had gone “back home.”

“Your mother was the kind of woman to bow to gods she couldn’t see, but not to the man who kept her fed.,” he said, spreading ghee on his toast.

And just like that, the narrative was rewritten. But Kaliyah, Kaliyah had grown up watching his hands. She knew what silence meant. She knew what absence really cost. She didn’t weep. Didn’t ask. But that night, she crept into her mother’s room, the one already being cleared out, and pulled up the floorboard behind the closet. It had creaked once, months ago, and her mother had flinched so hard the tray she was holding tipped.

Beneath the warped floorboard: a notebook.

Small. Unremarkable. Bound in cracking leather and silence. The kind of silence that watches you when your back is turned. The kind of silence that waits. It smelled like dust and something older, like jasmine oil and breath held too long. She opened it with hands that already knew how to shake without showing it. Inside: her mother’s voice. But not the lullaby voice. Not the bedtime story voice. Not the voice that taught her why gods had so many arms, to protect, to destroy, to hold all the things the world was too cruel to carry.

No.

This voice was jagged. Frantic. Sacred in its ruin. A voice that had clawed its way out of a cage just long enough to leave something behind. The pages weren’t neat. They were torn at the corners, creased with panic. The ink bled in places. The paper wore fingerprints like bruises. Dates were scrawled beside names. A pattern. A system. A map of silence and what it cost.

But what stopped her breath was the repetition.

Over and over again, in looping, desperate script, her mother had written one line.

No one will come to save me.

Again.

And again.

And again.

It filled the pages like a chant. A prayer turned into warning. At first, the words were clean. Then they frayed, looped wider, darker, smeared. By the end, they didn’t look written anymore. They looked carved. Etched in a shaking hand that wanted someone, anyone, to listen. To see. Kaliyah saw.

The notebook was a heartbeat in her lap. Thudding. Alive. It breathed. It screamed without sound. She felt it press against her ribs like it wanted inside.

She didn’t sleep that night.

Or the next.

The silence in the house changed. It was no longer waiting. It knew she knew. The walls pulsed. The light flickered. Even the air seemed to watch her. Her father’s footsteps felt louder. His smiles sharper. The house became a coffin with fresh paint. So she waited. She waited with her teeth clenched and her eyes open, tracing that phrase under her tongue until it tasted like prophecy.

She left at sixteen.

No sobs. No suitcase. No final, trembling look back. Just the blade tucked in her waistband, the notebook pressed flat to her chest like armor, and the tarnished silver ring her mother used to wear, her hands shaking too badly to put it on in the end, but never letting go of it, not even once. She didn’t run. She walked. Down the hallway. Past the portraits. Past the photo where her father still smiled like a god and her mother stood two inches behind him, spine straight but eyes already folding. She walked out the front door like she’d been rehearsing the moment since birth. She didn’t slam it. No. That would’ve been granted rage. She closed it gently. Softly. So softly, it echoed.

Not a goodbye.

A curse.

And the world outside didn’t greet her. It tested her. The city was made of frost and concrete and neon-lit hunger. It snarled at her ankles. It flashed teeth. It told her she would not last. She didn’t have a plan. Just purpose. And she was hungry for it. Not for redemption. Not for survival. For reckoning. The kind that arrives slow and barefoot in the night, that doesn’t raise its voice but still clears a room. Kaliyah entered the world of the forgotten like a whisper through a locked door, silent, steady, final.

She learned fast.

How to fight without gloves, without permission. Her fists weren’t made for boxing rings. They were made for promises broken too many times. Her knuckles split often, but she never bandaged them. She let them bleed, let the pain stitch itself into memory. Her hands became sermons. She ate when she could. Stale ramen. Stolen apples. Gas station bread that tasted like chemicals and grit. But hunger wasn’t unfamiliar, it was familial. She wore it like her mother wore bangles: loosely, but always. She didn’t sleep so much as stall. One eye always open. One hand always curled around something sharp. The nights were longer than the days, hours folded in on themselves, wrapped in the wet breath of the city, each minute whispering, He could find you. He could find you. But he never did. And that made it worse.

Men tried.

They always tried.

To corner her. To charm her. To own her. She learned to hold her breath when they got close. Learned how to angle her smile just wide enough to distract, then vanish before they figured out she wasn’t flirting, she was marking exits. Her body wasn’t a trap. It was an exit wound waiting to happen. She wore darkness like eyeliner, thick, unapologetic, smudged by morning. The shadows didn’t scare her. They made space. Made cover. Made her feel known. Her secrets became her currency. She didn’t speak. She watched. Memorized patterns. Postures. Weaknesses. She could tell what kind of man someone was by how he spoke to waitresses. By how he sat when he thought no one was watching. She didn’t collect friends. She collected leverage.

And when she finally found the tattoo studio, its windows painted black, its owner chain-smoking grief by the hour, she stepped in like someone who already belonged. Mads, the woman who ran it, didn’t ask for ID. She looked at Kaliyah’s eyes and said, “You draw?”

Kaliyah said yes.

Mads handed her a mop. They didn’t speak for the first three weeks.

It was perfect.

At night, she practiced on fake skin. On oranges. On her thighs. The needle sang, and her hands stopped shaking. Pain became precision. Trauma became design. Her first real tattoo wasn’t art. It was a warning. A single phrase, etched around her ribs in a looping scrawl that mimicked her mother’s trembling hand:

She etched that line like a boundary. Like a curse. Like a spell made of scar tissue and ink. When she looked in the mirror afterward, she didn’t cry. She smiled for the first time in two years, and it looked like teeth. Now, she doesn’t talk about the past. She doesn’t talk much at all. Words feel cheap. Paper-thin. But memory? Memory is thick. She carries it in her spine. In her mouth. In her refusal to flinch.

There’s a list in her drawer. A growing one. Names. Faces. Systems. The kinds of men who know how to smile just right for the camera, who fund charities with one hand and silence women with the other. Politicians. Surgeons. Judges. Her father taught her what power looks like in a suit.

Now she makes sure to write it down. Not to expose. To . Because one day, it won’t be a list. It’ll be a target. She’s not interested in justice. Justice, she learned, is the lie the system tells you while it eats you alive. It’s paperwork. Protocol. The right kind of crying. The right kind of dying. Too soft. Too slow. Too late.

it is correction. She is correction, The kind with teeth. The kind with fire. The kind that wears steel-toed boots and doesn’t ask for an apology because it already came too late. She doesn’t knock on the door. She removes it. She doesn’t scream anymore. Doesn’t beg. Her silence is no longer surrender. It’s a sharpened blade. Every morning she opens her eyes and re that silence isn’t emptiness, it’s a shape. A coffin. A room. A bruise. A name unspoken.

And she is going to fill it.

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Notes