Chapter One: The Whisper in His Eyes
From the very moment Aryan took his first breath, something felt off—strangely calculated, unnervingly quiet. He didn't cry like other newborns. Instead, he looked at the world with eyes too focused, too aware.
By the time he was five, his parents had learned to obey his silence more than his words. When Aryan didn't want to eat vegetables, he didn't throw tantrums. He simply convinced his mother that she'd cooked too much, that the leftovers would go to waste, that maybe—just maybe—she didn't really want him to eat that today. And she believed him.
At school, Aryan wasn't the loudest or the strongest. But he always got his way. Teachers praised him even when he hadn't done much. Classmates followed him blindly into plans that somehow always benefited him most. No one noticed how he nudged them—just a comment here, a raised eyebrow there, a carefully planted doubt.
"People don't really make decisions," he once told his mirror. "They think they do, but I just offer the idea. Their minds do the rest."
By ten, Aryan had become something of a myth in his neighborhood. The boy who could calm a fight with one sentence. The boy whose enemies mysteriously changed their minds—or disappeared from his life entirely.
But one evening, as he sat quietly under the banyan tree near the old temple, a new voice whispered back from the wind.
"You think you're the master of minds, Aryan. But who's been whispering to you?"
For the first time in his young life, Aryan felt a chill he couldn't reason away.
Chapter Two: The Mirror's Secret
Aryan couldn't shake the voice. It haunted him in dreams, echoed through empty rooms, and sometimes flickered across the faces of people he manipulated. For the first time, he felt like a puppet—strings moving, but not by his hand.
At school, things started to change. His tricks weren't working as smoothly. His best friend, Dev, suddenly began questioning him.
"Why do you always get what you want?" Dev asked one afternoon, staring hard. "You ever wonder why people listen to you… even when they don't want to?"
Aryan shrugged, trying to mask the unease crawling under his skin. "Maybe I just make sense."
But Dev didn't laugh. "Or maybe there's something else. Something wrong."
That night, Aryan returned to the mirror—the same one he spoke to often, the one that had always felt more than just glass. But this time, the reflection blinked before he did.
He stumbled back.
"What are you?" Aryan whispered, heart pounding.
The reflection leaned forward, a twisted grin spreading across its face.
"I'm the part of you you've ignored. The truth you've hidden. The voice you borrowed."Aryan stared in horror.
"You thought manipulation came naturally. But someone gave it to you. A gift... or a curse."
The mirror's surface shimmered like water, and the face was no longer his. It was older, colder. Eyes deep like wells with no bottom.
"If you want answers," it said, "you'll need to find the girl who resisted you."
Aryan's mind raced. One girl had once seen through him. Naira. She moved away years ago after a strange incident Aryan had buried in his memory.
But now, it was time to remember.