Inspector Ratan sat in his office, the rain tapping faintly against the window. His eyes were fixed on the table, but his mind was elsewhere.
Shyam was dead.
A single headshot. No struggle. No prints. No contacts in his phone.
"Why…?" Ratan muttered to himself. "Was he killed because he found out something? Or because they knew that we were getting too close?"
His thoughts were broken by a knock.
Constable Raju stepped in—young, alert, and always respectful. He was also Ratan's younger brother, though few at the station knew.
"Sir," he said, hesitating slightly, "I mean… bro—I brought the file you asked for."
He placed a worn, dusty file on the desk. Ratan opened it slowly. The yellowing papers crackled under his fingers.
Inside were records from old, unsolved cases—files buried long ago under bureaucracy and silence. The heading on one caught Raju's eye:
> The Black Rose & The Garden – Classified (12 years ago)
Raju swallowed. "Sir… why now? Why are they coming back?"
Ratan didn't look up. He turned the pages carefully, scanning reports of missing persons, strange symbols, a small school in another district where students vanished without a trace. A pattern that disappeared… until now.
He finally spoke.
"You know, Raju… 12 years ago, I was just a fresh officer. I saw things I wasn't ready to believe. There was a case… a girl who vanished from her school garden. All they found was a black rose… and a bloodstained diary page."
Raju blinked. "But that case was… shut down, right?"
"No," Ratan said quietly. "It was covered up."
He tapped the file.
"These people… whoever they are… they're not ordinary criminals. They work in symbols, secrets… mind games. They don't just kill. They erase."
Raju leaned in. "Then what do we do?"
Ratan stared at the last page in the file. It had a photo—grainy, taken from a distance—of a woman in a long coat standing near a garden of roses.
And on her wrist?
That same black rose with the crescent moon.
"We follow the roots," Ratan said. "No matter how deep they go."
Outside, lightning lit the sky.
And far away, in a locked school garden, one more rose began to bloom.