**Author's Note – From Your Unstoppable Queen 🖤✨**
ShadowHearts, are you still breathing? Because after this chapter, you might not. Welcome to Chapter 11 — where forgotten places remember your scent, and the people you left behind… never left you. This is where secrets ache like fresh wounds. Where being found may be the most dangerous thing of all.
Take my hand now.
We don't walk — we descend.
---
**Recap of Chapter 10:**
Aanya and Veer crossed into the forbidden corridor, where light flickers backward and memories have teeth. Veer's scars whispered truths his lips still hid. The door screamed. The clock bled. And Aanya finally saw the girl from the mirror — the one who didn't blink.
She whispered: *"I never left."*
---
**Aanya's POV**
The hallway smelled like time that had gone sour.
Like the walls had soaked up too many secrets and were starting to rot from the inside.
Aanya's nightgown clung to her — wet from sweat or fear, she didn't know. Her robe trailed behind like a shadow with a heartbeat. The pendant Veer had given her earlier now pulsed faintly against her skin, as if remembering what she tried to forget.
"Where are we going?" she asked, breathlessly.
Veer turned, his black shirt half unbuttoned, his silver ring reflecting the moonlight pouring through the cracked ceiling.
"Somewhere the House doesn't want us to remember."
They moved past cracked portraits. Each one had their faces scratched out — except one.
Aunt Ira Verma.
Her eyes followed Aanya.
Always.
---
**Veer's POV**
The pendant had chosen her.
Again.
She didn't know what that meant.
Didn't know the House had already marked her — when she was barely ten, when her shadow first went missing in the mirror.
"Aanya," Veer murmured, his voice rough as gravel, "you need to remember Ananta."
"Why do you keep saying that name? Who was she?"
He stopped. The hallway was a mouth — and they had just stepped onto its tongue.
"Not who," he corrected. "*What.*"
---
**Flashback: The Day It Was All Forgotten**
Naira was laughing. Ananta held Aanya's hand.
It was a ritual gone wrong.
Ira Verma stood at the edge of the salt circle, clutching Veer's shoulders.
*"If the girl remembers, the door will scream."*
Veer had watched his sister — Naira — burn a page that should have never existed.
Aanya had cried.
Not because of pain.
Because she had kissed Veer right before it all went dark.
*"Don't forget me."* she had whispered.
*"I'll die before I do."* he had answered.
He did.
---
**Back to Present: Aanya's POV**
They stopped in front of the mirror door.
The one that hadn't reflected her since childhood.
Veer took her hand — warm, firm, trembling.
"We can't be found here. Not even by ourselves."
The door breathed.
Opened.
Inside was a room made of glass and ash.
A diary floated in the air — pages flipping by themselves.
One page stopped.
The ink bled out a name.
**"Ananta Verma"**
Aanya's legs gave out. Veer caught her.
"She was… your cousin. The girl the House chose before you."
"She died?"
"No," Veer said. "She *remembered*."
And in the far corner — a mirror boy watched. Crying.
"And he's still watching you forget."
---
The mirror shattered without a touch.
A scream rose from the glass.
A girl's voice.
*"Don't let her forget again!"*
The pendant around Aanya's neck burned against her skin. Her lips parted.
She said a name she didn't remember knowing:
**"Naira…"**
The diary burst into flames.
---
**Author's Note – Your Queen of Fire & Memory Aish🔥👑**
So now you know...
There was a girl before Aanya. There was a ritual. There was a kiss. And there was something forgotten — something forbidden.
But what if remembering costs more than forgetting ever did?
Next up in Chapter 12: *"Kiss Me Like It's the End of Time"* — expect slow-burning tension, twisted romance, deeper betrayals, and a truth only the dead dare speak.
Vote, scream, or whisper. But never forget—
**We weren't meant to be found.**