𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬 | 𝟏𝟖+

𝟐𝟎. Panic

･:*࿔.ೃ⋆❀˚༺☆༻°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

Ikshita pov

I woke up in darkness.

Not the cozy, romantic kind people write poems about — no, this was the kind that swallows you whole. It was everywhere. The walls, the curtains, even the damn bed. Everything was dark — black, deep, endless.

For a horrifying second, I thought my eyesight was gone.

Yes. Gone.

I blinked once. Twice. Thrice. Nothing.
Still dark.

And then, like a trigger snapping inside me, it hit as before.

The same situation i have faced before.

I looked around and the darkness sowed something in me.

And suddenly I wasnt here but there.

Flashes. Shouts. That voice. That pain.

"Naahi! Nahi, lemme goooo NOOOOOOO ! Don't—don't hit me!"

My own voice echoed in the room, trembling, lost. My body jerked upright, my breath catching in my throat as those old memories clawed their way back up. My palms went cold, my heart thrashing inside my chest like it was trying to escape.

"I need... I need to call someone..." I whispered to myself, fumbling blindly across the nightstand. My hand hit something hard — a glass maybe — then nothing.

"Phone... phone kaha gaya..."

"Alaiyaaa!" I called out, my voice shaky and uneven.

Silence.

"Hello? Aloo?" I tried again, half-panicked, half-delirious.

Still no reply.

My eyes adjusted slightly, and that's when I saw it, on the far wall, glowing faintly from the moonlight slicing through the curtains — a painting.

Not just any painting.

A roaring lion.

Oh no.
No, no, no, no, no.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKAAAAAAAAAARSHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MEHROTRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

I screamed from the pit of my stomach, with all the panic, rage, and embarrassment of someone who had just realized she'd slept in the lion's den — quite literally.

And almost instantly, the door swung open.

The tall, infuriating silhouette of him stood there,Aakarsh Singh Mehrotra, shirt slightly unbuttoned, hair messy, eyes sharp even in half-sleep.

He looked at me — wide-eyed, standing in his bed, clutching the blanket like a child caught in a haunted house — and I could practically see amusement ghosting at the corner of his lips.

I froze.

Because this wasn't a nightmare.
This was worse — I'd woken up in his room.

"Why are you screaming early in the morning?" his voice came from the doorway, calm, lazy, utterly unfazed, but I didn't even give him a chance to finish.

I shot up from the bed, clutching the blanket like armor, and brushed past him before his words could trap me there. The air in that room felt heavy, suffocating, dark.

No.

I couldn't breathe in there.

My bare feet hit the cold marble floor as I ran down the corridor, searching for light, for space, for something open.