ll Ghuroor Ke Badal غرور کے بادل ll

16. **Chapter Sixteen**

The cold, dim light of the early morning filtered through the small gaps in the curtains, casting long shadows across the room. Meher’s body felt heavy with exhaustion, her mind clouded by the torrent of emotions that had consumed her for hours. She had spent the entire night knocking on the door, screaming for help, but each cry fell into the void of silence. The walls around her seemed to echo with emptiness. No one came. No one answered.

Her face, once composed and confident, was now a portrait of distress. Her eyes were swollen and bloodshot, red from hours of relentless crying. Her nose was flushed, streaked with the remnants of her tears. Her hair, usually neat and tidy, hung in messy tangles around her face, strands sticking to her damp skin. She could feel the ache in her chest as the weight of helplessness settled in, making it harder to breathe.

Sitting on the floor by the main door, Meher had been trying to compose herself, willing the tears to stop, but they came anyway. She wiped her face with trembling hands, her nails digging into the skin, as if she could erase the overwhelming despair that clung to her. But no matter how hard she tried, the sense of being trapped, both physically and emotionally, remained.

The tick of the clock was the only sound that broke the suffocating silence, its rhythmic beat mocking her. It was already 4 a.m. The hours had slipped by without any sign of help, and she felt the weight of the isolation more sharply with each passing minute. The house felt like a prison, and she was its captive.

With a sudden surge of determination, Meher wiped her tears away and stood up. Her legs were unsteady, her body trembling from both exhaustion and fear. She couldn’t sit here any longer. She couldn’t wait for something, someone, to come to her rescue. She needed to take action.

Meher stumbled across the room, her bare feet making soft sounds against the cool wooden floor. Her eyes darted from one corner to the other, searching desperately for any escape. She approached the windows one by one, peering through the thick curtains that blocked her view. But every time she looked outside, she saw only guards patrolling the grounds, their figures visible through the thin veil of the night. There was no way out this way.

She moved toward the kitchen, hoping to find something she had missed, a crack in the fortress that surrounded her. Her gaze caught on a small, narrow window on the backside of the house, almost hidden from view. It was higher up, but she could see the faint glimmer of the outside world through the glass. Hope flickered in her chest. Maybe this is it.

Without hesitation, Meher grabbed a chair and dragged it to the center of the room. She piled cushions from the couch on top of it to make it tall enough to reach the window. Her hands were trembling as she balanced herself on the makeshift platform, her breath coming in short, shaky gasps. The pressure in her chest increased, but she focused all her energy on the window, on the possibility of escaping this place.

She strained her arms and legs, pushing herself up as she reached for the window. Her fingertips brushed the cold glass before her hands found the edge. She pulled with all her might, managing to shift the window open just enough to squeeze through. Her heart raced, adrenaline coursing through her veins.

As she made her way out, her foot slipped on the edge of the frame, sending her tumbling to the ground. Her body crashed into the soft grass below, but her forehead collided with a sharp stone hidden in the darkness. A sharp pain shot through her head, and she gasped in shock as a thin trickle of blood dripped down her face. The coldness of the stone against her skin sent a wave of dizziness through her, but she shook her head to clear the fog.

With a disoriented groan, Meher slowly pushed herself to her feet. The world around her spun as she stumbled, her vision blurred. She raised a hand to her forehead, feeling the blood that stained her fingers. The darkness enveloped her, and the sounds of the night seemed to press in from all sides. But she couldn’t afford to stop. Not now. She couldn’t let herself be caught again.