Ashoka: Journey Thought Myths

a wax bomb in the train

We needed to reach Varanasi as soon as possible. Magic was dying, simple spells like Rakshasurta which was to hide our presence a little bit weren't working. We were already on a train. It wasn't crowded, which was unusual, we were passing through fields and even some rivers. Trijya had volunteered for the guard duty. But none of us could sleep.
Around midnight, the train stopped at a station. Some people boarded the train, A couple of people came to our compartment too. As soon as we saw them we knew something was odd about them, none of them had eyes. Instead, there were holes, fire burning in them. There was nowhere for us to go.
But instead of attacking us, they approached us calmly. The middle of them, a man that should be in his thirties spoke: "We will burn, we will burn until she is free."
The women behind him nodded in agreement "Free her and you shall be free of the curse" they all spoke in unison. They blasted as if their bodies were made of wax, it covered most of the compartment. Wet wax-like thing.
The blast had been pretty strong, we knew it would attract attention, so we did the most stupid thing and jumped off the train.
The train wasn't even a mile away from the station and wasn't at a good pace. We landed safely into the rokes, well as safe as you can on a pile of rokes.
We were going back to that station where the train had stopped a few minutes ago.
"So any idea who they were?" I asked them
Bith of them looked clueless but Trijya responded: "the bigger question is which curse".
"I think they meant this curse," Rashi said and touched the back of my neck. Pain surged through my body as if someone had put a hot rod through my neck.
"Ow," I said "it hurts"
Trijya tried to see what it was, she looked puzzled at first but then said " panch". Obviously, Rashi punched her, "Not punch, panch the Sanskrit word".
" You mean 'five', like what five?"
But Trijya wasn't listening, her mind was somewhere else. "Rashi turn" Rashi did, it was there too. A symbol "५". It looked 4 but I knew that it was five. We checked and Trijya too had the same symbol.
It looked like someone had burned it onto them, but who and what was the curse?