But she was calling to an empty kitchen. Because the man who had lived there, who had downloaded a forbidden PDF, who had whispered a sentence into the night—that man had never been here at all.

His phone buzzed. A message from his mother: "Beta, who is Raghav? I just found a photo of a man in my album. I don't remember his face."

Raghav scrolled. Page 2: a diagram of an inverted tree, roots in the sky. Page 3: a recipe for ink made from midnight shadow and crow feather ash. Page 4: a warning. Do not turn to page 7 unless you wish to be seen.

He scrolled. Page 9 was there now. One sentence in his own mother tongue: "I was never here."