THE_ALGORITHM_OF_FATE

System_Log: Day_01

The rain in Mumbai doesn't wash things away; it just makes everything louder.

Aryan sat on the 24th floor of a glass tower in Bandra Kurla Complex, watching the monsoon hammer against the window. His reflection was faint—tired eyes, dark circles, and the blue glow of three monitors reflecting off his glasses.

He was 29, a Senior Data Scientist for India’s largest AI firm, and currently, he was fighting with a ghost.

"Run diagnostics again," Aryan muttered, typing the command.

On his screen, the neural network was processing millions of images. He was building a generative model for a client—a simple AI meant to create realistic human faces for advertisements. But for the last week, the AI had been glitching.

Every 100th face it generated was the same.

It was a woman. She wasn't a celebrity. She wasn't anyone Aryan knew. But the AI was obsessed with her.
She had large, almond-shaped eyes, dark skin that glowed like polished copper, and a small, crescent-shaped scar just above her left eyebrow. In every image, she wore a saree that looked centuries old—deep crimson with gold zari work that hadn't been fashionable since the Maratha empire.

Aryan sighed and picked up. "Hello, Maa. Yes, I’m eating. No, I haven't looked at the biodata you sent."

"Arre, Aryan!" His mother’s voice crackled through the speaker, competing with the sound of a pressure cooker whistling in the background. "She is a dentist from Pune! Very fair, very tall. Just meet her once? For me?"

"I’m busy, Maa. The code is breaking," Aryan rubbed his temples.

"Code, code, code. You will marry that computer one day!" She hung up.

Aryan looked back at the screen. The processing bar hit 100%.
The image loaded.

It was her again.
But this time, the AI hadn't generated a still image. It had generated a 3-second video loop.
In the grainy video, the woman with the scar looked directly into the camera. She wasn't smiling. She looked terrified. And her lips moved.

There was no audio, but Aryan was good at reading patterns. He replayed the video ten times, mouthing the words along with her.

Kashi.
Find me in Kashi.

A chill went down Aryan’s spine that had nothing to do with the office air conditioning. Kashi was the ancient name for Varanasi—the city of the dead.

"System error," Aryan whispered to himself, reaching for his coffee. "It's just overfitted data. The dataset must have historical archives mixed in."

He grabbed his jacket. He needed air. He needed cutting chai and a cigarette, and he needed to stop looking at the eyes of a woman who didn't exist.

The Sea Link

Thirty minutes later, Aryan was standing under the awning of a tapri (tea stall) near the Bandra reclamation, sheltering from the rain. He took a sip of the hot, spicy tea. The ginger burned his throat in a good way.

Cars wooshed past, splashing water. The city smelled of wet mud and exhaust fumes.

"Bhaiya, one more sugar," a voice said next to him.

Aryan froze.
He knew that voice. He didn't know how he knew it, but the sound of it felt like a memory he hadn't made yet. It was melodic, slightly husky.

He turned his head slowly.

Standing next to him, shaking a wet umbrella, was a girl.
She was wearing jeans and a yellow kurti, soaked to the bone. She was wiping rainwater off her face.
She looked up at the tea seller, and the streetlights hit her face.

Aryan dropped his cup.
Hot tea splashed over his sneakers, but he didn't feel it.

It was the girl from the code.
The same almond eyes. The same dark skin.
And there, just above her left eyebrow, was a small, crescent-shaped scar.

She noticed him staring. She frowned, pulling her dupatta closer. "Excuse me? Do I know you?"

Aryan’s mouth opened, but his logic center had crashed. The probability of an AI hallucination walking into a tea stall in Bandra was zero. It was statistically impossible.

"You..." Aryan stammered. "You're in my computer."

The girl’s eyes widened. She took a step back, looking ready to run or scream for police. "What? Is this some kind of creep pick-up line?"

"No, no," Aryan raised his hands. "I mean... have you ever been to Varanasi?"

The anger on her face vanished instantly, replaced by a look of pure, unadulterated shock. The color drained from her face.

"Who sent you?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "How do you know about the dreams?"

"Dreams?" Aryan asked.

"I dream of a fire," she said, stepping closer, ignoring the rain blowing onto her face. "Every night for two weeks. I dream of a fire in Kashi. And I dream of a man..."

She looked at Aryan. She looked at his modern glasses, his corporate ID card, his wet hair.
She squinted, as if trying to see beneath the layers of 2025.

"...a man who looks exactly like you, but wearing armor."

Thunder cracked overhead, shaking the ground. The lights of the Sea Link flickered.
For a second, just a split second, Aryan didn't see the Mumbai skyline. He saw stone steps leading down to a dark river, and he smelled burning sandalwood.

"I'm Aryan," he said, extending a hand that was shaking.

The girl hesitated, then reached out.
"I'm Kavya," she said.

As their fingers touched, the smart-watch on Aryan’s wrist beeped a high-pitched warning.

It wasn't anxiety. It was recognition.