"She was going for my baby!" The mother wailed, tears welling in her eyes as quickly as the blood now flowed down the woman's forehead. "She was going to at her!"

Saroshi sat on the very charpai, its jute creaking softly under her weight. Her gaze was fixed, unblinking, on the small bundle cradled gently in her lap. It was still, except for the shallow rise and fall of its tiny chest, a rhythm so faint it was barely there.

The rain was long gone, the aroma of jasmine dissolved and replaced with the smell of wood smoke from the evening chulhas, usually a comforting scent, but today, it felt acrid, like ash in her mouth. Around her, the usual clamour of the village - children's shrieks, the clang of metal pots, the lowing of cattle - seemed muted, pushed into the background by a heavy, unspoken tension.

They had been quiet for a while now, those men and women who had gathered sometime after it happened. Their hushed whispers, initially laced with outrage, had morphed into something far more sinister. They muttered about ill omens, about curses, their eyes darting towards the still form in her lap.

It had happened swiftly, brutally. The sudden flash of steel, descending with horrifying speed. It was meant to be lethal, aimed right at the delicate nape of the small creature. Only a last-second flinch, a twitch of fate perhaps, had averted disaster. The blade had missed its mark, slicing instead through the air, finding purchase only on the tip of the tiny tail, severing it with sickening ease.

Now, Jasmine lay pale and whimpering, the bright red stain of her blood stark against the charcoal fur. The severed tail lay discarded near the feeding bowl, a gruesome piece of evidence.

"Bad luck," someone finally dared to speak, the voice raspy, fear thinly veiled as anger. "A black omen in the village. No wonder misfortune follows us."

Others chimed in, voices rising in a chorus of condemnation. They spoke of darkening skies, failing crops, the illness that had swept through the village. All, somehow, twisted and blamed on the innocent creature lying injured. Their words, sharp and laced with generations of ingrained fear, echoed around the courtyard.

Saroshi's grip tightened almost imperceptibly on the small kitten. She raised her head then, her eyes, usually soft and warm, now like chips of obsidian. She looked at each of them, one by one, letting her gaze linger, letting them feel the weight of it.

There was no shouting from her, no raised voice, no accusations flung back in their faces. Just silence. But within that silence, a storm brewed. In her eyes, they could see it - the pity, not for herself, but for them, for their small minds, for their fear-driven cruelty. And beneath the pity, a cold, unwavering anger simmered. It was not the fury of a scream, but the quiet, potent wrath that burned slow and deep.

She looked at the man who had spoken first, his face a mask of false righteousness. She looked at the woman who mumbled about curses, her eyes averted, unable to meet hers. She looked at the young boy who had earlier that day chased Jasmine with a stick, now hiding behind his mother's sari pallu.

They expected tears, perhaps pleas. They expected her to defend the kitten, to argue against their superstitions. But she offered them only her gaze. A look that conveyed more than any words could. A look that spoke of profound disappointment, of understanding their ignorance, and of a deep, unwavering love for the small, injured creature in her arms.

But her eyes, the look of disappointment triggered the fragile ego of the villager. He snatched the nearest stone, a jagged piece of granite lying near the well, and hurled it. It flew through the air, a missile born of fear and misplaced rage, finding its mark with sickening thud on Saroshi's temple.

The world fractured. One moment, the obsidian gaze, the silent condemnation; the next, a blinding white flash exploded behind her eyes, and a searing pain ripped through her skull. She gasped, a choked sound lost in the growing din of the villagers' voices, now emboldened by her visible injury, by the trickle of blood that bloomed instantly, staining her hairline crimson.

The blood trickled into her eye, blurring the already distorted faces around her. Voices, sharp and accusatory, echoing not just in the courtyard, but now it seemed, in the very air itself.

"Child stealer!" The man spat, the one who had thrown the stone, his face inflamed with indignation. "Witch! You harbor evil!"

"How could you even think of it?" Another woman shrieked, pointing a finger that trembled not just with rage, but with a primal terror that Saroshi could feel resonating in her own bones. "Trying to poison our children with your cursed animal!"

Saroshi swayed, the kitten clutched tightly in her arms as the charpai beneath her legs seemed to dissolve. It wasn't the courtyard anymore. The familiar terracotta walls shimmered, stretching into the distance, morphing into the towering facades of a marketplace she vaguely recognized from stories, from half-forgotten dreams. The saffron of her saree billowed around her, not in the gentle village breeze, but in a wind that smelled of incense and ancient dust, the aanchal snapping behind her like a forgotten banner.

It wasn't the wind of this world, though. Not entirely. It carried whispers, echoes of stories etched into the very stones beneath her feet, whispers of ages past, of forgotten queens, and burning pyres, and whispered vows made in the face of roaring flames. Stories she felt thrumming within her, a familiar ache she couldn't place, yet recognized with a chilling certainty.

The smell of something burning intensified, not the comforting wood smoke of the chulhas, but a sharp, acrid smell that clawed at her throat, the scent of ritual fires, of sacrifice.

With a strength that surprised even herself, Saroshi rose, Jasmine still cradled against her. She walked, not with the uncertain steps of a woman recently injured, but with a terrifying, regal purpose, towards the middle of the village square. Her figure, swaying slightly but resolute, was both terrifying and strangely compelling against the backdrop of familiar terracotta houses and bustling market stalls that now seemed to writhe and distort around her, reflecting something ancient and unsettling. The usual cacophony of vendors hawking their wares, children's laughter, and the gentle murmur of gossip had vanished, replaced by a heavy, oppressive quiet, a silence so profound it hummed in her ears.

People peered at her from behind shuttered windows, from the shadowed doorways, their faces pale and indistinct. They had seen a shift in her, a change that went beyond the physical.

It had started subtly, yes, a quiet oddness that they had tolerated, even indulged. She was always... different. A dreamer, they whispered, too caught up in her own world, her head filled with stories and philosophies gleaned from crumbling texts and whispered legends. But there was a gentleness to her difference, a quiet thoughtfulness that, while sometimes perplexing, was never threatening. Until now.

Now, the gentleness was gone, cauterized by the stone, burned away by their fear. Replaced by a raw, untamed power that seemed to radiate from her very core, a crack in the mundane revealing something... else. She stopped in the center of the square, turned slowly, her eyes, no longer obsidian chips, but burning coals, their fiery gaze sweeping across the unseen faces hidden within the houses. The people pressed themselves further into the shadows, their breath catching in their throats.

"You fear me, my children," she declared, her voice ringing out in the unnatural silence, amplified not by volume, but by an unearthly resonance. "You cower like pups before a storm. But look at me. Look! Do you see destruction? Do you see malice?" Though even as she spoke the words, a flicker of doubt, or perhaps something darker, crossed her face, a shadow that hinted at the very things she denied.

Her hands, usually skilled at intricate embroidery or a soothing touch, were now outstretched, palms open in a gesture that was meant to be benevolent, a blessing perhaps, but came across as demanding, imperious, terrifying in its raw authority.

"I am not here to end you," she continued, her voice softening slightly, a deceptive gentleness that did little to assuage the terror in their hearts. "Why would I? You are mine. You are my children, the threads of my grand design. I am here to... to weave you into something magnificent." The word 'magnificent' echoed strangely, devoid of warmth, laden instead with a chilling, clinical detachment.

The young mother, clutching her infant tighter to her chest, dared to peek out from behind her husband. She saw Saroshi's eyes - luminous, intense, glowing with an inner light that felt both mesmerizing and deeply wrong - and felt a chill seep into her very bones despite the scorching heat of the day. There was something undeniably broken, fractured, about Saroshi now, a terrifying disconnect between the words of comfort and the predatory energy that pulsed around her.

"I see the in ways that bring only suffering," Saroshi lamented, her voice now tinged with a strange, theatrical sorrow. "Poverty, disease, heartbreak... such needless pain. Such... ugliness. I can untangle them, you see. I can re-weave your fates, each one, into patterns of joy, of prosperity, of everlasting peace." Her promises dripped with a honeyed venom, tempting and terrifying in equal measure.

She took a slow, deliberate step forward, and involuntarily, those watching drew back further into the suffocating shadows of their homes. Her movement was fluid, almost predatory, despite her words of benign intention. She circled slowly in the square like a caged tigress, her eyes never still, constantly searching, judging, as if reading invisible scripts written on the very fabric of their lives, on their very souls.

"I will be the mother you never had," she announced, her voice rising again, gaining an eerie grandeur. "A benevolent, all-seeing mother! I will nurture you, guide you, protect you from the shadows that lurk unseen. I will shape your destinies with love, with wisdom, with... with fire!"

The last word was spat out, not with anger, but with a strange, unsettling exhilaration, a thrill that sent shivers down the spines of her unseen audience. 'Fire.' They saw it reflected in her eyes, a consuming, untamed fire that promised not warmth and light, but destruction and obliteration, a fire that burned away the old to make way for something new, something unknown, something monstrously beautiful.

An old man, the village elder, his face lined with the wisdom and weariness of a hundred monsoons, whispered to his grandson, huddled beside him, his eyes wide with terror, "She speaks of motherhood, but her eyes hold the madness of Kali in the cremation grounds."

Saroshi stopped her pacing, her head tilted upwards once more, as if listening to voices only she could hear, voices that whispered promises of power, of control, weaving themselves into the fabric of her fractured mind. A strange smile stretched her lips, a smile that held no warmth, no kindness, only a chilling detachment, the smile of something ancient and inhuman wearing a human mask.

"You do not understand," she sighed, not with sadness, but with a chilling indifference, as if speaking to children who could never grasp the complexities of the adult world. "You cling to your petty lives, your small joys and sorrows, unaware of the grand tapestry unfolding around you, a tapestry I am destined to weave. You fear me because you fear change, you fear the shedding of the old, the embrace of the new."

She spread her arms wide again, encompassing the entire village, the surrounding fields, the distant hills, the unseen cosmos beyond. "I will not end you," she declared, her voice now flat, devoid of emotion, almost robotic, the voice of a puppet reciting lines it did not understand. "No. That is not my role. My role is... to watch. To observe. To witness."

A crow cawed loudly from the ancient banyan tree at the edge of the square, a harsh, discordant sound that broke the eerie silence, a sound of ill omen, of death. Saroshi's gaze flicked towards it, then back to the unseen faces. "I will sit here," she murmured, sinking slowly back down onto the altar. "I will sit and watch."

That's when she saw a man walking towards her.