"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. Her gaze swept over the assembled villagers, their faces a mixture of fear and morbid curiosity.

Zamindar Roy stood rigid, his normally robust frame seeming to shrink under her scrutiny. Women clutched their children tighter, their eyes wide and darting. Men shifted uneasily, their hands instinctively reaching for the lathis at their sides.

"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. Her silken saree, the colour of twilight, rippled in a non-existent breeze, adding to the otherworldly aura that clung to her. "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."

Virinchi had been standing amongst the very crowd at the village square, almost invisible at the edge. Taking tiny steps towards Zamindar Roy, he leaned in, his breath a whisper against Roy's ear. "Didn't I tell you she will end the village?"

Roy gulped, his eyes fixed on Saroshi, but his mind reeling with Virinchi's words. "What do we do?" he asked, his voice barely audible above the hushed stillness of the square.

A crow cawed loudly from the ancient banyan tree, a harsh, discordant sound that broke the eerie silence, a sound of ill omen, of death hanging heavy in the air. The villagers flinched, their apprehension solidifying into tangible fear.

Virinchi smirked, a predatory curve to his lips hidden by the shadows of his hood. He reached inside his robe, pulling out a small, wickedly sharp dagger, its hilt wrapped in worn leather. He pressed it into Roy's trembling hand. "End her before she ends us."

Roy stared at the dagger, the polished steel reflecting the harsh sunlight. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat of fear and desperation. He nodded mechanically, his gaze still locked on Saroshi's distant, unreadable face. He moved, each step heavy and deliberate, pushing through the stunned crowd towards her.

Saroshi was still speaking, her voice a monotone drone weaving through the charged atmosphere. She was lost in her pronouncements, unaware of the storm brewing in the heart of the village.

Roy reached her just as she paused for breath. In a clumsy, fear-fuelled motion, he raised the dagger and slashed. The blade sliced through the air, biting into the delicate skin just below her collarbone.

A gasp escaped Saroshi's lips, not of pain, but of shock. Warmth bloomed on her skin, spreading outwards, staining her saree a vibrant, shocking red. She looked down, her fingers trembling as they touched the gash, coming away smeared with blood. Then, she looked up, meeting Roy's horrified, tear-filled eyes.

The sight of her blood shattered the last vestiges of restraint holding the villagers back. The dam of fear burst, releasing a torrent of pent-up anxiety and rage. They surged forward as one, a mob driven by primal instinct, their faces contorted masks of fury.

One man, his face red and contorted with rage, snatched Saroshi's small kitten. Before Saroshi could even cry out, he slammed the tiny creature against the hard-packed earth, again. A sickening crunch echoed in the square, followed by a soft, lifeless thud. The villagers barely registered the sound in their frenzy.

A woman's hand clawed at Saroshi's hair, yanking her head back. "Child killer!" she shrieked, spittle flying from her lips. "Demoness! You cursed my son!" Another hand lashed out, aiming a stinging slap at Saroshi's face.

Saroshi recoiled, disoriented and bleeding. She pushed back against the onslaught, a desperate struggle against a tide of hatred. She stumbled, her feet slipping on the dusty ground, but somehow she managed to break free, scrambling away from the maelstrom of violence. She snatched up the limp, broken body of her kitten, clutching it to her chest, and ran.

The villagers roared, a collective cry of vengeful fury, and surged after her. Their torches, previously held aloft in curiosity, now blazed as weapons, casting flickering, grotesque shadows that danced with the chaos. The night descended quickly, swallowing the village in a cloak of darkness, but the chaos only intensified, fuelled by fear and the mob's bloodlust.

Saroshi's breath burned in her lungs, each gasp a searing pain in her chest. She ran blindly, the village blurring into a nightmarish landscape of shouting faces and flailing torches. She didn't know where she was going, only that she had to escape. Finally, the ground beneath her feet turned soft and uneven. The roar of the mob was still behind her, but a new sound emerged, growing louder with each stride - the furious rush of water.

The river. She had reached the river.

It frothed with icy urgency, its current a raging beast tearing against the jagged rocks that jutted from its belly. The air was damp and cold with the river's breath. Saroshi stumbled to the river's edge, trembling violently. Her chest heaved, ragged breaths tearing through her, her lifeblood staining her saree in an ever-widening crimson stain. The gash just below her collarbone throbbed cruelly, a searing fire in her flesh - a wound inflicted not by accident, but by deliberate intent.

Behind her, the villagers closed in, a sea of accusatory faces twisted by fear and anger. Their torches flickered and hissed in the damp air, the flames painting the scene in shades of grotesque orange and black, casting long, distorted shadows that danced eerily across Saroshi's ashen face.

"She bewitched us!" cried a woman, her voice cracking with hysteria.

"Cursed our children!" yelled a man, his fist clenched and raised.

"A demon!" shrieked an old woman at the back, her voice shrill and cracking like dry wood, echoing the crow's earlier ill omen.

Saroshi's voice caught in her throat, a choked sound lost in the rising crescendo of the mob. She tried to speak, to defend herself, to make them see, but the words wouldn't come. They were drowned out by the crowd's venomous chants. "Drown the demoness! Drown her!" they barked in unison, their hatred swelling into a feverish frenzy.

Saroshi could rewrite destinies. But Virinchi... Virinchi had wanted to be the sole weaver of destinies.

He had envied her, loathed her power. How dare she get the powers which were his to begin with? He was a scribe, respected, certainly, one with a gift for writing destiny, for spinning words into captivating tapestries of living beings. But who listened to the tales of a mere writer when the stars themselves, interpreted by Saroshi, had already spoken? Carefully, methodically, he had turned the tide against her, like a slow poison seeping into the village consciousness.

A lost child here, a sudden illness there, and his cunning whispers, seeded with doubt, nurtured by fear, blossomed into raging suspicion. Carefully planted "evidence," whispers of dark magic, subtle manipulations - it had all led to this.

"Push her! Let the river take her!" Virinchi called now, his voice calm but commanding, cutting through the frenzied shouts of the mob. His words rippled over the crowd like the deadly current below, solidifying their intent.

Saroshi staggered to her feet, despite the agonizing pain splitting her chest. Her wide, dark eyes, shimmering with unshed tears, flicked to Virinchi. Realization struck her with the force of a physical blow. He had really done this. All of it. Her lips trembled, parting as if to utter his name, to scream his treachery to the sky, but no sound emerged. Her voice faltered, choked by pain and betrayal. Her strength, like her blood, was rapidly slipping away, draining into the thirsty earth.

The crowd surged forward again, a wall of hate and fear pressing in, hands outstretched, grasping, eager to finish the task. Saroshi stumbled back, her heel scraping against the loose earth of the riverbank. The ground crumbled slightly beneath her weight, pebbles skittering into the churning waters below.

"Stop!" she managed to rasp, her voice barely audible, a fragile whisper against the Yamuna's roar. But they wouldn't-couldn't. They were too far gone, whipped into a frenzy, blinded by the lies that Virinchi had so carefully woven around them. She was no longer Saroshi, the wise and kind voice who had guided them, who had listened to their woes, who had offered solace and counsel. To them, she had become a blight, a demon, a usurper of their fates, and they were desperate to reclaim control.

A ruddy-faced man, his eyes bloodshot and wild, lunged, his calloused hands curling around her wrist like iron clamps. He yanked her forward, his strength overpowering her fragile, blood-weakened resistance. She gasped, a sharp, painful intake of breath, but the crowd surged again, a suffocating wall of hate pressing her closer and closer to the precipice.

And yet, even as her heels slid further into nothingness, as the cold spray of the river kissed her ankles, Saroshi's eyes never left Virinchi's. There was no hatred in her gaze, no accusation, no plea for mercy. Just a chilling calm, a profound acceptance, as if the stars themselves, the vast, indifferent cosmos, had whispered a secret defiance into her ear.

"You can't rewrite the stars," she whispered, her words barely carried over the roar of the river, yet somehow, they reached him, a cold shard of truth piercing through his self-satisfied smugness.

And then, shocking even herself, summoning a last flicker of defiant will, she ripped free of the man's grasp. Agony shot through her chest as the motion tore at her wound, a searing white-hot pain that threatened to consume her. But it didn't matter anymore.

With one final, shuddering breath, her eyes locked on Virinchi's one last time, a strange, knowing glint in their depths, she leapt.

The icy water clawed at Saroshi the moment she plunged, stealing her breath and slamming the air from her lungs. The churning river, moments ago a roaring threat at her heels, now embraced her with a brutal coldness that seeped into her very bones. The world above vanished in a chaotic swirl of grey and brown foam. Currents dragged her down, a relentless hand pulling her into the river's murky depths. Darkness pressed in, thick and suffocating.

Her lungs burned, a desperate ache for air, for light - for anything but this icy tomb.

Then, something bumped against her hand, soft and strangely yielding against the bite of the cold water. Instinctively, she closed her fingers around it. Opening her eyes, stinging from the river's grit, she saw it: a small, waterlogged body. A dead cat, its fur matted and sodden, eyes vacant and staring into the swirling gloom. A wave of unexpected sorrow crashed over Saroshi. Death, so close, so cold, mirrored in this tiny, lifeless form.

But as she held the small corpse, a peculiar warmth bloomed in her chest, spreading outwards like sunlight after a long winter. The agonizing throb in her ribs eased, the ragged pain fading into a dull ache, and then, nothing. She reached a tentative hand to her collarbone, brushing fingers over skin that was smooth, unbroken. No throbbing, no pain. Astonishment flickered through the chilling water. Her head, which had been splitting with a pain since the stone had struck it, now felt clear, light. In the river's depths, held by the cold embrace of death and life, Saroshi felt... whole.

Clutching the dead cat close, as if it held the secret to this impossible reprieve, Saroshi closed her eyes. Defeat settled upon her, heavy as the river water. Virinchi had won. Let the darkness take her. Let the river claim its due.

But as she surrendered, as the cold seeped further, a different kind of chill began to crawl across her skin. Not the river's bite, but something internal, unsettling. A strange tugging sensation started deep within her, like unseen hands gripping her soul and pulling. It wasn't painful at first, just... weird. Then, the pulling intensified.

It felt like being stretched, elongated, as if some unseen force was trying to unravel her, to pull her essence apart. The tugging became a ripping. A horrifying, internal tearing, as if she was being divided, broken down into pieces too small to comprehend. Her consciousness fractured, splintering into a million bright shards that scattered and dissolved into the dark, cold river.