Chapter 1: The Seat That Shouldn't Exist

The first thing Raghav Awasthi noticed was the silence.

Not the respectful silence of Parliament.
Not the nervous silence of first-day nerves.
This was something… unnatural.

As he stepped into Rajya Sabha for his first session as a newly elected MP, the air felt strangely cold — like walking into a temple abandoned long ago. Everyone around him was in slow motion. Words were being spoken, hands were raised, but the sound… it didn’t quite reach him.

“Seat Number 13, Row C, Sir,” the usher said, pointing with a hesitant hand.

13.
The number echoed in his mind louder than it should have.

“Unlucky,” he muttered, trying to laugh it off.
But no one else laughed. In fact, the usher wouldn’t even look him in the eye.

The chair was different. Slightly darker than the others. Old. Wooden. Carved with something — symbols he didn’t understand. Ancient Sanskrit, maybe. A spiral of lines and eyes that seemed to follow him as he sat down.

The moment his body touched the seat, his breath caught in his throat. It felt like sitting on ice. The leather wasn’t cold — it was dead. Like skin stretched over something that once lived.

From the seat beside him, a senior MP leaned over and whispered without turning his head:

“You shouldn’t be there.”

Raghav turned. “Excuse me?”

The man said nothing. He just crossed himself in silence… and shifted two seats away.

That night, Speaker Jagdeep Singh — a man with no known health issues — collapsed during a closed-door session. Eyes wide. Mouth frozen in a silent scream. His last glance had been toward Seat 13.

Raghav watched the news in his hotel room, feeling a strange static charge in the air. As if the television knew something he didn’t.

His phone vibrated.

Unknown Number.
Message:
“Who gave you permission to sit in my place?”
Time: 01:13 AM.

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The days that followed were filled with dread.

Each time Raghav sat in Seat 13, he felt it again — a low humming sound beneath him, like something was moving below the Parliament floor. A faint heartbeat. Sometimes, the carpet under his shoes felt… wet.

The cameras never recorded him. He watched the Lok Sabha TV broadcast — and his seat appeared empty. The mic assigned to him never worked. The technicians said, “We don’t know why. It just… doesn’t respond.”

Worse still — his reflection in the mirror blinked out of sync.

At night, he would hear tapping on the hotel mirror. Not on the glass. From inside it.

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On the fifth night, he awoke suddenly — to see a little girl standing at the foot of his bed.

Wet. Pale. Head tilted.

Her eyes were hollow black holes. Her mouth stitched shut with threads of saffron cloth. She held a torn parliamentary ID badge — bloodied, half-burned.

It was his.

Before he could scream, she vanished — leaving only muddy footprints on the floor… and a burning smell of incense and rotting flowers.

He ran to the Parliament the next morning and confronted the staff. That’s when he met Meera Joshi, a sharp political journalist who had been tracking mysterious disappearances connected to Parliament for years.

She listened. Quietly. Calmly.

Then she pulled out an old file from her bag — yellowed and dusty.
Inside it: a list of MPs who sat in Seat 13 since 1952.

There were only five names.

All five had died. All five within 13 days of their first session.

And the final note scribbled at the bottom of the file:
"Last assigned: Seat vacant for 26 years. Reopened accidentally by new software update."

Meera looked him in the eyes and said:

“You have eight days left.”

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Chapter 2: The Curse Beneath the Dome

Some sins are buried beneath stone. Some never die.

The rain had begun to fall over Delhi like a warning — hard, bitter, and endless. Raghav stood outside Sansad Bhavan, its mighty dome glowing eerily in the storm. Lightning cracked the sky behind it, casting its silhouette in unnatural angles.

The Parliament was ancient, but that night, it looked… alive.

“Come,” Meera Joshi said, pulling him by the sleeve.
“You need to see what they never wanted the public to know.”

She led him to an underground corridor known only to journalists and maintenance workers — through rusted gates and faded walls marked “Records & Archives.”

The fluorescent lights flickered overhead. The deeper they went, the stronger the stench of old blood, incense, and something worse… burnt flesh.

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Meera pulled out a rusted cabinet labeled Classified: Ekattar Files.

Inside were yellowed newspapers, old photographs, and handwritten letters. Each one told a story of power, politics… and death.

“In 1912,” Meera whispered, “long before this building became Parliament, this land was used by a secret spiritual cult — the Ekattar Mandal. Seventy-one members. All powerful. All believers in ancient, forbidden rituals. Their goal wasn’t power. It was immortality through blood sacrifice.”

Raghav picked up an old photograph — grainy and gray.

At the center was a young girl. Her head shaved. Eyes wide with terror. Anklets on her feet. Chains on her wrists.

“Her name was Sharvani,” Meera said. “Thirteen years old. A mute orphan kidnapped from a nearby ashram. She was meant to be sacrificed to a forgotten deity — the ‘One Beneath the Dome.’”

The ritual was to take place on August 15, 1947, under the Parliament dome, to transfer “eternal sovereignty” into the land itself. But something went wrong. Sharvani escaped — bleeding, broken — and crawled into the hollow space beneath the dome’s base.

To protect their secret, they sealed her alive behind the foundation stone.

“They say she screamed for days. Until she didn’t.”

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The file also revealed a hidden section of the Parliament’s architectural blueprint. A chamber directly beneath Seat 13.

An area not on modern maps. Not on any record.

“I’ve tried entering,” Meera whispered, her voice trembling now.
“But something always stops me. Guards go missing. Electronics die. Once, my camera melted in my hand.”

Suddenly, the lights went out.

Total darkness.
Breathless silence.

Then… footsteps.

Slow. Wet. Crawling.

Raghav turned, eyes wide, heart hammering.

And then he saw her.

Hanging upside down from the ceiling, Sharvani stared at him — skin bloated and gray, hair dripping with blood. Her stitched mouth slowly tore open as she whispered:

“I never left. I was never freed.”

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The next morning, Raghav woke up in his hotel room — barefoot, trembling, and covered in mud. Soil under his nails. Scratches across his chest in ancient script.

On the mirror, written in blood:

“You sat on my throne.
You carry my burden.
Thirteen bells will toll.
Then I rise.”

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Terrified but determined, Raghav met ACP Kabir Rathore, an ex-CBI officer who had once investigated a Parliament-related suicide in 2002. Kabir was a wreck of a man — beard overgrown, eyes bloodshot.

“You found the files,” Kabir muttered. “Then it's already too late. She doesn’t kill fast. She erases.”

Kabir showed them his old case files. They included a pattern: every 13 years, someone died in the Parliament building under Seat 13's curse. One was electrocuted by their own mic. Another jumped from the dome screaming “She’s inside me.”

No records remained of these MPs. No photos. No videos. Not even their families remembered them.
It was as if Sharvani devoured their existence.

“She isn’t a ghost,” Kabir said, voice cracking. “She’s a cursed presence — born from pain, betrayal, and sacred blood. She doesn’t haunt buildings. She haunts memory itself.”

Raghav’s name had already been wiped from the MP register.

Google showed “No Results.”
His college alumni page said, “No such student.”
His bank account: deactivated.

And worst of all — his own mother didn’t recognize his voice on the phone.

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That night, Raghav had a dream.

He was seated in Parliament again. Alone. Everyone else was headless. Their hands clapped silently. The walls bled. The Indian national emblem melted like wax.

Sharvani walked down the aisle, her feet not touching the floor.
Her mouth stitched. Her eyes bleeding.
She held a saffron flag — soaked in blood — and whispered through the stitches:

“Thirteen souls. Thirteen years.
Your time ends...
on the thirteenth hour.”

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Chapter 3: The Last Session

You can run from fear. But can you run from memory itself?

The clock on the Parliament dome struck 12:47 AM.
The wind howled through Delhi like a dying breath.

Inside the Rajya Sabha, darkness ruled.

The central dome, once proud and majestic, was now cloaked in unnatural shadows. Not even the floodlights outside could penetrate the thick veil surrounding the Parliament. Cameras jammed. Phones failed. No media coverage. No records. It was as if reality refused to witness what was about to happen.

Raghav stood at the entrance of the central chamber, barefoot, shivering, and utterly forgotten. Even the guards at the gate had let him in without a glance — as if he were invisible.

Beside him, Meera Joshi gripped a silver amulet, chanting softly. The words were from a forgotten Vedic hymn — one meant to protect souls from spirits that fed on remembrance.

But even she looked pale.
Terrified.

“Once we go down,” she said, pointing to the hidden hatch beneath Seat 13, “there’s no coming back unless we confront her.”

Raghav nodded. “Then let’s end this.”

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Beneath the Parliament

The hatch opened with a groan, releasing a foul stench — of wet soil, rotting bones, and centuries of betrayal.

They descended into a forgotten chamber — a crypt that shouldn’t exist, built directly beneath the beating heart of Indian democracy. Stone walls bore ancient carvings — not of gods or symbols of power, but of twisted figures worshipping a child bound in chains.

The air was thick with chanting, though no one was visible.

Torches lit by themselves.
Shadows danced without owners.
And the floor... was breathing.

As they moved forward, Meera stumbled. Her torch flickered. Then they saw it:

A circle of thirteen skeletal bodies, seated in a ring — robes fused to their bones. All staring at a raised stone seat in the center, where a small skeleton sat upright.

It wore anklets.
And a saffron-threaded mouth.
Still sewn shut.

Sharvani.

Her head turned — slowly — cracking with the sound of breaking bones.

She looked straight at Raghav.

And then… she smiled.

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The Final Possession

The walls began to shake. Dust fell like ash.
A loud ringing began — distant at first, then louder.
One bell. Two bells. Three…

“She’s begun the ritual!” Meera screamed.

Raghav’s body was suddenly lifted into the air. Invisible hands twisted his limbs, forcing him to sit in the ancient stone seat at the center. His eyes rolled back. Blood dripped from his ears. A voice boomed from his throat, but it wasn’t his:

“He sat in my throne. He will carry my name.”

As the thirteenth bell rang, Raghav saw a vision.

Parliament. Full session.
Everyone speaking… but no sound.
All faces stitched.
All eyes black.

He looked down at himself — in a black sherwani, red tikka on his forehead, and a name tag:

“Sharvani.”

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Suddenly — Meera grabbed a vial from her coat. Inside it was soil from the original ashram where Sharvani lived — the only thing that could break her curse.

“You’re not her memory!” she screamed. “You’re still a scared little girl who wanted justice, not vengeance!”

She crushed the vial and threw the soil into the fire pit at the center.

The chamber shrieked.

Sharvani — or what remained of her — screamed in a thousand voices. The ground split. The seat cracked.
And Raghav fell.

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The Morning After

Raghav awoke under the open sky.

The Parliament stood silent behind him — untouched. Whole. Peaceful.

But Seat 13 was gone.

Not broken. Not removed.

Just… missing. As if it never existed.

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Epilogue: Forgotten Again

A year later, Meera Joshi published a blog post titled “The Seat That Parliament Forgot.”

No one believed it. No one remembered Raghav Awasthi.

He didn’t appear in records. No ID. No bank trail. No mention in Parliament history.

But late at night… when the Lok Sabha TV channel glitches…
Sometimes, for a brief second… a figure appears in Row C.

Sitting perfectly still.
Dressed in white.
Eyes wide.
Mouth stitched.

Seat 13.

Waiting.

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THE END