I wasn’t supposed to write this story.
I was just going to attend a workshop.
An Instagram ad changed that. It showed up casually — IIT Kanpur, Generative AI Workshop, March 30th, 2025. No spiritual signs. No suspenseful background music. Just another swipe.
I clicked.
Why not? AI is my passion. It wasn’t a career-changing event or a life-defining leap — just a chance to see a reputed institute and learn something new.
But there was another, unspoken reason.
I wanted to see the place I had once written about in fiction.
A few months ago, I had started working on a novel titled Anarth. A dark, psychological horror centered around hallucinations, grief, and the collapse of reality. The protagonist, Aryan, is a bright student specializing in cognitive science at IIT Kanpur — a department I’d never visited, only imagined.
In the story, Aryan falls in love with Shaily — a kind, pure, deeply spiritual woman. Their bond is intellectual and emotional, rooted in their research on AI-driven hallucination detection. But then, Shaily is raped.
Her mind fractures. She hangs herself — but the rope slips. She crashes to the floor, screaming in agony.
She crawls. And finally, she jumps from the 10th floor.
Her body stays on the street all night.
Dogs devour her.
And Aryan returns to find her like that — destroyed, beyond death. Something in him dies too. His reality fractures. He begins to hallucinate her.
Lives with her.
Loves her.
Talks to her as if nothing happened.
To him… she never left.
But she did.
That was fiction.
Just fiction.
Or so I thought.
As I sat in the workshop at IIT Kanpur, watching presentations on generative models, one word kept echoing in my head — Cognition. The building, the energy, the silence between two intellectual storms — it all felt eerily familiar.
I stepped out during the break, wandered the corridors, and there it was — the Cognitive Science Department.
The place I had only imagined.
Exactly how I had imagined it.
I had goosebumps.
I felt like Aryan had written it, and I had walked into it.
Or maybe… it had always been there, waiting for me.
I didn’t choose IIT Kanpur. In fact, I had never specifically planned to aim for any IIT.
But after the workshop, I came back home and started researching GATE Psychology — a path I had only recently considered. And again… IIT Kanpur kept flashing before me.
Every forum. Every ranking. Every video.
It was always: IITK Cognitive Science is the best.
My screen whispered:
“Isn’t this the same department Aryan studied in?”
“Didn’t Shaily die… after getting placement from here?"
I froze.
Had I written my future by accident?
Around the same time, I was preparing to publish Anarth through Notion Press — the very platform now hosting this contest. A contest whose theme punched me in the gut the moment I read it:
“The lines between fiction and reality get blurred when your character starts writing a new book.”
That was me.
I was the character.
Anarth was the book.
And now… fiction wasn’t just catching up — it was overtaking me.
A part of Anarth that still haunts me reads:
“There are things worse than death — like seeing the one you love rot before your eyes, yet smiling at you from your hallucinations as if nothing ever happened.”
“Love doesn’t die. It multiplies… in madness.”
I wrote that.
And now, I wonder — what if that madness was just beginning?
Because here’s what I can’t shake off:
What if this workshop was never just a workshop?
What if it was the beginning of something I accidentally scripted?
I ask myself daily now:
What if I crack GATE?
What if I get into IIT Kanpur?
What if I walk those same halls Aryan walked in Anarth — not as a writer, but as a student?
What if someone sits beside me in a lecture, and I see her smile just like Shaily did in my book?
What if she’s gentle, pure, spiritual — just like Shaily?
And what if one day… I lose her too?
Will I relive Anarth?
Will I begin to hallucinate like Aryan?
Will I recognize the moment fiction starts becoming reality… or will it be too late?
I know how this sounds.
Paranoia. Projection. Artistic overthinking.
But this isn’t just imagination.
This is timing. Alignment. Coincidence wrapped in synchronicity.
Why did Anarth, a story I wrote months ago, plant itself in IIT Kanpur’s Cognitive Science department — long before I even discovered its real-world prestige?
Why did a random Instagram ad pull me to the very place where I unknowingly wrote a fictional tragedy?
Why did a contest pop up — themed exactly on what I was going through?
And more importantly…
Why do I feel like this contest isn’t the end of the story — but just the beginning?
To the reader, the judge, the accidental witness of this blurring:
You can check my manuscript.
You’ll see I’ve been writing Anarth for months.
I’ve been building this world before this contest was even a whisper.
I was planning to publish it with you — Notion Press — well before you announced this theme.
So now I don’t know what I’m submitting anymore.
Is this a contest entry?
Or is this an echo from a book that no longer wants to stay inside the pages?
This isn't a story.
It’s a portal.
And maybe…
You aren't reading about a writer anymore.
You're reading a warning... from the inside.
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