Then the bats came.

  She heard them before she saw them — a sudden explosion of movement above her head, the frantic papery beat of dozens of wings erupting from the cave ceiling all at once, a rush of displaced air that hit her face like a cold breath.Bats spilling into the forest outside in a cloud of motion.

  *Breathe,* she told herself. *Keep going.*

  She unzipped her bag and pulled out the torchlight. Clicked it on.

  The beam cut through the cave darkness in a sharp white line and landed, without warning, on a tiger.

  Suzie did not scream. She froze — every muscle in her body going absolutely still, the torchlight steady in her hand by sheer force of nerve. Her eyes adjusted. She took in what she was seeing.

  The tiger was not standing. It was not crouching, not poised, not presenting the explosive readiness of a predator about to move. It was lying on its side against the far wall of the cave,it is seen like it is out of energy and going to die

  It was golden. Even in the torchlight, the colour was unmistakable — a deep, rich, impossible gold, unlike any ordinary tiger's coat. The black stripes crossed it like shadows of shadows.

  Suzie's frozen breath came out in a long, slow exhale.

  She moved toward it.

  Each step was careful and deliberate, her eyes fixed on the tiger's face, watching for any shift in its expression, any flicker of the muscles around its eyes or mouth. But it barely reacted to her approach. Its eyes were half-open — glazed, unfocused, the look of something that was present only in the loosest sense of the word.

  She knelt beside it.

  Up close, the tiger was enormous — its head alone the size of her torso — and yet the sight of it pulled not fear from her chest but something closer to grief. It looked wrong. Not dangerous-wrong, but hurt-wrong. The kind of wrong that makes you want to fix something without knowing how.

  She reached out and placed both hands holding its face. Warm. Fevered, almost. The golden fur was softer than she expected.

  And then, barely above a whisper, barely above silence itself, it spoke.

  *"Hi."*

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  Suzie's breath stopped.

  The voice was faint. Faded at the edges. The word had cost it something to produce. Its eyes didn't fully open, didn't fully focus. It was half here and half somewhere else entirely —

  *"Knight,"* she said. Not a question.

  It didn't answer. It didn't need to.

  Suzie's throat tightened. She pressed her hands more firmly against his face — not pushing, just holding — as if contact alone could anchor him to see her. *"You're here,"* she said, quieter now. *"I found you. You're here."*

  She reached into her bag with one hand and pulled out her water bottle — then remembered. The water was gone. They had finished it all under the banyan tree.

  She tipped what little remained against his mouth anyway. A few cold drops. Nothing. His mouth didn't move to receive it. His body didn't respond.

  *"Knight."* Her voice cracked slightly on the word. She swallowed it back. *"Knight, look at me."*

  Nothing.

  She set down the water bottle and pulled out the blood packet. Her hands moved quickly now — peeling back the seal, tilting it carefully to his half-open mouth, letting the dark liquid touch his lips.

  *"Drink,"* she said quietly. *"Please drink."*

  He didn't.

  The blood reached his mouth and went no further. His throat did not move. His body, enormous and golden and heartbreakingly still, offered her nothing.

  *"Knight."* She pressed her free hand flat against his chest, feeling the slow, struggling thump of his heart beneath her palm. "Come on. Please. Drink it."

  She tilted the packet again. Again, nothing.

  "Please," she whispered, and her voice had lost all of its edges now. It was just a word, stripped down to its most essential thing — the sound of someone asking for something they were terrified they would not receive.

  She was so focused on him — on the packet, on his mouth, on that fragile heartbeat under her hand — that she almost missed it.

  Almost.

  The sound came from the far end of the cave. Deep. Rolling. The kind of sound that doesn't ask permission before it fills a space completely.

  A roar. Hungry. Close. And getting closer.

  Suzie's hand went still on Knight's chest.

  The smell of blood —the packet's blood, all of it mixing in the cold cave air — had reached something in the dark that she had not seen when she swept the torchlight across the cave. Something that had been still enough, and dark enough, to be invisible. Something that was not still anymore.

  She could hear it now. The soft, enormous sound of padded feet on stone, deliberate and unhurried, moving toward her through the dark with the absolute confidence of a creature that has never needed to run toward anything in its life.

  The torchlight trembled in her hand — not much, barely at all — but enough.

  She turned the beam toward the far end of the cave.

  Two eyes caught the light and threw it back at her like twin fires burning in the dark.

  Suzie looked at Knight beneath her hands. Looked at the blood packet. Looked back at the eyes moving toward her through the darkness, patient and enormous and entirely without mercy.

  There was no one to call. No one close enough. No voice that would reach Mrita and Gill in time.

  Just her. And Knight, who would not wake. And the thing in the dark, which was nearly here.

  *"Knight,"* she said one last time, her voice barely a breath now, her hand pressing down harder on his chest as if she could push life back into him through sheer will alone. *"Please. Wake up. I really need you to wake up right now."*

  The eyes in the dark did not stop moving.