Prarthana's pov

Some people don't leave your life completely. They just go quiet. Like unfinished sentences you pretend not to remember.

The city outside the hospital was restless, lights bleeding into the night as ambulances came and went. I stood near the window, arms folded, watching reflections blur on the glass. Another shift over. Another day survived. I told myself that was enough.

It usually was.

Yet tonight, something felt... off.

The kind of unease that settles deep in your chest without a reason. The kind that makes your breath hitch even when nothing is wrong. I pressed my palm lightly against my sternum, trying to steady myself. Doctors weren't supposed to feel like this. We fixed chaos. We didn't surrender to it.

And yet, here I was.

I had learned to live with silence. To bury things neatly where they couldn't hurt me. Four years had taught me discipline. Control. Distance. I had convinced myself that the past was exactly where it belonged.

Behind me.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Calm. Unhurried. Too steady for the frantic energy of the emergeny wing. I didn't turn around. I didn't need to. My body reacted before my mind could catch up.

The air changed.

Some presences do that. They don't announce themselves. They don't demand attention. They simply exist, and everything else rearranges around them.

I exhaled slowly.

"You're imagining things", I told myself. Fatigue played tricks. Memory did worse.

Still, my fingers curled involuntarily. A familiar tension coiled low in my stomach, sharp and unwelcome. I hated how instinctive it felt. How immediate.

I finally turned.

For a moment, the world stilled.

He stood at the end of the corridor, posture relaxed, expression unreadable. Older. Broader. The same quiet intensity in his eyes that once made me forget how to breathe. Time had refined him, not softened him.

Our eyes met.

No shock. No anger. No question.

Just recognition.

The kind that doesn't need words.

My heartbeat thundered in my ears as the weight of four years of silence pressed between us. Everything I had buried threatened to surface, clawing its way back with brutal precision.

Some people don't return to ask for answers. They return to remind you of what you never said.

And standing there,beneath the harsh hospital lights, I knew one thing with unsettling clarity.

Kabir Rathore was back.

And silence was no longer enough.