My readers, I'm truly sorry for the late update. 🤍
I know you've been waiting for the chapter and I hate keeping you waiting longer than promised.
Sometimes life gets a little hectic and despite wanting to give you the chapter sooner, I couldn't.
Thank you for being patient with me, for staying with His Lotus, and for still coming back to these characters and their story.
Your love, votes, comments, and every little bit of support mean more to me than I can ever put into words.
I promise, the wait wasn't without reason.
So now... let's return to Shivansh and his Lotus. 🪷
Thank you for waiting.
And once again, I'm genuinely sorry🙇
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Happy Reading...
It was already past 10 PM when Nischay finally cracked, begging Shivansh to pull over. When Shivansh flatly refused, Nischay threw his hands up.
"Oh, hello! I am a human here," Nischay protested. "I need actual fuel to keep my body and mind functioning, okay? I want my dinner...aree kanjoos, sare paise mujh pe hi bachayega kya?"
Shivansh cut him a look with absolute dead eyes, holding the silence just long enough to make Nischay more irritated, before finally giving a curt nod.
Fifteen minutes later, they pulled into a sprawling, well-constructed Dhaba that felt like a sudden escape into nature.
The property was vast, dotted with charming, treehouse-like private cabins. Inside one, a lantern-lit candle flickered, casting a warm, amber glow that instantly nailed the perfect, rustic rural vibe.
They booked one of the treehouse cabins and headed up the wooden stairs to the first floor. It opened up into a spacious, breezy seating area, completely open to the night air except for a rustic wooden canopy overhead and a sturdy bamboo railing framing the perimeter. In the center sat a large, low table crafted entirely from bound bamboo sticks. The faint, warm flicker of lantern candles cast a dim, moody glow across the space.
Nischay looked around, instantly charmed by the aesthetic. He whipped out his phone, snapped a few aesthetic pictures of the setup, and sent them off to Viren.
Across the bamboo table, Shivansh sat entirely still. He stared out into the open night, where a vast canopy of stars stretched over the horizon and a gentle breeze swept through the cabin.
It was the kind of night designed to bring anyone peace but peace was a luxury Shivansh couldn't afford.
Not tonight...not when he was still actively battling the ghosts of his past, fresh off an encounter with the very man responsible for shattering the life of the woman he cherished, leaving her to drown in abuse.
The serenity around him felt like a mockery.
Then, his hollow gaze drifted down, landing on a weathered poster pinned near the trunk of an adjacent tree.
KAYA NGO: Sanctuary for Unemployed and Abandoned Women.
Shivansh froze. The name hit him like a physical blow, snapping his mind into a sharp, agonizing alertness.
Kaya.
The world around him faded into background noise. The breeze grew distant. The only thing left was the rhythm of his own heart, hammering against his ribs to the beat of a single, echoing name.
Kaya...
Kaya.
...Kaya.
Kaya...
Kaya.
It looped endlessly in his mind, transitioning from a shock to a profound, aching ache. A name he hadn't realized he was drowning without. A name that carried the entire weight of his yearning.
Kaya...
Shivansh let his eyes slide shut, slipping deeper under the spell of his own mind.
Nearby, Nischay was on a video call, his voice a distant, muffled backdrop as he turned the phone toward Shivansh to loop Viren into the conversation.
Shivansh could register the noise, could hear his friends, but his limbs felt heavy, anchored by a profound paralysis. He couldn't force his body to react to the reality right in front of him.
Instead, a memory or a presence flickered into the dark theater of his mind.
He saw the soft movement of feet walking precisely toward him. Her steps were soundless, yet her anklets left behind a ghostly symphony of melody that echoed in his chest.
The line between what was real and what was an illusion bled away completely. He felt himself drowning, sinking into the weightless depth of a dark sea.
He knew how to swim, he knew how to fight...but he chose not to move.
He didn't fight the agony, he just let himself sink.
In the depth of his mind, she stepped closer, slowly draping her small arms around his torso. The embrace was incomplete, and an ache of pure yearning flared within him, longing for her to hold him completely, to anchor him.
She lifted her serene, dreamy face toward his. She reached only to his chest, her sparkling eyes shining like Sirius, the brightest star, resting just above his heart.
Shivansh kept drowning, making no effort to swim back toward the shore of reality. He simply let the tide take him, trapped in the memory of her small arms wrapped around him, looking up at him with a profound fondness he still couldn't fully decode.
the moment Shivansh's eyes slipped fully shut and his posture gave out. As his head slumped forward toward the bamboo table, Nischay reacted on pure instinct. He dropped his phone onto the table, lunging across the space to catch Shivansh by the shoulders just before impact.
Panic and sheer disbelief twisted Nischay's face as he held up his friend's dead weight.
"Shiv? Shiv!" His voice faltered, cracking hard at the edges. He shook him gently. "Shiv... are you okay? What happened?"
Hearing Nischay's frantic, high-pitched shout, Viren realized instantly that something had gone terribly wrong on the other end of the line. His voice boomed through the speaker of the dropped phone. "Nischay! What's happening? What happened?!"
The sound of Viren's voice snapped Nischay back to reality. Remembering the live call, Nischay fumbled for the phone with one hand while keeping his other arm securely around an entirely unresponsive Shivansh.
He lifted the screen, his face pale. "I don't know, Vir. He just completely blacked out. One second he was fine, and the next... I don't know what happened!"
"I'm calling an ambulance right now," Viren commanded, his tone instantly shifting into crisis mode. "Hang on."
The call cut to black as Viren disconnected to dial for emergency services.
The sterile smell of the ambulance corridor finally solidified into the cold, harsh reality of the hospital waiting room.
Nischay paced the length of the polished corridor, his leather shoes squeaking rhythmically against the linoleum floor.
His hands were faintly trembling, the knuckles white where he gripped his phone. He still had Shivansh's coat flung over his arms, a heavy, empty reminder of the dead weight he had been holding just an hour ago.
The double doors at the end of the corridor slammed open.
Viren strode in, still dressed in the same suit he'd boarded the emergency flight from Bengaluru in. The journey had been made at full speed, yet it hadn't been fast enough. His chest rose and fell with laboured breaths, his face pale beneath the fluorescent lights, every trace of his usual composure stripped away by raw fear.
His eyes swept the corridor once before locking onto Nischay.
In two long strides, he reached him and gripped his arm with trembling urgency.
"Where is he?" His voice was low, tight, barely holding together. "What did the doctors say?"
"They took him inside the emergency bay immediately," Nischay said, his voice raw and exhausted.
He ran a hand over his face, trying to shake the image of Shivansh's unresponsive face from his mind. "They wouldn't let me back there. They just said his vitals were unstable and that his body was under extreme shock."
Viren swore under his breath, running a hand through his hair as he stared at the closed doors of the ER. "Shock? From what? He was fine before we..." He trailed off, the weight of the past few days crashing down on both of them.
They knew the ghosts Shivansh had been fighting; they just hadn't realized those ghosts were finally dragging him under.
Before Nischay could answer, the electronic lock on the ER doors clicked, and a doctor stepped out into the hallway, pulling off his latex gloves.
Both Nischay and Viren lunged forward as one. "Doctor? How is he?"
The doctor's face was unreadable as he looked at the two young men. He sighed, glancing down at the medical chart in his hands before looking back up at Viren and Nischay.
"Physically, we've stabilized his heart rate, but his blood work shows massive spikes in cortisol and adrenaline, the kind you see in people fleeing a life-or-death crisis," the doctor explained, his voice flat and clinical.
"He didn't faint from a physical exhaustion, his brain forced a shutdown.
When a patient suffers from severe trauma or deep-seated anxiety, repetitive, obsessive mental looping can overstimulate the nervous system until it completely shorts out."
The doctor tapped the chart. "In psychology, we look at this through the lens of extreme trauma processing. His mind is trapped in a hyper-fixation loop, thinking of something so deeply, so excessively and repeatedly, that the sheer agonizing weight of it starved his brain of emotional bandwidth. He was actively drowning in an internal panic state while looking completely still on the outside.
His body chose to black out because his mind simply couldn't bear the exhaustion of being awake anymore."
Nischay swallowed hard, looking through the glass window of the ICU bay. Inside, Shivansh lay perfectly still, hooked up to a heart monitor that beeped in a slow, fragile rhythm.
Even in his medically induced sleep, Shivansh's brow was faintly furrowed. He was still running. Inside the dark, locked cage of his subconscious, the blackout hadn't stopped the loop. The world outside had vanished, the hospital walls were gone, and all that remained was the suffocating darkness of his own mind, echoing that single, shattering word over and over again.
Kaya.
He was still reaching for her in the dark, his mind tearing itself apart at the seams, completely oblivious to the fact that his physical body had finally broken under the strain.
The air was heavy with the sweet, clean scent of blooming wildflowers. A brilliant, golden sunlight cast a protective embrace around Shivansh, warming his skin in a way he hadn't felt in years.
He was walking through a vast, endless floral meadow. The soft, rhythmic rustle of his own footsteps against the grass was the only sound in the universe.
Then, a sudden, familiar softness surrounded him. Without a sound, a quiet presence adjusted her pace to match his, stepping effortlessly into the space right beside him.
Shivansh turned his head, his gaze dropping down.
She was there. Walking barefoot against the earth.
The light yellow, flowy fabric of her skirt swirled gently around her ankles like a divine aura, making her look less like a memory and more like a celestial being born directly from the floral scent and the warm sunlight.
Slowly, deliberately, her small, warm palm slid into his large, freezing hand.
The contrast was immediate, her life-giving warmth seeping into his cold skin. Shivansh's fingers tightened instinctively around her soft hand, refusing to let go, he looked down at her, a profound tenderness washing over him as he watched her concentrate entirely on matching his long strides, her small feet moving in perfect rhythm with his.
A low, rare chuckle escaped his chest at her sheer adorableness.
Hearing his voice, she instantly lifted her serene face toward him. She flashed a smile of such pure, untainted innocence that the icy walls around his heart melted away in a single second.
Driven by a sudden, overwhelming surge of yearning, Shivansh bent down slightly, with just one arm, he effortlessly lifted her small frame against him, as if she were a feather.
The sudden movement sent her luminous, long hair bouncing into the air, cascading down over his hands and shoulders like silk.
Shivansh didn't look at the meadow anymore. His eyes were entirely locked onto her face, his gaze softly tracing every minor detail, every line of her features with a peaceful, quiet smile. She simply leaned into him, her attention drifting back to the sea of flowers ahead, safe in his hold.
For a moment, there was absolute peace.
Beep.
The warmth of the sunlight abruptly turned freezing cold. The scent of wildflowers soured, transforming into the sharp, chemical sting of antiseptic.
Beep. Beep.
The gentle weight of her in his arms suddenly vanished. Shivansh gasped internally, trying to hold onto the yellow skirt, trying to grip the warm palm in his hand, but she was dissolving into gray mist, slipping through his fingers like sand.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
His eyes flew open, the transition was a violent, jarring shock to his nervous system.
The golden meadow was entirely gone, replaced by a harsh, sterile white ceiling and the aggressive glare of fluorescent lights. Shivansh tried to breathe, but his throat felt dry and parched.
The heavy, rhythmic symphony of her anklets had vanished. In its place was the cold, clinical, electronic pulsing of a heart monitor beside his bed. He moved his fingers, expecting to feel the soft warmth of her hand, but his skin only brushed against coarse, stiff hospital bedsheets. A plastic cannula was hooked into his nose, pushing cold oxygen into his lungs, and an IV line was taped securely into the back of his hand, dripping cold fluids into his veins.
The reality of the quiet, sterile room crashed down on him with the weight of a physical blow.
He wasn't in a meadow.
He hadn't saved her.
He was trapped in a hospital bed, surrounded by monitors tracking his failing vitals, utterly alone with the ghosts he couldn't outrun.
The sleek Mercedes purred to a stop in front of Shivansh's penthouse. It had been three agonizing days since his collapse, three days of hospital walls before they could finally return to Bengaluru.
The heavy glass doors of the private elevator slid open with a soft chime, opening directly into the expansive, minimalist living room of the penthouse . The city skyline stretched out through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, a glittering grid of urban lights that felt entirely detached from the chaos of the past few days.
Shivansh stepped in first. His face was still pale, shadows under his eyes betraying his deep exhaustion, but his posture had reclaimed its usual, unyielding stiffness.
He didn't want to be coddled, and he certainly didn't want to look weak.
Behind him, Nischay and Viren trailed in, carrying the duffel bags. Both of them looked entirely spent, their clothes wrinkled but their eyes remained sharply fixed on Shivansh, watching his every move like hawks.
"Drop the bags anywhere," Shivansh said, his voice flat and exhaust as he walked toward the kitchen island. He picked up a crystal tumbler, his knuckles tightening slightly as he poured himself a glass of water. "You guys didn't need to exhaust yourselves all the way down here with me. I told you, I'm fine."
"Oh, shut up, Shiv," Nischay muttered, tossing the bags onto the dark hardwood floor and collapsing onto the massive leather sofa. He ran a hand over his face, letting out a long, ragged sigh. "You literally short-circuited a few days ago. If you think we're leaving you alone in this, to drown in your own head, you're losing your mind."
Viren closed the distance, standing on the opposite side of the kitchen counter. He didn't say anything at first. He just looked at Shivansh, his sharp eyes evaluating the subtle tension in his friend's shoulders, the quiet, frantic rhythm of his breathing.
"Nischay is right," Viren said quietly, his tone carrying a rare, grounded seriousness.
"The doctor said your nervous system crashed because you're forcing yourself to carry something entirely too heavy, entirely too repetitive. You're looping, Shiv."
Shivansh paused, the glass halfway to his lips. The word looping echoed uncomfortably in his ears, instantly dragging his mind back to the poster on the tree, back to the phantom warmth of the meadow, back to the single name that was currently carving a permanent scar into his subconscious.
Kaya.
He forced himself to take a slow sip of the water, keeping his gaze locked on the surface of the liquid to hide the sudden, sharp flash of yearning in his eyes.
He was back in his sanctuary, surrounded by his wealth and his absolute control, but as he looked around the quiet, sprawling penthouse, the emptiness of it only made the echo of her name louder.
He walked to the couch and lowered himself onto it in silence.
Viren didn't say a word, he simply watched Shivansh.
His gaze was fixed on nothing, vacant, distant, as though neither the room nor the people in it existed for him. It was as if his body had remained behind, but his mind had drifted somewhere far beyond their reach.
He had dissociated again.
Viren recognized it instantly, it was the second time today.
Those hollow spells where Shivansh forgot where he was, what he was doing, and everything around him simply ceased to exist.
Viren dragged a weary hand down his face, anxiety tightening every muscle in his body.
This was getting worse, day by day and they couldn't let him disappear into that darkness.
Slowly, Viren rose from his seat and walked toward him.
Shivansh remained motionless, lost somewhere beyond reality.
Viren dropped heavily to his knees, planting himself directly in Shivansh's line of sight, he grabbed Shivansh's cold hands, trapping them in a firm, unyielding grip to force him back to the present.
For a long moment, Shivansh's eyes remained distant, then, slowly... his dead eyes shifted down to meet his.
Viren's jaw clenched so hard the muscle ticked, he didn't soften his voice and didn't offer a gentle touch. He looked straight into the hollow vacuum of his expression and delivered the truth like a physical execution.
"Shiv..."
A brief silence stretched between them.
" Kaya mar chuki hai ."
Thanks for reading...
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