Under The Veil Chapter 6: Chapter - 6: A place known as Home

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Chapter - 6: A place known as Home Agastya did not rush. The three heavy knocks still echoed in the suffocating silence of the room. With methodical calm, he closed the heavy leather cover of the diary. His unfamiliar fingers gripped the coarse jute ribbon, wrapping it tightly around the worn binding and pulling the knot secure. Whatever secrets House Esrala held, they were sealed away in the dark once more. Only then did he turn his attention to the iron-banded door. His right hand remained wrapped tightly around the wooden handle of the long, serrated bread knife. In the brutal underworld of the empire, you never answered a midnight summons unarmed. Keeping the blade angled downward and hidden flat against his forearm. He moved silently across the floorboards. He reached the heavy door and rested his free hand against the cold iron bolt. With agonisingly slow precision, he slid the lock back. The metal gave a dull, muffled clack. Agastya pulled the door open just a fraction, keeping the heavy, iron-banded wood between himself and the street. His right arm hung naturally at his side, the long, serrated blade of the bread knife hidden carefully in the shadows behind his thigh. The cold, smog-laced night air immediately bled into the room, cutting through the warm scent of stale yeast and flour. Two figures stood on the dark cobblestone threshold, their features partially illuminated by the jaundiced yellow glow of the streetlamp. The first was a young woman, perhaps in her early twenties. She was draped in a heavy, tailored azure coat. The wool was visibly worn at the cuffs and hem—a garment that had seen years of harsh winters—but it was meticulously maintained. Beside her stood a man wrapped entirely in a dark, sweeping black coat and matching trousers. He stood perfectly still, his posture rigid and calm, blending into the night like a natural extension of the shadows. They were both smiling. It wasn't a strained or nervous expression; it was familiar, warm, and entirely out of place in the dead of the night. The man, whose face was sharp and angular, tilted his head. "Hey, big brother," he said, his voice light and casual. "Aren't you coming home?" Big brother. Agastya’s blue eyes narrowed. His mind—an assassin’s mind inside a stolen brain—instantly dug into the fragmented memories of the baker. A sudden, sharp ache bloomed behind his forehead as flashes of a past that wasn't his own surfaced like photographs developing in a darkroom. He saw a bleak, run-down orphanage. He saw a kind, working-class couple taking in a young Astragan. And he saw these two faces growing up alongside him. They were the couple's biological children. They shared no blood with Astragan, but the baker had loved them fiercely, claiming them as his true brother and sister. Agastya’s grip on the wooden handle of the knife tightened until his knuckles turned white. ‘Which little brother did he mean in the diary?’ his analytical mind raced, rapidly processing the new variables. ‘If this adopted brother is alive and well, could Astragan have been writing to his real, blood-related brother?’ Whatever the truth was, Agastya was currently inhabiting the baker’s life, and he had to play the part not to become suspicious. Digging into the fading warmth of Astragan’s memories, Agastya forced the stolen muscles of his face to form a gentle smile. He pulled the heavy door open the rest of the way. "Yes," he replied, his voice rough. "I am coming… home." ‘Home.’ It was the first time in Agastya's entire life that he had ever spoken the word with actual intent. It felt completely foreign on his tongue, a concept that belonged to a different universe entirely. Taking a step back into the shop. He finally allowed his white-knuckled grip on the bread knife to loosen. He turned back to the teakwood counter, his movements suddenly fast and fluid. With the practiced, invisible sleight of hand of a master thief, he slid open the top left drawer. He scooped the meagre pa