*Chapter 1: The Day I Played the Wrong Formula*

*Chapter 1: The Day I Played the Wrong Formula*

Kolkata , 1809.

It has been raining for three days. I have no umbrella, no job, three annas in my pocket. I am sitting in the mess in gollamari. Lizards are calling on the wall. My name is Arindam Sen. I have run away from Dhaka College for two months. Why did I run away? Because in 2026, I woke up and saw that it was 1809, and I was a philosophy student.

Transmigration. It sounds like a story, but it doesn't fill my stomach.

There was a knock on the door. The mess owner, Haripada.

"Sir, rent?"

"Uncle, two more days."

"Two days have passed and it has been a month. If you don't pay the rent, I will float you in the Ganges."

Haripada left. I looked out the window. The street was sparkling with gaslight. Horse-drawn carriages were passing. The gentlemen's servants were walking with umbrellas on their heads. And me? I was thinking whether to take poison or steal.

There was an envelope lying on the table. I found it this morning on the street in Chitpur. The envelope read: *"Only for the desperate"*.

I am desperate, after all. I opened it.

Inside was a yellow piece of paper. Written in ink:

> *Recipe No. 9: Secret scribe*

> *Ingredients*: 3 crow feathers, a pinch of cremation soil, 7 drops of your own blood.

> *Method*: On the night of the new moon, mix blood with soil and write on the feather—"What I see, no one sees." Then eat it.

> *Result*: You will see secretly, write secretly, and it will remain secret.

> *Caution*: If you make a mistake, your head will explode and your brains will come out.

I laughed. Surely it was the work of a madman. Crow feathers? Crematorium soil? But...

My stomach is pounding. I can't pay the rent. I'm an engineer from 2026, now I'm a beggar. It's better to have my brains out than this.

12 midnight. New moon. The rain has stopped. I'm walking towards the Keoratola crematorium. People will say I'm crazy. I know I'm crazy myself. But the burning in my stomach doesn't accept logic.

I took the soil from the crematorium. Crow feathers in my hand—I picked them up on the roof at noon. I cut my finger and let 7 drops of blood fall. I wrote on the paper: "What I see, no one sees."

Then I ate it.

The taste? Like burnt paper and iron. It stuck in my throat. I drank water.

A minute. Two minutes. Nothing happened.

I laughed. "damm it."

Just then, someone played a flute inside my head.

A sharp, ear-piercing sound. I fell to the ground. The world was spinning before my eyes. I was vomiting. Blood was pouring from my nose.

And then... silence.

I sat up. The crematorium was empty. But no, not empty.

A man was standing by the ghat. White clothes, bare body. He had no head. Smoke was rising from his severed throat. He was "looking" at me.

I started to scream. No sound came out of his throat.

The decapitated man walked towards me. A voice came from inside his chest, as if opening a rotten wooden box:

"You... saw..."

I ran. I didn't look back. I turned back to the mess and closed the door, shaking.

I looked in the mirror. My eyes... my eyes were completely black. No pearls. No white parts. Just black, like the night sky.

And inside the mirror, on my shoulder, sat that decapitated man. He raises his finger and writes on my forehead:

*"Sequence 9: Cryptographer — Complete."*

*"Welcome, Shadow-Seeker. Now you'll be crazy, or a god."*

I fainted.

When I regained consciousness, it was dawn. In the mirror I was normal. My eyes were fine. The decapitated man was gone.

A new piece of paper on the table. My handwriting, but I didn't write:

> *Rule 1*: Don't tell anyone what you saw.

> *Rule 2*: Write a secret every day. If you don't, you'll get a headache.

> *Rule 3*: Your shadow is no longer yours.

I looked down.

My shadow was standing on the floor. I was sitting, but it was standing. And it was looking at me and smiling.

It wasn't smiling with my teeth. My shadow had its own teeth. Thin, like needles.

The formula worked.

I was now a cryptographer.

And I realized—the thought of paying rent was the last normal thought in my life.

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