Chapter 8 – Beyond the Veil

 

Tatiana’s eyes widened. For a split second, she couldn’t tell what was happening — whether Chathurika was really tilting backward or if the world itself had started to spin around her. The horizon seemed to sway; the trees bent; everything felt like it was moving except her heart, which froze in place.

Then it hit — the sight of Chathurika’s body leaning away, her tearful eyes still locked on Tatiana’s.

“No!”

The scream tore from her throat with a force that felt like it might rip her chest apart. The veins in her neck strained, her voice raw, primal. Pain, disbelief, and terror all collapsed into that single cry. She lunged forward, sliding across the wet rock every instinct screaming to reach her before she vanished. Her soldier instincts kicked in, eyes narrowed to a tunnel vision focus on to Chaturika’s ankles as her upper body is already tilting away. She reaches with great speed as she sees feet are still on just one second away from saving her, I got her, she thought as she grabs, with a sound of a feather, her palms met nothing but the thin air.

Feet went off the cliff edge split second before she grabs them. Sliding make her chest slammed against the cliff’s edge. She looked down through the rising mist, gasping. Looking at her loved friend falling, everything feel slow motion as she is falling away through the white haze, hair flowing upward in the pull of wind, her face turned toward Tatiana — eyes still open, still glistening. She disappears in to the  veil of white mist.

The moment stretched, slowed; Tatiana’s heart hammered against her ribs, every beat echoing through the silence that filled her ears as she looking in to the white mist with blank mind, without believing what just happened. she was gone.

Tatiana’s breath broke into sobs she didn’t recognize as her own. Her hands clawed at the edge as if she could still pull her back, but there was nothing left to hold.

roar of the waterfall fade in. and the hollow ache inside her chest, pulsing like a wound that would never close.

The echo of Chathurika’s voice rolled through the canyon—soft at first, then rising, breaking apart in the spray: Find me… Find me… Find me…

Tatiana’s breath hitched. The words circled inside her skull, until she could no longer tell where sound ended and memory began.

She blinked once. Roar of the waterfall fade in, as her adrenaline. The tears were gone; only focus remained.

In one motion she crouched, one foot braced against the rock, body coiling tight like a swimmer at the starting block. The mist swirled around her, cold and blinding, but she didn’t hesitate.

No thinking. No fear. Just go.

She launched herself from the ledge, diving straight into the heart of the white roar. The world vanished into spray and wind; her body cut through the mist, slicing toward the water’s crashing center.

There was no time to wonder what waited below—rocks, current, or the dark pull of a vortex. Only the instinct to follow. Only Chathurika’s last words echoing in her mind as she disappeared into the torrent.

The plunge hit like a hammer.
Cold closed around her, slamming into her ears and chest. The sound of the waterfall turned to a deafening roar, a thousand tones vibrating through bone instead of air. For a heartbeat she didn’t know which way was up.

Light fractured above her in bright shards, then vanished as the current seized her. She spun once, twice—caught in a churning vortex that dragged her down and rolled her sideways. Every sense inverted: the pull of gravity gone, noise pressing in from every side.

She forced her eyes open against the sting. For an instant the water cleared, and through the swirl of bubbles she saw something—fabric, movement, a shape wedged between stones. Pale cloth.

Chathurika.

Tatiana kicked toward it, arms cutting through the current. She reached out, hands closing on a shoulder slick with silt, and pulled hard. The body shifted toward her, turning in the current.

Chaturika’s face turned in front of Tatiana, but the face is mottled canvas of blue and gray. The skin had swollen, pulling taut over the facial bones until the features were blurred and indistinct. Her eyes, open and unblinking, stared at nothing with a glassy, indifferent emptiness. The skin was peeling in places, revealing an unnervingly pale layer beneath. Some parts of her face has been eaten by fish making her body look horrific.

It wasn’t the face of someone who had just fallen; it was older, water-worn, lifeless in a way that froze every muscle in Tatiana’s body. A shockwave of horror rolled through her chest. Her throat convulsed — a gasp and a scream she has never screamed before when she saw the horror face of her beloved friend. But instead of sound of the scream, water rushed in, flooding her lungs.

Her body jerked, twisting; the world spun into chaos. She tried to push upward, but the current caught her again, dragging her sideways, down — away from the light, away from the motionless figure still drifting in the dark water.

Sound became a deep, endless rumble. Light flickered out.

And then there was nothing.

Darkness folded around her like water still clinging to her skin. Tatiana floated in it, weightless, soundless—until a flicker of light shimmered ahead.

And there she was.

Chathurika, standing in the haze between mist and memory. The light around her pulsed softly, like reflections off water. Her face was calm, but her eyes… those eyes carried everything Tatiana hadn’t understood until now.

Images broke across Tatiana’s mind like fragments of glass.
Chathurika not answering her messages during the safari.
The empty villa when she returned.
How she asked help from Tatiana to rescue her brother in the morning.

“I couldn’t do it, Tatiana.” Chaturika’s words about rescuing her brother
Her sudden appearance on the bike seat without a sound, without Tatiana feeling her weight.

How chathurika did not lean on to Tatiana when riding on the bike like she used to do and held on to the bar on the bike.

The words: No one will recognize me. They’ll just see a tourist on a bike.
How she knows about enemies perimeter set up so well,

How she reappear from other side of the enemy house when all soldiers were kept in alert

The tireless climbing of the hill.

Her message to her parents ““Can you help my parents find me?”

“They’ve been looking for me for days. They are worrying about me. Tell them where I am.”
And finally, that last whisper—Remember me. Take care of my brother. Find me…. Find me…. Find me….

From that moment everything rewind backward to 5.00AM in the moaning. Tatiana was in front of the mirror, she saw no reflection of anyone from the mirror. When she turned around……. She has seen a ghost.