Episode 252

The old locket felt heavier than usual in Natasha’s palm. Its intricate silverwork, once a comfort, now seemed to mock her with its silence. She’d found it tucked away in a forgotten drawer, a relic from a life she couldn't quite recall, yet one that tugged at her soul with an insistent, ghostly pull. The faint scent of jasmine, a fragrance she’d always loved but never understood its origin, clung to the metal.

Anu, her artistic eye catching the distant shimmer of the locket as Natasha turned it over and over, paused her sketching. “That’s beautiful, Natasha. Where did you get it?”

Natasha’s smile was a little too bright. “Oh, just… an old keepsake. From my grandmother, I think.” The lie felt flimsy, an ill-fitting garment. She knew, with a certainty that chilled her, that the Malhotras, her adoptive parents, had never mentioned such a locket. It was another thread, frayed and dangling, in the tapestry of her unknown past.