The Mansion : Part 2

Part 1 can be found here: https://storymirror.com/read/english/story/the-mansion/lo0faezc

The sword never felt heavy, but Bobby could feel the weight of something far greater. A burden, or perhaps a purpose. As he rode deeper into the forest, through the layers of whispering mist, his thoughts became quiet. The pain in his arm had dulled, and so had the fear. He didn’t feel human anymore. Not quite. Something had shifted.

The jungle had accepted him.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been riding. Minutes? Hours? There were no roads here, no stars visible through the heavy fog and forest canopy. But the horse, rotting and skeletal as it was, knew where to go. It never hesitated.

What now? he wondered, as he looked down at the sword on his belt. What the hell am I supposed to do now?

The images, the memories, or visions, or whatever they were, still flickered behind his eyes like an old projector reel. He remembered the redcoats. He remembered the poison they had brought into the village. He remembered the betrayal. He remembered the blood.

And somehow, it had all become his own.

He was no revolutionary. No freedom fighter. Just a stubborn reporter who didn’t know when to back down. But maybe that was enough.

The fog thinned slightly and he saw a dim light glowing in the distance. A fire. Instinctively, he lowered his head, letting the horse move slower. The flicker of the flame barely reached the branches above. He dismounted quietly, every movement deliberate, as if he had done this a hundred times before.

Five men sat around a small fire. Their weapons rested beside them, and several small black duffel bags lay under a makeshift canvas tarp. He didn’t have to guess what was inside them.

He moved closer.

One of the men stood up to stretch. That was enough.

He stepped out of the tree line.

They froze. Not because they had heard him. But because they had felt something.

Bobby didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

He reached for the sword.

“Who the f—”

The first man didn’t finish. The blade cut the air with terrifying speed and silence, finding its way across his throat like it had been there before. He dropped without a sound.

The second man fired. The bullet hit Bobby square in the chest.

He didn’t flinch.

The man dropped his gun. “No, no, no—”

He turned to run.

The third never even moved. He was still trying to understand what he was seeing, his eyes locked on Bobby’s, which no longer looked like the eyes of a man.

By the time the last of them screamed, Bobby’s sword was already stained again.

And the jungle was silent once more.

He spent the next week clearing every corner of the forest. Every trail, every camp. Every cave, every creaking floorboard in the Mansion. No more hiding. No more shadows. He didn't need proof anymore. He was the proof.

At night, the villagers would whisper about how the jungle felt… different. Lighter. Quieter. As if something old and angry had finally finished its work.

But the Mansion still stood.

One afternoon, Bobby stood at the edge of the forest, watching the structure from behind a thicket of trees. It looked the same. Half-dead. Mould crawling up the stone walls. Roof broken in patches. But still standing.

He walked toward it slowly, his boots crunching dry leaves, his breath misting in the still air.

The front door creaked open when he touched it. It hadn't been locked. It never had been.

Inside, the air was damp. The floorboards groaned with age and memory. The walls were covered with graffiti, some of it recent. The place reeked of drugs, of chemicals and decay, of things human hands had cooked here.

And beneath it all, something older. A grief, buried so deep into the bones of the building that it hummed.

He took the sword and drove it into the ground, right in the middle of the living room. There was no ceremony. No chants. Just a simple, final gesture.

“I know what you were,” he whispered. “I know what you became. And I know what you can still be.”

Then he turned and left.

He never looked back.

The villagers never saw Bobby again. Some believed he had died that night in the jungle, shot by smugglers or eaten by leopards. Others whispered that he had gone mad like Akshit, and wandered too far into the cursed forest.

But a few — a very few — told different stories.

Of a figure riding through the trees on a pale horse with red eyes.

Of a sword that glowed faintly in the moonlight.

Of silence that fell like a curtain after he passed.

The drugs stopped flowing. The violence stopped too. Sometimes, late at night, people heard something moving through the jungle. No footsteps. No sound. Just something there. Watching.

And then nothing.

The Mansion still stood, but no one went near it.

And every now and then, when someone foolish enough tried to restart the old operations, they found the same thing waiting.

A man, silent and cold, with a sword that sang of vengeance.

In a small city far away, in the back room of a dusty newspaper office, the editor opened a package with no return address. Inside, he found an old phone. Cracked. Scratched. Barely held together.

But when he plugged it in, it worked.

There were three videos.

In shaky, grainy footage, the face of the operation stood exposed. Men and cargo. Names and numbers.

It took only a week for the story to go national.

Smugglers arrested. Corrupt officials exposed. An old case, long forgotten, reopened.

They called it “The Jungle Files.”

The editor wanted to credit Bobby. But no one could find him. He had vanished completely. No calls. No family. No body.

Just a story.

And sometimes, in the silence between deadlines, when the office was empty and the city had gone to sleep, the editor would think about what Bobby had told him once, during a fight over a missed deadline.

“If I ever disappear,” Bobby had said, smirking, “don’t look for me. Just know I went down fighting.”

And now, he believed him.

Not everyone disappears without a trace.

Some disappear with a purpose.