The victory over the saboteur had injected a desperate, electric surge of adrenaline into the Haveli, but the fifteenth day brought a challenge that no amount of human vigilance could foresee. The heavens themselves seemed to conspire against them.

The Rajasthan heat, which had been an oppressive, dry weight for months, suddenly snapped. By mid-afternoon, the horizon didn't just darken; it bruised into a sickly, deep purple. The air grew so thick with humidity that the women in the hall found it difficult to draw breath. This wasn't a seasonal cooling; it was a pre-monsoon deluge of biblical proportions. When the sky finally opened, it didn't rain, it cascaded, turning the parched dust of the courtyard into treacherous red rivers in a matter of minutes.