The glow of the desk lamp cast long shadows across the small study room in their modest room of the haveli in Lyari. Inara sat hunched over her textbooks, her slender fingers gripping the edges of a worn notebook filled with scribbled formulas and highlighted notes.

At twenty-three, she was in her final year of college, pursuing a degree in literature that she had fought tooth and nail to earn. The upcoming exams loomed like a storm cloud, threatening to drown her in a sea of self-doubt. Her dark hair, usually tied back in a neat ponytail, had come loose, strands sticking to her forehead from the hours of relentless focus.