He thought the worst was losing her.
He was wrong.
Since his mother's death, Arun refuses to cry. If he lets the grief out, he's certain he'll lose what little of her he has left. Alone in their cramped apartment, he clings to her room, her things, and her memory until the first night he feels the mattress dip beside him.
A familiar hand, icy and impossibly real, curls around his.
At first, the touch is a dark comfort, a sign that love might be stronger than death. But as the nights pass, the visits grow colder, heavier, and hungrier. Something is learning the shape of his sorrow, feeding on the pain he refuses to release. And it's not coming only for him.
Haunted by hospital corridors, stale incense, and the small, suffocating rituals of mourning, Arun discovers that what grips him in the dark isn't his mother at all, but a vast, invisible net woven from the world's unspent grief, one that tightens every time someone keeps their hurt secret and their doors closed.
To break free, he must do the one thing he's most afraid of: open his fists, open his mouth, and let his love move where the dead can't follow.
"Connection" is a chilling, slow-burn ghost horror about the terrors we invite when we confuse suffering with devotion and the thin, fragile hope that comes when we finally learn to let go.