Carved into crimson stone, when safety becomes uncertain and escape becomes survival, some thresholds exist for necessity.

I am the passage that asks no questions.

Built into these red sandstone walls when the fort changed hands again and again - Mughals to the Suris, back to the Mughals, then the Jats, followed by the Marathas, and then the British.

Each conquest brought new reasons to flee, new feet upon my worn steps.

Emperors have used me, but so have servants who overheard the wrong conversation. Guards who chose loyalty over pay. Wives whose husbands fell from favour. Children whose only crime was their bloodline.

I have felt the weight of jewelled sandals and bare feet, silk slippers and leather boots.

Some descended my steps carrying treasure, others only the clothes on their backs. All carried the same thing: the urgent need to cross from danger into the unknown.

My walls have absorbed countless whispered prayers, felt trembling hands guide loved ones through darkness. I have been salvation and last resort.

Where do I lead? Into uncertainty.

But in a fortress where allegiances shift like desert sands, I remain what I have always been, the threshold between peril and possibility, where uncertainty may prove kinder than what is known.