Maya

Artist Vasanth narrates a chilling tale about Maya and the haunted Mayavanam to a friend on his birthday. He explains the superstition that saying 'Maya! Your daughter is not with me!' three times invites a spirit. When the friend repeats the line, a figure appears, only to reveal itself as the wife playing a prank.

The next day, Vasanth shows his Maya photos to Ram Prasad and Madhan, the episode writer. Ram notices a smoky form near them and warns that the Mayavanam legend could be dangerous. Madhan recalls Kate's book Asylum, tying Maya Matthews to the asylum’s dark history.

In a flashback, Maya Matthews murders her husband and is forced to surrender her newborn daughter to the authorities. She is taken to Mayavanam, where she dies after a fall from a building and is buried on the asylum grounds. The locals believe her vengeful spirit still roams the cemetery and haunt the forest.

Madhan and Vasanth's auto driver friend visit Mayavanam to document Maya's last episode. Madhan disappears during the exploration, and the auto driver narrowly escapes. The eerie incidents fuel Vasanth's determination to uncover the truth behind Maya.

In parallel, Apsara is a single mother struggling to make ends meet while her husband Arjun, an actor, is away. She lives with Swathi at RK Studios and fights a loan from a local gangster, bouncing cheques and fearing violence. The financial strain sets the stage for her encounters with Irul.

A poster of Irul appears in Apsara’s world, and strange happenings escalate as debt gnaws at her. She learns about a promotional contest offering 5 lakh for watching the horror film alone at night. With money tight, she goes to the ad company, hoping for a breakthrough, only to find the producer has departed to participate in the contest.

The ad film producer collapses at the studio and is carried away on a stretcher, with the director claiming it was a heart attack. The case unsettles everyone, and the director and Swathi give tacit support to Apsara as strange events intensify around Irul. The boundary between film and reality begins to blur.

Deciding to watch Irul to cope with her troubles, Apsara finds the director unusually supportive. As the film starts, it’s revealed that Vasanth’s side of the story is the film Irul itself, turning Apsara’s world inside out. She is suddenly drawn into the movie’s narrative as a participant rather than spectator.

Within Irul, Ram and Kate search Maya’s coffin for the rumored ring while Vasanth is captured and threatened. Apsara is pulled deeper into the film, and the group faces escalating supernatural danger as a spectral presence looms behind them.

The trio is chased by the vengeful spirit and falls into a big ditch. Vasanth helps Apsara out, but she is shot by Shankar and collapses. Maya’s motherly presence then emerges, grabbing Shankar and exacting a deadly vengeance.

Apsara wakes up in a theatre with her mother's diary and Maya’s doll. The revelations unfold: Vasanth was played by Arjun in the story, and the producer who died earlier had orchestrated Maya’s asylum and stolen her ring. The layered storytelling exposes how the film’s reality mirrors their lives.

Apsara reunites with Arjun and acts in a Maya-themed film directed by the Irul director. During a shoot, Maya’s spirit appears in the wheelchair scene; Arjun realizes Apsara is not the person in the chair. The spirit kills the director, Maya’s ring slips from his pocket, and the screen cuts to black.