Location: Kolkata Ruins, Sector 9 SlumsDate: September 20, 2029Time: 3:03 AM
The sky no longer looked like sky.It looked like flesh stretched over bone, bleeding from somewhere behind the stars.
Monsters roamed the city like shadows — slipping between broken buildings, feeding on silence. Fires danced in the rain. Smoke curled like veins in the air.
Yash crouched in an alleyway, barefoot, covered in ash.
His eyes — silver.Hair — white.Heart — slow but awake.
He didn't know what he was now.But he wasn't the same boy who stood under a rope.
A scream broke through the air.Real. Nearby.
A woman.Then a child.Followed by silence — the kind that stays.
Yash moved.
His body didn't ask permission. It acted.One step, two, then through a collapsed wall. A hallway flooded with red light. A smashed scooter. A fallen power line.
Then he saw it.
A creature — tall, skeletal, hunched over something that used to be human. Its limbs moved like wet rope. Its face… wasn't a face. Just a flat surface with red cracks pulsing underneath.
It turned toward him.
It didn't growl. It clicked.
Yash felt nothing.
No fear.No rage.Just cold focus.
The ash around his body began to rise — like smoke being called to war. His right arm shimmered with faint symbols. Not language — just meaning.
The creature lunged.
He didn't move.
When it struck — claws wide, teeth ready — Yash stepped through it.
Literally.
The ash bent reality around him, for just a breath.
He reappeared behind it.
His palm struck its spine.
There was no explosion. No light. No dramatic sound.
Just—
Disintegration.
The creature turned to dust mid-scream.Its essence became ash.
Yash stood over it, breath shallow.
His hand was shaking.
Not from fear.But from something else.
He looked at the blood on the ground. Not the creature's — the human's.
A child lay beside her dead mother. Alive, sobbing, covered in bruises.
Yash knelt slowly.
The girl looked up, terrified.
He extended a hand.
She stared at it.
The ash on his fingers was still warm.
"I won't let anything hurt you," he said.
His voice sounded different.Not older — just… clearer.
The girl didn't speak. She just grabbed his hand.
And in that moment, something shifted in Yash.
Not in his body. In his will.
This wasn't about surviving anymore.This was about protecting.
In the sky, far above the city, eight shadows watched silently.
Gods, or something like them.Not interfering. Not speaking.
Just… watching.