It started in a Mumbai slum.
Not with lightning. Not with screams.
With a child laughing.
Eight-year-old Arjun hadn't spoken in months—not since the Purge raid that took his parents. He sat by a rusted water tank, tracing patterns in the dust with a stick, eyes dull.
Then the birds stopped flying.
He looked up.
A pigeon hovered three feet above the alley, wings frozen mid-beat. Raindrops hung like glass beads in the humid air. Even the distant honking of rickshaws cut off, as if someone had muted the world.
Arjun blinked.
And laughed.
Not out of fear. Out of recognition.
His fingers twitched—and the dust around him rose, not in a cloud, but in perfect spirals, forming tiny constellations only he could name.
