We had made it.
The floating city opened around us like something out of a dream. Neon lights buzzed along gleaming towers, casting vivid blues and pinks onto the spotless glass streets. Everything shimmered — a hypnotic, endless glow of movement and color. The buildings were impossibly tall, stretching into the night sky like shining spears, and the roads were alive with a swarm of sleek hovercars zipping soundlessly by. The air itself felt different—sharp, clean, metallic. It tasted like the future.
People moved around us in graceful, hurried waves, dressed in crisp suits, flowing dresses, shimmering fabrics. They looked polished, important, utterly detached from the filth and despair we had just crawled out of. If the ground below had been hell, this place was its heaven—cold, perfect, indifferent.
Even though we wore stolen guard uniforms, it was clear we didn't belong. Their eyes caught on us. Brief flickers of suspicion. Curiosity. Disgust.
We needed to get out of these clothes—fast.
Moving in step with the other guards, we made our way toward a quieter part of the city, into a cluster of low, concrete barracks. The place had the same soul as the old railway stations where my father once worked, and where Aman and I had spent so much of our childhood. The smell of iron and grease, the distant echo of heavy boots—it all came rushing back. I saw Aman catch the memory too, the same ghost passing over his face.
"These uniforms are going to get us killed," Aanchal hissed under her breath.
She was right. We had maybe an hour before someone asked too many questions. Fortune, however, smiled on us. As we turned a corner, we saw a row of small balconies above—clothes fluttering from laundry lines. Without speaking, we moved. It felt wrong to steal, but survival didn't leave much room for guilt anymore. One quick climb, a snatch of fabric—and for the first time in months, we slipped into clean clothes. Soft. Warm. Not stiff with blood and grime.
Dressed like regular citizens, we could finally breathe. And for a moment... just a moment... we allowed ourselves something we hadn't felt in so long.
Wonder.
The city at night was a living thing. Lights blazed like fireflies trapped in glass, painting everything in wild, shifting color. It reminded me of the photographs I'd once seen of New York's Times Square or Tokyo's Shibuya Crossing — multiplied by ten. Massive digital billboards curved around buildings, screaming adverts in languages I couldn't even recognize. People streamed across levitating walkways. Trains without tracks floated silently along invisible rails. Every corner we turned showed us something stranger, something more beautiful.
There were aliens here too—real ones. Tall figures with crystal eyes, humans with metallic skin grafts, creatures that moved in strange, flowing ways. No one batted an eye. We must have stared like idiots.
Amid the chaos, we spotted something—a neon sign shaped like a steaming bowl: Public Hot Baths.
We practically ran.
Scraping together the few credits we had scavenged, we bought a single group pass. For the first time in four months, we felt clear water against our skin. The grime, the blood, the dirt of the garbage pits—it peeled away, turning the water a cloudy grey. I almost cried. The girls laughed freely, real laughter, bubbling up without fear. Dikshant dunked himself under until only his nose poked out like a little kid. Aman leaned back against the tiles and closed his eyes, smiling.
Afterward, still dazed, we stumbled into a nearby food stall. Spicy skewers. Hot noodles. Things we couldn't even name. We ate until we hurt. For those few golden hours, it felt like the world outside—the Knights, the garbage pits, the hunger—was a bad dream we had finally woken from.
But dreams don't last.
Night crept deeper, and we realized we had no place to sleep. We tried hotels first. Impossible. Prices that would've bought a house down below. We were out of options.
It was time to break a few more rules.
Quietly, carefully, we scouted the residential zones. Row after row of tightly packed apartments. After nearly an hour of searching, luck turned. A small, modest home — lights out, no signs of life inside. A holiday sticker on the door hinted the family might be away. No alarms, no neighbors in sight. We forced the lock. Slipped inside.
And for the first time in what felt like forever, we slept under a real roof.
No metal sheets overhead. No stink of burning garbage. No guards screaming us awake.
Just soft beds, clean air, and dreams that—for once—weren't nightmares. But the night had some other plans for us. The living room had quieted down, but the tension still lingered like static in the air.
Aanchal stood near the cracked window, arms folded, her breath misting faintly against the glass. Naina sat cross-legged on the sofa, flipping through a weathered map, pretending to focus on troop movement routes that no longer mattered.
The silence was sharp, brittle.
"I just think it's wasteful," Aanchal said suddenly, not bothering to turn around. "A whole room for one person when we're all trying to stay hidden? Come on."
Naina sighed without looking up. "And I think we need boundaries. If we're going to stay here for a while, we should have at least some system."
Aanchal turned then, her eyes narrowing. "Is that why you made Shivam sleep on the floor last night?"
"I didn't make him. He offered."
"He offered because you guilt-tripped him into it."
Naina snapped the map shut. "Oh, please. Don't project. You're the one stomping around acting like you're above the rest of us."
Aanchal smirked. "And you're the one who pretends being in charge means you're always right."
Their voices were rising now. Aman sat up from his makeshift bed in the corner and groaned.
"Can you two not do this tonight?" he mumbled. "Seriously, I'm too tired to referee."
Neither girl responded.
Shivam looked between them, eyes cautious, choosing silence over siding with either.
"I'm going to the balcony," Naina muttered. "At least there's air out there."
"I'll be in the room I 'shouldn't have' all to myself," Aanchal shot back, before disappearing down the hallway.
Naina paused for a moment at the balcony door, as if considering whether to say something more. But instead, she pushed it open and stepped into the cold night, her figure framed in moonlight.
Aman rolled over. "Ten rupees says they apologize in the morning."
Shivam didn't answer. He lay back on the floor, folding his jacket into a thin pillow. The room slowly settled into a hush, broken only by the ticking of a dusty wall clock and the occasional rumble of the city outside.
Eventually, he drifted off.
And the dream came.
It began in a corridor—long, dimly lit, and stretching endlessly in both directions. Shivam couldn't tell if it was underground or floating in space. The walls seemed made of stone and metal, ancient yet humming with energy.
He walked.
No footsteps echoed behind him, but the hairs on his neck stood up as if he were being followed.
Whispers floated through the air. Not in words, but sensations. Guilt. Fear. Hunger. Loss.
One door stood at the end.
He pushed it open. Suddenly, the world shifted.
Now he stood on a battlefield. Not one from memory, but from somewhere else—perhaps not even Earth. Ash rained from a dark sky. Broken towers jutted from a scorched wasteland-like ribs from a carcass.
In the center, a crater pulsed with dull, red light.
Shivam stepped closer, drawn without understanding why.
The crater wasn't just empty—it was deep, endless, and inside it was a shape. Not quite a machine. Not quite alive. It pulsed like a heartbeat, casting eerie shadows that didn't match the angles of anything around it.
He stared. And then—eyes opened within the object.
Not literal eyes, but the dream-world's version of them: ovals of shimmering awareness, watching him.
Studying him. He couldn't move. Couldn't speak. The object pulsed again.
"The fracture grows."
A voice, not heard but felt.
The sky above cracked open like shattered glass. Through it, something descended—a figure, vast and undefined, cloaked in writhing smoke and silver fire. Its face was obscured, but its presence was unbearable, like gravity pressing down on his chest.
"He sees you."
The battlefield twisted, folding in on itself. Shivam fell into the crater. Fell through light.
Through time. Through something that remembered him. He screamed. His eyes snapped open.
The ceiling above was cracked and grey in the early morning light. For a moment, he couldn't breathe, couldn't tell if he was still dreaming. But the world was still again.
No pulsing craters. No whispers. Just the dim apartment and the slow rhythm of sleep around him. Aanchal's door was closed. Naina hadn't come back from the balcony. Aman was snoring.
Shivam wiped the sweat from his brow and sat up slowly. The dream had felt… real.
Not just in the way nightmares usually did, but in the way that made his chest ache, like something ancient had recognized him.
He didn't know what it meant. Didn't know who "he" or "IT" was.
But as the light of morning crept through the blinds, Shivam couldn't shake the feeling that the dream wasn't over. It was just beginning.
Morning broke with the golden sheen of artificial sunrise across the city domes.
We didn't dare stay long. By sunrise, we were back on the streets, splitting up to find answers. Aman, Aanchal, and Dikshant headed toward the libraries and archives. Meanwhile, Naina and I made for the towering City Hall and the massive Museum of Progress, where the regime proudly displayed its history.
And what we found there made my blood run cold.
The floating cities weren't just some natural evolutions of humanity. They were the Vashra Dominion's masterpiece. A ruling power so vast, so absolute, that no one questioned it anymore. They had reshaped the world after the Collapse — destroying the old nations, erasing the old maps.
At the head of it all was a single name whispered in awe and fear:
Commander Navek Vyer.
A man—or something more than a man—who had led the Dominion to victory and now ruled like a living god.
The museum hailed him as a savior. Murals showed him descending from the heavens, sword in hand, bathed in psionic light. Monuments praised his genius, his strength.
But looking at his eyes in those paintings—those cold, emotionless eyes—you knew.
This wasn't a savior.
This was a tyrant.
More terrifying was the discovery of Noctirum.
A metal unlike anything the Earth had ever known.
It powered the cities. It powered the weapons. It amplified thought itself into deadly force. It could bond to human minds — sometimes giving them abilities beyond imagination, sometimes enslaving them completely. A semi-living metal, shifting, waiting, hungering.
They had built this shining city on the back of a monster.
That evening, the sky turned crimson as the daily parade of the Dominion began. Soldiers marched in perfect, mechanical precision. Psionic banners rippled overhead, casting eerie, shifting shadows across the crowds. And at the heart of it, riding a hover-chariot made of blackened steel, was Commander Navek Vyer himself.
The sight of him froze my blood.
He moved like a shadow given flesh. No warmth. No mercy. Only an endless hunger for control.
Around us, thousands cheered. They threw flowers, cried his name, wept with joy.
But we—standing silent in the crowd—saw the truth. We saw the chains hidden beneath the lights. And we knew: The real fight was just beginning.