The night after the riot did not end. It bled into a grim, sunless morning where the sky was a blanket of ash and suspended smoke. Delhi's streets lay wounded and silent—shopfronts gaping like skulls, the glitter of shattered glass mimicking a perverse frost, the air a foul cocktail of gasoline, charred wood, and the coppery tang of dried blood.
For Alok, time had not merely stopped; it had reversed. He was trapped in an endless loop of that single, shattering moment in the alley. He sat on the edge of his hostel bed, his clothes stiff with Shree's dried blood. His hands, resting on his knees, were mapped with dark, rusty stains that no amount of scrubbing could erase. It was as if her life had seared itself into his skin, a permanent brand of his failure.
Her voice was a ghost in his skull—the soft sigh of his name, the ghost of a smile, the terrifying slackness of her fingers as they slipped from his. Every time he blinked, he saw the rock connect, the light extinguish from her eyes.
The initial, animalistic scream had been torn from him until his vocal cords were shredded. Now, there was only a silence so profound it was a physical pressure in the room. A hollow, howling void had opened in his chest, a vacuum where his heart had been.
When Ankit finally pushed the door open, his own face pale with shock and lack of sleep, he found Alok exactly as he'd been for hours—a statue of grief and rage.
"Alok…" Ankit's voice was rough with emotion. He cleared his throat, forcing strength into it. "Phone aaya hai. Shree ke ghar se. Antim sanskaar… kal subah hoga."
Alok's head lifted with a painful slowness. His eyes were not red from tears, but from a sleepless, burning intensity that made Ankit's breath catch. They were the eyes of a stranger. "Main jaunga,"Alok said, his voice a hollow rasp, stripped of all its former softness.
---
The morning of the funeral was oppressively still. The courtyard outside Shree's home was crowded, the air thick with the cloying smell of marigolds and sandalwood incense, undercut by the darker scent of smoke from the nearby cremation grounds. Hers was not the only pyre; the city was burning its dead.
Alok stood apart, a specter at the edge of the gathering. He moved with a stiff, mechanical grace, but inside, a furnace was raging. When they carried her body out, swathed in white cloth, his knees threatened to buckle. The finality of it was a physical blow.
Sandhya was collapsed against Shree's mother, her body wracked with sobs that seemed to tear her apart. Nishant stood rigid, his usual charm replaced by a pallor of stunned horror, his jaw muscle twitching relentlessly. Ankit remained a half-step behind Alok, a silent sentinel, his hand a steady, worried weight on his friend's shoulder.
But Alok was blind to them all. His entire world had narrowed to the white-shrouded form on the bier. His Shree. The woman who debated political theory with fire in her eyes, whose laughter had been a secret he treasured, who had whispered about a trip to India Gate just moments before the world ended. Reduced to this. A thing to be consumed by fire.
As the flames leaped hungrily, engulfing her, something in Alok's soul ignited alongside her pyre. It was not just grief. It was a cold, crystalline rage. It did not burn hot and wild; it settled in his veins like ice, sharp and purposeful.
They did this. Not an act of God.Not chance. Men.Men who preached hate. Men who followed blindly. Men who counted profit in blood.
His fists clenched, his nails carving half-moons into his blood-stained palms. In the crackle of the flames, he made a silent, unbreakable vow. Her death would not be a statistic. It would be an equation. And he would balance it.
---
The days that followed were a monochrome blur of strategy and simmering fury.
Delhi attempted a fragile normalcy, but the tension was a live wire. On television, politicians traded hollow accusations. In corporate towers, men like Dhanna Seth calculated the depreciation of riot-affected assets and the lucrative opportunities in reconstruction. And in the shadows, Alok began his work.
He stopped attending classes. His textbooks were replaced by newspapers, local gossip, and a map of the city now marked with notations only he understood. He was no longer grieving; he was investigating.
Ankit found him one night, staring at a wall plastered with news clippings and grainy photos of mob leaders. "Bhai," Ankit pleaded, his voice strained. "Yeh rasta galat hai. Tum khud ko is aandhi mein kho doge."
Alok didn't turn. His voice was low, devoid of emotion, chilling in its certainty. "Main kho nahi raha hoon, Ankit. Main dhoondh raha hoon. Aur main nayaa rasta bana raha hoon."
Sandhya came to him, her eyes red-rimmed. "Shree tumse pyaar karti thi," she whispered, her voice breaking. "Woh nahi chahti ki tum is tarah andhere mein chale jao. Yeh dekh kar uski aatma tarp jaayegi."
Alok finally looked at her, and the emptiness in his gaze made her flinch. "Uski aatma tabhi chain paayegi," he said, each word a shard of glass, "jab main unki aatmaon ko daraye bina sone nahi dunga. Har ek aadmi jo uss din wahan tha, jo uss mob ko encourage kiya… unka hisaab hoga."
Nishant, ever the pragmatist, confronted him with brutal clarity. "Alok, yeh badla sirf ek aur laash khaada karega. Tum exactly un jaise ban jaoge jinke khilaaf Shree ladti."
For the first time, a flicker of raw emotion twisted Alok's features. "Agar main unki tarah bann jaata," he snarled, the ice cracking to reveal the inferno beneath, "toh main aaj yahan khada hokar bemaut logo ko maarna nahi chahata. Main unki tarah stage par khada hokar logon ko ukasa raha hota. Farak hai, Nishant. Main murderer nahi, executioner ban raha hoon."
The distinction was terrifying. Nishant recoiled, seeing not his friend, but a formidable, single-minded force of retribution.
---
Alok's research was meticulous. He cross-referenced eyewitness accounts from terrified shopkeepers with police FIRs that named no one of consequence. He identified the local muscle, the hired agitators, and then he traced the chain upward. He learned of Rinku, a small-time thug with a vicious streak, who had been paid to be the "spark" in his own neighborhood. He had been seen, bragging in a tea stall days later, laughing about the "khabar" of the "college-wali."
The night Alok moved, the city was lashed by a sudden, violent downpour. The rain drummed on corrugated roofs, washing the soot and blood from the streets, a futile attempt at purification.
Rinku was stumbling home, drunk on cheap liquor and his own misplaced sense of power. The alley was dark, the rain masking all sound. Alok emerged from the shadows not like an avenging angel, but like a predator—silent, efficient, and utterly without mercy.
There was no grand speech, no screaming of Shree's name. This was not about emotion; it was about correction. The violence was clinical, brutal, and overwhelming. It was the physical manifestation of a mathematical certainty: an eye for an eye.
The next morning, Rinku's body was found in a gutter, his face a pulped, unrecognizable mask. The police wrote it off as a typical gangland settling of scores. But when Ankit saw the small news item, a cold dread seized him. He looked across their room at Alok, who was methodically cleaning under his fingernails, his knuckles scraped raw and bruised.
"Tumne… kiya?" Ankit's question was a breath, barely audible.
Alok met his gaze. His eyes were flat, devoid of triumph or remorse. They were the eyes of a man who had completed the first step of a complex formula. He said nothing. His silence was a confession more damning than any boast.
"Pagal ho gaye ho?" Ankit hissed, panic rising. "Yeh kya kar diya? Police agar pakad legi? Kya yeh Shree wapas la dega?"
Alok's reply was chilling in its calm. "Shree wapas nahi aayegi. Lekin jo log sochte hain ki aise haalaat mein marne waalon ka koi hisaab nahi hota… unki soch badalni chahiye. Yeh shuruaat hai, Ankit. Sirf shuruaat."
---
The weeks turned into a grim tally. Men connected to the riot began to vanish or were found dead under gruesome, symbolic circumstances. A low-level political aide who had helped organize transportation for the mob was found hanged with a placard around his neck: बातून का हिसाब (Account Settled). Fear, once a tool used by the powerful, began to trickle upwards. Whispers spread through the bazaars and political offices: Koi aaya hua hai. Khoon maang raha hai.
For Alok, each death was not a satisfaction but a subtraction. A variable eliminated from the equation of injustice. But the core of the equation—the men who designed the chaos, who profited from it—remained. Dhanna Seth in his fortified mansion. Saurabh Singh behind his political podium.
His grief had been forged in the fire of her pyre into something harder and more dangerous: a perfect, unwavering purpose. Every memory of Shree's smile was now a whetstone on which he sharpened his resolve.
The gentle student of commerce was gone, erased as completely as if he too had been consumed by those flames.
In his place stood a shadow, a phantom of vengeance, meticulously planning his next move. And Delhi, oblivious in its fragile peace, had no idea of the storm that was patiently, methodically, preparing to unleash its fury.