The city of Delhi has always been a creature of duality. By day, it is a vibrant, chaotic symphony of ambition—students clutching books, professionals rushing to metros, vendors calling out prices, a million lives intersecting in a haze of exhaust fumes and hope. But as the sun sets, a different energy stirs, especially when the venom of partisan politics seeps into its bloodstream. Then, the city can curdle, revealing a raw, primal underbelly where the thin veneer of civilization cracks.
It was late February. The brittle winter chill was retreating, leaving behind an unseasonal, oppressive warmth that seemed to hum with tension. That evening, the first sign was not a sound, but a smell. In the hushed, hallowed silence of the University library, where the only sounds were the turning of pages and the soft sigh of central heating, Alok caught it—the faint, acrid tang of burning plastic carried on a wayward breeze through an open window.
He looked up from his accounting textbook, his focus broken. A moment later, a boy burst through the heavy oak doors, his chest heaving, his voice a strangled whisper that cut through the quiet like a blade.
"Danga… Chand Bagh mein… shuru ho gaya hai…"
The words landed not in Alok's ears, but in his gut. Riots were abstract tragedies, stories on the news. But Chand Bagh was not abstract. It was a nexus of lanes that fed into Seelampur.
Shree.
She had gone to meet her professor there hours ago. A cold, precise dread, entirely different from generalized anxiety, crystallized in his chest. His hand, steady a moment before, now trembled slightly as he reached for his phone. He dialed her number. It rang once, twice, then died into a hollow, network-busy signal. He tried again. Nothing. The silence from the device was more deafening than any alarm.
Outside the library windows, the world was shifting. The usual evening sounds of students laughing, rickshaw bells ringing, were being overwritten by a new, dissonant score: the distant, panicked revving of engines, the wail of a police siren rising and then being swallowed, and beneath it all, a low, ominous rumble—the sound of a crowd turning into a mob.
He was moving before he made a conscious decision, his body propelled by a biochemical imperative of fear. He shoved his books into his bag, his movements efficient, automatic. The library, a sanctuary of order, felt suddenly like a trap.
Pushing through the main gates, he was met with a tide of people flowing inward, their faces pale, eyes wide. The university was sealing itself off, a fortress closing its portcullis against the plague outside. Alok moved against the current, a single salmon fighting the flow, his satchel bumping against his hip.
The closer he got to the epicenter, the more the sensory world transformed. The air grew thick and caustic, stinging his eyes and throat—a cocktail of burning rubber, melted tar, and something sweetly organic that he knew, with a nauseating lurch, was smoldering wood from smashed handcarts. The light changed too; the soft gold of the setting sun was stained a hellish orange by the reflections of multiple fires.
And the sounds. They were no longer distant. They were immersive, a 360-degree theatre of violence. The explosivepop-crack of glass shattering. The metallicshriek of a shop shutter being pried open and then torn down. The guttural,rhythmic chanting of slogans that were less words and more pure, hateful noise: "Maaro! Saala… Maaro!" And beneath it all,the terrified, high-pitched screams of those caught in the melee.
His heart was no longer beating; it was a frantic, caged animal throwing itself against his ribs. His breath came in short, sharp gasps that burned his lungs. "Shree!" he yelled, but his voice was a feather lost in a hurricane.
---
Shree in the Labyrinth
Meanwhile, Shree was navigating a waking nightmare. Her meeting had ended, and she'd been threading her way through the familiar lanes toward the main road when the atmosphere curdled. It happened not like a wave, but like a gas leak—invisible, then suddenly suffocating.
One moment, it was a crowded market; the next, a churning sea of anger. A rock whistled past her ear and smashed into a paan shop window, the glass exploding inward with a crystalline crash. The smell of spilled spices—chilli powder and turmeric—mixed with the smoke, creating a suffocating haze.
Her rational mind, the Political Science student who understood the mechanics of mob violence, was swiftly overridden by primal terror. Her breath hitched, her pulse a frantic drumbeat in her ears. She pulled her dupatta over her nose and mouth, trying to filter the air, and pressed herself into a shallow doorway, making herself small.
"Yeh ladki kahan se aayi?" a voice, thick with aggression, snarled far too close.
Her blood ran cold. She wasn't a person to them; she was a symbol, an object, a target. Her eyes darted, searching for an escape route down a side alley, but the crowd was a living wall.
Alok… The thought was not a prayer, but a anchor in the swirling chaos. His calm. His steady hands.
---
The Convergence
Alok's world had narrowed to a single objective: Find her. He used his analytical mind, now supercharged by adrenaline, to calculate probabilities. She'd take the shortest route back to the main road. He pushed down a lane clotted with debris, his shoes crunching on broken glass and nameless refuse.
And then he saw her.
She was pinned against a stained brick wall, cornered by three men whose faces were contorted into masks of mindless fury. One of them raised a lathi, a thick wooden staff, its movement slow and telegraphed in Alok's adrenaline-sharpened perception.
A sound tore from Alok's throat—not a word, but a raw, animalistic roar of pure negation. "HAT!"
He didn't feel his body move. He was simply there, his body interposing itself between Shree and the men. His hand shot out and caught the descending lathi mid-swing, the impact jolting up his arm. The man grunted in surprise. Alok's other fist, driven by a force he didn't know he possessed, connected with the man's jaw with a sickening crunch.
The second man lunged. Alok dropped the lathi, grabbed the man's outstretched arm, and used his momentum to swing him into the third. They collapsed in a tangle of limbs. There was no technique, only a feral, desperate strength fueled by a love that was currently manifesting as pure violence.
"Alok!" Shree's cry was a mixture of terror and overwhelming relief.
Their eyes met. In that split second, a universe of communication passed between them. Her look was one of sheer, unadulterated fear, but also a dawning hope. His was a feral, protective fury, a promise of safety written in the grim set of his mouth.
"Chalo!" he gasped, his voice hoarse, grabbing her hand. Her skin was ice-cold against his. "Yahan se nikalo."
---
The Unraveling
They ran, a two-person organism fleeing a predator. They ducked into a narrow gully, the sounds of the riot momentarily muffled by the close walls. Their footsteps echoed loudly, too loudly, in the relative quiet. The air was slightly clearer here, smelling of damp stone and sewage.
For a fleeting moment, hope sparked. They could hear the main road ahead, the sound of more organized shouting—perhaps police.
It was a illusion.
From behind them, a tremendous WHUMP echoed, followed by a wave of heat that washed over them. A petrol bomb had struck a fabric godown at the mouth of the alley. Fire erupted with a hungry roar, consuming the oxygen, turning the narrow passage into a chimney of superheated air and black, choking smoke.
The force of the explosion threw them forward. Alok lost his grip on Shree's hand. He hit the ground hard, the breath knocked from his lungs, his vision swimming with dancing black spots.
Coughing, choking, he scrambled to his knees. "Shree!" he croaked, blinking through the tears the smoke forced from his eyes.
She was lying a few feet away, unnaturally still. A large, jagged shard of windowpane, blown out by the blast, was embedded in her side. The pristine white of her kameez was already blooming a horrifying, deep crimson around it.
A sound left Alok's mouth—a wounded, inhuman thing. He crawled to her, his limbs feeling like lead. Gently, so gently, he cradled her head in his lap. Her skin was pale, waxy.
"Shree… please… please…" he begged, his voice cracking. He pressed his hands against the wound, a futile attempt to stanch a river. The warm, sticky blood seeped through his fingers, a horrifying contrast to the growing cold of her skin.
Her eyelids fluttered. Her dark eyes, clouded with pain, found his. A faint, ghost of a smile touched her lips. Her hand, trembling violently, lifted a few inches off the ground. He caught it, holding it tight.
"Alok… tum… aa gaye…" she whispered, each word a monumental effort. "Mujhe… darr nahi hai… tum… ho na…"
Her eyes held his for a moment longer, filled with a love so profound it eclipsed the horror around them. Then the light within them softened, faded, and went out. Her hand went limp in his.
The world did not go silent. It became horrifically specific. The crackle of the fire. The drip of water from a broken pipe. The ragged, desperate sound of his own breathing. The drip… drip… drip of her blood hitting the wet stone beneath them.
He shook her gently. "Shree? Shree, utho. Please." His voice was a child's, pleading with a universe that had just revealed its absolute indifference.
He held her, rocking back and forth, as the alley burned around them. The grief was a physical vacuum, collapsing his chest, stealing the air from his lungs. It was too vast, too absolute to process.
And then, as he sat in the ashes of his world, the grief began to transmute. It didn't fade; it crystallized. It hardened in his veins, cold and sharp and infinitely more powerful. The tears on his cheeks dried, replaced by a mask of terrifying calm.
He looked up, his gaze sweeping over the hellscape—the fire, the smoke, the distant, fading sounds of the mob already moving on to new destruction. They had done this. Men. Not an act of God, but a choice made by hate-filled hearts.
A plan began to form in his mind, not in words, but in cold, geometric certainty. It was a blueprint for retribution.
He leaned down, close to her ear, his voice now a low, deadened whisper, a vow made not to the world, but to the silence she had left behind.
"Main maaf nahi karunga," he whispered. "Main hisaab lunga. Har ek aadmi ka. Har ek haath ka. Tere liye. Sirf tere liye."
He gently laid her down, arranging her dupatta with a tenderness that was grotesquely at odds with the fury in his eyes. The boy who loved numbers and quiet moments was gone, incinerated in that alley.
The man who rose from the bloody ground was something new. Something forged in loss and dedicated to a single, terrible purpose. The first seed of the God of Blood had been planted. And it would grow in the darkness.