Nights in Mumbai had always been noisy—rickshaws rattling through narrow lanes, the smell of frying spices drifting from food stalls, the constant blare of horns weaving into the pulse of the city. But lately, something felt different. The city seemed wrapped in a veil of unease, as though the air itself carried a warning no one could quite name.
The sky was no longer ordinary. Stars flickered in strange patterns, trembling as if reflected on rippling water. At odd hours, pale blue streaks cut across the clouds, vanishing before anyone could truly see. Some called them tricks of the atmosphere, reflections of airplanes, or fireworks from unseen celebrations. Yet Ravi, the boy who sold newspapers by the station, could not shake the feeling that these lights came from far beyond the reach of Mumbai's bustle—from somewhere pressing against the fabric of the world itself.
One morning, while stacking fresh bundles of newspapers, Ravi's hands froze on the bold black letters stretched across the front page:
"Mysterious Attack in Stuttgart: Witnesses Describe a Man With a Glowing Staff."
He read quickly, each word tightening his chest. The article was confused, uncertain. A man had appeared suddenly in the heart of a European square, forcing crowds to kneel with what witnesses called a "scepter of light." Local police had been powerless. No explanation was given. Governments were silent. But eyewitnesses insisted there was something unearthly in the man's presence, a weight that bent the will of those around him.
Ravi swallowed hard. The description sent a chill up his spine. In his dreams he had seen such a figure: a tall man with cold, blue-lit eyes, carrying a weapon that pulsed like lightning caged in glass. He did not know the name Loki, nor the word Tesseract. Yet the shadow in his dreams had already spoken to him, long before the newspaper did.
The next paper was worse.
"Secret American Organization SHIELD Involved?"
Below the headline, a blurry photograph showed a man in a black suit and dark glasses. The article speculated on a hidden agency investigating anomalies across the globe. Another image caught Ravi's attention even more: a burst of blue light exploding from a building in Europe, captured mid-frame.
His stomach clenched. What was happening across the world seemed impossibly distant, yet Ravi felt as though invisible threads were pulling Mumbai closer to that chaos. Pulling him closer.
That evening, pushing his cart home through fading light, Ravi noticed a man trailing him. The stranger was unremarkable at first glance: neatly dressed, hair trimmed, his pace unhurried. Yet his eyes—sharp, measuring—never wavered from Ravi.
Ravi turned into a side alley, weaving between stacked crates and laundry lines, hoping the man would lose interest. But the footsteps followed, steady, unhurried, patient.
He stopped at a small roadside shrine, heart hammering. Turning, he caught the stranger's gaze. The man stopped a few paces away. Neither spoke. There was no smile, no threat, only a silent question in the stranger's expression: Who are you really?
Ravi lowered his head, pretending to fix his cart. When he looked again, the man was gone.
Was he SHIELD? A spy? Or merely a figment born from sleepless nights and too many troubling headlines? Ravi did not know. But the encounter left a weight on his chest. The more he tried to escape the world's pull, the more it seemed determined to find him.
That night, his dreams returned, fiercer than ever.
He stood in a city of steel towers and neon lights. At its heart, a man with the scepter of his nightmares raised it to the sky. From the tower's peak, the heavens cracked open. A vast rift yawned, spilling blinding blue light and endless shadows. Out poured a swarm—creatures of metal and flesh, wings beating, weapons screaming as they descended on the city.
Ravi clutched his ears, but another voice seeped through, deeper than thunder, heavier than oceans.
"Child of earth… you are dust. And dust shall return to darkness."
It was the voice of Kali Purusha.
Ravi's knees buckled. Fear hollowed his body, his breath strangled. He wanted to scream but found no sound, only a suffocating cold swallowing him whole.
Then—another voice. Clear, firm, unyielding.
"Dharma does not wait for the ready."
Ravi knew that voice. Parashurama. The wanderer, the shadow who had once confronted him with riddles of courage and destiny. A faint warmth spread within him, enough to keep him from collapsing.
He woke gasping, drenched in sweat. Outside his small window, the yellow wash of a streetlamp flickered. The night was quiet, yet his heart would not slow. He knew this had not been just a dream.
The following day, aimless and restless, Ravi walked through a park to calm his thoughts. There, beneath a banyan tree, sat an old man in simple robes, eyes closed in quiet meditation.
When Ravi drew near, the man opened his eyes and spoke softly, as if continuing a conversation that had begun long before:
"Sometimes, young one, the world does not ask if you are ready. The world simply calls."
Ravi blinked. "What do you mean?"
The man's gaze lifted briefly to the restless sky. "When a door opens, who will step through? The brave? Or the fleeing? Dharma chooses not by wealth or blood, but by who can still stand, even while trembling."
The words struck deep. They echoed the voice in his visions. Ravi wanted to press for answers, but the man rose, touched his shoulder gently, and walked away. No name, no farewell. Just a shadow passing through his life, leaving more questions than before.
Yet strangely, Ravi felt steadied. At least for a moment.
But peace never lasted.
That night, Mumbai itself seemed to shudder.
The sky above the city rippled with strange light. A flash of blue burst across the horizon, painting glass towers with unnatural glow. Pedestrians stopped mid-step, staring upward. Some pointed, some muttered prayers, others fumbled to record on their phones.
Ravi raised his eyes. His breath caught.
For an instant, he saw it: a hairline fracture across the heavens, like glass about to break. From it spilled that same blue radiance he had dreamed of. Within the crack, something darker moved—shapes that might have been wings, or machines of war.
Panic erupted. Screams filled the streets. Shopkeepers pulled down shutters, parents dragged children inside, yet Ravi could not move. The sight gripped him, rooting him to the pavement. This was not illusion, not a dream. It was real.
And worse—he felt it was searching. For him.
From a balcony high above, Arjun watched in silence. His form was cloaked in the simple guise of an ordinary man, but his eyes glimmered with hidden power.
He knew well: the portal had not opened here. Its heart was across the ocean, in a city called New York. But the Tesseract's resonance was too vast to contain. It rippled outward, touching every corner of the earth.
And Ravi, the boy still learning to stand, had felt it.
Arjun's lips curved into the faintest smile. His voice was barely more than a whisper, carried away by the night breeze.
"Your time is near, Ravi. The door has opened."
The night after the sky split open, Mumbai was restless.Markets stayed open long past their hours, not to sell but to talk. Radios crackled in tea stalls, televisions glowed in shop windows, and strangers gathered in doorways as if the city itself could not sleep.
The rumors spread faster than any headline. Some swore they had seen divine wrath descend. Others claimed it was the work of weapons from another country. But Ravi knew it was neither. What he had seen in the blue fire was not the wrath of gods nor the invention of men—it was hunger.
And that hunger had a name, even if only he could hear it.
The following day, Ravi delivered newspapers through the lanes near CST station. The usual clamor of trains and vendors was drowned out by shouts as commuters clustered around a television set in the chai stall. Ravi paused, bundle of papers still under his arm.
The broadcast was shaky, filmed from a rooftop across the ocean. Yet what it showed made his breath freeze.
Over a skyline of glass towers, the sky had been torn wide open. A rift, glowing with the same blue he had glimpsed above Mumbai, poured fire and steel upon the city below. From it streamed creatures—armored leviathans that roared through the air, and ranks of warriors wielding alien spears.
The anchors struggled to keep pace: "Authorities… evacuation… unidentified invaders…" The words blurred in Ravi's ears.
And then he saw him.
A man in dark armor, crowned with a horned helm, a staff glowing with unnatural light. He walked through the chaos as though he had summoned it. Cameras struggled to follow, but Ravi did not need clarity. He knew the face. He had seen it in his dreams.
The name passed through the crowd: "Loki."
Ravi whispered it under his breath. The syllables felt heavy, like the name of a storm.
For days, the world seemed to stop spinning. Every screen carried the same images: the city across the ocean besieged by otherworldly forces.
Yet alongside the terror came figures no less impossible. A man encased in red and gold armor streaking through the skies. A giant, green as emerald stone, smashing invaders with his bare hands. A warrior whose hammer called down thunder itself. A soldier with a shield, an archer firing from rooftops, a woman moving like fire given flesh.
The anchors called them the Avengers.
Ravi watched from rooftops, from crowded stalls, from the tiny television in his uncle's shop. Each time, the same unease tightened in his chest. These were the silhouettes from his visions, now flesh and blood. And still, despite all their strength, the battle looked less like victory than survival.
Behind it all, Ravi still heard the whisper. Not from the television, not from the speakers, but from the silence itself:
This is only the first crack. The hunger has not yet fed.
That night, sleep abandoned him. Ravi climbed to the rooftop, hoping the wind off the Arabian Sea would still his racing heart. The city below was restless, horns and voices rising even at midnight. But up here the world was almost quiet.
"Why me?" he asked the stars. "Why am I shown these things?"
A voice answered—not from the sky, but from behind him. Calm, measured.
"Why was Arjuna shown the armies of Kurukshetra before the battle began? Not to terrify him. To awaken him."
Ravi turned. There, leaning against the parapet, stood the same wanderer he had met beneath the banyan tree. Worn sandals, plain clothes, a satchel across his chest—ordinary in every way except for his eyes, which carried the weight of centuries.
Ravi's throat tightened. "You again. Who are you?"
The man smiled. "A guide. Nothing more."
"You speak as if you know what's happening," Ravi said. His voice trembled despite himself. "The visions, the voice, the sky tearing apart… Why me? I'm not a warrior. I'm nobody."
The man stepped closer, resting a steady hand on Ravi's shoulder. "Nobody? The fire chose to show you what others cannot bear to see. That is not chance."
Ravi shook his head. "I'm not ready."
"No one ever is," the man replied softly. "Dharma does not wait for readiness. It demands only courage."
For a heartbeat, Ravi glimpsed something impossible shimmer around the stranger—a vastness, as if galaxies revolved in the depths of his gaze. Then it was gone, leaving only the gentle smile of a teacher.
The moment passed, but Ravi felt changed.
The battle across the sea raged until the next day. The alien horde poured through the rift, the city burned, and the strange heroes fought until the world doubted they could stand any longer.
And then—suddenly—it ended.
The rift collapsed. The alien beasts fell lifeless. The man called Loki was bound in chains.
The world erupted in celebration. Crowds cheered in Mumbai streets as though victory had come to them directly. Firecrackers burst, children waved flags, and strangers clapped each other's shoulders in relief.
But Ravi did not cheer.
Because when the cameras showed the sky clear again, Ravi still saw the blue fire behind his eyes. When the anchors declared the battle won, he still heard the whisper curling through his mind:
One city saved. One world trembling. The hunger waits still.
That night, his dreams returned. Clearer, sharper than ever.
He saw Loki bound, smirking even in defeat. Behind him, in the darkness between stars, something vaster stirred—too many limbs, too many eyes, its presence stretching beyond thought.
The voice filled him, thick as smoke:
I am not stopped. I am not slowed. I am coming.
Ravi woke with a cry, drenched in sweat. His uncle rushed in, alarmed, but Ravi could not speak. He could only clutch his chest, shivering, as though the dream had burned its mark into his skin.
At dawn, Ravi walked until the city thinned and the Arabian Sea stretched endless before him. He let the waves lap against his feet, the horizon burning with sunrise.
And to the sea, to the sky, to himself, he whispered:
"If I am chosen, then I will not run. Even if I fear, I will stand."
Far behind him, the wanderer watched. The disguise of a common traveler clung to him still, but in his eyes danced a quiet light—the echo of a god once known by another name.
Arjun smiled. The boy had spoken the words of acceptance, however fragile. The weave of destiny tightened around him.
"Soon," Arjun murmured, his voice carried away by the wind. "When the next door opens, you will walk through."
The waves thundered against the shore as though answering.
And somewhere beyond sight, Kali Purusha stirred again.