The next morning began like most others: too late, too hot, and too hopeless.
Aarav woke up to the sound of construction outside, a jackhammer rattling the street like an angry drum. He splashed his face with water from the tap — it came out brown for the first few seconds, as usual — then sat staring at his phone for ten straight minutes.
Five missed calls from his mother. Three job rejections in his inbox.
He shoved the phone into his pocket, grabbed his sketchbook, and decided to head to Abids. The plan was vague: sit in a café, maybe sketch, maybe send out more résumés. At least the café had air conditioning.
The bus was overcrowded, as always. People crammed shoulder to shoulder, sweat-soaked shirts brushing against each other. Aarav squeezed in near the back, clutching the overhead bar. His sketchbook was tucked under his arm like a shield.
He was halfway through sketching a quick profile of a woman with gold earrings when the air in the bus seemed to… shift.
Not cooler. Not warmer. Just heavier, as though the space itself had thickened.
Aarav looked up. The man sitting across the aisle was staring directly at him. At least, Aarav thought it was a man. His face was wrong — too long, eyes too bright, smile stretched wide and fixed. Like someone had painted a human face but hadn't quite gotten the proportions right.
Nobody else noticed. The conductor brushed past, calling out stops, while people argued over change. The wrong-faced man just sat there, grin frozen, and mouthed something.
Aarav blinked.
The man's mouth formed the word again: "Remember."
The bus lurched violently. Tires screeched. People screamed. The driver shouted as the bus swerved off the road, metal grinding against the divider before slamming to a stop. The impact threw everyone forward — bags, bottles, and bodies crashing into each other.
Aarav hit his head against the seat in front of him. The world rang like a bell. He tasted iron in his mouth.
Through the ringing, he heard another sound — low, guttural, like laughter mixed with growling.
He forced his eyes open. The wrong-faced man was standing now, taller than before, his skin peeling away in strips to reveal something darker, scaled, and glistening beneath. Two horns pushed through his skull, curving like a bull's.
And still, nobody else reacted. Passengers scrambled, yelling at the driver, tending to bruises. A woman wailed about her spilled groceries. But not one pair of eyes turned toward the horned figure.
The creature stepped toward Aarav. Its grin was wider than human jaws should allow.
"Finally," it hissed, voice layered with echoes. "You can see."
Aarav's breath caught in his throat. His fingers tightened around the only thing he had — his sketchbook.
The creature raised a hand, claws catching the dim light.
And then, in a flash of blinding gold, something slammed into the bus. Not metal. Not debris. A presence.
The horned figure shrieked, recoiling, as a man wrapped in saffron robes appeared at the door. He looked impossibly calm amid the chaos, holding a staff that glowed with threads of fire. His eyes locked on Aarav.
"You shouldn't be able to see them," the man said, voice cutting through the noise like a blade.
"Not unless you've seen before."
Aarav's sketchbook slipped from his hands, pages fluttering open to the drawings that looked far too familiar now.