10:00 P.M.
Click. Clack.
Hands on keyboard, eyes fixed on screen.
"Oye! Kailash!"
"Huh… yeah, yeah. Did you say something?" Kai looked around to face Mohit and Ajay sighing in unison.
Ajay, who was in his 20s, said, "Man, I just called you five times. Never mind. I was just asking—"
Click. Clack.
Kai went back to the computer. Typing.
Ajay's jaw remained open. He rubbed his forehead.
"Hey! I was saying, if you want, we can go to a club tomorrow." Ajay asked Kai, leaning on the partition.
Kai's fingers paused. He looked up with a blank expression. "Umm… actually, I'm busy."
"See?" Mohit gave a familiar look to Ajay.
"Haha… guess he's an introvert, so I guess it'll take time before we become friends. Right, Kailash?"
Kai focused on the screen. Didn't respond, as if he didn't hear Ajay.
Ajay waited.
Kai's eyes never left the screen. The monitor's glow caught the edges of his face—sharp jaw, dark circles, the particular stillness of someone who had forgotten other people were in the room.
"Don't mind. It's him." Mohit, sitting on a neighboring desk, turned toward Ajay.
"Haha, I don't mind, sir." Ajay paused. A strange smile crossed his face as he fully turned toward Mohit. "Sir! Why don't you join? It might be good for you. You know… find someone."
"Huh… I'm married, and you know it?" Mohit sized up Ajay before slinging his bag over his shoulders.
"Hahaha—I know, I know, just kidding." His expression turned genuine. "But seriously, sir, why are you always so tense? You've got these—" he tapped his own forehead, "—lines. Actual wrinkles. You're what, thirty-four?"
Mohit smirked. "There's a saying—Sindoor for women, forehead lines for men. You'll get yours one day."
Ajay shut his computer down and looked up at Kai, whose fingers were still moving. "Dude, do you mind going home now? Or is this your home? haha"
"I still have some work left," Kai said while scratching his neck. Seeing this, Ajay let out a heavy breath.
"You don't know how he is—enjoys his own company, always. Let's go." Mohit rubbed his forehead and gave Kai a last look.
"I'll be going after some time," Kai whispered in a firm voice, eyes focused on the screen, seeing Mohit and Ajay's reflection shrink on his monitor as they walked toward the exits. The door clicked shut.
Silence.
The office was a grid of dead desks and chairs, except one desk which was constantly illuminated with light. Kai worked for another 25 minutes before stopping.
He looked outside the window, sitting on his chair. The scene from this 10th-floor window at night was mesmerizing—clusters of streetlights, the crescent moon surrounded by constellations of stars—the moon's wives—but Kai let out a heavy breath and looked toward the flickering error message on his monitor. He closed the message without fixing it.
After some beats, he shut down his computer and walked away from his desk. He exited the building to head toward his home.
…
There were two paths home.
The first cut through the residential area—lit, populated, full of houses.
Safe.
The second followed through the trees on both sides. Dirt track full of cracks and potholes. Curving through stretches of forest avoided by most people, especially when stars illuminated the sky. Wild dogs' howls drew the silence away.
Kai took the second path. He always did.
It added almost 30 minutes and a wide detour. One also had to watch out for wild, feral dogs that sometimes roamed the deeper stretches. He had once seen a pair of eyes high above ground that belonged to a wild dog.
But the route was rather quiet and calm, free from people, from noise.
Mother would've hated this route, the thought arrived uninvited.
She'd always worried about him. Now dead for three years.
In his formal clothes and backpack, this young man who was in his mid-20s walked forward at a rather slow pace.
From time to time, he looked up at bright stars, the way they appeared only when you got far enough from the city's light. Orion's Belt. Faint smudge of the Milky Way.
He continued walking as he moved deeper into the forest. Not really seeing the path.
At one moment the forest felt alive with its night chorus—insects, rustling of leaves, the distant complaint of dogs. Next, everything stopped. As though every living thing stopped living in a half-mile radius.
He always walked this way, but today it was different. Wind carrying the smell of dust with some fragments of ashes.
No fire. No smoke. Just ash carried on a wind that tasted like ozone.
As he walked deeper, the howls became fewer and fewer, as if the wilds were afraid of the wild.
Crack.
Thunder split the sky.
Kai looked up. Clear sky. Same constellations. No change.
Hmm… the weather's changing, Kai thought without stopping his legs.
BOOM.
A strong wind struck Kai, making him nearly lick the ground. Kai stumbled, catching himself. His clothes became loose after flapping.
Two hundred meters ahead, something landed on the dirt track.
No—not landed! But crashed. Leaving a small crater.
It looked like a creature whose body was charred, completely blackened, thin wisps of smoke covering its body.
Kai's eyes widened. "What—"
Suddenly, a six-foot human-like figure descended at the same spot outside the crater. It appeared to have four arms, the latter two coming out of its shoulder joints.
From the figure's upper back, two stalks protruded—each tipped with a smooth, luminous sphere the size of a tennis ball, glowing a dull amber. They moved. Independently. Scanning. Like eyes.
The four-armed figure stood over the crater, looking at the charred creature as if a predator ensuring its prey was dead.
Kai's brain couldn't process.
"Hallucination," he whispered. A self-deprecating sound escaped his throat—half chuckle, half whisper. He rubbed his forehead. "Stress. This isn't real—"
Three more creatures emerged from the air near the crater. Each the size of a horse. Four limbs. Elongated neck. Deep black eyes. Each mouth was a vertical slit that opened sideways, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth. A pair of wings.
Spine running along their backs to a long tail, resembling a small dragon.
Two of them stood the same size. The third—which emerged directly behind the four-armed figure—had wider wings which seemed made of ice.
They moved in unison.
The smaller ones lunged first—one from the right, one from the left, converging on the four-armed figure in a scissoring attack.
The figure opened its arms, spreading fingers without flinching.
CRACK.
A lightning bolt emerged—not from the sky, from the palm—launched outward with a sound like tearing fabric amplified by a thousand times. The blast hit one of these two creatures, making no difference between it and the one sleeping in the crater. The other one tried to dodge.
But it got hit on one of its wings, making it burn down and tear apart. It let out a scream—a sound like metal dragged across glass—and was knocked down on the path, thrashing into the dirt.
The bigger one charged at the man. The four-armed man didn't even show the sign of slightest fear or panic.
But he instead stretched his lips to reveal a sinister smile.
He brought his two hands, palms together, aiming at the ground—CLAP.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
Rain.
A rain of lightning bolts. The ground erupted. Trees splintered. A shockwave of dirt and wind exploded outward, catching Kai in the blast.
He flew backward along the track, hitting the ground rolling, losing his bag, dust filling his mouth with a hint of thunder. Ears rang.
RUN.
The thought cut through panic.
RUN.
Kai scrambled, got on his feet, and ran. No matter the direction—just away from the nightmare behind him—
No!
He'd turned around in the blast. He was running toward the lightning strikes. Not away. Every step closed the distance between Kai and the crater.
No, no, no—
HAWL.
The bigger one cried in pain before launching dense white crystal spears—not where its target was standing, but where he would be dodging. Sharp predator instincts.
Before the spears hit the man, it split open its mouth, revealing its sharp teeth. It started sucking the air until it became like a compressed air cannon.
The man dodged with an inhuman speed.
The cannon obliterated the surroundings. Barks opened. Branches shattered. Several ancient trees went down with just a single attack, leaving only dirt in the air with traces of leaves.
The man raised his hands. Lightning bolts hit the ground. He dodged the spears with incredible speed, swapping his positions between lightning strikes like walking between lightning bolts. With each dodge, he was closer to Kai than before.
The bigger creature hurled itself at the man. Talons of compressed air–extended from its limbs with a sound like steel being torn apart. The very atmosphere seemed to wrap around its claws.
The man vanished with another bolt of lightning before materializing further down the track—twenty meters behind Kai—in a thunderclap that shattered the sky.
The big creature's midnight fur bristled like electrified needles. It launched forward—not flying but tearing through the air—a black missile. It shot past Kai's left shoulder in a violent blur, chasing the man behind Kai.
Crater ahead. Man and beast behind him. Like wheat between two grinding stones.
"Wrong. All wrong."
Kai froze. The path ahead wasn't empty.
With the man and big creature now behind him, he was left facing the third beast—the one with a burned wing near the crater. Eyeball hanging out of its socket. Wings torn apart. Standing roughly 70 meters ahead of Kai.
Their eyes met.