The day unraveled like any other—class, noise, a bit of laughter—but the world had already begun to fray beneath its surface.
That evening, Aarav sat alone on his terrace, under the wide Indian sky, the hum of summer fans in the background, dogs barking in distant alleys. His math book lay ignored beside him, its corners fluttering in the warm breeze.
Then the air changed.
Everything stopped.
The breeze paused. The sounds dimmed to silence. Even the stars above seemed to stretch and blur, like they were smudged across a fogged-up mirror.
And then, it fell.
A single drop of light—not a shooting star, not a meteor, but something entirely other—descended from the heavens like a silver teardrop. It struck Aarav squarely in the chest.
The world exploded.
Aarav screamed as something ignited inside him. Not fire. Not cold. Something ancient. A flood of alien memory, symbols spiraling into his mind faster than thought.
His veins burned—literally. Glowing patterns began crawling up his arms in crimson and gold, curling like living tattoos. His skin shimmered, split in places, reknitting in real time.
He doubled over, gasping.
Every breath was a fight.
Pain lashed through his back, down his spine. His vision cracked like broken glass—fragments of places he had never seen but now somehow remembered. Floating cities. Dead suns. Screaming skies. He wasn't just seeing another world—he was becoming part of one.
Then the ground beneath him ceased to exist.
With a thunderous, vacuum-sucked pull, Aarav was wrenched from his rooftop and flung through an invisible tear in space. It wasn't falling—it was being shredded. Between moments. Between realities.
He screamed again, but no sound came out.
When he woke, he thought he had died.
But death, he quickly realized, would have been gentler.
He lay on a jagged patch of cracked ground, surrounded by fractured stone and thorny growths that twisted like rusted wire. A dark, purple-gray sky hung low overhead, flickering faintly like a dying screen. The air was thick, buzzing with pressure—like gravity couldn't decide how hard it wanted to push.
Aarav coughed violently, every breath like knives. His clothes were half-burned from the transfer, his skin raw with residue magic.
He rolled to his side and vomited.
Then he noticed: the glowing lines on his skin were still there. Fainter now, but pulsing.
"What the hell... where am I?"
He forced himself up. His legs shook, his lungs barely holding. In every direction: ruins. Rocks. Distant screeches that sounded wrong—too many layers, too much echo.
He stumbled forward, instinct driving him.
The realm around him felt wrong. The trees, if they could be called that, looked half-metallic. The animals—or whatever once lived here—left only tracks, most of them sharp and sunken deep.
In the distance, a spiral cliff formation stood out, glowing faintly. Something about it called to him. And near its base, broken rubble glimmered.
He dragged himself toward it.
Among the debris, he found a stone chest sealed with a handprint indentation. As his fingers touched the mark, his blood—still laced with remnants of the mysterious power—was recognized.
The stone cracked open.
Inside lay a sleek, curved weapon. More like a dagger carved from dark glass with lines of violet metal embedded in its handle. The moment he held it, the weapon pulsed once—then quieted.
He had no idea why he felt calm holding it. Like it had always been his.
It wasn't much, but it was something.
Behind him, a branch snapped.
Aarav whirled.
Something had followed him.
Eyes—too many of them—watched him from the shadows. A beast, low to the ground, with scale-like skin and bone protrusions. It didn't snarl or charge. It just waited.
Aarav took a step back.
Then it lunged.
And something deep inside him woke up.
His free hand moved without thought, forming a spiral shape in the air. His veins lit up like firecrackers.
"VEIN IGNITE," a voice whispered in his own mind.
His body reacted. The dagger glowed, swung, and sliced a wave of compressed force, flinging the creature into a tree with a bone-snapping crash.
Aarav stared at his hand, chest heaving.
"What… was that…?"
Unseen by him, far beyond the twisted trees, something older—stronger—raised its head. It had no name in this realm. It needed none. All other beasts avoided it. Even the sky bent around its presence.
It watched the pulse of the spiral signature with interest.
It remembered that power. Barely.
And it remembered the gate that had not opened for centuries.
The prey had arrived.