Aarav didn't walk home.
He drifted.
The city blurred past him—vendors packing up their carts, couples arguing over autos, stray dogs prowling for scraps. Everything looked normal, and that was the worst part. The world hadn't flinched at what he'd done. Three people had been erased, and Delhi kept breathing like nothing had happened.
His hands still felt wrong.
Not dirty.
Empty.
He scrubbed them at a public tap until the skin burned, as if guilt could be washed away with chlorinated water. The cold from earlier clung to his bones, even as sweat soaked his shirt.
A siren wailed in the distance.
Not police.
ARA.
The Awakened Regulation Authority didn't use normal sirens. Their vehicles hummed—a low, invasive vibration that seemed to slide into your skull and refuse to leave. The sound crawled across the city like a net being thrown.
Aarav's phone lit up again.
BHAIYA (12 missed calls)
He froze.
His brother, Rohan Verma, was ARA. Not field combat—analysis division. The kind of officer who looked at data, not bodies. The kind who believed rules could save people.
Aarav ducked into the stairwell of an old apartment block and answered.
"Where are you?" Rohan demanded. No preamble. No patience. "Do you have any idea what kind of spike just went off in Connaught Place?"
Aarav closed his eyes. "I was… out."
"Out where?"
"Near Palika."
Silence.
Then: "Don't move."
The words weren't angry. They were scared.
"Rohan, I'm fine—"
"Listen to me," his brother cut in. "ARA sensors picked up a reality distortion. Not fire, not ice, not spatial compression—all three. That doesn't exist. The algorithms flagged it as a possible Transcendent anomaly."
Aarav's throat tightened. "You're saying it like that's… bad."
"That's catastrophic," Rohan said. "When reality bends that hard, it attracts things. Things that hunt anomalies. If you're anywhere near that zone—"
"I'm not," Aarav lied.
Another siren wailed, closer now. The stairwell's flickering tube light buzzed like a dying insect.
Rohan exhaled, slow and steady, the way he did when he was trying not to panic. "Come home. Now. I'll stall the team. Just… don't be stupid."
Aarav stared at the concrete steps, at the grime worn into the edges by decades of shoes. "I'll try."
The call ended.
He didn't go home.
Instead, he climbed to the roof.
From there, Delhi spread out in a chaotic ocean of lights. The ARA convoy slid through traffic below—sleek black vehicles with faint sigils glowing along their frames. Drones lifted off, eyes sweeping rooftops and alleys.
They were hunting him.
Aarav backed away from the edge, heart hammering. The pressure in his chest stirred again, a low thrum like a caged storm. The memory of that impossible cold and heat made his stomach churn.
He wasn't a hero.
He wasn't a villain.
He was a problem the system would try to erase.
A shadow moved at the far end of the rooftop.
Aarav spun, muscles tensing. "I'm not interested in—"
"Relax," a woman's voice said. "If I wanted you dead, you'd already be a rumor."
She stepped into the weak light.
She was tall, wrapped in a long black coat despite the heat. Silver lines traced intricate patterns along her neck and wrists—awakened markings, but old, refined. Her eyes were an unsettling gold, catching the city's glow like a predator's.
"You're leaking reality," she said. "That's messy."
"Who are you?" Aarav demanded.
"Someone who cleans messes like you," she replied. "Call me Mira."
The pressure in Aarav's chest flared. Instinct screamed at him to run—or strike. "ARA send you?"
Mira snorted. "ARA can barely handle B-rank street gangs. They don't even have a word for what you are yet."
She took a step closer. The air around her rippled faintly, like heat haze—but colder. Controlled.
"You erased three men tonight," she said. "Not burned. Not frozen. Unwritten. Do you know what that means?"
Aarav swallowed. "It means they deserved it."
Mira's gaze sharpened. "That's your moral code?"
"They were going to hurt someone I care about," he shot back. "So yeah. They deserved it."
For a heartbeat, something like approval flickered across her face.
"Good," she said. "That'll make this easier."
"Make what easier?"
The rooftop lights died.
Darkness slammed down like a curtain. The city's noise dulled, muffled by an invisible barrier that hummed with power.
Mira raised her hand. Silver lines on her skin ignited, casting cold light over her face.
"Because the things that hunt Reality-class anomalies don't care about your reasons," she said quietly. "And one of them just crossed into Delhi."
The air split.
Not with a sound—but with absence.
A vertical seam opened a few meters away, a wound in space that bled darkness. The temperature dropped. The city's lights beyond the barrier flickered, then warped, as if reflected in broken glass.
Something moved inside the seam.
Something looked back.
Aarav's chest burned. The storm inside him surged, desperate and wild.
Mira's voice cut through the rising roar in his head. "If you lose control here, half this block disappears."
The seam widened.
Aarav took a step back—and the rooftop edge crumbled under his heel.
For a weightless instant, the city rose up to meet him.
And then he fell.