The morning smelled of rain that never came. Mumbai's suburbs had been choking on dry heat for weeks, the kind that made clothes stick and tempers flare. Devansh walked home from school with his earbuds in, the bass of an old Bollywood track drowning out the usual chaos of vendors hawking chai and children darting between scooters. His backpack hung heavy with textbooks he hadn't opened in days. Seventeen felt like a long time to still be waiting for life to start.
He turned onto his street, the one lined with identical concrete houses painted in faded pastels. His mother's voice echoed in his head from breakfast: "Don't be late, beta. Your father wants to talk about college applications." He rolled his eyes at the memory. College. As if the world wasn't already too full of things that didn't matter.
Then the roar came.
It wasn't thunder. It was deeper, mechanical, like the sky itself had torn open. Devansh yanked out his earbuds. People froze mid-step. A street dog lifted its head, ears pricked. The air vibrated.
A blinding flash lit the horizon, white-hot, swallowing the sun. Devansh shielded his eyes, but the light burned through his fingers. The ground shuddered once, twice. Screams started sharp, confused, then panicked.
He ran.
His house was only two blocks away. He sprinted past neighbors spilling onto the street, past a woman clutching her child, past a scooter that had toppled over. The shaking grew worse. Windows rattled. Dust rose from cracks in the road.
When he reached the corner, he saw it.
His home was gone.
Not collapsed. Erased. Where the two-story house had stood pink walls, iron balcony, the mango tree his father had planted when he was born ,there was only a crater of pulverized concrete and twisted rebar. Smoke curled upward, thick and black. The air tasted of ash and something metallic, like blood on the tongue.
Devansh stumbled forward. His knees hit the rubble. He clawed at it, hands scraping against sharp edges. "Mom! Dad!" His voice cracked, raw. "Mom!"
No answer. Only the distant wail of sirens that sounded too far away, too late.
He dug deeper. His fingers bled, mixing red with gray dust. A piece of his mother's blue dupatta fluttered free, singed at the edges. He stared at it, numb. This couldn't be real. This was a dream, a bad one, the kind where you wake up sweating and laugh about it later.
But the dust kept falling. The sirens kept wailing. And the dupatta stayed in his hand, real and ruined.
He sat back on his heels, chest heaving. The world tilted. People were shouting now neighbors, strangers running toward the wreckage, pulling others away. Someone grabbed his shoulder. "Boy, come on. It's not safe."
Devansh shook them off. He couldn't leave. Not yet.
Hours blurred. The sun dipped low, turning the sky a sickly yellow. Rescue teams arrived in orange vests, shouting orders. They found nothing. No bodies. No survivors. Just debris and silence.
By dusk, Devansh was alone in the crater. The others had drifted away grief had a way of isolating people. He clutched the dupatta to his chest. His hands throbbed. His throat burned from dust and tears he didn't remember shedding.
A strange warmth bloomed in his chest. Not comforting. Not hopeful. Just... there. Like a coal lodged behind his ribs. He pressed a hand to it, frowning. The warmth pulsed once, sharp, and a faint glow flickered under his skin blue veins tracing up his arm before fading.
He blinked. Hallucination. Shock. Had to be.
But when he stood, the ground trembled again not from aftershocks, but from him. A nearby chunk of concrete lifted an inch, hovered, then dropped with a thud. Devansh stared at his hands. They shook.
Panic rose. He tried again on purpose this time. A metal rod lifted, spun, then hurtled toward him. He threw up both hands. An invisible wall shimmered into existence, the rod bouncing off with a clang.
He gasped. The effort sent a spike of pain through his skull. Blood trickled from his nose, warm and coppery. He wiped it away, staring at the red smear on his palm.
The memories surged again. His father's voice: "You're stronger than you think, beta." His mother's hand on his forehead when he was sick. They weren't fading they were sharper, louder, replaying in loops that made his head throb.
He curled into himself. "Stop," he whispered. "Please stop."
The warehouse went quiet. The warmth receded, leaving him hollow.
Then his shadow moved.
It wasn't the moonlight playing tricks. The long, dark shape cast by the broken window stretched across the floor longer than it should have been, independent. It rippled like oil on water, edges fraying into tendrils that reached toward him.
Devansh froze. His own shadow, the one attached to his feet, detached slightly at the edges, as if testing the air. A low rasp echoed not in the room, but inside his skull. Not words at first. Just a sound like wind through cracked bones, hungry and patient.
He backed against the wall. The shadow followed, pooling at his feet, then climbing slowly up his legs like spilled ink. It didn't touch him not yet but he felt the cold weight of it, pressing against his skin without contact. Pressure. Need.
The rasp formed into something almost like a voice. Fragmented. His own, but wrong deeper, colder, laced with the echo of screams he hadn't heard yet.
Survive.
Devansh's breath hitched. He looked down. His shadow had stretched across the floor toward the metal rod he'd deflected. The rod trembled, then lifted again slowly this time, guided by the dark shape. It floated to him, hovering at eye level.
He didn't reach for it. He couldn't. The shadow did it for him tendrils coiling around the metal, offering it like a gift.
Take.
Blood dripped from his nose again, faster this time. The warmth in his chest flared in response, syncing with the shadow's movement. The memories hit harder: the flash in the sky, the crater, his mother's dupatta burning at the edges. They weren't just replaying they were accusing.
He slapped at the shadow with his free hand. It recoiled, but only slightly. The rod dropped with a clang. The dark shape retreated back to his feet, but it didn't vanish. It waited. Patient. Always there.
Devansh slid down the wall, knees to chest. His heart hammered. The shadow stayed attached, longer now, darker, as if feeding on the fear.
He didn't know what it was. Part of him? Something the disaster had birthed inside him? A curse wearing his grief like skin?
All he knew was that it had saved him from the rod. And it wanted more.
Outside, the wasteland waited. Fires burned in the distance. Screams carried on the wind. The yellow sky had deepened to a bruised orange.
Devansh stared at his shadow on the concrete. It stared back subtly, almost imperceptibly, shifting when he didn't.
He pressed the dupatta to his face, muffling a sob.
The shadow waited.
And something new something dark was just beginning.