The sun was not setting; it was being strangled. Deep, bruised clouds sprinted across the horizon like thunder running for its life, desperate to outrun a cosmic void that had finally decided to claim the sky. Then, the first drops touched the parched concrete. For a heartbeat, the air held the pleasant, metallic perfume of the first rain—the smell of the earth breathing. But the breath was shallow, hitched with the scent of ozone and something far older.
Inside his room, Arush sat in the flickering dimness, the light of his laptop casting a pale, sickly blue glow over his face. His fingers moved regressively over the keyboard, a rhythmic tapping that sounded like teeth on bone. He was hunting "Vaidere." He had scavenged every dark corner of the web, sliding through dead links, encrypted forums, and redacted government articles for two hours. But his luck was as dry as the air before the storm. Every search lead was a ghost, every file a hollow shell.
His eyes were leaden, stinging with a fatigue that felt like grit under his lids. With a heavy exhale, he shut the laptop. The hinges creaked, a sound that vibrated up his spine and settled in the marrow of his bones. He slid the chair back, the metal legs screaming against the floorboards, and stood up. He looked at his hands. Even in the dark, the vision haunted him—the slick, wet weight of a vertebrate he had once held, the jagged edges of a life unmade by a single, involuntary strike.
He moved toward the window. He didn't just open it; he removed the glass with a practiced, mechanical coldness, exposing himself to the raw atmosphere. He watched the rain. Across the city, in the high-frequency sanctums of the NSEA, he knew Sanvi was "Invoicing" her destiny as a Top-Level Dealer. What was she doing now? Was she looking at the same clouds, or was she already too far gone into the system to see the sky?
Arush reached out, cupping his palm to catch the falling water. The moment the drops hit his skin, they hissed and evaporated into steam. His body was emitting a feverish, unnatural heat—a thermal leak from the abyss within. He stared at the beauty of the cycle until a drop of deep, viscous red splashed into his palm.
He froze. Refraction, he thought. A trick of the fading light. Then another drop fell. Then a dozen. This was no hallucination. The rain had curdled into a thick, hemoglobin red. Arush watched the sky bleed onto the soil. His hand began to tremble, sweat carving cold rivers through the grime on his face.
Then, the Neuron Strike arrived.
It wasn't a headache; it was a kinetic spark that tore through his synaptic pathways like a lightning bolt in a closed circuit. Arush collapsed. His skull felt like a pressurized vessel ready to burst, the internal friction of his own power turning his brain into an engine of pain. He gripped his head, his knuckles turning white, as his nose began to fountain blood. It didn't stop there. The pressure forced the liquid from his tear ducts, painting his hair and face in the dark, iron-rich signature of his own internal erosion. His vision blurred into a smeared, crimson kaleidoscope.
Outside, the world had turned into a slaughterhouse. The red rain was painting the soil in the color of old debt.
BEYOND THE LAND: 13th Century - Vranspur Border
A hawk circled a graveyard that had once been a valley. Below, the ground was a forest of spears. Each one was a trophy, bearing a body pierced through the sternum, pinned to the earth like insects in a display case. The mud was no longer earth; it was a slurry of bile, iron, and discarded hope.
Chariots thundered through the gore, the wheels churning the mud into a pink froth that sprayed against the legs of the horses. Men in samurai armor, their blades singing a song of steel and bone, screamed as they marched through the fire. The sky above wasn't dark from clouds; it was choked with the gray, suffocating ash of the dead, rising in plumes from the burning villages on the horizon.
Then came the Golden Chariot.
It was a machine of solar brilliance, cutting through the ash like a hot blade through wax. The archer standing atop it wore dark, heavy plates with a sun emblazoned in the center. He moved with the cold precision of a God. Every arrow he released didn't just hit; it liquidated. He pierced the chests of the retreating samurai, the kinetic force pinning them to the earth alongside their fallen brothers. His movements were a "Forensic Execution" of war.
"Long live the Indraprast!" the screams echoed through the dead men's land.
On a high cliff, a man in dark samurai armor watched. His red helmet, crowned with jagged horns, looked like a demonic skull forged in the depths of a volcano. His knuckles were sopped in blood, his breathing a heavy, wet rattle. He watched the Golden Chariot dominate the middle of the carnage, a mechanical reaper in a field of flesh. As the echoes of the massacre tore through the air and heaven, he whispered a single, forbidden truth:
"Long live... Indrasur."
He turned, his shadow melting into the woods as the 13th century began to bleed into the present.
Arush opened his eyes. His face was a mask of dried iron, the blood having crusted into a dark, brittle shell. He grabbed a nearby column, his fingers digging into the stone for support as he forced himself to stand. The floor was red. Everything was red.
"What is more left in this world to see?" he croaked, his voice sounding like two stones grinding together.
He stumbled to the sink, throwing splashes of cold water onto his face. He watched the pink water swirl down the drain, a miniature vortex of his own biological failure. In the hall, the TV was screaming. A news anchor was reading the NSEA Manifesto, her voice clinical and devoid of empathy:
"NSEA has officially established a camp in the city to recruit new Dealers. The world is changing. We must adapt or be consumed. The Rankings are as follows:
Dealer: 10,000*
Masker: 5,000+*
Soldier: 1,000+*
Help us save life from the Sinners."
"Bullshit," Arush muttered. He grabbed a hoodie, pulling the hood low to hide his bloodshot eyes and the remnants of the iron-stained tears. He needed to breathe. He needed to smell the blood-rain for himself, to know if the world was truly ending or if he was just the first to die.
Outside, in the society courtyard, a group of his peers sat on a bench, their voices high and nervous as they discussed the end of the world. Arush tried to ghost past them, but they called his name. Left with no choice, he joined the circle of "Sugar"—the soft, unrefined people who still thought the world followed rules.
"I think this rain is a signal from God," one said, his voice trembling.
"No, it's a biological leak from an NSEA lab," Raj countered, trying to sound smart.
Then, Raj took a wrong step on a raw nerve. "Hey, guys, let's go to the NSEA camp at Nagar Road tomorrow. We should try out. Maybe one of us is a Soldier." He looked at Arush, blinking at the others with a predatory grin. "Hey Arush, you want to come? Or do you want to stay here and hide under your bed while the world bleeds?"
The group erupted in laughter. "Don't take it personal, Arush. The NSEA wants people to save, not people who need to be saved."
Arush stood still. He didn't look at them. He exhaled, and the air around the bench suddenly tiered with his own weight. It wasn't a move; it was a Sovereignty. The atmosphere itself became a solid block of pressure.
The laughter died instantly. It didn't fade; it was cut off as if by a guillotine. Every one of them dropped to their knees, their lungs collapsing under a pressure they couldn't understand. Their eyeballs bulged, staring at Arush as if he were a ghost from a 13th-century slaughter. For a few seconds, their only intent was the primal, animal struggle to breathe.
"If I move," Arush said, his voice a low vibration in their chests, "you will all collapse."
He turned away, his shoes leaving red mud prints on the pavement. Behind him, they gasped for air as if their lungs had never tasted it before, their bodies shaking with a cold, biological terror.in home staring at seling fan he mutters in stady voice " I am coming to for Rays of sun"
The next morning, Nagar Road was a sea of thousands. The air was a cacophony of chuckles, desperate prayers, and the colorful glaze of souls—red, blue, purple—all hoping to be the next "Dealer." It was a market of human desperation.
Arush moved through the crowd in his cotton jacket, a silent shadow. At the end of the registration line, near the guards, stood a figure in a nylon jacket with the NSEA logo. Her hair was messy, her soul looked frozen, trapped in a stasis of duty and power. It was Sanvi.
Arush moved to approach, but the jagged bone in his leg—the debt of a previous strike—sent a bolt of white-hot pain through him. He stopped, his breath hitching. But she turned. As if she had felt his heat signature, she waved him over. As she approached, the air around them turned clinical and cold. For a moment, the thousands of people disappeared.
"Hey," she said, her voice a soft fracture in the noise. "How are you doing?"
"Hey... I'm doing good," Arush lied, his voice sounding hollow.
"I have many questions," she said, her voice deepening with an authority she hadn't possessed a year ago.
"I have all the answers," Arush replied, his eyes lowering.
"Sanvi, is everything alright?"
The voice was a rattle of blades. Arush looked up. It was Vaidere.
Their gazes locked. It was the meeting of two wolves in a narrow pass. Vaidere's soul was glowing with a jagged blue light, sparks of contained electricity dancing across his skin. He didn't look like a hero; he looked like a predator.
"Looks like something is burning," Vaidere smiled, his teeth sharp.
Arush didn't blink. "Can you help me evaluate my rank?"
Vaidere's smile didn't reach his eyes. Before he could answer, the alarms tore the sky apart. It was a sound that didn't just alert; it wounded.
Soldiers sprinted toward them, their heavy boots thudding against the pavement. "Sinners heading toward the bunker! Crocodile types! Massive heat signatures! We have orders to move the crowd!"
The panic was instantaneous. Humanity was forgotten. People stepped on each other, a frantic mass of meat trying to reach the bunker. Vaidere signaled Sanvi to move. Behind them, the soldiers stood their ground, but behind the soldiers was a herd of terrified souls, their glazing flickering out like dying candles in a gale.
Then, they appeared.
The Crocodile Sinners were massive, armored nightmares, their skin the color of rusted iron and their eyes glowing with a predatory hunger. They lumbered toward the bunker, their claws carving deep grooves into the Nagar Road asphalt. Each step sounded like a hammer hitting an anvil. The air began to smell like rotting swamp water and old blood.
In the back row, Arush stood still. He heard the prayers for mercy. He saw the soldiers trembling. He didn't pray. He didn't run. He gripped his knuckles so tight they felt like they would snap. He watched the "Sinners" approach, and for the first time, he didn't feel fear. He felt a Sovereign Recognition.
then something broke under feet of him pulling him down.
Aarush couldn't even blink as he falls down seeing the floor shattered as glass broken into many piece but on other side of glass was dark and someone waiting as his black flames glazing into that abyss.it was kurozaro seeing arush feel into his own domain of nothingness.
-ARUSH SALUNKE