May 26th, 2025, India, City V
Rain. Just… constant, annoying rain. It plastered Aarav's dark hair to his forehead and seeped cold fingers down the collar of his jacket. Downtown looked like a grimy watercolour painting – neon lights, wet roads , headlights cutting hazy tunnels through the gloom. He hunched deeper into his coat, the strap of his overloaded backpack digging a familiar groove into his shoulder. Sunday. Finally Sunday.
He'd just crawled out of SRM library after shelving books for six straight hours. His back ached, his eyes felt gritty, and the smell of old paper and cheap library coffee seemed permanently stuck in his nose. But weirdly? He felt… good. Tired, yeah, bone-tired. But a good tired. The kind you earn. College sucks sometimes, sorry everytime – the workload, the weird trust fund paperwork reminding him he was an orphan – but it was his suck. His life. Uncle Silas's cramped apartment above the dusty old bookshop wasn't fancy, but it was home. Warm, safe, comfortable. After the chaos of losing his parents young? Predictable was gold.
Hell, he'd even started writing again last night – just a crazy fantasy idea bubbling in his head. Jotted down a synopsis, the first few lines of Chapter 1. A guy awakening in a magical world… Ridiculous, maybe, but it felt good to create something that wasn't an essay.
His phone buzzed, a rocking song of MJ. He fumbled it out of his jeans pocket, water droplets dropping on the screen. Uncle Silas. A grin broke through the tiredness. He swiped answer, bringing the phone against his ear as he goes towards the bus stop area to go home.
"Hello, Uncle S," Aarav said, his voice raspy. "Just got off the bus. I will there in um.., ten to fifteen minutes. Tops."
"Aarav! Thank goodness," Silas's voice crackled through, warm and familiar, edged with its usual worry. "Got the Steak on. With coke and your favourite sweets Roshogolla, just how you like. You wearing that decent coat? Not that flimsy hoodie?"
Aarav snorted, wiping rain from his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, the decent coat. Promise. Smells amazing already, even from here." He stepped out from the shelter, the rain instantly redoubling its attack. The bus stop was on the far side of Elm Street, a nasty four-lane monster that was always busy. "Just gotta cross Elm."
"Elm? In this rain?" Silas's worry spiked. "Aarav, be careful! That intersection is a death trap when it's wet. Those truck drivers… they act like the rules don't apply. Look. Both. Ways."
Aarav reached the curb. The light was red. Traffic streamed past, tires hissing on the wet road, throwing up spray. A big, grimy delivery truck idled impatiently in the closest lane, engine rumbling like a hungry beast. "Relax, Uncle. Light's red. I'm not an idiot. Waiting right here. and I always cross the road carefully by seeing both left and right side. What bad can be happen?"
He leaned against the wet bus stop pole smilling at his uncle who worry so much. a sudden warmth spreading in his chest despite the chill.
'Someone who worries...' It wasn't just Silas's voice now. For a split second, he was eight years old again, shivering under a scratchy police blanket in a too-bright hospital hallway. Silas's face, pale and strained, swimming into view, replacing the faceless officer who'd delivered the news. "I've got you, lad," Silas had whispered, his voice thick, pulling Aaravl into a hug that smelled of pipe tobacco and dust from the shop.
"I've got you now." That moment, the crushing emptiness where his parents should have been, the terrifying uncertainty... Silas had been the anchor. The only anchor. The reason he could even think about writing silly stories now.
"Good. Wait. Take your time. Stew's bubbling happily. We'll put on that awful documentary about space junk you love so much…" Silas rambled on, his voice a comforting anchor in the dreary evening.Maybe he'd show Silas the synopsis later. Get his thoughts. Uncle Silas loved old myths; he'd probably have some wild ideas.
The light changed. The green walking man lit up in the traffic signal, blinking insistently. "Okay, walk signal. Gotta go, hands full." Aarav tucked the phone between his shoulder and ear, adjusting his backpack strap. He stepped off the curb, eyes scanning the lanes. Clear left. Clear right ahead. He started walking briskly, aiming for the pedestrian island in the middle. Almost home. Warm steak. Uncle Silas's terrible jokes. A hot shower.Maybe working on that stupid novel idea… Bliss. Just thinking about today's dinner i feel hungry.
He was maybe two steps onto the second lane when it happened.
No screech. No warning shout. Just a sudden, overwhelming roar of engine noise, way too close, way too fast. From his left.
He started to turn his head. And saw a truck coming towards him.
Truck-kun....
WHAM.
Boom.
The world exploded.
It wasn't pain first. It was just… impact. A massive, undeniable force slamming into his side. Like being hit by a runaway train. His phone vanished, ripped away, Silas's voice cut off mid-word with a sickening crunch of plastic and glass. The backpack tore free. He was floating in the air. For a terrifying split second, he saw grey sky, blinding headlights, wet pavement rushing up. Then came the pain – a white-hot supernova erupting in his ribs, his leg, his head hitting the hard wet road with a sickening crack.
Uncle… The thought was a ghost, thin and fading fast.
'At least there's someone... who worries...' The faint, final flicker of warmth in the enroaching cold. Silas's voice, cut off, still echoing somehow.
The image of uncle Silas's worried face, the smell of the shop… it all flashed, bright and sharp, then started to dissolve into the enroaching cold.
Just… one chance… The desperate plea tore through the shock, raw and primal. One more chance… to live… Please… It wasn't a prayer to any god, just a final, animal cry against the dying of the light, against the unfairness of it ending now, when he'd finally built something simple and good out of the ruins.
Darkness rushed in, thick and cold, swallowing the pain, the rain, the streetlights. He couldn't feel his body anymore. Just… falling. Down, down into black nothing.
Then… heat.
Sudden, intense, impossible heat blooming right in the center of his chest. Where that stupid silver raven pendant always hung – the only thing left from his parents. It felt like it was burning him. A fierce, blinding light seemed to punch out from his skin, tearing through the suffocating black for a single, searing instant.
And then… the darkness changed.
It wasn't just dark. It felt… empty. Vast. The roar of the city, the drumming rain, the smell of wet pavement and exhaust – gone. Vanished. Replaced by… silence. A deep, vibrating hum that wasn't sound, but a feeling in his bones. And a smell? Sharp, electric, like lightning had struck stone. Cold, but a different cold. Dry. Ancient.
The pavement under his broken body wasn't there anymore. He was… nowhere. Falling? Floating?
"Fate denies me…Heaven hates me...." The defiant words from his own barely-begun novel echoed in the dissolving scraps of his mind, a bitter, ironic counterpoint to his final, unanswered plea. Not a character's line anymore. His. His stupid idea, mocking him as the void took him.
...The heat in his chest flared one last time blinding, furious. That stupid raven pendant felt like it was melting into his skin.
The light dimmed and gone. Like blowing out a match.
The light died. The heat vanished. Everything did. Silas's voice in his head, the phantom smell of steak.
There was no void. No falling. No sensation at all.
Only nothingness. Absolute. Eternal.
He died.
End of story.
.
.
The end of a story barely begun.