The scent of frying onions drifted through the house like an early morning alarm—sharp, familiar, and unmistakably home. Aarav Sharma squinted against the sunlight peeking through the curtain gap, pulling his blanket tighter.
"Utho Aarav! School ka time ho gaya!(Wake up! Its school time!)" his mother's voice rang out, followed by a knock that wasn't really a knock—more like an impatient drumroll on the door.
"Five minutes!" he groaned, though both of them knew it meant fifteen.
Upstairs in a compact, two-bedroom apartment nestled in a quiet lane in Pune, life ticked by in ordinary rhythms. The Sharma family wasn't rich, but they were close—rich in rituals, banter, and emotional blackmail, as Aarav often described it.
By the time he was downstairs, still fixing his shirt collar, his younger sister Simran was already at the table, humming some Bollywood tune while solving a Sudoku on her tablet.
"Late again, Einstein?" she smirked without looking up.
"Better late than lame," Aarav shot back, snatching an aloo paratha off the plate as his mother smacked his arm lightly with a spatula.
"Wear your tie properly at least. What's the point of science stream if you can't even organize your own neck?"
His father peeked over a newspaper. "He'll invent a robot to do it someday. Until then, we suffer."
"Thanks for the faith, Dad," Aarav muttered, chewing.
They were like this every morning—playful chaos, rushed breakfasts, Simran trying to sneak chocolate into her lunchbox, and his mother somehow managing to keep it all together while also debating TV serial plotlines with her friends over WhatsApp voice notes.
But this morning felt… different.
Not obviously. The sun still rose, the school bus still honked outside, and the news still reported on heatwaves and cricket scores. But something in Aarav's chest felt out of step, like an extra heartbeat, or a breath out of rhythm.
He shook it off.
On the way to school, he stared out the bus window, earbuds in but no music playing. His thoughts wandered. Space-time. Parallel realities. He had read an article the night before on "dimensional echoes." Fringe science, sure—but something about it felt real.
Maybe he just wanted it to be.
Because here, in this world, he was ordinary. No grades worth boasting about, no big sports medals, no tragic backstory to make him interesting. Just a lanky boy with a good imagination and bad timing.
Still, he looked up at the sky.
Blue. Silent. Safe.
He had no idea it would be the last normal sky he'd ever see.