Rain on corrugated tin. Not a sound, really. A texture. It wrapped the world in gray gauze, leaving nothing but the damp smell of the houseboat—old wood, wool, the stagnent, cradle-rock of Dal Lake.
Ranveer stared at the rug. The pattern was worn bald in spots. Zoya sat across from him, knees drawn up. Her fingers were stained black from walnut husks. She was working a shell open.
Snap.
Small sound. Loud in the quiet. She looked up. The kerosene lamp caught the wetness in her eyes. When she reached out, her hand was cool against his cheek. Rough skin, gentle touch.
"Stay," she said.
The word didn't just hit his ears; it hummed in his chest bone.
"It's burning out there, Ranveer. Here, it's just us."
He let his head fall into her palm. Heavy. God, his head was so heavy. The ache in his leg, the shrapnel ghost, it faded. The noise in his head stopped. It felt like sinking into warm mud.
"Sleep," she said. "Just let go."
He let the air out of his lungs. He gave it to her…
Then the dream tore open.
No slow waking. Just impact.
Cold stone against his spine. The smell of ozone and copper—blood, old and new. Ranveer tried to inhale, but his ribs were a cage of broken glass. He was on a slab, somewhere dark, somewhere deep.
A figure loomed. The Masked Man. He held something that looked like a crown, but it was heavy, ugly iron, sucking the light out of the room.
"You live," the man said. No inflection. Just a fact.
He jammed the metal onto Ranveer's brow.
It didn't sit; it bit. Metal grinding against skull.
Ranveer's eyes blew wide. His jaw clamped shut, teeth grinding until something popped.
Then the metal changed. It didn't break; it melted. It turned into a thick, black sludge, sliding down his forehead. It wasn't hot. It was cold. Absolute, void-cold. Like ice water injected into the carotid.
It didn't stop at the skin. It went in.
Ranveer arched off the slab, spine screaming. The sludge was alive. It burrowed into his pores, threading through muscle like freezing wire. He clawed at his face. He needed it off. But when his nails dug in, they didn't find skin. They hit something harder than bone.
He tried to scream, but the blackstuff flooded his mouth. It tasted like battery acid.
The Masked Man watched. He didn't move. He didn't flinch. To help would be to kill, and he needed the weapon, not the man.
A sound ripped out of Ranveer—wet and jagged.
Crunch.
His arm. The bones shattered, then snapped back together, fused by the intruding iron. He thrashed, boots scraping uselessly against the concrete. The metal tightened around his chest, squeezing the lungs until they were just pockets of panic.
He scrambled to his knees. Blind terror.
He looked at his hands…
Gone. The skin, the scars, the human shape—gone. In their place were segmented claws of pitted black metal. When he flexed, it sounded like stones grinding in a mill.
The rot surged up his neck. Swallowed the jaw. Took the eyes.
Blackout.
For a second, Ranveer wasn't there. Just the hunger of the suit, stitching arteries, shocking the heart. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Harder than before.
Then, the visor flickered.
Green light. Grainy. He was looking through a slit. He was buried in a helmet that smelled of recycled air and stale fear.
He couldn't breathe. The walls were too close. The ceiling was a lid.
He tried to shout, "Get it off!" but what came out was a distorted, synthesized bark that shook the dust from the rafters.
He lunged.
He meant to stumble, but the suit moved with terrifying force. The floor cratered under his step. He slammed into a steel support beam, and the metal folded around him like wet cardboard.
Panic took the wheel. He swung an arm, blind and frantic. A heavy wooden table exploded into splinters. He wasn't a soldier anymore; he was a trapped animal trashing its cage, a thresher of meat and iron.
Too tight. Too small. Air too thick.
He turned to the wall. Reinforced concrete. A dead end for a man.
For this thing? Paper.
He lowered his shoulder. A noise built in his chest, vibrating the heavy plating—a roar of pure, animal rejection.
He ran.
BOOM.
Dust choked the air. The wall didn't just break; it vaporized. Rebar snapped with the high, singing ping of cut piano wire.
Ranveer tumbled out into the night.
The Hindu Kush. The wind hit him like a physical blow, stripping the heat from the armor. Steam hissed off his plating, rising in angry plumes. He didn't look back. He couldn't.
He ran.
One step, thirty feet. Claws tore up the frozen earth, throwing clumps of rock and ice behind him. He hit the mountain face—sheer granite—and didn't slow down. He went up, scrambling, gouging deep scars into the stone, moving like a spider, like a nightmare.
Inside the shell, Ranveer was crying. Hot tears running down a face that no longer felt the air. Snot and salt in the dark.
Outside, he was a monster.
He crested the ridge and let out one last sound—a mechanical shriek that rolled over the peaks, lonely and terrifying.
Then he was gone. Swallowed by the white noise of the blizzard.
Silence settled back over the ruined bunker. Heavier this time.
The Masked Man stepped through the hole in the wall. The wind whipped his cloak, biting at his exposed skin. He walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down into the swirling white nothing.
He pulled a device from his belt. A small screen glowed green. A single red dot moved across the grid, erratic, fast. Too fast for a human.
Alive.
The Masked Man watched until the dot vanished over the ridge. He lowered the tracker. He stood there for a long time, a statue in the wreckage. He'd saved the soldier's life.
And ended it.
He turned back to the dark, and the mountain took him too.