The transition from the suffocating, enclosed heat of the burning house to the vast, open terror of the street was not relief-it was an amplification. Ojas's lungs convulsed, rejecting the air that was thick not just with smoke, but with the scent of high-octane violence. He wasn't running so much as he was ejected, a projectile thrown by the dying wish of his father. He hit the rough concrete of the driveway, the impact jolting his small bones, but his grip on the leader-the precious, heavy leathet book-did not falter. It was already less an object and more an appandage, the final anchor to a reality that no longer existed.
He sctambled past the wreckage of the wrought-iron gate, a gruesome sculpture twisted into the shape of a screaming face. The sight of the street, normally a sleepy, familiar avenue lined with trees, was disorienting. The entire facade of Gambheera home was now a roaring, building maw of fire. The flames seemed to pocess a unnatural energy, liking the sky splitting embers, and crackling with a furious, triumphant sound that drownd out the wail that had left his mother's lips. It was the sound of victory, Ramnandan Roy's victory.
Ojas forced himself to look away from the mesmerizing horror. Survival demanded his focus be external. He scanned the street. The three black sedans, the silent, efficient harbingers of death, were mere smudges in the distance, their tailights vanishing around the next corner. They were gine, but their shadow lingered-the shadow of Ramnandan Roy. Ojas knew, with the instinctive certainity of the hunted, that this street was still tainted. Perhaps the eyes were watching from the drarkness, waiting to ensure the job was finished.
He pressed himself into the shadow of a large, gnarled mango tree near the boundry wall, his heart pounding a frantic, useless rythm against the ledger tucked beneath his shirt. The heat radiating from house was so intense it was beginning to blister the paint on the nearest car parked across the street and seemed poised to scorch the leaves above him. He could feel the residual heat on his face even though the raising steam of the pavement.
It was in this moment of hiding that the first witness apeared. An elderly man thin, and slightly stopped, rounded the corner with his tiny, yapping terrier. He was drawn, like an instect to a flame,by the unusual noise and the smell of the massive blaze.
The man stopped. He saw the fire, monumental, catastrophic blare that defined the quiet dignity and neighborhood. Then he saw ojas: a small, solitery figure, soot-blackened, shivering and clutching something dark and heavy.
Ojas didn't move. He stood perfectly still, his body language communicating only shock, not distress. He waited for the man to help, to rush towads him, to call the police. That was the response of the world Ojas had been taught existed-a world of neighbours and shared humanity, where children in distress were saved.
But the old man's face did not register pity; it conrorted in a silent realization that this was not accident-it was a pumishment. This fire reeked of ptoffesional malice, of something dangerous the city preferred to ignore. The man didn't see a victim; he saw a witness, a loose end, a potential source of trouble that could spill into his own quite life. He hauled terrier's lesh back sharply, the animal yelping in confusion. His mouth opened as if to scream, but only a dry rasp emerged. He tured instantly, scrambling back around the corner, his frail legs pumping with panicked speed, leaving Ojas utterly with fire.
The raw, bitter taste of this abondment was Ojas's second blow of the night. His wealthy, shattered life had taught him nothing about the indifference of the ordinary citizen to tragedy. Kindness was only granted from a position of security. Ojas was tainted, a survivor, who proved the danger was real, and the city wanted nothing to do with him. He had no social currency left.
Just as the heat threatened to overhelm him, a colossal downpour commenced. It was the full, violent force of the south-Asian monsoon, not a gentle rain, but a sky-breaking deluge.
The water hit the burning mansion with an ear-splitting HISS, generating vast clouds of steam that billowed out, mixed with the black smoke to a create a dense, blinding, fog. The air was suddenly cold, wet, and chaotic. It was visible battle: nature fighting man's destruction.
Ojas recognized this chaos as his opportunity. He burst from the shadow of the mango tree and sprinted into the midle of the street. The cold was brutal sensory shock, washing sticky soot from his hair, running black rivulets down his thin, soaked shirt. This cold pain was a necessory agony, snapping his traumatized mind of its catonic state and replacing the paralysis with a sharp, survival-driven focus. He could think again.
He ducked into the deep, shadowed doorway of travel agency, its shutters bolted for the night. The rain drummed relentless, rhythemic roar on the corrugated metal awning above,creating a small, noisy, private world that momentarily shielded him from the roaring calamity behind him.
He pulled the ledger from beneath his shirt. The leather though water-resistant, was cold and sick. His were cramping from the vice-like grip he had maintained on it. He needed to read his father's last words again. He needed validation. He needed his orders to be confirmed.
Sheilding the book with his body, Ojas carefully opened the front cover. The inner pages thankfully, remained dry. His father's firm, familiar hand dominated the page, but the words were foreign and brutal, written with the speed and desperation of a man facing death:
Ojas my son. If you read this, I have failed you. Your mother and I are gone, victims of a debt we coulld not repay to the devil, Ramnandan Roy. This ledger is the only thing left. It is not money; it is knowledge. Every name, every crime, every hidden asset that Ramnandan Roy controls, is here. He tried to destroy this because him a puppet-a mere foot soldier in a much larger, global game of power.
Do not sneek simple revenge, Ojas. That is what they expect. Simple revenge is fast and dies quickly. Instead use this book as a map. It details every connection, every weakness, every source of money he lavereged to destroy us. You must use the next twenty years to understand its contents to live outside their sight, and to grow strong enough to dismantle the entire structure he represents. Your only purpose now is to repay this debt in kind: Dismantlement, not Murder. Trust no one. The man who destroyed your family is only the first step.
-Your Father. (Remember your mother's love,it is the only warmth you have left.)
Ojas read the final paragraph three times. The burden of this document was not sorrow, but purpose. The tears that came were not the easy tears of a grieving child, but the hot, silent tears of a soldier receiving a lifetime mendate of the mission. The ledger was not a reminder of tragedy; it was a blueprint for war and the sole Inheritence of the orpan's debt.
The heavy drumming of the was suddenly pierced by the insistent, rising scream of sirens. Not the distant moan of before, but the loud, frantic, urgent wail of fire engines and police vehicles converging rapidly on the scene.
Ojas knew his time of solidute was over. The authorities, once they secure the fire, would looking for survivors and witnesses.
He clutched the ledger to his chest, the leather could against his rapid heartbeat. The risk of being found by the police was three-fold: first they would take the ledger, destroying the only wepon he posessed.Second, a child survivor of such a high-profile hit would draw immediate, intense media attention-and if Ramnandan Roy had been through, he would have watching the police reports. Third, and most chillingly, the police might be compromised by the Ramnandan Roy's influence, turning them into a new kind of threat. Ojas's life dependent on immediate, total invisibility.
He carefully sealed the ledger inside his shirt, tucking deep into the waistband short, securing with his belt. It was clumsy, uncomfortable but effective.
He then slipped out of the doorway. He ignored the main road where the lights were flashing. Instead, he slipped into the dark, narrow passage between the travel agency and the next building-a cramped, stinking alleyway used for refuse and forgotten things.
He become a ghost in the monsoon night, a tiny, determined figure disappearing into tje city's underbelly carrying the terrible, glorious burden, of the Gambheera ledger. His twenty-year war had just begun, starting with his own desperate fight from the law and vast shadow of Ramnandan Roy.
He kept running until the sirens were just a distant hum, until the glow of the fire was gone, and until the only sound was the incessant, drumking of the rain-a soud that would forever be the soundtrack to the night his life ended, and his purpose began