The man didn't look at my father.
He looked at my mother.
Something in the room shifted, like a breath being taken and never released. My mother straightened in a way I had never seen back becoming a blade, hands suddenly certain and small fingers clenched.
"Agnivansh," the man said again.
The name landed on the air. It was a heavy thing older than the furniture, older than our flat. My mother's eyes flashed a wordless answer that felt like a prayer and a weapon at once.
"You shouldn't be here," she said.
My father, Raghav rose from the sofa. He was not the man to pick fights, only the man who read cricket and fixed minor household things. But he was tall enough, and prideless enough to put himself between us.
"Listen," he stammered. "You've got the wrong house. Please..."
The man's mouth did not twitch. The rain outside kept beating the windows, as if the weather itself were trying to drown the sounds that followed.
Then he spoke in a voice that made the radio commentary sound like a child's game:
"यातनायाः सिद्धिः जायते।"
Perfection is forged in pain.
I did not understand the words. I understood the chill they left in my bones.
My mother's reply came out low, steady, and terrible:
"अग्निः प्रतिज्ञा, अग्निः मूल्यं।"
Fire is a promise, and a price.
My father swallowed hard. "This is nonsense. Please..."
The man's expression was still polite. Too polite. He moved as if silence were part of his body's rhythm. He reached for my father's arm like he was offering help.
Then his fingers tightened.
There was a sound I will never forget. Not a shout. Not a snap. A soft, clean fracture that answered the movement like a percussion note.
My father collapsed.
I ran before I could decide otherwise. I climbed into my mother's lap and the world narrowed to the beat of her heart against my face. She cupped my head and felt rigid, not like the soft, laughing woman who made parathas on Sundays—but like someone who had practiced courage in secret.
"Run if I tell you," she mouthed against my hair, more urgent now.
But my small legs didn't move. They were two lumps of lead. I watched my father rolling on the floor, clutching his arm and coughing. Blood flecked his lips when he tried to speak.
The intruder took a step forward.
And it started.
The skin at his wrist rippled.
Not like a rash. Not like goosebumps. Like metal being poured into a mould. The color slid across his skin darker, then glossier. A sheen formed, quietly, inexorably, as if iron itself were deciding to grow in place of flesh.
I squeezed my eyes shut because seeing felt like disloyalty to my mother's voice telling me to be still. But I could see the metal anyway, and I heard the low grinding that came with it—soft, like a saw moving through wood, only thinner.
My mother breathed in, and the air answered.
She raised her hands.
The first flame was small. Red, hungry, angry. It licked out from her palms like a tongue tasting the man's armor.
He didn't flinch.
That was what terrified me.
The flame hit him. It washed across the metal shoulder like water over stone. The metal darkened, but did not crack.
My mother pushed harder.
The flame brightened orange, then a white heat that blurred the edges of the room.
My toy car left where I'd abandoned it in my panic melted at one corner, the plastic curling like a dying insect.
The metal man took it as a personal affront and walked through the fire like someone walking through steam. He did not burn. He did not even slow.
Then, as if some design had been switched on inside him, plates began to rise from his skin. Sections that had been smooth split like scales, folding over each other. The thin, metallic scraping filled the apartment and made the radiator sound like laughter.
My father tried to crawl away. He coughed and made a sound that was half plea, half apology. Tears spilled down his face. "Get out," he tried to say, but his voice rasped and came out thin.
My mother's face changed. Not with fear she had none to spare but with something I hadn't known she was capable of: a soft, terrible calm. Her eyes gleamed as if reflecting a far, bright thing.
She dug her hands into the air and pushed.
The flame burst blue.
Light swallowed the corners of the room. It did not seem to have color at first just a pure, empty burn that ate the edges of everything. The curtains shuddered. The ceiling paint bubbled. The smell of burning became a thing I could taste in my mouth.
Under the bed, breath shaking, I felt the world fold. Heat pressed into the wood; the bed's legs began to groan. Somewhere above us, a tile cracked. A distant metallic scream maybe the man's armor, maybe something else cut through the roar of the storm.
Under the bed I could not tell if I was crying. I only knew my mother's voice shouting my name was sharp and muffled, and then softer, like it was being buried under the white.
The man's silhouette moved through the light. He was taller now more plated. The transformation seemed to obey him: where he needed protection, metal rose. Where he reached, the metal flexed.
My mother's hands shuddered. She coughed, as if the memories of years had torn at her lungs, and then she moved again. The white collapsed inward, focusing like a spear toward the intruder.
Something happened to his face. For the first time the man's mouth twitched not in pain, but in a strange, satisfied grin, as if he had anticipated this test and found it amusing.
I watched molten metal sweat from his joints. It dripped in ribbons to the floor and sizzled.
My mother's strength faltered.
She looked at me then only for a second and that look told me she had counted every possibility and chosen what to do.
She leaned over me. Her fingers were hot against my hair. "Run if I say run," she breathed again.
Her voice was different now older, full of a weight I did not understand. She kissed my forehead. The kiss tasted like metal and cinnamon and something else I could not name.
The apartment groaned. The man reached one plated hand forward.
He said nothing.
He smiled just as he laid that hand down on the floor.
His plated fingers flexed, and the room seemed to hold its breath—waiting for the shape of what would happen next.