For a long time, Vicky didn't move.
He stayed there—hands and knees pressed against the cool cement—breathing like a man dragged up from deep water. Every ordinary sound around him felt unreal. A scooter horn in the street. A neighbor arguing about milk packets. Even the buzz of a fly circling near the gate.
These weren't background noises anymore.They were proof.Proof that he was home. That the world was real. That he wasn't trapped in that silent, pixel-coated nightmare.
His body trembled. The memory of blocky arms and stiff, robotic movement clung to him like a second skin. It felt wrong. Wrong enough to make him want to tear something off.
The back door creaked.
"Vicky? Beta, what are you doing on the ground?"
His mother's voice snapped through the haze. She sounded annoyed, confused—gloriously, beautifully human.
He looked up. She wasn't made of pixels. Not a single line of her face was blocky. His chest tightened with a burst of relief he couldn't hide.
"Maa… I—" His voice cracked. "I just slipped. Tripped."
She didn't buy it. No mother ever did. She knelt, pressed the back of her hand to his cheek, then to his forehead.
"You're freezing. And sweating. Kya hua? Sacch batao."
"It was nothing." He forced the lie out cleanly. "Nightmare."
A simple word. Close enough to the truth that she didn't push further.
"Hmph. Chal, andar aa." She grabbed his wrist, hauling him up. "You're not going anywhere today. I'm making adrak chai. You need rest."
For once, Vicky didn't argue.The warmth of her hand was an anchor pulling him back into his body.
He sat at the kitchen table while she brewed tea. The sharp scent of ginger filled the air—bright, real, grounding. He wrapped both hands around the hot cup she placed before him. The first sip burned his throat.
Good. He wanted it to burn.
His father walked by, adjusting his shirt for work. He paused when he saw Vicky.
"You look like you've seen a ghost, son."
Vicky managed a thin, unconvincing smile. "Something like that."
The rest of the day crawled. Every flicker in the lights made his pulse spike. Every glitch on his sister's laptop made his hands go cold.
He didn't touch his phone.He couldn't.The black screen felt like an open door he was terrified to look through.
In the evening, his Discord lit up.
Rahul:Where are you disappearing every day? IAS ban raha hai kya?
Akash:Bhai, you okay? Aaj bhi class?
Their messages felt like they belonged to another life—one where his biggest worry was K/D ratios and last-zone circles. He typed slowly, fingers heavy.
Vicky:Sick hoon. Kal milte.
He set the phone face down.
On his desk lay the notebook: PROJECT: PIXEL PULL.The foolish, excited handwriting. The diagrams. The plans.World domination scribbled by a kid who didn't understand the grenade he was sitting on.
Vicky picked it up.
He didn't read a single word.
He walked to the clay suraahi kept for watering the tulsi plant. Page by page, he tore the notebook apart, crushing each sheet into a tight ball and submerging it. Ink bled. Plans dissolved. The last traces of that dream sank into muddy pulp.
Good.Let it drown.
That night, lying beneath the old ceiling fan, Vicky stared upwards. This was the same ceiling he'd nearly lost forever. The same world he'd nearly overwritten.
He thought of the diamond.The glitch.The dead, empty Minecraft sky.
He swallowed hard.
The power wasn't a toy.And it wasn't a blessing.
It was a trap.
It dangled miracles in front of him, then sharpened the knife behind them. If he used it again—if he pushed even a little—he knew what waited.
Silence.Blocks.Nothingness.
So he made his decision. Quiet. Heavy. Final.
No more pulls.No more experiments.No more shortcuts.
Reality wasn't something he would gamble with again.
Tomorrow, he'd go to his fake "tuition," drink his mother's chai, help his father with small chores, tease Ankit, and pretend his life was ordinary.
Because ordinary was safe.Ordinary was human.Ordinary meant he didn't have to stare down the void again.
The Family Guardian wasn't dead—he was stepping back.
For the first time, Vicky understood what true danger looked like.
And he wasn't going anywhere near it again.