The house felt unusually quiet that evening.
Reena, Ankit, and his mother had left early in the morning to visit his grandparents. Only he and his father were home. Before they left, Maa gave her usual barrage of instructions—"khana time se kha lena," "papa ko disturb mat karna," "mobile kam use karna"—and then they were gone.
Vicky and his father ordered dinner—simple biryani and two soft drinks—and ate silently while watching a rerun of some comedy show. When his father went to his room, Vicky stayed awake a little longer, scrolling mindlessly.
Eventually, he drifted off.
The Dream
The world around him wasn't black. It was red.Red sky. Red cracks in the clouds. Red lightning splitting the horizon.
Then the sound hit him—like metal screaming.
In the sky hung enormous, rotating helix-sphere constructs. Not machines exactly, something beyond that—like living algorithms wrapped in chrome. Every rotation pulsed a shockwave through the air. They weren't flying.
They were hunting.
Down below, something stood alone on a shattered skyscraper—a dark metallic humanoid shape, tall, lean, its surface shifting like liquid steel. Its presence was suffocating: rage, grief, exhaustion—emotions he shouldn't be able to feel, yet he did. It was like those feelings were coming from inside him.
The helix-spheres fired beams of white-blue light. The humanoid roared, not with sound but with sheer force—it shook the dream itself.
Then the sky tore open.
Not like lightning, but like a glitch—pixels ripping away.
A rectangular distortion opened above him on a rooftop. Inside it, static. Shapes. Movement. A silhouette falling.
A person.
They dropped from the glitching tear like gravity had been waiting for them. He saw them fall—
—and then everything went white.
The Crash
CRASH—
Except there was no sound.No glass. No impact. Nothing.
He jolted awake in his bed, heart racing… and she was right there in his room.
Not a dream.
A real person.
A girl—no, a soldier—wearing a suit straight out of a sci-fi war, sleek and white like something from Darling in the Franxx, except torn, cracked, and shining faintly like it wasn't fully real. Some panels flickered like corrupted textures. Blood stained the fabric along her ribs and shoulder.
She staggered.
Her hand dragged across his bed frame.Her knees buckled.
She took one step toward him—Another—And murmured something like she was fighting to breathe.
"Vick… Vi… Vicky…"
Then she collapsed.
For two entire seconds he couldn't move. His brain simply refused to process what had just phased through his solid window without making a sound.
Then he saw the blood.
Pure instinct kicked in.He scrambled to his drawer—pulled out the tiny health potion he kept hidden since the day he got it to heal his mother. His hands shook as he uncorked it.
"Please don't glitch… please don't glitch now…" he muttered to himself.
He gently turned her over. Up close, she looked older than him, late teens maybe, but battle-worn. Her skin was cold under the blood, like she had been pulled through a freezer full of electricity.
He tilted her head and let one drop fall into her mouth.
Nothing.
Another drop.
Her breathing steadied a little.
Two more drops.
A faint color returned to her cheeks. The cracked parts of her suit flickered, stabilizing for a second.
Her eyelids fluttered open.
She looked right at him.Like she had known him for years.
Her voice was rough, like metal scraping against metal.
"…Vicky… I found you."
He froze.
She winced, clutching her side, shaking her head as if fighting time itself.
"We… failed… Vicky… we failed you. We couldn't… save you."
"What? Who are you? What are you talking about?"
She didn't seem to hear him.
Her body glitched—literally glitched—edges stuttering like bad rendering.
"I can't exist here long… listen… listen carefully…"
He leaned closer despite every instinct screaming to back away.
"Find… Rilu…"She swallowed, breath catching."…Rilu… Osbo—"
She didn't finish.
Her body fractured like glass hit by a silent hammer—Then shattered into glowing fragments.
The particles floated for a moment, suspended in the air—Then faded out like dying pixels.
And she was gone.
Nothing left.
No blood.No suit.Not even the drops of potion.
Just a faint static in the air.
And Vicky sitting paralyzed in his bed, staring at the empty space where a girl from another world had just asked him to find someone named Rilu Osbo— something.