Riya woke up in a white room that smelled like antiseptic and nothing else.
The ceiling above her was too bright. Too clean. The kind of clean that made your skin itch, as if the place itself disapproved of mess, emotion, and memory. Machines hummed softly around the bed, their lights blinking in steady, impersonal rhythms.
She blinked.
A woman in an ARA uniform sat beside the bed, tablet in hand. Her expression was gentle in the practiced way of people trained to deliver calm with bad news.
"Good morning," the woman said. "Can you tell me your name?"
Riya swallowed. Her throat felt dry. "Riya… Malhotra."
The woman smiled faintly. "Do you know why you're here?"
Riya frowned. Images fluttered at the edges of her mind—sirens, fear, a scream that might have been hers. But when she reached for anything solid, her thoughts slipped through her fingers like smoke.
"I… I don't remember," she said. "My head hurts."
"That's normal," the officer replied. "You were exposed to an anomalous event. We stabilized you."
Riya's eyes drifted to the window. Beyond the reinforced glass, Delhi moved on—traffic snarled, people argued with vendors, the world refused to pause for whatever had happened to her.
"There was someone," Riya murmured. "I think. Someone important."
The officer's stylus paused over her tablet.
"Memories after anomalous exposure can be unreliable," she said carefully. "It's best not to fixate on them."
Riya nodded, unease curling in her stomach.
Aarav watched from the corridor.
He stood behind reinforced glass, his reflection warped by faint containment sigils etched into the surface. The sterile light bleached color from his face. The blood on his shirt had dried into dark, ugly stains.
He looked like a crime scene that had learned to walk.
Mira leaned against the opposite wall, arms crossed. "You should go."
He didn't move.
Inside the room, Riya laughed weakly at something the ARA officer said. The sound was familiar. The way it hit his chest wasn't.
"She's alive," Aarav said.
"Yes," Mira replied. "Because you let her go."
The words were meant to be kind.
They weren't.
"I could have kept her with me," he said. "Run. Hide her between the cracks. I could have protected her."
Mira pushed off the wall, stepping closer. "You could have turned her into a moving target for Hunters and regulators for the rest of her life. You chose the lesser cruelty."
Aarav's jaw tightened. "It doesn't feel lesser."
"No," Mira said softly. "It never does."
The ARA captain approached, boots echoing against the corridor floor. Her gaze flicked to the room, then back to Aarav. "We're releasing the civilian once observation is complete. Her resonance has been severed cleanly. She won't be tracked."
Aarav nodded without looking at her.
"You," the captain continued, "are another matter."
He finally turned. "I figured."
She studied him with a mix of professional curiosity and wary respect. "You could have killed dozens tonight. You didn't. That matters."
"It doesn't change what I am," Aarav said.
"No," she agreed. "But it changes what we do next."
The corridor lights dimmed slightly as containment fields strengthened. Somewhere deeper in the facility, heavy doors slid open and closed with a dull, final sound.
Mira's eyes narrowed. "You're taking him in."
"We're offering him a choice," the captain said evenly. "Register with ARA. Submit to monitoring. Learn control. Or be classified as a rogue anomaly."
Aarav let out a humorless laugh. "You mean a weapon with paperwork."
The captain didn't deny it.
Aarav looked back at the room one last time.
Riya turned in her bed, her gaze drifting toward the window. For a heartbeat, her eyes met his through the glass.
Confusion flickered across her face. Not recognition. Not memory.
Just the faint sense of a stranger standing where someone important should have been.
Aarav stepped back.
The glass reflected only his own hollow stare.
The safehouse Mira brought him to wasn't safe in the way ARA buildings were safe.
There were no bright lights. No sterile walls. Just old concrete, patched wires, and a city skyline bleeding neon through cracked windows. The kind of place no one noticed unless they were looking for trouble.
"This is neutral ground," Mira said. "ARA tolerates it. Hunters ignore it. For now."
Aarav sank onto a battered chair, exhaustion crashing into him all at once. His body trembled as the delayed shock set in.
"What now?" he asked.
Mira studied him. "Now you decide what kind of monster you're going to be."
He looked up at her.
"Power like yours always turns into a story," she continued. "The only question is who gets to write it. Them—" she jerked her chin toward the city, toward ARA, toward the unseen eyes of Hunters and gods—"or you."
Aarav stared at his hands.
They were steady.
Too steady.
"I don't want to be their weapon," he said.
"Then don't be," Mira replied. "Be the thing they can't control."
Aarav closed his eyes.
The storm inside him stirred, quiet but present. Cold and heat coiled together, patient as a sleeping dragon.
"Then I need rules," he said. "For myself."
Mira's lips curved, just a little. "Good. Monsters without rules don't last long."
Aarav opened his eyes, something hard and clear settling into his gaze.
"Rule one," he said. "I don't let innocents pay for my power again."
Outside, Delhi's lights flickered.
Somewhere in the spaces between spaces, Hunters adjusted their trajectories.
And far above the city, something ancient smiled at the birth of a monster who still thought rules could save him
Delhi learned to whisper before it learned to scream.
The rumors didn't spread through news channels or ARA bulletins. They crawled through back alleys and encrypted group chats, across chai stalls and midnight calls between people who lived on the wrong side of the law.
They said a ghost was hunting the black market.
They said fire vanished when he passed.
They said ice cracked stone without touching it.
They said men who preyed on the weak were simply… gone.
Aarav moved through the city like a rumor made flesh.
He didn't announce himself. He didn't leave symbols. The only signature he left behind was absence—places where reality felt thinner, like a scar that hadn't decided whether to heal.
Tonight, the target was a power broker named Sameer Qureshi.
Sameer ran an Awakened trafficking ring out of a half-finished high-rise in Noida. He specialized in buying desperate D- and C-ranks, juicing them with unstable artifacts, and selling the survivors as disposable muscle to anyone with money. The ones who didn't survive were quietly written off as accidents.
Mira stood beside Aarav on the opposite rooftop, wind tugging at her coat. "He's got ARA moles on payroll. You touch him openly, and you paint a target on your back the size of India."
Aarav watched the lights flicker in Sameer's building. "Then I won't touch him openly."
He stepped forward—and the space between rooftops folded.
He landed without a sound.
The unfinished high-rise breathed rot and old cement. Below, voices echoed—guards laughing, the clink of bottles, the casual cruelty of men who had never expected consequences.
Aarav moved.
He didn't unleash the storm. He shaped it into precise, surgical distortions—thin planes of compressed cold that froze weapons in hands without touching skin; narrow bands of heat that warped concrete under fleeing feet, stealing traction without burning flesh.
Panic spread fast.
"What the hell is that—?"
The lights flickered. Then died.
Darkness swallowed the floor.
Aarav stepped into the dark like it belonged to him.
The first guard lunged.
Aarav didn't look at him.
The space between them failed.
The man's momentum vanished as if the floor had forgotten how to be solid beneath him. He tumbled forward, sprawling unconscious as the distortion gently released him onto concrete.
Screams rose. Boots thundered. Someone fired wildly into the dark, muzzle flashes strobing terror across unfinished walls.
Aarav moved through the chaos, not fast—inevitable.
In a corner office ringed with cheap glass, Sameer Qureshi fumbled with a data slate, sweat slicking his beard. His awakened marks glowed a sickly green—enhancement artifacts thrumming under his skin.
"You don't know who you're messing with," Sameer snapped into the dark. "ARA protects me. I pay for that protection."
Aarav stepped into the dim spill of emergency light.
Sameer's breath hitched. "You're not— you're just a kid."
Aarav's eyes were empty of humor. "You bought kids."
Sameer's hand flicked, a pulse of corrosive energy arcing toward Aarav's chest.
It died in the air.
The corrosion flattened against an invisible plane, hissing uselessly before evaporating into nothing.
Sameer stumbled back. "Wait. I can pay you. Name a number. You want artifacts? Information? I can—"
Aarav closed the distance in one warped step.
He leaned in close enough that Sameer could see the faint shimmer in his pupils, the reflection of a storm he couldn't understand.
"Rule one," Aarav said quietly. "I don't let innocents pay for my power again."
He reached past Sameer's shoulder and pressed two fingers to the wall behind him.
The space around Sameer's awakened core tightened.
Not enough to erase him.
Enough to remind him how fragile reality was when someone else held the rules.
Sameer screamed as the enhancement artifacts in his body overloaded, their energies collapsing inward. The glow on his skin flickered and died, leaving him shaking, powerless, alive.
Aarav stepped back.
"ARA will find you like this," he said. "Powerless. Loud. Alive to answer questions."
Sameer collapsed to the floor, sobbing.
Aarav turned away.
On the rooftop across the street, Mira watched the scene through a distortion lens. Her expression was unreadable.
"You left him alive," she said into her comm.
"I said monsters," Aarav replied quietly. "Not murderers."
The city answered him.
By morning, Sameer Qureshi's fall was everywhere in the underground. The brokers panicked. The traffickers went dark. Prices spiked. Deals fell apart.
And the rumors grew teeth.
They called the thing hunting them Zero.
Not a name.
A warning.
Back at the safehouse, Aarav washed blood he hadn't shed from his hands.
The water ran clear. The feeling didn't.
Mira leaned against the doorway. "You just destabilized three black-market routes. ARA will notice. The gangs will adapt. Hunters will adjust their paths."
Aarav dried his hands slowly. "Good."
She raised an eyebrow. "You're not afraid of becoming what they say you are?"
He met her gaze. "I'm afraid of becoming something worse."
Mira studied him for a long moment.
"Then your rules better be stronger than your power," she said.
Outside, sirens wailed in the distance—normal ones this time.
The city whispered the name Zero again.
And somewhere in the unseen layers of reality, something ancient shifted its attention.
The first Hunter found Zero at 3:17 a.m.
It wasn't an accident.
It was bait.
Aarav felt it before he saw it—the way reality tightened, the way space resisted him like a held breath. Someone was anchoring the street with suppression sigils, old-world magic braided with ARA tech. Clean. Expensive. Designed to cripple high-tier distorters.
Mira swore softly in his ear. "ARA Black Division. Three squads. Two Hunters. They've sealed the block."
The street in Old Delhi looked asleep—shuttered shops, stray dogs, the quiet of people who learned to keep their heads down. But beneath the skin of the night, the trap hummed.
Aarav stepped into the sealed zone.
The air thickened.
His power didn't vanish—but it hurt to move it. Like pushing a blade through wet clay.
A voice echoed from the dark. "Zero. You're under provisional detainment under the Awakened Regulation Act. Do not resist."
A figure emerged from between parked trucks—tall, armored in matte-black plates traced with blue sigils. A Hunter's crest glowed on his shoulder: Karan Malhotra, Rank-S.
Another presence moved on the rooftops—lighter, faster. A woman with eyes like cold glass. Neha Rao, Rank-A+.
Mira hissed, "Those two don't come for interviews."
Karan raised a gauntleted hand. The sigils along the street flared brighter. "You destabilized Awakened trafficking routes. You crippled an ARA asset. You interfered with an ongoing investigation."
Aarav laughed once, quietly. "You're welcome."
Neha dropped lightly onto the street behind him, blade humming with stored lightning. "Cute. Turn around. Hands up."
Aarav didn't.
The suppression field bit into him, forcing his power inward. The city lights flickered as the sigils drank energy from the grid. Old Delhi groaned.
Karan stepped closer. "You're strong. Not unkillable. Come quietly, and you might live long enough to justify yourself in front of a tribunal."
Aarav's jaw tightened. He thought of the kids Sameer had sold. Of the screams that never reached daylight. Of the rules he'd written for himself in blood and silence.
"No," he said.
Neha moved first.
Lightning sang as she crossed the distance, her blade aimed for his throat.
Aarav twisted space—too slow.
The blade kissed his skin.
Pain flared white-hot.
He staggered back, blood warm against his collarbone.
Mira screamed his name through the comm.
Karan struck next, his fist carrying a gravity-well that slammed Aarav into a wall. Stone spiderwebbed. His lungs emptied in a brutal gasp.
The street watched.
So did something else.
The world thinned.
Aarav felt the pressure behind his eyes—the edge of the thing he never fully touched. The layer of reality that answered when he was desperate enough to forget fear.
Don't, he told himself.
Neha raised her blade again. "He's still standing. End it."
Karan hesitated—just a fraction. "ARA wants him alive."
"ARA isn't here," Neha snapped.
She lunged.
Mira broke cover.
She dropped from a rooftop, firing a distortion charge that shattered one of the suppression sigils. The field flickered.
Just enough.
Aarav stepped into the gap.
Reality folded like wet paper.
The street stretched, bent, screamed as space misbehaved. Lightning froze mid-air, trapped in a curve that never finished forming. Karan's gravity-well collapsed inward, devouring its own mass in a silent implosion that threw him back.
Neha hit the ground hard, breath knocked from her lungs.
The suppression field died with a shriek of tearing magic.
Aarav stood at the center of a broken street, blood dripping onto cracked stone, eyes reflecting a storm that wasn't entirely human.
Karan struggled to his knees. "You don't know what you're touching," he said hoarsely. "There are things behind your power that don't care about your rules."
Aarav walked toward Neha.
She tried to rise. He pressed her blade into the ground with a distortion that pinned it there without bending the metal.
He knelt.
"Rule two," he said quietly. "Hunters who protect monsters don't get to call themselves heroes."
Neha spat blood. "We keep balance."
"You keep order," Aarav replied. "Balance is something else."
He reached out—and collapsed the lightning engine in her blade. The stored energy bled harmlessly into the ground in a web of fading sparks.
Karan surged forward. "Stop! She's not your enemy!"
Aarav looked at him. "Then stop acting like mine."
Sirens rose—this time the heavy kind. ARA transports, rotors beating the air above the rooftops.
Mira grabbed Aarav's arm. "We can't win this one. Not clean."
Aarav hesitated.
That's when the shot came from nowhere.
A suppressed round tore through Mira's side.
She gasped, staggered—and fell.
The world went very quiet.
Aarav caught her before she hit the ground. Blood spread fast, too fast. Her eyes searched his face, unfocused.
"Hey," he whispered, panic cracking his voice. "Stay with me. I can— I can fix this."
He reached for the layer beneath reality.
It answered.
The pressure behind his eyes became a door.
Something on the other side leaned closer.
Karan shouted, "Don't! That power will take more than it gives!"
Aarav didn't hear him.
He pressed his will into the wound, trying to rewrite the space where blood had decided to leave her body.
Reality resisted.
The door pushed back.
Mira's hand found his wrist. Weak. Steady.
"Don't become it," she whispered. "Don't become… the thing you're afraid of."
Her breath hitched.
Then stopped.
The door inside Aarav slammed shut.
The storm in his eyes went dark.
ARA transports roared overhead. Floodlights pinned the street in white.
Karan stared at the body in Aarav's arms. His voice was rough. "I'm sorry."
Aarav stood slowly, laying Mira down with care that felt like sacrilege on broken stone.
He turned to Karan.
"No more rules," he said—not as a threat, but as a fact.
Space bent.
Not enough to kill.
Enough to warn the world.
The street screamed as reality rippled outward in a wave that knocked Hunters and ARA squads to their knees. Windows shattered for blocks. The city's lights went out in a rolling blackout.
When the dust settled, Zero was gone.
By morning, ARA sealed Old Delhi's Block 19 under "Containment Protocol Theta."
Official reports called it a terrorist incident.
Unofficially, Hunters began refusing assignments that mentioned distorters who didn't fit known classifications.
The underworld whispered that Zero had crossed a line.
And in the deep places beneath reality—where concepts watched the surface like bored gods—something had learned his name.
Not Zero.
Aarav.