The school bell rang with its usual shrillness—less of a chime, more of a shriek of surrender. Students flooded into the corridors of Suryadatta High, a blur of dark blue uniforms, chatter, and the occasional smell of sanitizer mixed with sweat. Aarav Sharma walked through it all, earbuds in, no music playing—just white noise between him and the world.
He stepped into XII-C just as the second bell rang. Mr. Deshmukh was already halfway through a chalk-stained explanation of electromagnetic flux. Aarav slid into his bench next to Ishan, his eternally sarcastic seatmate and closest friend since ninth grade.
"You look like someone punched your dream," Ishan said without looking up, flipping open his notebook.
"Reality did," Aarav muttered. "Right in the syllabus."
"Ah yes. The CBSE two-hit combo: pressure and sleep deprivation."
Despite himself, Aarav grinned. This routine—the dry jokes, the shoddy benches, the humming tube lights—was comforting. Familiar. The kind of ordinary you didn't notice until it changed.
But something was off.
He glanced up at the classroom wall clock. The second hand jerked forward, then paused, mid-tick, before catching up with a twitch. For a second, he thought he imagined it. But there it was again—a stutter, like time had tripped over its own feet.
He blinked, shook his head, and focused on the board.
Deshmukh was explaining Faraday's Law, his voice flat and rhythmic. Aarav stared at the white chalk lines, but suddenly they seemed too sharp—like someone had etched them with light instead of calcium. For the briefest moment, the numbers flickered, like a weak hologram. A static ripple.
He rubbed his eyes.
"Hey," he whispered to Ishan. "Did the board just… glitch?"
Ishan frowned. "You're spending way too much time in sci-fi forums, bro."
Aarav nodded slowly, but unease clung to him like sweat. He couldn't explain it, but his skin felt warm, like he was standing too close to a microwave oven.
At lunch, the school cafeteria buzzed with energy. Tables were filled with open lunch boxes, echoing laughter, and exaggerated stories about exam papers and overstrict teachers. Aarav poked at his lunch with little interest.
Simran had packed it today as a joke—three rotis wrapped around Maggi noodles. "Fusion cooking," she called it.
Across the table, Ishan was arguing with another boy about whether Pokémon could be considered genetically modified animals.
Aarav barely registered the conversation.
His eyes kept drifting to the sky visible through the arched window.
Cloudless. Blue. Normal.
Yet... he couldn't shake the feeling that something was watching him. Not a person. Not even a presence. Just a sense that his timeline had suddenly grown too thin, like the fabric of his life was being stretched.
That's when he saw it.
A line. No—more like a hair-thin fracture in the sky. Faint, like cracked glass held up to the sun. It shimmered once—an iridescent ripple—and then vanished.
He dropped his spoon.
"You okay?" Ishan asked, mid-chew.
"Did you see that?"
"See what?"
"There was a… line. In the sky."
Ishan squinted. "Bro, did you eat expired chutney again?"
Aarav managed a laugh, but his heart was thudding. He rubbed his forearm without realizing it. The skin felt… warm. Buzzing, almost, like there was something under it.
That evening, Aarav sat alone on the terrace. His backpack lay at his feet, books untouched. He leaned back on the cool cement, eyes scanning the sky for something—anything—that might confirm he wasn't losing it.
The sky was quiet.
The stars hadn't changed. The moon was late, as usual. Cars honked below. A dog barked. Someone in the building played an old Hindi song on full volume.
It was all normal.
Painfully normal.
And yet, a silent pressure pressed against his thoughts, like his mind was brushing up against a dream he hadn't fully woken from.
He didn't know it yet, but far beyond Earth—in a dying pocket dimension sealed between realities—a spiral had begun to spin.
Xeiros's final curse and gift to the universe had reactivated.
One drop of blood, older than recorded history, had broken free from the seal. It shot through space-time, searching.
For a vessel.
For a match.