A smell of smoke. Wet dust. Something metallic in the air.
Dev's eyes fluttered open to darkness laced with grey light. He was still strapped in, body pressed sideways against the seat. The world was tilted — the ceiling was where the window should've been.
For a heartbeat, there was noise: a single lingering vibration, as if the echo of impact still hung in the air. Then — nothing. No wind, no rain, no screams. Just a hush so complete it felt unnatural.
He lifted his head. The bus had come to rest at an angle off the road. Rain had broken through a shattered window, but each droplet hung midair, sparkling, unmoving — a thousand small beads of glass suspended around him.
The driver's mirror was cracked into a dozen reflections of the same still face. A notebook floated in midair near the front, its pages half-open, frozen mid-turn.
Dev unbuckled his seatbelt. The sound was strangely loud — too loud — a tiny click that rippled through the silence. He tried to call out, but his own voice came back dull, swallowed by the air.
"Appa?"
No answer.
His father's seat was empty — or maybe he couldn't see clearly through the haze. Dev stumbled forward, stepping over the tilted aisle. Each movement felt slow, exaggerated, as though he were walking underwater.
He reached out and brushed against a hanging piece of cloth — it was stiff, unyielding, as though time itself had turned solid.
Outside the window, a crow hung in mid-flight, wings caught halfway open. Every raindrop around it glittered like a suspended constellation.
Dev pressed a hand to the glass. Cold. Smooth. Real.
He looked down the length of the bus. Shapes were caught mid-motion: a hand raised, a mouth open in a cry that never finished. Not gruesome — just frozen, like life turned to wax.
The stillness had a weight, pressing against his skin. The ticking he'd always known — from the house, the clocks — was gone. It was as if the very heartbeat of the world had stopped.
Dev climbed toward the front, hands gripping seatbacks. His knees brushed shards of glass that neither shifted nor fell.
At the driver's seat, the man sat motionless, eyes wide but unblinking. Outside, the rainclouds were sculpted things — grey and unmoving, carved into the sky.
Dev stepped through the open door.
The road stretched ahead, empty. Palm trees bowed under a frozen wind. Even the ripples in the puddles were still — a mirror locked mid-shiver.
"Appa!"
His own voice sounded wrong in this world — too loud, too alive.
He turned back toward the bus. And there, by the side door, he saw his father.
He was on his knees, posture mid-movement, one hand reaching forward as if to steady someone — maybe Dev — but everything around him had stopped. Even the loose ends of his shirt were caught in the air like folded paper.
Dev reached out, hand trembling. He touched his father's fingers. They were cold but not lifeless — firm, like stone.
"Wake up," Dev whispered.
Nothing.
He looked up again. The world shimmered faintly — like heat rising off a road. Then, faintly, a sound began to build. It wasn't a noise exactly — more like a pulse, somewhere beneath the skin of reality.
Dev turned toward it, toward the curve of the road ahead, where the air itself seemed to bend.
A single raindrop quivered — then fell.
The sound returned all at once: wind, thunder, the groan of the bus collapsing onto the wet ground. The silence shattered.
Dev gasped. The scene lurched forward. People cried out. The world came rushing back in noise and motion.
And just before darkness claimed him again, he thought he saw something — a flicker in the air above his father's shoulder, a faint, glowing line stretching into infinity.
Then, blackness.