The wind in the Hindu Kush didn't just blow. It took things. It scraped the heat off the rocks and dug for the marrow in Ranveer's bones.
He let it. The ice matting his beard, the dead weight of his fingertips—it was better than the alternative. Without the cold to numb him, there was only the burning.
And the fire never really went out. It sat heavy in the back of his throat, tasting of sulfur and wet ash.
He shifted the Tavor. The polymer stock dug into the bruised pocket of his shoulder, a dull ache he'd stopped noticing three days ago. Below, the Syndicate fortress sat in the valley's throat like a concrete tumor. Ventilation fans churned, pushing stale, recycled heat out into the freezing night.
Ranveer blinked. For a second, the grey rock glitched.
Purple.
It wasn't a memory; it was a physical intrusion. The smell hit him first—wet dirt. The Jhelum river rising. Then the saffron. Miles of crocus flowers bowing under a Kashmir sunset, turning the valley into a bruised sea of violet.
Zoya was there. She always was. Not an angel, not a ghost. Just Zoya. Mud on the hem of her pheran, hands stained orange-red from the harvest. She wasn't smiling. She was looking at him with that terrifying, anchoring weight she always had.
"The mountains love you too much, Ranveer." Her voice was a static hum in his ear. She touched his beret. "One day, they'll forget to give you back."
He had grabbed her hand then. He remembered the friction of his callouses against her skin. The silver ring—his grandmother's, cheap and battered—pressed into her palm.
"The rifle goes to the attic, Zoya. After this."
A lie. The worst kind. The kind he'd actually beleived.
Ranveer opened his eyes. The purple snapped away. The grey returned.
He didn't climb down the ventilation shaft; he let gravity drag him in. Boots finding purchase on the rungs—thud, thud, thud—rhythm over thought. The air changed. It got thick, smelling of overheating servers and other men's sweat.
He dropped to the corridor floor.
He rounded the corner, leading with the barrel, and stopped. His heart skipped a beat, a painful lurch in his chest.
He wasn't alone…
A figure stood under the buzzing fluorescent strip. Green light washed over black tactical gear. A face that wasn't a face, just a mask. Eyes that didn't reflect anything. The man stood with the stillness of a statue, or a corpse that forgot to fall down.
The Masked Man. The ghost from Karachi.
Ranveer didn't shout. His voice was a wreck, gravel grinding on glass. "I know you."
The Masked Man didn't flinch. Just a tilt of the head. A microscopic shift. Calculating angles.
"Zulfiqar," Ranveer said. The name tasted like bile. "He's mine."
The silence stretched, tight enough to snap. The Masked Man looked at Ranveer's sleeve—stiff with dried blood—then up to his eyes. He saw the ruin there. He saw the man who had burned in a house in Pampore and left this hollow thing behind.
"Get in my way," Ranveer whispered, finger taking up the slack on the trigger, "and I'll bury you right here."
The Masked Man checked his wrist. A mechanical glance at a watch that gave off no light. He didn't speak. He just stepped back, fading into the deep shadow of a doorway.
Go, the darkness said. Burn it down.
The heavy blast doors at the end of the hall hissed. Seals broke.
Ranveer stopped thinking. The soldier vanished. What was left was just instinct, a jagged thing forged in grief.
Twelve men spilled out. Mercenaries. Shouting commands that dissolved into noise.
Ranveer moved.
He didn't run; he threw himself forward. The Tavor bucked against his shoulder—dhar-dhar-dhar. The lead man dropped, chest opened up. Ranveer didn't step over him; he stepped on him, crashing into the center of the squad before they could line up a shot.
A rifle barrel swung at his head. Ranveer battered it aside, stepping into the man's sweat-smell. He grabbed a tactical vest, jerking the mercenary down.
Pistol up. Muzzle into the eye socket.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Five shots. The recoil hammered his wrist. The man's head wasn't a head anymore. Just mist and wet bone spraying the white walls.
Ranveer shoved the dead weight away and spun. His hand found the frag grenade on his belt. The pin came out—a metallic ping lost in the screaming.
Another guard lunged. A serrated knife looking for Ranveer's ribs. Ranveer caught the wrist. He didn't block it; he snapped it. The sound was wet, like stepping on a dry branch. The man's mouth opened—a perfect, cavernous O of agony.
Ranveer didn't throw the grenade.
He jammed the steel sphere into the man's open mouth. Past the teeth. Deep.
With a roar that tore his own throat raw, Ranveer kicked the man backward, sending him stumbling into the knot of retreating soldiers.
BOOM.
The corridor convulsed. The air turned solid. A hammer of pressure knocked the wind out of him. Dust, concrete, and wet fragments slapped against his armor.
He didn't wait for the ringing in his ears to stop. He walked into the grey cloud.
A survivor crawled across the floor, coughing up black fluid. Ranveer drew his knife. The blade was scarred. He knelt. No hesitation. No moral question. He drove the steel into the side of the man's neck. Tough muscle, then the sudden, sickening give.
He didn't pull it out. He twisted.
The vibration of the artery failing traveled up the handle, buzzing against his palm. Hot, metallic blood sprayed across Ranveer's face. It hit his lips. Salt. Copper. Iron.
He didn't wipe it away. He closed his eyes for a micro-second, inhaling the steam rising from the wound.
The fire.
For a heartbeat, the burning in his head stopped. The raw Josh—the adrenaline—flooded his exhausted bones. It was a drug. The blood on his face felt warmer than the saffron fields ever had.
Thwack.
A bullet tore through the meat of Ranveer's left bicep.
He didn't flinch. He didn't stumble. He just looked up.
Above, on the catwalk, the Masked Man lowered a suppressed pistol. Smoke drifted from the barrel. Behind Ranveer, a Syndicate sniper who had been aiming at the back of his head slumped over the railing.
The Masked Man looked down. Untouched. Clean. Like a scientist watching a rat fight in a cage.
Ranveer gripped his blood-slicked knife. The pain in his arm was distant, just information to be filed away. His skin hummed. The silence came back, heavier now, weighed down by the dead.
He looked at the final door. Reinforced steel. Grey.
Zulfiqar was behind that…
Ranveer wiped the blood from his eyes, smearing it across his forehead.
"The list ends," he whispered to the empty air.
He stepped over the bodies. The smell of saffron was gone, drowned in the stench of iron. Better this way. Memories were for the living, and he had no intention of surviving the night.