Mumbai never really slept.
Even at midnight, the city breathed — in honking rickshaws, in the rumble of local trains, in the dim yellow halos of streetlamps flickering against sheets of monsoon rain. Water hammered the tar rooftops of the Sion chawls, leaking through patched tin like impatient fingers.
Inside one cramped room, an eighteen-year-old boy was racing against exhaustion and time.
Arjun Desai sat bent over his grimy laptop, tapping fiercely at the keyboard. The fan overhead creaked like it was complaining about life just as much as he was.
"Come on, come on..." he muttered, copying code from reference notes taped to the wall.
His mother coughed in the next room — that deep chest-rattling cough he'd grown up hearing — and guilt twisted like a knife in Arjun's stomach.
Just finish the project, get the payment, buy her medicine, he told himself.
At eighteen, Arjun had become the man of the house simply because no one else remained to carry that weight. His father had walked out years ago, an echo that brought sadness to his mother's eyes whenever someone mentioned his name.
Thunder cracked overhead, shaking the windowpane.
The ancient tube light flickered once, sputtered, and buzzed angrily.
Arjun froze.
"Don't you dare," he whispered at it like it could hear.
Then, the rain intensified — and the light blinked out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Arjun slammed his palm on the table. "No, no, no! Load shedding now?!"
He waited to hear the UPS beep from the neighbor's place.
Nothing.
Completely dead.
But then — something impossible happened.
The laptop screen did not turn off.
Instead, the glow intensified—blinding white, humming with a strange vibration.
Arjun stumbled backward, knocking over his chair. The humming grew louder, sinking into his bones.
"What—?"
Letters flickered across the screen, not typed by him.
CANDIDATE LOCATED.
Arjun's heartbeat hammered so hard he could hear it.
SOUL COMPATIBILITY: 99.8%.
"What the hell is this? A virus? Prank? Malware?"
He reached to yank the plug—but the power cable was already out.
The laptop wasn't connected to anything.
His mother shouted from the kitchen,
"Arjun! Light chala gaya kya?"(did the lights go out)
Before he could answer, the screen bulged outward, stretching like a membrane of silver liquid.
Arjun didn't even get time to scream.
The world flashed white—and swallowed him whole.
Wind.
Cold.
Silence.
Arjun gasped awake, lungs burning with crisp air unlike anything in Mumbai.
He blinked up at the bluest sky he'd ever seen — not smog-muted, not filtered through monsoon clouds — but raw, brilliant sapphire.
Grass cushioned his back, damp and fragrant with morning dew.
He sat up, heart hammering.
"Where... where am I?"
No buildings.
No people.
No honking, no trains, no street dogs barking.
Just nature—endless and untamed.
He staggered to a nearby riverbank, nearly tripping on roots.
The surface reflected him better than any mirror.
A young boy stared back.
Barefoot, hair longer and wilder, eyes darker than before.
Ten years old — maybe eleven — definitely not the eighteen-year-old who fell through a laptop screen.
He slapped his cheek.
"Ow!"
He tugged at the too-large shirt hanging off his shoulders.
"Oh, hell no. No way. No way I'm a kid again!"
The river rippled as a soft chime sounded in his ear.
A floating blue panel materialized before him—like a hologram, except more solid, more divine.
Welcome, Arjun Desai.
You have been reborn as Arjun Ashkiran.
Region: Bharathavarsha — Realm of Gods, Kings & Demons.
Status: Lost Heir — Hunted.
"Hunted? By who?"
No answer.
A rustle of leaves behind him made Arjun spin around.
At first, he saw only forest shadows.
Then, three figures emerged — robed, masked, symbols glowing like embers on their foreheads.
Their steps were silent, lethal.
Arjun's instincts screamed.
Danger.
He backed away, heart slamming like a drum.
The assassins unsheathed curved blades, the metal gleaming with some liquid coating — poison.
"Hey, I don't know who you guys are," Arjun whispered, voice trembling, "but I'm just a guy with no idea what's going on! Can we—talk?"
They didn't slow down.
The tallest one raised his hand, energy sparking between his fingers — dark and hungry, like night wrapped into lightning.
Arjun tried to run — but the forest floor tangled him up, and he fell hard, pain biting his elbows.
The assassins moved in for the kill.
But then — A low, ragged growl cut through the air.
A small wolf cub — so young its fur still fluffed unevenly — staggered from the bushes and stood between Arjun and the blades.
It shook violently, one leg bleeding, but its eyes burned with defiance.
Arjun stared in disbelief.
"You're kidding me. You want to protect me?"
The assassins paused — almost insulted.
The wolf snarled louder, baring tiny teeth.
The leader waved his hand.
"Kill both," he muttered in a rough language Arjun somehow understood.
The two assassins lunged.
Something snapped inside Arjun — something primal, hot, and furious.
A mark ignited on his chest — glowing through skin, through bone — a symbol pulsing blue-white like starlight.
His body felt like it held a storm.
A voice boomed inside his skull:
ASHKIRAN BLOODLINE AWAKENED.
Wind exploded outward — not blowing from the forest, but from Arjun.
The assassins were hurled back as if slammed by an invisible wall.
They crashed into trees, bark splintering.
Arjun stared at his own hands — shaking violently — as leftover sparks of blue energy crackled across his arms.
"What... what did I just do?"
The wolf cub collapsed onto the grass.
Arjun scrambled forward and lifted it gently.
Its breath was shallow.
"No, hey, don't die on me," he whispered, panic rising.
He didn't know this creature, didn't understand why it risked itself. But seeing blood on its fur tore at something inside him.
In Mumbai, he had been powerless — to fix poverty, to help his mom, to change anything.
Here, power pulsed under his skin — raw, terrifying, real.
He held the cub close.
"You protected me. I'll protect you. That's a promise."
The sigil on his chest glowed once more—not explosively, but warm, healing.
A faint pulse of energy passed into the cub, and its breathing steadied.
Arjun exhaled shakily.
In minutes, his entire life had changed.
He wasn't a nobody surviving day to day anymore.
He was someone else.
Someone new.
The assassins groaned and scrambled up again—this time cautious, eyes wide with fear.
"Target awakened," the leader hissed.
"We must retreat and report."
They vanished into the forest like smoke.
Arjun sat silently, clutching the wolf cub.
Birds chirped again, as though the world had reset.
"Arjun Ashkiran..." he repeated slowly.
"That's... me now, huh?"
He looked up at the ancient sky, painted gold by morning light.
He didn't know the kingdoms that ruled this land, the gods that watched over it, or the beasts lurking in the shadows.
But he knew one thing.
His new life wasn't an accident.
It was a summons.
And he had just taken his first step into a world where the weak were devoured and the chosen carved their own legends.
Arjun stood, wolf cub in arms, and whispered to the silent forest:
"Fine. I'll play your game. But I'm not dying without finding out why I was brought here."
What Arjun didn't see — high above the canopy — was a blue comet streaking across the sky.
A sign watched only by gods.
And far away, in a walled city of marble towers, a girl with storm-gray eyes felt a shiver run down her spine.
Tara — Princess of Nandivana — stirred in her sleep, whispering unknowingly:
"He's here."
To BE CONTINUED...