The scream didn't fade.
It cut through the city's noise like a blade, thin and raw, ripping open something in Aarav's chest that he hadn't known was still intact.
Riya.
The name wasn't a thought anymore. It was a reflex. A pull so violent it drowned out reason, training, even fear. The storm inside him surged, cold and heat spiraling toward release, clawing for space in a world too fragile to hold it.
Mira's hand tightened on his shoulder.
"If you lose control here," she said, low and fierce, "you won't just kill her enemies. You'll kill her neighbors. Kids. Strangers who never chose your war."
Aarav's breath came in short, broken pulls. Across the street, ARA drones hovered like patient insects, their pale beams sweeping the building's facade. The two officers at the entrance were calm, professional. They didn't look like villains.
That was the worst part.
"They're not supposed to hurt her," Aarav said. "She's not awakened. She's just… normal."
Mira's eyes flicked up to the window where the scream had come from. "No one is 'just' normal anymore. Not when anomalies start bending the rules nearby. Collateral damage is a line item in their reports."
Another cry echoed, cut short this time.
Aarav stepped forward.
The world responded.
Reality thinned around his feet, the pavement dimpling inward as if the city were soft clay. The pressure in his skull bloomed into white noise, a shrill insistence that drowned out Mira's next words.
He crossed the street in three warped strides, the air folding under him like invisible stairs. ARA officers turned, hands snapping to their weapons, sigils flaring.
"Stop!" one shouted. "ARA! Identify—"
Aarav raised his hand.
Not to erase.
To hold.
The space between him and the officers thickened, becoming syrup-slow. Their shouts stretched into warped echoes. The drones' beams bent around an invisible curve, refracting into harmless halos of light.
Mira appeared beside him, coat snapping in the distorted air. "You're overextending. Your boundary's sloppy."
"I don't have time for neat," Aarav said, pushing past her.
The building's entrance door burst inward with a metallic scream as he forced the lock to forget it was ever closed. He sprinted up the stairs two at a time, Mira a ghost at his side.
On the third-floor landing, an ARA officer lay slumped against the wall, unconscious but breathing. Another was struggling with Riya near her apartment door, one gloved hand clamped around her wrist, the other reaching for a restraint cuff etched with suppression runes.
Riya's eyes met Aarav's.
Relief flared—and then fear, sharp and sudden, as she saw his face.
"Aarav, your eyes—"
He didn't let her finish.
The world between her and the officer bent.
Not violently. Precisely.
The man's grip loosened as the space around his arm thickened, his movements slowing until they felt like underwater flailing. Aarav stepped in, gently pulling Riya free.
She stumbled into his chest.
For a heartbeat, the storm inside him stilled.
Her warmth anchored him. Her heartbeat—fast and terrified—was a fragile, human rhythm in a world that had started to sound like breaking glass.
"It's okay," he whispered into her hair. "I've got you."
Behind them, Mira swore.
"Aarav—"
The pressure snapped.
Not outward.
Inward.
Aarav's vision tunneled. The edges of the stairwell warped, the walls bowing as if drawn toward his chest. The Zero-Point Contrast recoiled, then surged, compressing heat and cold into a razor-thin core that throbbed with wrongness.
Riya gasped. "What's happening?"
Aarav staggered, clutching her to keep her from falling. Pain lanced through his skull, sharp enough to steal his breath. He felt something inside him tear—a microscopic fracture in the boundary he'd drawn on the rooftop.
Mira moved fast, slamming her palm against his back. Silver sigils flared, bracing the collapsing distortion around him. "You can't anchor yourself to a human like this," she hissed. "Your power is destabilizing her reality."
Riya's fingers tightened in his shirt. "What is she talking about?"
Aarav looked down at her, at the fear in her eyes, at the trust he didn't deserve.
"I'm sorry," he said.
The stairwell lights shattered.
Not the bulbs—the light itself. It fractured into jagged shards of brightness that drifted through the air like broken mirrors. The building groaned, a deep, wounded sound as reality strained around the anomaly at its heart.
Down below, ARA officers shouted orders. Drones swarmed, their beams slicing through the darkness.
Mira's jaw tightened. "Hunters will feel this. We're out of time."
Aarav's chest burned. The storm demanded release. The fracture in his boundary widened, spiderwebbing through the careful control he'd managed moments before.
Riya trembled in his arms. "Aarav… you're scaring me."
The words cut deeper than any Hunter ever could.
He loosened his grip, just a fraction.
The storm surged into the gap.
And the first thread of reality around Riya began to unravel.
The air around Riya shimmered.
Not with light, not with heat—
with absence.
It started at her fingertips.
The color leeched from her skin in thin, spiderweb lines, like frost creeping over glass, except this frost wasn't cold. It was empty. Where it passed, the world felt thinner, quieter, as if reality itself were holding its breath.
Riya stared at her hands. "Aarav… what's happening to me?"
He felt the fracture inside his chest widen, a hairline crack splitting open under unbearable pressure. Panic surged through him, raw and animal.
"No—no, no, no," he whispered. "This isn't—this isn't supposed to—"
Mira grabbed his wrist, her grip iron. "Your boundary collapsed the moment you anchored on her. Your power doesn't distinguish between enemies and anchors. To it, everything nearby is just… material."
"I'll pull it back," Aarav said. "I can—"
He tried.
The Zero-Point Contrast responded like a wounded beast.
Cold and heat twisted inward, tightening around the unraveling space near Riya's hands. The absence shuddered, slowed—
—and then surged up her arm.
Riya cried out, the sound tearing through him. He felt her pain like feedback through a broken wire, a mirror of the distortion screaming inside his own nerves.
"Aarav, it hurts—why does it hurt to exist?" she sobbed.
The question shattered him.
Mira swore under her breath, silver sigils flaring as she layered containment fields around Riya's arm. The shimmer slowed, then stalled at her elbow, the absence writhing against the barrier like a living thing.
"This is temporary," Mira said, but there was strain in her voice. "But every second you hold her, your power treats her as part of the anomaly. You're eroding her."
Aarav went very still.
Down the stairwell, boots thundered. ARA officers were moving up, voices sharp with urgency. The drones' beams cut through the broken light, painting the walls in harsh white slices.
"Aarav!" Riya pleaded. "Don't let them take me. I don't understand any of this. I just wanted you to come home."
Her fingers tightened in his shirt, desperate, human, warm.
If he let go, ARA would take her. They would test her, isolate her, classify her as contamination risk. She would disappear into sterile rooms and endless questions, her life folded into reports and redacted files.
If he held on…
He looked at her arm, at the thin line of absence writhing against Mira's barrier. He imagined it spreading, eating through her reality the way it had eaten the men in the alley.
"I can fix this," he said hoarsely. "I just need time."
Mira's eyes were hard. "You don't have time. Hunters are already bleeding through the cracks you made. I can feel them adjusting their vectors."
As if summoned by the words, the air at the far end of the corridor shuddered. A seam quivered into existence, smaller than the one on the rooftop but growing, its edges whispering with silent hunger.
A presence pressed against the world.
Riya shivered. "Why does it feel like something is watching me?"
Aarav swallowed. "Because something is."
The ARA team reached the landing. Weapons raised. Sigils flaring. Their captain—a woman with a calm, lined face—took in the scene in a heartbeat: the warped light, the shimmering absence on Riya's arm, the impossible distortions around Aarav.
"Reality-class anomaly," she said into her comm. "Confirmed. Civilian contamination present."
Riya's eyes widened. "Contamination?"
Aarav felt the word lodge in his chest like a shard of glass.
The captain's gaze softened, just a fraction. "Miss, we're here to help you. Step away from him slowly."
Riya looked at Aarav, torn between fear and trust. "Aarav…?"
He shook his head. "Don't listen to them."
Mira leaned close, her voice a whisper only he could hear. "This is the choice. Let her go to the system and she might survive as a person. Hold on to her and you will turn her into a casualty of your power."
The Hunter's presence pressed harder. The seam at the corridor's end widened, darkness bleeding into the stairwell like ink in water.
Aarav's chest burned. The storm demanded release, furious at being caged.
He looked down at Riya.
At the girl who had shared chai with him on lazy evenings.
At the laugh that had cut through his bitterness.
At the normal life he had already lost.
"I promised I'd protect you," he said.
Riya's lips trembled. "Then do it. Don't let them take me away."
The ARA captain's voice sharpened. "If you don't release her now, we will use suppressive force."
Aarav's mind split in two.
One side screamed to run, to tear the world open and carry Riya somewhere no one could touch them.
The other side saw the thin line of absence creeping, patient and hungry.
Mira met his gaze. There was no judgment in her eyes. Only inevitability.
"Power saves no one without a price," she said again. "The question is who pays it."
The Hunter surged against the seam.
The building groaned.
Aarav closed his eyes—
—and made his choice.
Aarav let go.
Not of her hand.
Of the idea that he could save her without losing something else.
The storm inside his chest surged, furious at the cage he'd built around it. Cold and heat twisted together, screaming for release. The thin line of absence on Riya's arm writhed, straining against Mira's containment sigils.
Aarav didn't fight the storm this time.
He shaped it.
The pressure collapsed inward, condensing into a blade-thin boundary that curved around Riya like an invisible cocoon. The absence shuddered, stalled—and then recoiled, pulled back into the core of the Zero-Point Contrast like a tide being dragged away from shore.
Riya screamed once more—and then the pain cut off.
She sagged against him, breath coming in shaky gasps. The shimmer faded from her skin, color flooding back into her fingers.
For a heartbeat, the world went quiet.
The ARA captain's eyes widened. "Containment achieved?"
Mira stared at Aarav, something like awe flickering across her face. "You inverted the collapse… you forced the distortion to pay the price itself."
Aarav swayed. The migraine in his skull spiked into white-hot agony. He tasted iron. The world tilted.
The Hunter did not retreat.
The seam at the end of the corridor convulsed, swelling wide enough to swallow the stairwell. The presence behind it pressed forward, furious now—not irritated. The air screamed in silent protest as reality bent around the intruder's hunger.
Mira cursed. "You fed it. The inversion left a vacuum it can lock onto."
The ARA captain barked orders. "Evacuate the floor! Suppression teams, form perimeter!"
Riya clutched Aarav's arm. "You saved me," she whispered, tears streaking her face. "I knew you would."
The words were a knife.
Aarav looked at her—really looked at her—and saw the faint afterimage of absence clinging to her outline like a shadow only he could see. The Zero-Point Contrast had touched her. Marked her. Hunters would feel that echo like blood in water.
Saving her here had not saved her forever.
The Hunter surged.
Darkness spilled from the seam, not as a shape but as a pressure that crushed breath from lungs and thought from minds. The nearest ARA drone flickered—and then vanished, its feed cutting off mid-frame.
Mira grabbed Aarav's collar and yanked him close. "This thing isn't here for you anymore," she hissed. "It's here for her."
Riya's eyes widened in dawning horror. "What do you mean… for me?"
Aarav's chest hollowed out.
He could run with her. Tear a path through the city, drag her into the spaces between spaces where Hunters would take time to follow. He could become a fugitive, a living anomaly dragging the one person he loved deeper into a war she had never chosen.
Or—
He could cut the thread.
The idea formed in his mind like a sin.
Mira saw it there. "There's a way," she said quietly. "You can sever the resonance. But it will hurt. And it will change her."
"Change her how?" Aarav whispered.
"She'll live," Mira said. "As a human. Without the echo. Without Hunters tracking her."
Riya shook her head, clinging to him. "I don't care about Hunters. I care about you. Don't leave me."
The Hunter's presence swelled, the seam yawning wider. The building's walls bowed inward, groaning under the pressure. Somewhere below, people screamed as the structure shuddered.
Aarav pressed his forehead to Riya's. He memorized the warmth of her skin, the familiar rhythm of her breath.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I should never have pulled you into my world."
She sobbed. "Don't do this. Please."
He closed his eyes.
And cut the thread.
The Zero-Point Contrast twisted inward, cold and heat shearing through the resonance that linked Riya to the anomaly. The severing wasn't clean. It tore.
Riya screamed.
The sound ripped through him, raw and animal. For an instant, he felt her terror, her pain, her confusion as the echo of the impossible was ripped out of her reality.
Then the pressure snapped.
The shimmer around her vanished completely. The Hunter recoiled, its presence stuttering as the bait it had locked onto disappeared. The seam wavered—and began to collapse.
Riya went limp in Aarav's arms.
"Riya!" He caught her, heart slamming against his ribs. Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused. She looked at him like he was a stranger.
"Do… do I know you?" she asked softly.
The words destroyed him.
Mira looked away.
The seam shrank, the Hunter's presence retreating with a final, frustrated pulse. The corridor steadied. The building's groan faded into the distant noise of the city.
ARA officers surged forward, securing the area, their weapons lowering as the immediate threat dissolved.
The captain approached slowly, taking in the scene: the unconscious civilian, the reality-class anomaly kneeling on the floor, blood trickling from his nose.
"Sir," she said quietly, not unkindly. "You just saved this building."
Aarav didn't look up.
He cradled Riya's weight, her head lolling against his chest. The warmth was still there. The life was still there.
The memory of him was not.
Mira knelt beside him. "She'll wake up without the echo. Without Hunters tracking her. Without you in her head."
Aarav laughed, a broken sound that scraped his throat raw. "So I saved her."
"Yes," Mira said.
He stared at the wall, at the cracks spiderwebbing through concrete where reality had nearly torn itself apart.
"And I lost her."
END OF CHAPTER 2