The train screeched into the city like a beast unwilling to be tamed — metal on metal, a final protest before surrendering to the inevitable. Aarav stepped off, clutching his battered suitcase like a shield, and was immediately consumed by the tide of strangers. They moved in currents he didn't yet understand, swift and indifferent, as though the city itself had no patience for hesitation.
Metronova.
A name like a pulse.
The city was alive — a living, breathing machine of chrome and shadow. Glass towers clawed at the bruised, electric sky. Neon signs bled colors onto rain-slick sidewalks, flashing promises in a language made of hunger and hustle. Faces passed him in a blur — hurried, hollow-eyed, wired with ambition. No one met his gaze. No one cared where he'd come from.
Here, your past meant nothing.
Only what you could become — or convincingly pretend to be.
Aarav found a room the size of a coffin in a building that coughed dust every time someone slammed a door. One crooked window stared directly at a graffiti-smeared brick wall. The ceiling fan spun like it had grown tired of living, creaking with each revolution — a tired old man mumbling stories no one asked to hear.
But Aarav didn't mind.
This was freedom.
This was war.
St. Icarus Institute towered over the city's eastern edge — a fortress of intellect and quiet menace. All sharp angles and cold stone, it seemed to pierce the clouds themselves. Its gates stood wide but unwelcoming, as if to say: Enter, if you dare. Survive, if you can.
On his first morning, Aarav stood before them, spine straight beneath his second-hand blazer. His bag, a worn leather satchel, hung heavy on one shoulder. He could feel centuries of ambition pressing against his skin — the ghosts of geniuses and failures alike whispering from the marble walls.
He stepped inside.
Not as a guest.
As a challenger.
Lectures were a blur — foreign words hurled like knives, ideas slicing through the certainties he'd once clung to. Knowledge here wasn't handed out. It had to be stolen, deciphered, survived.
He was nobody again — one of a hundred wide-eyed dreamers, scrambling for footing on a staircase no one told them was greased.
But Aarav was quick. Quiet. Watchful.
He learned fast: the real power wasn't in the classrooms.
It lived in shadows — in the pauses between conversations, in the long silences between questions and answers. Power passed hands in coded glances at the library, in whispered jokes over coffee, in invisible currencies traded in the spaces where professors didn't look.
And it was in one of those spaces — between loneliness and lecture halls — that he saw her.
Maya Raines.
A name he wouldn't forget.
Sharp-eyed. Cool. Her smile held the elegance of a scalpel — beautiful, dangerous, precise. She moved like she already knew the ending of every story, including his.
Their first conversation was a collision.
Accidental.
Awkward.
Strangely charged.
"You're not from here," she said, handing him the book he'd dropped.
He answered before thinking. "Neither are you."
She tilted her head — just slightly — and smiled. Not with warmth.
With recognition.
Then she turned and walked away, leaving him holding the book like it was ticking.
That night, in his narrow bed beneath the squealing fan, Aarav stared at the ceiling and thought about her. About the city. About that flickering feeling at the edge of his mind — not fear, not excitement.
Something older.
Something waiting.
Outside, the brick wall glistened under the fractured neon light.
Then it moved.
Or seemed to.
A shape — darker than shadow — peeled itself from the wall. A ripple in the night. Aarav sat up, breath caught.
It was the figure.
The one from Varsha.
Closer now. Watching.
And then it was gone.
Like it had never been there.
A trick of exhaustion, he told himself.
Tomorrow would be better.
Tomorrow, he would start building his empire.
What he didn't know was this:
The game had already begun.