The metro station in Mumbai buzzed with its usual chaos—
crowded platforms, voices overlapping in a rush, announcements blaring from the speakers, and the metallic screech of trains coming and going.
This was where the heartbeat of the city throbbed the loudest, underground, as people carried the heavy burdens of jobs, debts, dreams, and despair in their overstuffed bags.
And right in the thick of it all, Shiva settled down.
In the heart of the main concourse, surrounded by honking cars and hurried footsteps, the man in the hoodie simply sat there.
Cross-legged.
Eyes shut.
Silent.
At first, no one paid him any mind.
But then, something shifted in the air.
Phones in the station flickered.
Lights dimmed.
One by one, people began to slow down. A woman, poised to scold her crying child, froze with her hand suspended in mid-air.
A man who had just snatched a wallet glanced back at his victim, shame washing over him.
Then someone shouted, "It's him! The guy from the videos!"
Heads turned. Dozens of phones shot up. But as soon as they aimed their cameras, the devices froze—not with an error, but in a strange stillness. It was as if the very notion of distraction had been put on hold.
Anika stepped off a nearby train and caught sight of him.
She halted.
Then, with deliberate steps, made her way toward him.
No words were exchanged. She didn't need to say anything. She simply sat down next to him. Cross-legged. Just like before—in another life, in another time.
For exactly two minutes, time stood still.
Trains slowed.
Feet paused. Breaths deepened.
A child placed their hand on the ground and beamed.
The station, a microcosm of the entire city, remembered what it had long forgotten.
Stillness.
And then, just like that, the spell shattered.
The cacophony returned. The train pulled in. But as people boarded, they did so with a newfound awareness.
Not everyone, but enough.
---
Meanwhile, Rudra Swami opened his eyes from his meditation. He had felt the ripple.
"They remembered," he murmured.
His disciple blinked in confusion. "Who remembered?"
"The city," Rudra replied,
"for just a heartbeat, it remembered it has a soul."
---
In a dimly lit command room, Raut was fixated on an error graph.
"Narak signal dropped for two minutes," his technician reported.
"No external interference detected, but neural responses plummeted globally."
Raut tightened his jaw. "Which location?"
"Mumbai Metro Central."
Raut had already anticipated the answer.
"Next phase," he instructed.
"Initiate embedded stimuli.
Create chaos.
We can't let silence spread like a virus."
---
Anika and Shiva strolled through the now-silent metro corridor, their words unspoken.
"You felt it too, didn't you?" she finally broke the silence.
"Yeah," Shiva replied.
"For a brief moment, the noise just faded away."
"I've never seen people freeze like that. It was as if the city took a deep breath."
He nodded in agreement. "When people remember to breathe, the world breathes along with them."
A janitor bowed as they walked by, a teenage boy deleted a meme mocking the gods, and a stockbroker tossed his anti-anxiety pills into the trash.
Small changes. But collectively, they formed a wave.
---
Later that night, footage from the metro leaked online. Yet, the video showed no movement—just two figures sitting in the center, blurred, enveloped in tranquility.
Still, the video went viral.
#MetroMiracle started trending.
People across the nation began to explore silence.
Breathing.
Sitting still.
Just for two minutes.
And somewhere, deep within the intricate web of Project Narak, the system glitched once more.
It couldn't process calm.
---
In a monastery in Nepal, a 9-year-old monk beamed, pointing at the screen.
"He's doing it, Guruji."
"Doing what?" the elder inquired.
"Rebooting the world."
And far beneath the bustling life of Mumbai, Shiva smiled.
The metro had remembered.
And the movement had begun.