Chapter 1 : The Night

The rain had started again, thin, sleety needles whispering against the tin roof of the single-bedroom house. Seventeen-year-old Devashish sat in the dark, his spine pressed against the cracked wall like a prisoner against the bars of a cell that had never needed locks. His government school shirt, faded and frayed at the cuffs, clung to him like a second skin that had seen too many seasons. 

The blood beneath his fingernails had turned the color of rust, just street blood, the kind boys spill when fists fly faster than words. Bruises bloomed like wildflowers on his arms, careless and uninvited.

But this house held a different kind of blood. Not the kind that stains skin, but the kind that stains memory. It was quieter, like a whisper behind a closed door. Older, like a wound that had learned to stop screaming. 

From the kitchen came the soft shuffle of his mother's feet, a sound like moth wings brushing against glass, barely there, but persistent. She was cooking dinner, stirring something in a dented aluminum pot. If he was lucky, he'd get some today. If she remembered he existed.

And then... the silence was sliced.

There was an unmissable slam of the gate. Followed by the stagger of footsteps on uneven cement, like a wounded animal dragging its pride behind it. Accompanied by the  unmistakable clink of a glass bottle in a paper bag, the sound of promises broken and rage uncorked.

The beast was home.

Every night followed this script, etched into the bones of the house like a curse. The bottle was always the prologue. It's arrival like a herald of ruin. Then the accusations, jagged and slurred, slicing through the air like broken glass. Then the fists, heavy and rehearsed, falling with the certainty of rain in monsoon season.

Devashish had learned the rhythm young. He knew how to fold himself between wall and furniture like a secret the house tried to forget. He knew how to watch without blinking, how to flinch without sound, how to cry only when the night was deep enough to swallow the noise. 

And later, when the storm had passed and his mother lay limp in the aftermath, he knew how to dress her wounds with the precision of someone who had practiced on silence. His hands never trembled, not because he was brave, but because trembling was a luxury he'd never been afforded.

But something was shifting now. Like the change of autumn to winter.

A pressure had been building under his skin for weeks, slowly, relentlessly, like steam trapped beneath a sealed lid. His teenage body had stretched taller, his voice had dropped lower, and the rage—thick, molten, alive—had begun to take up too much space in his chest. It pulsed where fear used to live, a new tenant with sharper teeth, with sharper claws.

Tonight, it would break.

He didn't know what he would do. But he knew this: he was no longer just a witness. He was becoming something else. Something dangerous. Something alive. Like a werewolf watching the moon reach it's full phase.

The door flung open with the violence of a storm uninvited. That man, his so-called father, stumbled in, belt already loosened, voice already slurred, eyes scanning the room like a predator sniffing for weakness. The bottle swung in his hand like a weapon disguised as comfort.

His mother appeared in Devashish's line of sight, her body recoiling before her mind could catch up. She flinched like a reflex, like a habit, like a woman who had learned that shrinking was safer than standing.

Devashish stood up unprompted. "Not tonight," he said.

The words landed like stones in a still pond, rippling through the room with a weight that didn't belong to a boy.

The man turned to look at him, amused. His face twisted into that familiar sneer, in a manner that made cruelty look casual. "What did you say?" he asked, voice thick with liquor and disbelief.

Devashish's fists clenched, knuckles whitening like bones remembering their purpose. His voice didn't shake. "You'll leave her alone."

"Deva," his mother's voice cracked through the air, shrill, scolding, desperate. A warning wrapped in fear. He gave her one glance. Just one. Enough to say: Not this time.

The man laughed, a sound sharp and ugly, like glass dragged across metal. And then came the hit.

But this time, Devashish didn't fall, only stumbled a bit. While he stood up straight, a glass bottle darted towards his arm.

He caught the bottle mid-swing, his fingers closing around it like fate finally taking form. With a single motion, he plucked it out of the monster's hand and smashed it against the wall. The explosion of glass was a scream, jagged, final and unforgiving.

The remaining sharp end gleamed in his hand like a ready warrior. It was not a weapon. It was a truth. A reckoning. A mirror held up to a monster.

His mother screamed, a sound that split the room in two. Not because of the bottle. But perhaps because she knew that the boy who had once stitched her wounds was gone. And in his place stood something else. Something that would never kneel again. Something that would never back down again.

The angry middle aged man lunged forward towards the boy.

And then. . . 

The world tipped sideways, like a painting knocked off its nail. Time fractured. Sound blurred. The room became a tunnel of motion and memory.

Devashish didn't remember the sharp half of the bottle flying towards the man's torso. Only the sound, wet, final, like a secret being swallowed by the dark. The man's breath caught in a strange loud rasp, half-growl, half-gasp. He staggered back. In the next second, Devashish was on top of him, teeth gritted, hand trembling from the rhythm of desperation—shoving the jagged glass again and again, as if trying to carve silence into flesh forever. Leaving no room for the monster to ever return.

It happened all in a frenzy minute. A single, brutal minute. And then the room froze for the next few.

The bottle, slick with blood, slipped from his fingers like a truth too heavy to hold. It hit the floor with a soft clink, absurdly gentle, as if mocking the violence that had preceded it.

Devashish stood there, bloodshot eyes locked on the lifeless man before him. The body was still, twisted and ruined like a broken marionette whose strings had finally snapped. The air was thick, unmoving. Even the walls seemed to hold their breath.

No more shouting. No more footsteps. No more breath.

One woman. Just his mother, trembling in the corner, her eyes wide with something that wasn't just fear. 

One boy. Just the boy who had finally stepped in to stop it, his chest heaving, his soul hollowed out. 

One dead man. Just a ruined body on the floor of a ruined home, blood spreading like a shadow that wouldn't fade.

Outside, the rain started again. Soft at first, like the sky whispering apologies it couldn't articulate. Then harder, as if the heavens themselves didn't know whether to wash this away or weep louder. Each drop struck the tin roof like a heartbeat, steady, relentless but mourning.

Inside, the air was thick with silence. The kind that doesn't soothe. The kind that lingers. Devashish stood in the center of it all, his breath shallow, his hands stained, his soul suspended between boyhood and something far from human.

* * *

The sirens didn't scream. They growled.

A low, crawling sound that slithered through the alleyways like judgment dressed in flashing lights. Not mercy. Not rescue. Just consequence.

Devashish stood in the doorway of that rusted one-room house. His shirt soaked in blood, clinging to his ribs like guilt. His knuckles were split, raw and blooming, the skin peeled back like pages torn from a book no one wanted to read. He didn't resist when they cuffed him. Didn't blink when they shoved him against the wall. His body moved like life had already left it.

He turned, just once, to his mother. She didn't move.

She didn't plead or protest. Didn't cry or collapse. She just stood there, staring at a cracked photo frame on the shelf. A wedding picture, long discolored. A lie cast in sepia. The glass fractured across their faces like the truth finally catching up.

Devashish waited. A word. A whisper. A flicker of something, grief, rage, love, anything. But nothing came.

Not from her. Not from God. Not from the world. Nothing.

* * *

The neighborhood kids had gathered.

Boys who once shared stolen chocolates and bruised cricket bats. Boys whose laughter once filled the alley like birdsong after school. Now they whispered. Pointed. Muttered things behind hands and under breath, their voices sharp as thorns.

"He is a killer." 

"Psycho." 

"Like father, like son." 

"He always had that look..."

Their words clung to the air like smoke— bitter, lingering, impossible to swallow.

Devashish's arms tightened as they led him out, wrists cuffed, the tiny dignity discarded like yesterday's news. The inspector didn't bother with gentleness. Or decency. His grip was rough, his tone colder than the rain.

"Feels good, doesn't it? Acting like a hero," he spat, voice thick with contempt. "But that's not what you are."

He leaned in, breath sour, eyes gleaming with something cruel. "You're just your father's rot in new skin."

Devashish's jaw clenched until it felt like bone grinding against betrayal. But it wasn't until one of the boys in the alley said it, "Murderer" , that something inside him snapped like a frayed wire finally giving way.

"Say it again!" he roared, thrashing against the cuffs like a storm trying to break its own sky. "You think I wanted this? You think I liked it? You hide behind your locked doors and pray it's not your mother next! Cowards!"

His voice cracked through the alley like thunder, raw and unfiltered. The officers pulled him back, their grips firm, their faces blank. But Devashish kept shouting,  cursing the boys who once shared his laughter. Cursing the system that taught him silence. Cursing the sky that watched it all and never intervened. The world was a cruel, dark place.

His words spilled like fire, uncontrolled and burning. He wasn't pleading. He wasn't explaining. He was unraveling.

And in that moment, soaked in blood and rain, he wasn't just a boy in cuffs.He was every scream that had ever gone unheard. Every bruise that had ever been hidden.

* * *

The car door slammed shut, after shoving him in.

In the backseat, Devashish caught his reflection in the fogged glass. His eyes wild and fists trembling, he was a silhouette shaped by violence and verdicts. A monster, the world had named him before he'd even had his chance to be a decent man.

Inside, something snapped. Not anger. Anger was fire. This was frost. Something colder. Something that didn't burn, it froze.

So this is it, he thought, watching drops of rain trail down the glass. Nothing for being a hero. No forgiveness, no support, no understanding, no empathy.  He had tried to save her, and she hadn't even looked at him. Tried to stop the devil, and they told him he was born from him, just to be another one. Fine, he thought. If that's who I am, so be it.

The car screeched to a halt, and he was yanked out. As he stumbled, his eyes lifted to the night sky which was vast, silent, and indifferent. He was dragged into a modest police chowki and shoved into a cell. The iron bars slammed shut behind him with merciless finality.

He sank to the cold stone floor, his back against the wall. In his line of sight stood an idol of the deity, reverently adorned and worshipped.  His gaze stuck to the idol in the corner, bathed in flickering lamplight. The same God he had once carried through crowded streets, collecting coins from strangers to build a pandal, to honor with music and dance. The same God whose name he had chanted with cracked lips and aching feet, year after year, despite the bruises life dealt him.

"You watching this, God?" he whispered through gritted teeth, voice low and bitter. "Hope you're enjoying the damn show."

"You made him. You let him hurt her. And now this." He laughed, a hollow, broken sound that ricocheted off the damp stone walls. "We're done, Bappa," he muttered, voice thick with rage and grief. "So don't ask for prayers. Don't ask for faith. I'm done with you."

The idol stood in the corner, bathed in the flickering glow of a dying lamp. It stared back, unmoved. Silent. As if carved not from stone, but from indifference itself.

He looked away, jaw clenched, heart heavy. The silence wasn't sacred anymore, it was cruel. The kind that follows betrayal. The kind that mocks belief.

That night, something was buried. Not just a body. Not just a boy. But the last flicker of someone who once believed in goodness. And in his place, the world got what it had always accused him of being— not a criminal by choice, but a criminal by inheritance. By design.

A criminal.

~

"I felt like I had died too, and they just forgot to bury me."

— Unknown

~

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–Anami!♡