The most dangerous thing in the Sharma house was the kitchen kettle.
“Two whistles, Kiran!
Not three!” his mother shouted from the living room, where she was folding a fresh stack of laundry.
“If it whistles three times, the hard water sticks to the bottom.
Then your father spends his whole Sunday scrubbing it with lemon and complaining.”
“I’m watching it, Ma!” Kiran shouted back.
He wasn’t watching it.
He was leaning against the kitchen counter, trying to balance a butter knife across the mouth of an open peanut butter jar.
His father walked into the kitchen wearing an old grey track jacket and reading glasses that sat low on his nose.
He had the morning newspaper folded under his arm.
“Don’t look at the counter,” his father whispered without looking up from the paper.
“Your mother has ears like a bat and eyes in the back of her head.”
“I cleaned it,” Kiran whispered back.
“With what?
The dry dishcloth?” His father peered over the edge of his glasses.
“You just pushed the breadcrumbs from the left side of the sink to the right side.
That’s not cleaning.
That’s moving trash from one room to another.”
“It’s called organizing, Dad.”
His father gave a small laugh and tapped Kiran’s head with the folded newspaper.
“Go finish your school work.
If you put half as much effort into your math as you do into getting out of chores, you’d be topping your class.”
“I was working on the old scooter engine this morning.
The fuel line was blocked.”
“Because you keep using dirty fuel,” his father said, walking over to the stove.
“Old engines need care.
You can’t just kick the starter and expect it to run.
You have to listen to the machine.”
Right then, the kettle let out a loud, ear-piercing shriek.
“That was two!” his mother yelled from the other room.
“It was only one long one, Sunita!” his father called back quickly, rushing to turn off the burner with a kitchen towel.
It was a normal Saturday.
The kitchen smelled of burnt toast, hot ginger tea, and the sweet laundry soap his mother always bought.
Kiran was seventeen years old.
He had scraped knees from working on old two-wheelers in the alley, a bad habit of staying up too late reading, and parents who checked his homework every evening.
He had no idea that by the time the sun went down, he would be lying in the dirt under a sky that didn’t belong to his world.
The fire did not start with a bang.
It started with a bad smell.
It was nearly nine at night when Kiran walked home from the local repair garage down the road.
He had a metal wrench tucked into his back pocket, and his knuckles were grey with grease.
The autumn air was cool and smelled of dry leaves.
As he turned down the narrow road near the old storage buildings, he smelled something nasty.
It was thick and heavy, like burning plastic and hot oil.
Kiran stopped.
Behind the frosted windows of an old repair shed, there was a dull, angry orange glow.
“Hey!” Kiran yelled, walking toward the gate.
“Uncle Verma?
Is anyone in there?”
No one answered.
The guard booth near the front was completely empty.
A small radio sat on the desk, playing static.
Then, a loud crash shook the metal door.
Glass shattered from the upper window, and thick, black smoke poured into the cold night air.
“Help!” a voice cried out from inside.
It sounded high-pitched, choked with smoke.
“The lock won’t open!
Help!”
Kiran’s chest tightened.
He didn’t stop to think.
He grabbed an old iron crowbar leaning against the guard booth, ran to the shutter, and shoved the flat end under the metal door.
“Get back from the door!” Kiran yelled, coughing as the nasty smoke hit his face.
He threw his entire body weight onto the bar.
With a loud snap, the old lock gave out, and the heavy metal shutter rattled open just a couple of feet off the ground.
Kiran dropped to his belly, wedged the bar under to hold the gap open, and crawled right inside.
The heat slammed into him like a solid wall.
Tins of paint and bottles of engine oil had caught fire, turning the narrow walkway into an oven.
“Where are you?” Kiran yelled, pulling his shirt up over his nose.
“Over here!
Under the table!”
A young boy, maybe eleven or twelve years old, was curled up behind a fallen wooden workbench, crying with his hands over his ears.
Kiran ran across the hot floor, grabbed the kid by the back of his jacket, and pulled him up.
“Come on!
Head down, straight for the light!” Kiran pushed the boy hard toward the open gap under the shutter.
The boy dropped to his hands and knees and scrambled out into the street.
Kiran turned to follow him.
He took one step, and then the ceiling groaned.
A thick wooden support beam snapped in half with a sound like a gunshot.
A heavy pile of burning wood, tin sheets, and blazing debris crashed down directly in front of the exit, sealing it completely.
The air in the room was sucked away in an instant.
Kiran stumbled back against the back brick wall.
The heat was so intense it burned right through his jacket, turning the cotton to ash.
There was nowhere to run.
I’m trapped, he thought.
His chest felt like it was caving in.
Mom is still waiting with the kettle.
Dad is going to wonder where I am.
A storage drum filled with paint thinner burst open with a deafening roar.
A huge wave of bright yellow and white fire rushed straight at him.
Kiran squeezed his eyes shut and threw his arms over his face.
He waited for the pain.
He waited for his skin to burn away.
Instead, something strange happened inside his chest.
Deep under his ribs, something heavy and ancient seemed to wake up.
It felt like a giant iron chain snapping inside his chest.
His blood felt hot—not like fire from the outside, but like a deep, heavy pulse from the inside.
For a tiny fraction of a second, the roaring fire stopped.
The flames froze in place, hanging in the air like painted glass.
And then, deep down in the ground beneath his feet, he heard a sound.
It was not wood breaking.
It was not fire.
It sounded like a massive, slow breath taken by something so huge the entire earth shook.
Then the white fire swallowed him completely.
Cold.
It was freezing cold.
Kiran coughed violently, rolling onto his side.
The air he sucked in tasted terrible—like crushed rocks, metal, and rotten eggs.
His hands scraped against the ground, and he winced.
The ground was wrong.
It wasn’t the smooth concrete floor of the storage room.
It was jagged, sharp, black stone that felt like broken glass.
Kiran pulled his hands back and looked at them.
His jacket was mostly gone, burned away to thin black threads.
His shirt was scorched right down the front.
But his hands had no burns.
His arms had no blisters.
There was only black dirt and soot on his skin.
“What…” Kiran croaked.
His throat was completely dry.
“Did the fire truck come?
Did someone pull me out?”
He forced himself to stand up.
His legs shook like jelly.
He leaned hard against a tall wall of black rock to keep from falling.
The world around him was dead silent.
There were no fire trucks.
No police sirens.
No sounds of cars or shouting people.
Kiran looked up, and the breath died in his throat.
Above him were giant, jagged black mountains that looked like broken teeth against the dark sky.
The sky wasn’t black or blue—it was the color of dark, bruised purple.
And hanging high up in the clouds were two moons.
One was pale and large, scarred with grey lines.
The other was smaller, glowing with a soft, eerie violet light right beside it.
Kiran backed up until his shoulders hit the stone wall.
“No,” he whispered, shaking his head.
“No, this is a dream.
I inhaled too much smoke.
My head is messed up.”
A soft, clear chime sounded right next to his ear.
A square of bright blue light snapped into existence, floating right in front of his face.
[JYOTI]
Name: Kiran
Race: Human
Bloodline: Sealed
Cultivation Realm: None
Status: Alive
Kiran jumped back, swinging his hand to hit it.
His hand passed straight through the blue light like smoke, but the words stayed right where they were, floating in mid-air.
“What is this?” Kiran gasped, his heart pounding against his ribs like a hammer.
“Who’s shining this light?
Who are you?”
The blue text melted away, and new words formed instantly.
[JYOTI]
Host does not have enough authority to access that information.
Kiran stared at the letters.
“Authority?
What are you talking about?
Am I dead?
Are you an angel or something?
Where am I?”
[JYOTI]
Host does not have enough authority.
Current location: Outer Ridge, Eastern Mountain Waste.
“Stop saying that!” Kiran snapped, panic making his voice crack.
“I need to get home!
My mom and dad are going to lose their minds!
Just tell me how to get back to the road!”
[JYOTI]
There is no road.
Warning: Large heat source dropping rapidly from the clouds.
Advice: Be quiet.
Before Kiran could even ask what that meant, the faint purple light from the twin moons vanished.
A massive shadow fell over the black rock.
The wind didn’t just blow—it crashed down like a falling building.
The sheer force of the air hit Kiran so hard he was thrown flat on his back, his head smacking hard against the stone.
Loose rocks and dust went flying everywhere.
Then came the impact.
BOOM.
The entire mountain ridge jumped beneath him.
Kiran felt the shockwave travel straight through the stone and into his bones.
Fifty feet away from him, something massive had landed on the cliff.
Kiran scrambled backward on his elbows, coughing through the dust, his eyes wide with pure terror.
It was not an animal from any book he had ever read.
It stood taller than a three-story house.
Its body was covered in thick, dark-grey scales that looked like sheets of hammered iron.
Two massive wings, ribbed with thick bone, folded tightly against its sides.
Its front claws were long, curved hooks of black horn that had dug deep gouges straight into the solid rock.
It had a long, heavy neck topped with a broad, horned head.
And its eyes…
Two giant, glowing eyes burned like pools of melted bronze.
The beast didn’t roar.
It simply let out a long breath through its snout.
A blast of hot air washed across the plateau, carrying the smell of old blood and burnt stone.
It blew the dust away from Kiran’s feet.
The giant head slowly turned.
The bronze eyes locked onto Kiran.
Kiran’s whole body turned to ice.
Every single thought in his head vanished.
He couldn’t speak.
He couldn’t scream.
He couldn’t even twitch his fingers.
The giant creature lowered its head until its snout was only twenty feet away from where Kiran was lying.
A low sound vibrated in its deep chest—a heavy, rolling growl that sounded like two boulders grinding against each other.
The blue screen flickered back into Kiran’s view, hovering calmly between him and the monster.
[JYOTI]
Target Identified: Ash-Ridge Drake (Exile).
Threat Level: Lethal.
Kiran’s lips trembled.
He didn’t dare make a sound out loud.
Can you do something?
he screamed in his mind.
Can you give me something useful?!
[JYOTI]
Certainly.
Finally!
What?!
[JYOTI]
You are currently standing in front of a hungry dragon.
…That’s not useful!
[JYOTI]
It is useful if you want to understand that you should not move.
It has not decided if you are food or dirt.
The dragon took one heavy step forward, its black claw crushing a boulder into grey powder, and opened its jaws.