They said the world would end in fire. Or in floods. Or war.
No one ever warned that it might die... quietly.
---
It began slowly. A strange decay of things that once held harmony.
Rain came in strange months, but when it came, it came with rage. Trees flowered in winter, and children were born sicker, smaller. Birds that used to sing in the morning began to fall silent. The rivers carried foam, not prayers.
People didn't notice at first. Because they had lights, and fans, and noise. So much noise.
And beneath that noise, something moved.
Something watching. Breathing.
Kali.
Not a demon with horns or bloodshot eyes. Not a god of wrath.
But a whisper. A turning of hearts.
A hunger in men to speak louder, fight dirtier, scroll faster. A forgetting.
---
Parth had seen it. Not in visions. But in the way his neighbour had screamed at her child for dropping a glass. In the way students laughed at a dead bird on the sidewalk. In the way he could not remember the last time someone looked at the stars.
And he? He had seen gods. He had touched time.
But he could do nothing.
So he waited. And watched.
And wondered when the veil would finally tear.
---
Time passed. Like old paper turning brittle.Six years to be precise.
Parth was now twenty-one.
A medical student. A dreamer. The boy who had once fought in another time, now learning anatomy and saving lives one textbook at a time.
He did it to make his parents proud. To feel useful. To fix what he could, if not the whole world.
> "If I can't lift my bow, I can at least hold a scalpel."
His words. Soft. Determined.
But even medicine had its limits.
Because over the past few years, mysterious deaths began piling up.
Unexplainable. Clean bodies, no injuries, no poisons. Just... life gone.
Doctors couldn't understand it.
Parth had a guess.
But no proof. No allies.
Only silence.
---
His grandmother had passed away two years ago. On a night that was strangely still. No storm. No fever.
Just a breath that stopped.
That morning, she had placed her hand on his chest and whispered:
> "I can't stay here forever and be on your side, Parth. But the one who will guide you is always listening to us."
She had smiled. Brave. Complete.
Parth did not cry. He lit her pyre with steady hands.
> "She didn't die," he would later tell the wind. "She returned."
She had done what she came to do. She saw her family rise, even if only in one universe.
But Parth?
His war hadn't begun yet.
So why was he still alive?
What was left to do?
He didn't know.
But he felt it.
In the chill before sunrise. In the weight of unshed tears. In the hum of the world about to crack.
---
And somewhere beyond the veil of smoke and sky, someone listened.
Just as she had said.