"Some fires don't explode. They burn quietly, until the world finally sees the smoke."
The next morning, Rudren's hands ached. Not from a fight. Not from lifting crates.
Just… from being clenched too long.
He rubbed them together on the bus ride to school, watching the city pass him by like it didn't know he existed.
He preferred it that way.
At school, everything felt louder.
The teacher's chalk screeching.
The buzz of flickering fans.
The way students laughed too loudly over things that weren't funny.
He sat in the back of class, half-listening, eyes occasionally drifting to Vikran and Ameira.
They were weirdly calm.
It irritated him.
During lunch, Rudren didn't sit with them.
Instead, he walked down the side steps and leaned on the rail overlooking the empty basketball court.
He pulled out his wallet, checked the folded slip of receipts. Two grocery bills. One bus pass. An unpaid fee reminder.
He sighed and shoved it back in.
"Hey," a soft voice called. It was Vikran.
Rudren didn't look.
"Your lunch?"
"Not hungry."
Vikran sat beside him without asking.
They didn't talk.
They didn't need to.
Rudren appreciated that.
That evening, Rudren helped his father fix the rooftop pipe. Afterward, his mom handed him a crumpled ten-rupee note.
"Buy yourself something on the way, okay?"
He smiled. "I'll bring you some tea instead."
She rolled her eyes but smiled back.
That night, Rudren went for a walk. Not because he wanted to. Because he needed to.
Needed to stop feeling like a dam holding back something he couldn't name.
He reached the outskirts of the neighborhood, where the streetlights thinned out.
The concrete was cracked, the fences rusted.
There, under the single working lamp, he stood still.
Closed his eyes.
Breathed.
And felt it again.
That pulse in the air.
That taste of metal on his tongue.
That tension in the wind.
He opened his eyes.
The light above him blinked.
Flickered.
Then burst.
No noise.
Just a single snap.
And then silence again.
But Rudren stood under the shattered light, perfectly still.
And the air crackled around him.
Far above, clouds gathered.
No rain. No thunder.
But something circled.
Watching.
Measuring.
Waiting.
The Black Dragon soul, cloaked in darkness and lightning, hovered beyond perception.
It had watched Rudren for days.
And in his silence, it saw fire.
Not rage. Not violence.
But the fire of those who carry more than they're meant to.
"He does not ask. He does not beg."
"He becomes."
It did not descend. Not yet.
But its presence lingered—like the smell of a storm long before the clouds appear.
Rudren didn't notice it directly.
But when he walked back home, the tips of his fingers tingled with something he didn't understand.
Later that night, Rudren sat beside his sleeping parents' door.
He didn't cry.
Didn't speak.
But he placed the unpaid school bill gently against it and walked to his room.
He didn't want to burden them.
He never had.
In his dreams, he stood in a black sky lit with veins of gold lightning.
No beasts. No forms.
Just heat. Pressure.
A heartbeat not his own.
And a whisper:
"We see you."
As the lights of the marketplace dimmed and Rudren walked alone, a pulse of silent thunder passed through his spine.
Not pain. Not fire.
But force — old and deep.
The soul of the Black Dragon had arrived.
Unseen, unheard.
Yet it knew him.
And it waited.
To be continued