This world is a dangerous place, kid. There are creatures out there that kill for sport, and monsters that devour anything living. They hide in shadows, waiting for the foolish to wander close..."
Kumar stretches his face in every possible direction as he speaks, trying to mimic every scary story he has heard on his travels.
Gopi watches him, unimpressed.
At his age—maybe forty, Gopi guessed—Kumar looks ridiculous making faces like that. His white kurta and dhoti flutter in the breeze, and the gamuchha tied around his head like a turban makes him look even more dramatic.
"Seriously?" Gopi interrupts. "You're using children's stories to stop me now?"
His light-brown eyes gleam like polished clay, his curly hair darker than both his eyes and his mood. The brown pants and white angarkha make him look older than he is—though Kumar still sees him as a sixteen-year-old boy trying too hard to be a man.
"These aren't children's stories," Kumar grumbles. "And why do you even want to leave the village? It's a good place."
Gopi's smile fades. He looks around—at the ten lonely shops, the empty streets, the quiet that isn't peaceful but suffocating.
"Maybe it looks good to others," he says softly, "but I don't want to stay here my whole life. I want to see the world. There are towns and cities where I can trade—where life actually moves."
People nearby, tired of listening to the hour-long argument, shout from afar, "Take the kid already!"
Gopi beams. Kumar finally sighs in defeat.
"Fine," he mutters.
Gopi jumps onto the bullock cart without waiting for another word, and the wheels begin to turn.
"So what are you gonna do for a living anyway?" Kumar asks after a while.
Gopi freezes. He looks around.
His suitcase—the one thing he should NOT have forgotten—is still lying back where they were arguing.
"I am not stopping the cart now," Kumar warns.
He looks back—Gopi is gone.
He rolls his eyes and keeps moving, assuming the kid fled in embarrassment.
But as he crosses the last shop of the market, a voice rises behind him.
"Did you really think you could get away from me?"
Gopi climbs into the cart, dragging the suitcase triumphantly.
Kumar can't help smiling.
****
Far away, inside an old haveli, a scream tears through the night.
Something crashes against the rooftop—a body flung with monstrous strength. As the clouds drift apart, the moon spills its pale light across the courtyard, revealing the nightmare perched above.
A creature crouches on the broken roof—skin black as coal, eyes glowing red, its mouth stretched into a cavern of needle-sharp fangs. A tongue double the size of its head slithers out, dripping. Claws like carved obsidian dig into the shattered tiles.
With one swipe, it rips off a corner of the roof and hurls the stone chunks toward the smashed doorway below. Wood splinters. Dust floods the hall.
"Still alive, human?" the creature hisses, voice scraping like metal.
"You are no match for me. Stop resisting. Die quickly—so I can eat your young flesh..."
A rock slams into its jaw mid-sentence.
"Bla bla," a voice answers from the dust. "You talk too much. Come on, fight properly."
A figure steps into the moonlight as the creature spits out shattered teeth, its mangled jaw dripping blood. But slowly—too slowly—the bone reshapes. Flesh knits.
A rare healing ability—dangerous, almost unstoppable.
"You ruined my pretty face, human," the creature snarls. "But I can heal. You can't do that again."
"That's what you call a pretty face?" the man snorts. "You'll need divine healing to fix that."
The creature roars and hurtles forward.
The man slips aside, swift as a shadow. The beast crashes into the floor below, cracking tiles and pillars alike.
He touches the metal bracelet at his wrist. A blue glowing rope unfurls from it like liquid light.
He swings it—
It coils around the creature's leg.
He yanks—
The monster slams into a pillar, then another, then the wall, breaking it open.
The beast claws its way out, but the glowing rope lashes again—this time around its throat.
It drags itself across the floor, gripping a pillar in desperation.
The man pulls harder.
The pillar breaks.
The monster flies toward him.
With a single fluid motion, he draws a sword from a wooden scabbard. The air shimmers.
A crimson arc flashes through the hall.
The creature's head separates from its body and hits the mosaic floor, rolling until it stops at the man's feet. Its lone red eye twitches.
"You can't kill me," it laughs weakly. "I'll regenerate."
Nothing happens.
The fear in its eye is new.
"Confused?" the man says calmly.
"Look closely. This sword is different. It carries a Vedic spell—its only purpose is to end monsters."
The blade glows red along its edge, power humming through the metal.
"Who are you?" the creature stammers. "A... a monster hunter?"
"My name is Ikshiv," he answers.
"And yes—I hunt monsters. And I know the real way to finish you. But i want you to tell me about a monster…”
After hearing ikshiv description monster busted into a maniac laugh.
“Don’t know about him but if you are after a monster like that. ha ha ha you will surely die”
Ikshiv takes a pinch of black powder from the pouch tied at his waist.
"No—stop!" the creature screams.
Ikshiv blows.
The moment the powder touches flesh, the creature's body ignites—not with fire, but with disintegration.
Its head collapses first, then its limbs, until only glowing ashes remain.
Ikshiv steps out of the haveli as the last of the demon's screams fade into silence.
