Dinner had been warm.
The firewood crackled gently beneath an old clay stove, pushing waves of heat through the small farmhouse that had weathered decades without flinching. Rice steamed in a metal pot while lentils boiled in a battered pan that hissed when cumin seeds hit oil. Roasted groundnuts popped like lazy fireworks in the corner, their scent curling up toward the smoke-stained rafters.
His father sat cross-legged at the low table, balancing a steel plate with theatrical precision, while his mother pretended to scold him for forgetting the salt again.
"You season like a politician," she said, ladle in hand. "Plenty of promises, but no follow-through."
His father groaned like it was a national tragedy. "I added a pinch this time!"
"You pinched the air."
Adyanth watched them—chewing without speaking, eyes tracing every gesture like he was afraid they might vanish between blinks. If anyone had asked, he couldn't have explained why this dinner felt different. Maybe it was the stillness outside. Maybe it was the way the war hadn't whispered through the skies today.
Or maybe the universe just needed to fatten the moment before the kill.
---
The explosion came from above.
Not with sound, but with absence. A pressure drop. A silence so vast it split the air before noise could catch up. Then: the roar. A blast that collapsed language and thought into instinct.
He bolted upright, heart pounding, lungs forgetting how to work.
The room tipped sideways. The beams shrieked as they cracked. The floor shifted underfoot like it had given up trying to be a floor. Smoke poured in like it had been waiting.
"Mom!" he choked out.
"Dad!"
He scrambled toward the hallway. Or what was left of it. Splinters clawed at his bare feet. The roof groaned above, sagging under weight it was never meant to carry.
The kitchen had ceased to exist. Fire licked the support beams. Plaster fell like rain.
And then—he saw them.
Fragments. A silhouette in the fire. A hand curled in defiance or fear, he couldn't tell which. Part of his mother's shawl. Charred. Motionless. His father's frame buried beneath what used to be the ceiling.
He screamed again.
It ripped from his throat like something feral—like grief had already taken his voice hostage. Blood surged from his nose, from his ears. His eyes burned—not with tears, but with rupture. Like the pressure inside him had nowhere to escape.
"Please—please—MOM! DAD!"
The flames surged in reply.
His knees gave out. The world folded.
And then—darkness.
Not sleep. Not death.
Just a void that made no promises.
---
Three days passed.
When Adyanth awoke, the world had changed shape.
Canvas ceilings fluttered above, stretched over iron frames. Medical cots stretched in rows, sterile and expressionless. Plastic curtains shifted with each gust of wind. Somewhere nearby, someone coughed like they were trying to die quietly.
The air stank of iodine, latex, and overboiled water.
Bandages pressed tightly against his chest, binding two fractured ribs that stabbed with each breath. Another strip encased his scalp where shrapnel had grazed him. His arms lay limp against scratchy sheets, each movement dragging fatigue behind it.
A woman moved past the end of his cot—focused, fast, and utterly detached.
Dark circles ringed her eyes. Her hair was pinned back like it had somewhere better to be. Her coat bore faded bloodstains beneath antiseptic scent. She stopped when she noticed him looking.
"You're awake," she said. Her voice was not soft.
She approached with the wary momentum of someone who had done this too many times.
"You took heavy impact," she continued. "Metal debris from the dropped rocket casing pierced the upper left quadrant—just beneath the ribcage. Head trauma, shallow lacerations across the abdomen and left arm. No internal bleeding. You've been unconscious for seventy-one hours."
She didn't wait for a reply.
Instead, she pressed a cold blister pack into his palm.
"Antiseptic tablets. Take them twice a day with food, assuming you'll be eating. One capsule for pain if the rib pressure becomes unbearable. Try not to stretch too much. The sutures are clean, but fresh."
Her tone was efficient. Neither cruel nor caring.
He didn't look at the pills. Didn't even close his fingers around them.
She paused, unsure whether to continue.
He blinked at her. Once. Slow. The way a dying machine flickers.
Then, softly—
"Ma'am…"
His voice cracked like ice under weight.
She stilled.
He didn't look at her. His gaze hovered over the shape of her shoulder, as though it anchored a truth he didn't want to see.
"My… parents…"
The words came slowly. Loosely sewn together with breath and hope.
"I—I thought I saw them, in the fire. But maybe... I was wrong. Maybe it was the smoke. It was fast, I couldn't tell. Maybe they—maybe someone—got them out?"
Even as he spoke it, he didn't believe it. His voice trembled with a fear that had long since moved past panic. Not quite denial—more like the desperate hunger to be corrected.
"No."
The doctor said it flatly.
She inhaled through her nose, slowly, a tired reflex.
"There were two casualties in that strike. A man and a woman. Identified by the remains and house location. They were buried yesterday."
Silence.
Stillness.
He absorbed the words without blinking.
They should have felt like bullets.
They didn't.
He nodded. Mechanically. As if being told he'd lost a schoolbook, not everything.
The doctor lingered for a beat. Her brow twitched like it wanted to furrow.
She saw no reaction. No sob. No wild-eyed plea. No shriek of a boy unraveling.
Nothing.
Just that same detached stare, held together by skin and the absence of collapse.
"Someone will come for you," she said. "You'll be transferred to the refugee relocation camp."
She turned without another word.
Her empathy was spent. Nothing left to give this boy. Not anymore.
---
Adyanth sat motionless for a long time.
He remembered the color of the flames. The smell of his mother's hair oil. The way his father smiled like it made the work easier. He remembered them laughing at dinner. Remembered how safe it all used to feel.
And yet—his face was dry. His lips, still. His chest, hollow.
He hadn't cried.
Not in the moment.
Not in the tent.
Not now.
The realization didn't crush him. Not all at once. It sank instead—slow and rot-black—curling around the base of his lungs like mold.
What kind of son doesn't cry?
He clenched his hands—partly from pain, partly from the shame clawing up his throat.
His parents were kind. They were good. They deserved better. They deserved remembrance that ached.
But all he had to offer was this emptiness.
That truth gutted him more than the shrapnel ever could.
Maybe I'm broken, he thought.
Maybe they died loving a mistake.
---
Hours passed.
Eventually, a man in uniform stepped into the tent—a soldier whose clothes looked sun-bleached and twice forgotten by the laundry. Boots dusted, face smeared in vague irritation. His voice carried all the warmth of a dying engine.
"You. Adyanth?"
A nod.
"Refugee transport's outside. Move."
No hand offered. No condolences.
Adyanth stood. Slowly. Every joint crackled in protest. The antiseptic tablets weighed nothing in his pocket. His feet barely remembered the act of walking.
As they passed through the makeshift camp, heads turned.
Some villagers glanced up and whispered.
"That's the boy... the one whose house got hit."
"Parents were saints, I heard. Fed everyone."
"Or fools. Refused to raise prices during wartime. Ended up enemies with every shopkeeper."
Adyanth heard them all.
He felt the words move through him like wind through an abandoned room.
He should have been angry.
He wasn't.
He thought of his father, trudging door to door with cabbages and broken sandals. His mother counting coins and saying "we always have enough to share."
Now they were ash.
And not a single tear had fallen.
Not from the villagers.
Not from him.
He was just a boy walking away from the ruins of something good.
Something irreplaceable.
Something no one—even he—had mourned properly.
---
And that would be the most haunting thing of all.
Not the fire.
Not the loss.
But the silence where grief should've lived.
Because in the fire, something had been burned out of him.
And the thing that stood in its place...
Wasn't a child anymore.
Wasn't Adyanth.
Not really.