WHEN THE SKY BECOMES A WEAPON

The call came while Gagan Sharma was stuck in traffic.

His mother.

The bus was packed tighter than usual. Sweat clung to skin. Windows were shut even though the heat was unbearable. Outside, the sky looked sick. Not dark. Not stormy. Just wrong. A dull green bronze shade hung over the city like a bruise that refused to fade.

Gagan watched the phone vibrate in his hand.

He did not answer.

A man near the front of the bus started coughing. Deep and wet. A woman covered her child’s mouth with her dupatta. Someone whispered a prayer. Another man tried to force a window open and failed.

The air smelled sharp. Metallic. Every breath burned slightly, like invisible thorns scraping the lungs.

The bus stopped suddenly.

A boy collapsed.

Panic spread fast.

People shouted for water. Someone screamed for help. The driver jumped down, helpless, staring at the sky as if it had betrayed him personally.

Gagan stood frozen.

The gauntlet hidden beneath his sleeve pulsed once.

Then again.

Pain bloomed up his arm, sharp and urgent.

Om Namah Shivay.

Outside, sirens wailed. Not ambulances. Emergency atmospheric alarms. Red lights flashed from distant rooftops. Above the city, clouds thickened unnaturally, folding into themselves like something alive learning how to move.

Gagan stepped off the bus.

Around him, the city was choking.

Old men sat on pavements gasping for air. Shopkeepers had pulled shutters halfway down, afraid of the sky but unsure why. Motorcycles lay abandoned where riders had fallen. Hospitals overflowed. Masks failed. Filters clogged.

This was not pollution.

This was an attack.

The gauntlet throbbed violently now.

The world tore open.

THE CHEMICAL SKY

Nandi tore upward through the clouds, leaving the city behind in a haze of suffering.

The moment he entered the upper atmosphere, the truth revealed itself.

This was engineered.

The clouds were layered with chemical lattices. Oxygen was being stripped and reshaped. Toxic compounds moved with intent, reacting to motion, pressure, even sound.

Lightning cracked across the sky.

Not natural.

Calculated.

Every flash reconfigured the air below, choking neighborhoods one block at a time.

Inside the armour, warnings screamed. Toxic density critical. Respiratory collapse zones expanding. Civilian casualty projections climbing by the second.

This was not chaos.

This was control.

At the center of the storm, a structure emerged.

A black spire rising from the clouds like a wound in the sky.

Black Rain Facility.

The source.

Nandi slowed, watching.

The sky itself attacked first.

A pressure wave slammed into him, hurling him sideways. Chemical lightning struck his shield, detonating with brutal force. The clouds closed in, compressing, rotating, reshaping like a giant lung learning how to suffocate a planet.

He steadied himself.

“He weaponised weather,” Nandi said quietly.

The Vrishabha responded.

This is not a battlefield. It is a system.

Below them, cities were dying breath by breath.

Nandi moved.

THE MAN WHO OWNED THE SKY

He landed on the facility roof with a force that cracked reinforced steel.

Rain fell instantly.

White.

Silent.

Burning.

It hissed against his armour, adapting as it fell, slicing through defensive frequencies. His shoulder plating blackened. Alarms spiked.

Then the rain stopped.

Footsteps echoed.

A man walked out calmly beneath the poisoned sky, untouched by the storm he commanded.

Dr Yuvan Kael.

His eyes were bright. Curious. Almost joyful.

“You are magnificent,” Yuvan said, studying Nandi like a successful experiment. “Do you know that?”

Nandi looked past him at the swirling clouds.

“You are suffocating millions.”

Yuvan smiled. “No. I am teaching them reality. The atmosphere is not sacred. It is programmable.”

He raised his wrist.

The sky descended.

COLLAPSE

Pressure multiplied instantly.

The clouds folded inward, forming a crushing dome. Oxygen thinned. Toxic compounds surged. The very act of breathing became a battle.

Nandi staggered.

A wall of compressed atmosphere slammed into him, driving him through the roof. Concrete vaporised. Metal screamed.

He rose and struck the clouds themselves, resonance exploding outward, tearing chemical bonds apart.

For a moment, the sky screamed.

Then it healed.

Reassembled.

Stronger.

“You fight matter,” Yuvan shouted over the storm. “I fight balance. Equilibrium always wins.”

A chemical tornado formed, lifting Nandi violently. The world spun. Blood filled his mouth.

Far below, Gagan felt something break.

Not armour.

Resolve.

He thought of the bus. The boy on the floor. His mother calling.

Unanswered.

He slammed his fists together.

Om Namah Shivay.

BREAKING AND BECOMING

Nandi broke free and tackled Yuvan mid air. They crashed into the central spire. Steel tore apart. The facility shook.

For the first time, Yuvan looked unsettled.

“You do not own the sky,” Nandi roared.

Yuvan smiled anyway.

“I do not need to.”

He triggered the final protocol.

Black Rain fully deployed. The sky turned solid. The atmosphere locked into a chemical cage around Nandi, crushing his chest. Armour failed. Resonance collapsed. Gagan fell to his knees.

Choking.

Human.

Yuvan stepped back. “Devotion ends where physics begins.”

Gagan stopped fighting.

He remembered something simple.

Breathing.

Not as power.

As life.

“I do not command you,” he whispered. “I share you.”

He inhaled.

The resonance changed.

Not stronger.

Deeper.

Planetary.

The sky rebelled.

THE SKY CHOOSES

The lattice shattered. Clouds tore themselves apart as natural atmospheric rhythm overwhelmed artificial control. Poison burned away mid air.

Nandi rose, wreathed in white blue light.

He struck once.

A resonance wave thundered across the spire, hurling Yuvan across the platform. The facility collapsed.

Yuvan escaped in light and fury.

“This is not over,” he screamed.

Nandi did not answer.

AFTER THE POISON

Hours later, Gagan sat alone on a rooftop.

The city breathed again.

Ambulances still wailed. People still coughed. But the sky was blue.

For now.

He called his mother.

“I was worried,” she said.

“I know,” he replied softly. “I am trying to do better.”

The Vrishabha spoke.

He will return.

Gagan stood.

“So will I.”

Above him, the sky waited.