He opened his eyes not to light, but to cold. The soil beneath his body was damp with December's indifference. The rags clinging to his skin had no memory of warmth, no fibers of kindness. There was no sound—only a distant echo of wind slithering through the narrow gaps in crumbling mud walls. No angels. No devils. Just dirt. Just cold. Just… again.
He blinked once. Twice. The world was large.
His arms—small. His fingers—tiny, weak, unfamiliar. He touched his chest and it didn't ache from starvation. He touched his face and there were no bruises. His breath was shallow, but alive. Alive.
That's when it hit him. Like a whisper shouted through a void:
> "I was dead."
And now, he wasn't.
He didn't panic. Not yet. First came the staring—at his own feet, at the broken courtyard walls, at the winter moon hiding behind fog like it was ashamed to witness this revival. Then his body began to react—tremors in the legs, heat in the chest, tears before the sadness. The absurdity broke through him not as emotion, but as nausea. Because this—this was not redemption. This was not reward. This was not reincarnation.
This was God showing him the punchline.
He closed his eyes and muttered, "You poor, broken existence." His lips barely moved, but the pity in his voice was sincere. Not theatrical. Not philosophical. Sincere. He pitied God.
"You must be exhausted. Making man in your image. Watching him become you. Watching him hurt and pretend it's holy."
He sat up slowly, arms trembling, not because of the cold now, but because of how much he remembered. Every slap, every verse screamed at him. Every bruise explained by theology. Every blow justified by love. The prayers recited before beatings. The Quranic chapters whispered by sociopaths while dragging him by the neck.
He remembered it all. Every detail. Every absurd contradiction. Every scar was a sermon.
He stared up at the sky again. "You created the Devil. Then warned us about him. You created man. Then gave him free will. Then punished him for using it. And now you've sent me back… to what? Try again? Why?"
Silence answered. As always.
So he spoke for both of them.
"I won't worship. I won't obey. Not the way you asked. I will do exactly what was done to me. In your name. Isn't that fair? Isn't that the world you built?"
And then he started laughing—not the innocent kind. The kind you hear from people who've finally broken through madness into clarity. Because there was no peace. No reward. Just another chance to suffer.
But this time, with memory.
He stood on tiny legs and walked slowly across the courtyard. Every brick, every crack, every stench was familiar. The house hadn't changed. And neither had its inhabitants.
Inside those rooms—Rehan, Irfan, Rizwan, Imran. His "uncles." The zoo of human deformity. Sleeping. Snoring. Oblivious. Holy in public. Monsters in private.
They had taught him well.
They taught him God was a weapon. So now, he would carry it.
They taught him verses could excuse anything. So now, he would memorize them all.
They taught him silence was survival. So now, he would whisper his plans only to the dirt.
He knelt down, touched the earth again, and smiled—not out of joy. Out of certainty.
There would be no savior. No miraculous change of heart. No sudden apology. The future was already written. The only variable now… was him.
And he? He was not Arslan the obedient. Not Arslan the boy who asked permission to breathe. Not the servant of pain, the child of disgrace.
Arslan didn't move with vengeance. Vengeance implies passion, fire of its own kind. This wasn't that. This was arithmetic. Justice, not the kind that cries in the night for sympathy, but the kind that simply balances the equation.
The bottles were exactly where they had always been. Rehan's secret stash, hiding in plain sight behind the bushes near the outhouse. Four bottles. One half-full, one nearly empty, two still sealed. The men of God needed spirits to silence the spirits. They needed liquor to survive the morality they choked others with. And by morning, they would be righteous again—wrapped in white, screaming God's name louder than yesterday's sins.
Arslan picked up the bottles one by one. He didn't tremble. Five-year-old hands, guided by a thirty-nine-year-old soul, did not shake. He climbed the stairs slowly. The wood creaked, but only the dirt noticed. There were no streetlights. There were no lights, period. Pakistan, 1990. Midnight in Uch Sharif was darker than the grave. But Arslan could see clearly. Not with eyes. Eyes were for fools. He saw with certainty. With faith. With memory. With a divine sense of conclusion.
Inside, the house was silent—not asleep, but unconscious. Rehan was sprawled like a fallen god, stinking of filth and fermented lies. Imran snored like a machine made of rust and violence. Irfan lay curled, perhaps dreaming of the screams he silenced in daylight. Rizwan... Arslan didn't look at him. He didn't need to. Monsters look the same whether you face them or not.
His mother and father lay tangled in their habitual exhaustion. Gambling slips still clutched in fists, mouths still half-formed around unfinished curses. The aunts were silent. For once, they weren't arguing about food. Maybe they'd run out of words. Or maybe Arslan had simply stopped listening.
He took the first bottle and poured it carefully onto the wooden beams above their heads. The roof drank like a beggar—dry, hungry. These sticks were the kind that splintered when you touched them. Soft, old, never meant to last. He went back down, got the second bottle, and did the same. Methodical. Thorough. No haste. There was no need for haste.
He wasn't scared of being caught. No one would wake up. Not now. Not them. These people didn't rise for Fajr. They didn't rise for cries. They rose only for money, or for violence, and both were out of reach tonight. He was their servant once. He knew their routines better than they did. He had memorized their cruelty in reverse—so perfectly that he now knew exactly when they would be incapable of movement. That hour was now.
When the roof was saturated, he moved to the windows. Heavy wooden crates blocked most of them—meant to keep the cold out, to keep the child in. They made his job easier. He poured the rest of the alcohol down the cracks. The wood inside would drink it, as eagerly as the roof had.
Then he locked the doors with the metal latches. Quietly. Deliberately. Not as punishment. Not as hate. As closure.
He struck a match. The roof caught quickly. Alcohol has no patience. Fire needs no explanation.
Then, with the same slowness, he descended the steps and lit the windows. One, two, three. Flames whispered first. Then hummed. Then screamed.
But he was already walking away.
He didn't run. He didn't look back. He didn't listen for cries or crashes or curses.
He walked to the dirt patch where he had woken up—where cold had greeted him and pity for God had first touched his lips. He lay down in the same rags. The fire was behind him. The screams, if they ever came, would not be his problem.
And for the first time in his life, Arslan slept. Not as a servant. Not as a possession. Not as a sinner born into the house of saints.
He slept without fear. Without prayer. Without asking permission from God.
Because tonight, he had done God's job for Him.
By sunrise, the flames had done what centuries of sermons couldn't. They had silenced the pious. Charred beams leaned like drunks over their dead masters. Smoke curled from the mudbrick skeletons, drifting upward like unanswered prayers. And Arslan sat cross-legged in the same dirt pile, watching the morning stretch its neck across the town.
In Pakistan, everyone is either half-asleep or fully in denial. But when the molvies walked to the mosque for Fajr and saw smoke, they didn't question it. Fire was warmth, and warmth was mercy in winter. They thought it was someone heating water, perhaps a restless man stoking embers for tea. The sight of flames didn't inspire suspicion. It inspired nostalgia.
Only after prayers, when the cold refused to lift and the smoke refused to thin, did the neighborhood grow curious. Men wrapped in shawls shuffled closer. They weren't in a hurry. Death isn't shocking when God is always on speed dial. And anyway, fire had its own explanations. God's punishment. God's test. God's timing. God's will. Never man's doing.
The house was half-gone by the time they arrived. The roof had collapsed inward. The windows were black holes where fire had licked through wood and faith alike. The doors remained latched. Burnt but intact. No one opened them. They stepped around them like trash.
No one mentioned Arslan. No one thought of him. A barefoot 5-year-old in rags sitting in the ash? Must've been sleeping outside. Poor thing. Nothing strange about that. Children in this country sleep where they fall. On dirt, on roofs, in courtyards, in graves. No one suspects a child. Least of all one who doesn't cry.
Arslan didn't cry. His eyes were dry. His gaze empty. He watched them with a serenity that could only belong to someone who had seen death from the inside. These people had watched his torture for years. Heard the slaps. Heard the screams. Heard nothing at all, really, because they never listened. Their heads were full of Quran, but their hands were full of stone.
Now, the religious men stood among the smoldering ruin, debating its cause. One old man said, "It was probably God's wrath. Too much sin in one house."
Another chimed in, "Or negligence. They slept with fire in the room. It happens."
"It was written," a molvi concluded, stroking his beard as if that made it true.
But when someone muttered about jewelry, the mood shifted.
Suddenly, the God-fearing grew helpful. Buckets were found. Ashes were stirred. Planks lifted. Not for the dead. For the loot. Gold, rupees, anything that glimmered in the name of piety. Hypocrisy, now baptized in smoke, was called helping. They dragged the remaining trunks, pried open doors like saints in a morality play, all under God's name.
And Arslan watched. He didn't smile. That would imply satisfaction. He didn't scowl either. That would mean he cared. He merely existed. The way fog does. Present, persistent, indifferent.
Not once did they ask who he was. No one touched him. No one questioned how he got there, why he sat so close, why he smelled faintly of soot but had no burns. He was five. That was explanation enough. In Pakistan, the only qualification needed to be invisible is to be small and silent.
The dead were dragged out by noon. Wrapped in charred bedsheets. The town imam prayed over the blackened bodies. "They were God's servants," he said. "Taken too soon. May Allah forgive them."
Arslan wanted to laugh. But laughing required breath, and he wasn't sure he had any left.
By afternoon, rumors had replaced reason. Some said it was jinn. Some said it was envy from neighbors. Some blamed the wind. But all agreed—it was tragic. And all agreed—it was no one's fault.
And still, no one saw Arslan.
As they stripped the ruin for parts, wood still warm from the kill, he sat beside a collapsed wall, watching the looters in religious robes argue over who deserved more reward for "saving what remained."
They had come too late to save the lives. But perfectly on time to steal what they'd left behind.
That evening, the sky turned gold—not with fire, but with a sunset so calm it mocked the day. Arslan stood, dusted the ash from his rags, and walked out the courtyard gate. No one stopped him.
The town behind him smoldered with sermons and selfishness. The path ahead was dirt. Long, dry, and cruel.
But it was his.