Dehradun, March 2025
Age: 17
The last bell of The Doon Scholar Academy rang on a Wednesday. A warm breeze carried the sound through the corridors, mingling with laughter, cheers, and the usual chaos that marked the end of an era.
Students poured out like waves, shouting over each other, throwing notebooks in the air, hugging, crying, recording the final moments of their school life.
But one student didn't join the crowd.
Aryan Malik walked out alone.
No farewell speech. No class photo. No drama.
Just the boy in a dark shirt, blazer over his shoulder, backpack light, eyes cold and unreadable.
The campus watched him go — in silence.
No one dared stop him. Everyone just watched.
The legend was leaving.
He had ruled this place.
Not with popularity.
With power.
Every competition he entered — he crushed.
Every girl who approached him — left with a memory and nothing more.
Every teacher who tried to "test him" — ended up correcting themselves by the end of the class.
At 17, Aryan walked out of school with:
Behind him, The Doon Scholar Academy became just another building in his past.
He had never dated.
But they came anyway.
Drawn to his presence, his silence, the sharp jawline and lean body, the veins on his arms, the distant stare that seemed to look through people.
He kissed many.
But never twice.
Manya, the athlete — in the locker room hallway after a badminton match.
Rhea, the bookworm — in the rain behind the library, her glasses fogged.
Sakshi, the wild one — on the back stairs after a fight she started and lost.
Even Neha, the head girl, kissed him on the rooftop during farewell practice, whispering, "You don't feel anything, do you?"
He didn't lie.
He just smiled.
They all thought they could change him.
But Aryan Malik didn't change for anyone.
At home on Rajpur Road, the air felt still.
His mother, Anita Malik, didn't ask what his plans were.
She didn't need to.
She knew he wouldn't follow the system. He had outgrown it.
"You're not going to college, are you?" she asked.
Aryan was seated at the dining table, sipping black coffee. "No."
"Not the civil services?"
"No."
Her eyes narrowed. "Then what?"
He looked at her — calm, composed, final.
"Now, I live for myself."
She didn't press further.
Because the moment she looked into her son's eyes, she knew:
He was beyond anything the world could shape.
It was summer in London, but the halls of the Browning Ballistics Institute in the English countryside were cool, echoing with the sounds of hammers, steel, and sparks.
Aryan Malik stepped out of the black Range Rover, dressed in a dark coat despite the warmth. No one here knew who he really was. They only had a file: 18 years old, Indian, accepted on an exceptional skill grant, fluent in physics, chemistry, metallurgy, mechanics, and two languages beyond English.
He didn't come here to study. He came here to learn how to build.
And more importantly—how to design guns.
The Browning Institute was one of the few places in the world where private defense contractors, ballistics researchers, and former military engineers taught under one roof. It was hidden, discreet, and highly selective.
Aryan entered under a different name: Aadi Rajan.
The instructors noticed him in the first week. Not for talking — but for what he built.
While others struggled with the basics of barrel-forging, Aryan submitted a prototype of a low-recoil tactical pistol using a hybrid carbon-titanium slide. His professors didn't know whether to praise him or keep him under watch.
But none of them questioned one thing:
He belonged there.
Aryan's days were divided with mechanical precision:
He learned to assemble, dismantle, redesign, and repurpose everything from a handgun to a long-range sniper rifle.
He never asked questions.
He never wrote notes.
He simply watched.
And mastered.
Some called him obsessive. Others, robotic.
But a few of the ex-special forces instructors began referring to him as something else:
"The Engineer Ghost."
She was sharp-tongued, golden-haired, and one of the few students who wasn't intimidated by Aryan.
Eliza Voss, 19, daughter of a German weapons manufacturer, could shoot blindfolded and argue in four languages.
She saw Aryan forging a modified silencer in under six minutes and said, "Either you're lying about your age, or you've done this before."
He didn't answer.
So she kissed him. Just to see what he would do.
He kissed back. Cold. Precise. Unapologetic.
From that day, she began spending her evenings with him in the lab. Not for love. Not even lust.
Just curiosity. Two minds circling like blades.
By his third month, Aryan began designing his personal prototype.
He called it: Pralay.
A hybrid-caliber weapon with switchable firing modes, perfect grip memory, and silent recoil. Made not for mass war, but for one-shot kills.
He coded its parts into three different 3D printers around the campus. No one saw the full design.
When it fired in the test chamber, it broke the institute's record for accuracy and zero recoil. The lab fell silent. Professors walked out shaken.
Aryan just wiped the barrel, packed the blueprints, and deleted the files.
He spent exactly 97 days at the institute.
On the 98th, he left.
No goodbye.
No explanation.
Just a closed laptop, an empty locker, and a cold breeze blowing through the foundry.
Only Eliza received a message:
**"You were right. I've done this before."