The gun didn’t go off.
For a fraction of a second, Aryan thought the sound had simply been swallowed by the room. Old buildings did that sometimes—absorbed noise, bent it, made it disappear. But silence like this couldn’t be explained away. It sat there, heavy and deliberate, as if the world itself had paused to stare back at him.
His finger was still on the trigger.
His breath was still trapped somewhere between inhale and regret.
Nothing had happened.
The moment stretched, elastic and cruel. Aryan felt it pulling at him, daring him to blink, to move, to acknowledge what had just failed. His arms didn’t shake. That surprised him. He had imagined that if things ever went wrong, his body would betray him first. Sweat, trembling, panic. Instead, he felt disturbingly calm—like his system
