The humidity of the chawl had thickened into a stagnant, suffocating fog by the time the evening shadows stretched across the cracked concrete floor. Inside the ten-by-ten room, the air was brittle, charged with the kind of tension that precedes a lightning strike. Vivaan, the youngest, sat in the far corner where the single lightbulb's yellow glow barely reached. He held a jagged piece of charcoal he had scavenged from the diner's trash bins earlier that morning, trying to sketch on the back of a discarded political flyer. His fingers, once groomed by the finest manicurists and trained in the world's elite galleries, were stained with soot and trembling with a fine, rhythmic tremor born of pure, unadulterated malnutrition.

The door didn't groan this time; it was kicked open with a violence that made the rusted hinges scream and sent a shower of dust falling from the ceiling.