In the heavy silence of the night, when Ivan descended the stairs, the atmosphere at the dining table was nothing like the usual. His father, Ishan, and his mother, Mayra, were already seated, but a strange chill hung in the air. Ishan ate his dinner in absolute silence, his eyes filled with a void that stirred a deep restlessness within Ivan. The three finished their meal without exchanging a single word. Ishan's silence wasn't ordinary; it carried an unspoken weight, a burden that felt palpable. As soon as dinner ended, Ishan retreated to his room without a word, and Ivan, with a heavy heart, went to bed.
The moment Ivan fell asleep, he plummeted into a world where the line between reality and horror blurred. In his dream, he saw a massive crowd gathered in front of his house. The entire village, distant relatives, and Ishan's close friends, Vikas and Arya, were all there. Every face was grief-stricken, and the air echoed with the sound of mourning. Pushing through the crowd, Ivan's heart shattered—there lay the body of his father. The news of Ishan's death felt as if the very ground had been snatched from beneath Ivan's feet.
Amidst the grieving crowd, Arya's young son sat silently beside his father. His innocent eyes scanned the deep sorrow surrounding him. He couldn't quite grasp the true meaning of death, but the questions brewing in his mind were enough to shake every adult present. Tugging gently at Arya's sleeve, he asked in a soft, naive voice, "Papa, will Ishan Uncle go to Heaven or Hell?" Arya tried to speak, but the child didn't stop. He asked an even deeper question: "Papa, tell me one thing... what if the God of Uncle's own religion doesn't come to collect him, and the God of another religion shows up instead? Will that other God throw him into Hell just because Uncle's religion was different? Or will He take him to Heaven?"
The child's words struck the room like a bolt of lightning, leaving everyone stunned. It was then that Ivan's grandfather, sitting nearby, looked at the boy and began to answer in a calm, steady voice. "Son," he said, "you have asked something very profound. Listen closely: if God began to think like humans—dividing people into 'mine' and 'theirs'—then He wouldn't be God at all. If a Creator were to say, 'I will only welcome those of my own fold into Heaven and cast a good, noble soul into Hell simply because their way of praying was different,' then such a God would have a mind smaller and more narrow than even a human's. That is not justice; that is mere prejudice."
Placing a hand on the boy's head, the grandfather explained the true essence of justice. "Child, true justice is not about punishment. Justice means 'Balance.' Just as the sun shines equally on everyone in nature, never asking if the person below is rich or poor, or by what name they call the light. Justice means everything receives what it deserves based on its own merit. If a plant receives the right water and sunlight, it thrives—that is justice. Similarly, God's justice isn't about picking a 'side' or a 'team.' Justice means that the Creator looks only at the 'purity of your deeds.' If your intentions were clear and you caused no pain to others, that is where true justice lies."
He continued, his voice resonating through the silence, "Justice is like a scale that does not tilt under the weight of religion, caste, or language; it measures only the weight of Truth. Therefore, no matter which manifestation of the Divine comes to collect Ishan, they will see only the goodness and the deeds he sowed throughout his life. Justice is never biased; it is like a clear mirror that reflects you exactly as you are. To put it simply: justice is the act of looking past labels and delivering an exact result based solely on truth and karma—just like a scale that reveals the correct weight without favoritism."
The moment the grandfather's words ended, Ivan snapped awake. He was drenched in sweat, his entire body trembling. The dream had been so vivid that he couldn't believe he was actually in his own bed. The grandfather's voice and the child's questions were still ringing in his ears. The mere shadow of his father's death had planted a deep-seated terror in his heart. He sat up in the dark room, his heart hammering against his ribs. He kept seeing Ishan's pale, peaceful face wrapped in a shroud.
A strange, suffocating anxiety took hold of him. Ivan began to pace the room, but the specter of that fear wouldn't leave him. He realized, with a haunting clarity, how fragile and uncertain life truly was. The silence he had witnessed at the dinner table now felt like an omen of a looming tragedy. He was terrified that his dream might be a premonition. In the dead of night, he stood alone, battling his thoughts and the memories of that horrific dream—a dream where he had found the definition of justice, but was still paralyzed by the fear of losing his father.
Far away from the deathly silence of the village, in a luxury flat of a plush skyscraper in the city, Arya was asleep. He was trapped in the grip of a nightmare so grotesque and soul-shattering that it felt millions of times more horrific than the cruelest tortures of hell. The dream began with a thick, black, and sticky silence. Arya found himself in an endless basement where the walls were not made of cement, but of human skin, with fresh blood oozing from them. The air carried such a pungent stench of rotting flesh and burning iron that Arya began to suffocate. Suddenly, tearing through that dense darkness, Ivan appeared before him. But this was not the Ivan Arya knew in real life.
The Ivan in the dream looked like a distorted demon. His skin was sloughing off in patches, and white maggots crawled within those open wounds. From the hollow sockets of Ivan's eyes, black, thick, and boiling blood bubbled over and ran down his cheeks. His teeth were as sharp as a saw, yellow and filthy. In Ivan's hand was a massive, barbed, and rusted iron rod that emitted sparks of electricity. Ivan let out an inhuman, piercing laugh that caused blood to leak from Arya's eardrums. He began advancing toward Arya, dragging the heavy rod across the floor.
Arya tried to retreat or run, but he realized his legs were missing from the knees down. He was standing merely on the stumps of his severed flesh and nerves, which were sticking to the clotted blood on the floor. He wanted to scream for help, but as soon as he opened his mouth, live black scorpions and insects began crawling out of his throat. Ivan came right up to him and, without a shred of mercy, slammed that barbed rod with full force onto the remains of Arya's knee. "CRACK-SHATTER!" The sound of the bone being pulverized and chunks of flesh splattering against the wall echoed through the basement. Arya could see his own white marrow and bone protruding from his mangled flesh.
Ivan didn't stop there. He plunged the barbed, sharp tip of the rod into Arya's stomach and began twisting it inside like a grinder machine. Arya could clearly feel his intestines being ripped out, tangling around the rusted rod. Ivan laughed diabolically, spitting hot, foul pus from his severed and rotting tongue onto Arya's face. Then, Ivan began to wrench and tear away Arya's fingers one by one. The visceral experience of his bones snapping and fingers being uprooted felt terrifyingly real. Fountains of blood had completely soaked Arya's expensive silk clothes.
Suddenly, hundreds of rotting, decayed hands emerged from the basement floor and began pulling Arya down. Arya felt as if he were being buried alive. Finally, Ivan raised the heavy rod high into the air to strike Arya right between the eyes and swung with all his might— "No...!!! Help!!!"
Arya sat bolt upright in bed with a scream so blood-curdling that it tore through the silence of the entire building. His whole body was not just drenched in sweat, but had turned ice-cold and pale with terror. His heart was hammering against his ribs so hard it felt as if it would burst through his chest. He began frantically fumbling for his limbs in the dark, unable to believe that his legs were still intact. His wife watched him, trembling with fear, "Arya! What happened? Why are you screaming like that? Your eyes... they have turned completely blood-red!" Arya couldn't speak; he just stared into the void with wide, hollow eyes.