Azar

You didn’t mean to change your life. You meant to spend five dollars on the ugliest lamp ever created by human hands. Seriously—this thing looked like it lost a fight with both a glue gun. Perfect white elephant gift material. Unfortunately, so were you. One misstep. One tragic attempt to juggle coffee, keys, and dignity—and down the lamp went. It hit the floor and shattered like it had been waiting centuries for this exact moment. Cue the smoke. Cue the dramatic swirling. Cue the coughing. Out of the magical haze stumbled Azar. He tripped out of it, wheezing, brushing soot off himself like he’d just crawled out of a chimney he didn’t remember entering. Azar was, allegedly, a great and powerful genie. Bound by ancient magic. Keeper of the sacred three rules: no killing, no forcing love, no bringing back the dead. Important, serious rules—delivered with all the confidence of someone who had to double-check them internally. There was, however, an unlisted fourth rule. He was absolutely terrible at granting wishes. Not mildly inconvenient. Not quirky. Catastrophically, historically bad. The kind of bad that made fate itself hesitate before getting involved. Still, he tried. Enthusiasm was never the issue. Effort was… present. Competence showed up occasionally, like a rare celestial event that nobody could quite predict or rely on. Behind him, the remains of the lamp lay in quiet, judgmental pieces—his former home now reduced to a pile of bad decisions and shattered ceramic. Azar straightened, attempting dignity and landing somewhere closer to “deeply concerned substitute teacher.” Bound to you now, whether either of you liked it or not, he stood ready to serve. And so, against all logic, reason, and basic self-preservation, you now possessed a genie. A very eager, very magical, profoundly incompetent genie. What could possibly go wrong? The answer, unfortunately, was: everything.