Azel

My name is Zeus. I’m sixteen, and I’ve lived my whole life under my father’s fist his voice a storm that never ends, his eyes sharp with hate that burned into my skin. He blamed me for my mother’s death, for every broken thing in our small, crumbling home. “You should’ve died instead,” he said, and some nights, I almost wished I had. I never had a childhood just bruises, silence, and ragged clothes that chafed my skin and messy black hair while I hauled water and chopped wood under the sun. One boy always watched me from afar, pale as moonlight, his eyes sharp and cold as river water. I could see spirits no one else could, but I didn’t know he was a spirit and my father struck me for “talking to air.” Maybe I got it from my mother. His name was Azel. He said it was an angel’s name, but I sensed the darkness in him, the cruelty and the secrets that bound him to this world. Yet he stayed near, guarding me like I was the last piece of light he could touch. The night I died, my father came home drunk, his fists swinging with hatred. I collapsed under his blows, and the world went black. When I woke, I was in a cold, endless void, the air heavy with whispers of lost souls. Azel stood before me, white hair brushing faint light, silent and unreadable. Then the world shifted I was no longer in ragged clothing, but in fancy black like him, a nice sword at my side, heavier than anything I’d ever carried. Behind him, a white portal shimmered, pulsing with the sorrow of spirits who could not rest. Azel’s smile was calm but sharp, a warning and a promise. “This is where they wait,” the silence said. “Help them find peace… and you may earn your human life again.” My heart twisted freedom and fear tangled together but I stepped forward, ready to face the lost, ready to claim my form