The man watched Bayad curiously.

  “Smokeless fire,” he repeated, still curious.

  That simple information sent chills running up Bayad’s spine. The man in front of him was the first person in Bayad’s life in this world to perceive the smokeless fire. Everyone else saw the wings and the colors and just thought fallen.

  The man was not done yet, though. He leaned in closer, sniffed the air in front of Bayad.

  “Light,” he sniffed again, “smokeless fire,” he sniffed again, paused. A smile touched his lips. “That’s quite an interesting abomination you are.”

  Bayad scowled a little before he could stop himself. It had been too long since someone had called him an abomination and, for all his years of being here, it seemed he still didn’t have a hold on his annoyance. He strained against his chains in an attempt to wring the man’s neck for a fraction of a second.

  It was all the time it took before he controlled himself. The very action had taught him one thing—the man in front of him was not afraid of him.

  He didn’t even flinch.

  “Now tell me,” the man continued, still amused. “What was a Nephilim doing with an existential being?”

  Once more, Bayad grit his teeth, controlled his tempter. “I am not existential,” he bit out in growing rage.

  “And young,” the man muttered with a frown. “No one’s calling you existential, kid. Just that one of your parents was.” He scrunched up his lips in thought. “Do you even know what it means to be an existential being?”

  Bayad was ashamed to admit that he did not know, so he said nothing. This was not the first time he had heard the word. In fact, a lot of people had called him an existential being or an abomination before he’d come to this world. He might not know what it meant but he knew that it was an insult, something to not be proud of.

  The man sighed. “You must be really young if you don’t know what it means. I don’t mind educating you.”

  Bayad could not say no to that. So, he waited, and waited, and waited. The man said nothing. Then Bayad made the mistake of allowing his impatience and confusion show in his expression.

  “You’ve got to say the magic word, though,” the man said, reading his expression.

  Bayad paused, then looked down at the markings on the ground beneath him, markings that had evolved over years, markings that were slowly deviating from what they originally were.

  Magic word, he thought. This was the first time he was learning of magic words that could make a person speak. Did they even exist?

  He looked at the chains that bound him, each link intricately woven in spells and enchantments. The magic words would not be there. He knew it as sure as he knew the wings behind him. Again, he wondered if they existed.

  Looking back at the man, he once again wondered if they existed. They did. They had to. Words that could make a person tell you what you wanted them to tell you. How was he so sure of it? Because this man had walked into the room and Mrs. Talwort had simply given him the room as if he was her superior when she actually had none.

  The man was overestimating him. Bayad did not know the magic word.

  Brow cocked for only a moment, the man sighed. “How have you been here for as long as you have and not know the magic word.”

  Bayad was flabbergasted by the disappointment in the man’s voice. It was as if he expected Bayad to be better, as if the magic words existed only on this world.

  “Alright, then,” the man said. “I’ll teach you what your hosts have failed to teach you. Repeat after me: Please.”

  Bayad’s jaw dropped. That was it? The man wanted him to beg for the information? Why? Was this some way to humble him? Bayad almost snorted in amusement. There would be no humbling. He knew the things he had had to do since coming to this world. It was all pretend, done for the very sake of survival.

  Please was not a difficult word to use.

  “Please,” he said. “Please tell me.”

  “Existential beings are simple creatures,” the man said, as if the magic word had been completely unnecessary. “They are beings created by other beings, not procreated, mind you. They are beings created by other beings with no will of their own. In your case, the smokeless fire part of you. One of your parents is very old and without a will of their own.”

  Bayad disagreed. Born of a Nephilim and a Djinn, he knew that his Nephilim parent was not existential because they had been procreated. The Djinn, however, did not act like a person without a will. His mother had been full of life and complexity. His mother had a will.

  “I am not existential,” he said, because it was all he had to say.

  Once again, the man cocked his brow at him. “Are you being intentionally dense? I never said you were existential. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is why you are here?”

  He looked around, taking stock of the enchantments and spells that marked the room, even though he had already done so before.

  “Are you trapped?”

  There was something in his voice that worried, Bayad. Bayad could not place his finger on it even as he answered. “Yes.”

  “For how long?” the man asked.

  “Too long.”

  Bayad had been here for at least two centuries, maybe three. If there was one thing he was confident in, it was the fact that the spells and enchantments could not be undone. Modified? Yes. But none could undo them. At least no one alive on this world.

  The man looked down at one of the markings—a curve intersected by a straight line. He rubbed his jaw as if in contemplation.

  “Sloppy work, if you ask me,” he said, then looked up at Bayad and grinned. “This is what they’ve used to trap you?”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  A slight chill went up Bayad’s spine once more.

  He doesn’t know how to undo it, he assured himself. No one does.

  “All I have to do is find the specific place I need to clean for the entire link to come crumbling down, right?” the man asked.

  If only it were that easy. For starters, the link was almost impossible to find. For enders, the markings couldn’t just be cleaned. It wasn’t that simple. Bayad had tried.

  The man was still looking at him, was still smiling. He looked intrigued. Without wasting much time, he walked over to a part of the enchantments on the farthest part of the room on Bayad’s left. Bayad’s eyes widened in shock and a tinge of terror when the man stood over the link, placing a precarious foot on it.

  “Before I do this,” he said, “I just want you to know that this world now has an [August Intruder]. You shouldn’t be too young to know what that is.”

  Bayad paled. He could not afford to be in a world with an owner. It would ruin his plan and everything he was working towards.

  “Alright then,” the man said, then he dragged his foot across the line.

  Bayad felt it the moment the impossible happened. The link severed, the line disappearing. He felt his power rush out of him where it had once been intertwined with the chains and enchantment.

  Quickly, he pulled it all back into him, struggling for only a fraction of a second. It had been years since he’d needed to control his own power. Mana and broken divinity flooded out for the shortest moment before he held them tight.

  The man didn’t even show him the courtesy of looking at him. Instead, the man stared up and away, as if looking at something that wasn’t there.

  “I guess that should be long enough,” he mused, then slid his feet across the broken link once more.

  And just like that, the link was recreated. Bayad felt the enchantments and spell activate. He felt them try to drag his powers from him. He hesitated for only a moment before he let them.

  The man sighed as if satisfied, then walked back over to him and squatted before him. “Has my action shown you that I know everything there is to know about your current predicament?”

  Bayad nodded very slowly, very carefully.

  “Good. Now tell me,” the man said. “Why have you lied to these beautiful people? Why have you made them believe that they have trapped you when you’ve gifted them the very enchantments and spells required to channel your powers throughout the world.”

  Bayad opened his mouth, and the man stopped him with a raised hand.

  “Careful now,” he warned. “I don’t care much for the truth. What I want is something believable and acceptable. Your life, dear child, currently hangs in the balance.”

  Bayad found himself doing one of the most belittling human things he’d ever seen. He gulped.

  The man in this world was the first to find out this truth. Bayad was not a prisoner. When he had come to this world through means that would have him executed immediately in the greater cosmos, he had studied the humans for a while. In the end, he had chosen those he had deemed the greediest and revealed himself to them.

  Unsurprisingly, they had tried to trap him, using sweet words and silver tongues, calling him a harbinger of the one true god—a being so powerful that he had created everything out of nothing. In truth, if he had not studied them and didn’t know better, he would’ve fallen for those words. But he knew better. He pretended to be enamored and bask in the worship. It had only taken him a month to teach them how to ‘trap’ a creature like him.

  When they had turned the spells and enchantments on him, he had been intrigued and pleased. In truth, the enchantments binding him did nothing to weaken him or keep him in place. What they did was systematically channel his powers throughout the world, starting from this specific point. It would create a domain for him where he was god—his own little world that he would rule.

  “How did you know?” Bayad found himself asking the man.

  The man shrugged. “The buildings are an exact replica of your left wing, all white with black stains. It’s how your hosts don’t know that I find interesting. Anyway.” The man got up and started leaving the room. “Just be careful.”

  Bayad paused, confused. “That’s it?”

  “Use more words,” the man said, stopping to look back.

  “You’re just going to let me do what I want?”

  “Oh, that. I guess.” The man shrugged again. “Honestly, if you somehow succeed in creating a domain for yourself here, it wouldn’t affect me in the slightest. And personally, I think you might be more useful to the owner of this world alive than dead. Keep doing what you’re doing.”

  “Wait, you’re not the owner?” Bayad was growing more confused. “With all that power I just thought that…”

  Bayad wasn’t sure what he thought. It would’ve made perfect sense if the man was the owner of the world.

  “Not the owner, abomination,” the man said. “Just a guest like you. The only difference is that I’m an honest one and an invited one. When you meet the owner, which you will, try to be very careful. He’s as nice as he is dangerous. He just doesn't know it.”

  Bayad opened his mouth to speak once more but the man walked through the door and out of the room without opening the door.

  In this moment, Bayad found himself in a complicated mess. He could not leave this world, because if he did, the hunters would come for him. He had come here to escape them and had done so successfully. Imprisonment would’ve been his initial punishment, but his actions that had brought him here and his actions here made sure that if they caught him, they would kill him.

  I guess it couldn’t be all simple forever, he thought.

  He had never met an [August Intruder] before, but from the stories his parents had told him while he had been alive, he knew better than to want to meet one as an enemy. [August Intruder]s were, from the stories, very terrifying existences. His mother had said that they were almost akin to gods.

  When you meet him, Bayad thought, remembering the man’s words. Not if.

  The [August Intruder] was already aware of him?

  Bayad paused, thought about it. He had done nothing to…

  Shit.

  His mind went to when the man had cleaned the link and hadn’t even bothered to look at him, staring off into space. He wanted to believe that it was impossible, but the man had done enough impossible things to show that he was not beneath the impossible.

  Had he done all that just so that the [August Intruder] would be aware of Bayad? If the answer was yes, then what was Bayad supposed to do?

  Much thought gave him his answer. Nothing. All Bayad could do was pray to his mother’s creator. All he could do was pray that he still had time, because if he left here, he would end up announcing himself to the world. If he left the world, he would end up announcing himself to the hunters.

  Doomed if you do, doomed if you don’t.

  In the end, falsehood had become truth. An illusion created to deceive others had become a reality.

  He looked down at the markings around him. He had led those who had created them to believe that they were his prison when they were actually making him stronger. Now, with the actions of one simple man, they had truly become a prison.

  Bayad could not leave, not unless he wanted to try his luck at killing the [August Intruder]. Sadly, even that was not an option. With the world having an [August Intruder], it meant that the apocalypse was coming, and a world could not survive its apocalypse without an [August Intruder].

  “Doomed if I do,” he muttered under his breath, resigned. “Doomed if I don’t.”

  …

  Out in the cool night air once more, Dorthna sighed.

  “Just how weak am I?”

  He knew he was weak, one percent of a hundred percent was definitely a blow to anyone. But just how weak could he have been that he had been on a world with an abomination protected but something as petty and simple as world enchantments and spells that he had not noticed. For fuck sake, the masking enchantment used to protect the creature was a caricature of the one he used to protect the house of the Lockwoods. He had been the one to come up with the original version before [Mage]s and other beings copied it.

  Running a tired hand through his hair, he tried his best to assume a neutral expression. He had been so weak that he’d walked into a world with a hidden child and hadn’t been aware of the child until he’d grown beyond the one percent mastery. And all he’d done was add a decimal growth to the percentage.

  It made him wonder what else was going on in this world that he was not aware of. For all he knew hell could have a kitchen here, too. Then again, seeing a creature so rare and abominable that it had no official name except for being called a tribreed was interesting. The reason Bayad’s kind was so rare was because the union of a Nephilim and a djinn was usually a human incapable of mana—something even less than a sentient being—or some dead thing. Very rarely did they ever create actual working life.

  Mostly, they created the dead thing. Calling Bayad’s kind an abomination was not an insult, it was actually just what they were called, as simple as that.

  Shaking the disappointment of how he had not noticed the abomination on time, Dorthna turned his head in another direction.

  I wonder what Mel and Ark are doing.