I tried not to think about my past too often, but Jay had really done me dirty by asking about it.

My heritage had been a sore spot for quite a few years. When my father had told me who his father was, I had been extremely happy. It made me feel great, even as a child. But it very quickly brought bad things to the family.

It caught me in my dreams that night. The memory.

I could see my father’s swollen and bruised face vividly in my mind. He lay in the hospital bed, bandaged up and evidently in pain. His olive skin had been turned red and even purple in some places, and he was now missing one or two of his molars.

My mother, younger brother, and younger sister had left the room only a few seconds ago, as my father had requested to be left alone with me for a moment.

It had been the scariest day of my life. The man that I looked up to most. The man that I aspired to be like with every ounce of my being. He had been reduced to a half-dead mess.

I had only been eight when it had happened, and that was not the sort of thing that an eight-year-old should have been seeing.

My dad was just an innocent old man, and he had looked like one before the incident. With barely any of his greying black hair on his balding head and those sparkling light brown eyes that he passed onto me, he was the typical image that came to someone’s mind when they heard the phrase ‘kind old man’. And he was my hero.

He held out his shaking right hand toward me and I took it gently.

‘Ali…’ he breathed, smiling toothily at me. ‘I’m not going to tell Yousef or Fatima about who my father is…and you shouldn’t either.’

‘But why?’ I had asked innocently. Obliviously.

My father stared at me, his eyes still twinkling, but even at the age of eight, I could tell that the twinkle was no longer one of true joy. In that moment it seemed like more of a disguise.

‘They did this to me because of who we come from, Ali,’ he had said after his moment’s pause. ‘To most people, we are seen as bad omens. Anomalies. I did nothing to those six men, son. They did this to me simply because of who my father is. I am thankful that they did not kill me.’

Even in the dream, my strange, indescribable feeling felt so real. Never before in my life had I ever felt a feeling like I had done in that moment. Even six years later, I had yet to feel anything remotely like it.

It was almost like a mixture of multiple feelings. That is the best possible way to describe it. It felt like fear, nausea, anger, and a lot more all joined into one.

‘Will they do it to me?’ I had whimpered.

My father squeezed my hand. ‘Not if you don’t tell anyone. Please, Ali, for your sake, don’t ever tell anybody about who your grandfather is.’

‘I won’t, Dad.’

My dream shifted. The scene before me shattered like glass and reconstructed into my first English lesson at RoCity.

Peter and Asbel sat on my right, and the three of us were engaged in happy conversation. I loved that seat. And when Albert had returned from training, I had sat next to him. But over Christmas, Mr Lloyd had moved my seat from there at the front to at the back near Ethan and Jay. I wasn’t complaining; I still got to sit with friends and it meant that Albert could sit with Cecilia.

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‘What God do you come from, anyway, Ali?’ Asbel had asked, and it was evident that he meant no harm in asking.

Something about me must have changed. Maybe it was my face. Maybe my eyes. Maybe some other feature of my body language. But both of them immediately realised that it was a sore subject.

‘Leave it,’ Peter had murmured, nudging Asbel in the side.

‘Yeah, sorry, man,’ Asbel said quietly.

My next words came out insanely quietly. ‘Don’t worry about it. Just… never mind.’

In that moment, the memory of my father in the hospital bed had flashed through my mind. It always did whenever somebody questioned what God I came from.

Of course, I knew. My siblings didn’t. My parents did. Even though my entire family lived in RoCity, my younger siblings still had no idea about which God was their grandparent. We had fooled them into believing that I didn’t know and hadn’t been Claimed yet. They knew that our father knew, but he swore that he could not tell them.

I woke up.

Groggily sitting up, I rubbed my eyes and glanced towards my clock. It was only twenty past one in the morning.

My grandfather didn’t do Claimings as other Gods did. It was far too dangerous. I dreaded to even think about what could happen if his symbol appeared above my head one day.

What would everyone’s reactions be? My friends probably wouldn’t have minded. But people at school might. Or the public. I wasn’t exactly famous, but I wasn’t exactly unknown.

That was the case with everybody close to Albert. Our names had been in the papers at least a couple times, but we weren’t exactly celebrities.

But my Claiming would probably make headlines. The public would shun me. All because of who I was descended from.

I hadn’t even been told why this stigma around my grandfather existed. My father had refused to tell me the story.

I balled my fists around my blanket. It’s not like I was horrible. I hadn’t done anything. But I was a ‘bad omen’.

My father’s words echoed in my head. ‘They did this to me because of who we come from, Ali’. That’s what he had said. Those words made me feel sick to my stomach. I had never even heard from the people that did that to my father, so I doubted that they had been charged.

We were powerful demigods, too. But my father was a docile man. And if he had fought back, it most likely would not have gone well for either side. My father would have more than likely been charged with murder.

I would be useless in the attack on Paris. I wouldn’t give it my all out of fear that I would reveal who I was descended from. I would just have to use my spear and pray that I didn’t accidentally let something loose.

Or maybe I could use some of my powers. I had similar abilities to demigods of other Gods. I could say that it was that.

But even that had its problems. If I said I was descended from a God that I wasn’t, they would see no reason for me to keep it hidden. No other God needed to be hidden like my grandfather.

I could never have children. I couldn’t pass down the curse that was my blood. If I was lucky, I would be able to find myself a wife and settle down, but I would forbid myself from having a child.

Sighing, I lay back down. There was no use troubling myself with those huge problems at one in the morning. It would be best to go back to sleep.

I just had to pray that I didn’t fall back into those nightmares. All I wanted was a peaceful, happy dream so that I could wake up with a smile.

Gods, it really did feel as though I were cursed. My heritage was a burden on my shoulders, not something that I was proud of like everybody else’s heritage was to them.

Why couldn’t I have been the grandson of a normal God? Yes, I had power, but it seemed that I did not have the freedom to be happy.

But the thoughts did not stop. I do not know how long I lay there tossing and turning, but my mind was throbbing with negative thoughts the entire time. It felt like an eternity.

‘To most people, we are seen as bad omens. Anomalies’. But why? What had we done to be seen that way?

I gripped my blanket tighter. It was cruel, if that word was even strong enough to describe what it was. I would simply never forget what my father had looked like after those six vile men had done what they did to him.

As I felt myself slowly begin to drift off after what felt like years, it was the words of Albert Santrrer that I heard rather than those of my father.

‘It doesn’t matter how long we’ve known each other. We were friends from the day we met’. I could still vividly hear him saying that to me. And it meant more to me than the world. I had to do him proud.

Even if it meant the death of me, I had to prove to Albert that I was worthy of being his friend.