ZAHIR:

I was just a boy. 

My eyes were wide and naive. I’d never seen violence before. That’s when it happened. My little sister and I were playing cards in our kitchen. I heard a commotion outside my home. My baba ran out to see what was wrong. 

BANG! 

BANG! 

THUD! 

Terrorists raiding my home. They kicked our door down and pointed firearms at my family. Screams of desperation instantly mangled my heart. I froze. 

If I were to blink I’d have missed it. I didn’t. I couldn’t close my eyes. A blink would’ve been a waste of time. Tears stream down my face as my soul starts to bleed. As quickly as it happened it was over. My eyes were opened in another way. 

What was the point of this? What did they want? I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I almost died, myself. My ammah cared for me until I was trusted to live on my own. But what was the point? Living in a world like this didn’t make much sense to me. I was never trusted to live on my own as my family became aware of my realization. So I decided to trust myself - I ran away from home when I was 13. I never wanted to see my family again. It would only remind me of my past. I wanted to focus on my future. 

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

It all became so clear to me. One who takes a life does not deserve to live theirs. 

That became my goal. I needed to fill that gap that was pried from me. They would pay the price of their lives. 

I didn’t stop running until I collapsed on the side of a road near the border. I was brought into hospice for two years. I was almost out. Instead my body shut down. I was comatose for those two years. I was given a 3% chance to live. Especially since my family was brought in. I could sense their presence. Part of me wished I just died already. They wouldn’t let me. 

Once I recovered from my physical pain I was never let out of sight of my family again. I was always accompanied by some relative. They didn’t understand that the more time I spent with them, the more it was driving me away. I wanted out. But I couldn’t run away.

I decided to give myself a hobby. I taught myself magic tricks and the art of illusion and misdirection. I could do everything. It came really easy to me. I could make this vanish and reappear with ease. I tried to make my sister disappear, but unfortunately she came back. I wanted to challenge myself.

I had discovered an old library that looked to be abandoned. Luckily, that meant it was easy to sneak into. Thousands of books, all for me and my viewing. They had everything - I tended to lean toward the history books. All this information at my fingertips. I became addicted to reading. Of course, I couldn’t read all of these books in one sitting. I had to sneak out every now and again to get my reading fix. I don’t know why I kept this as a secret to my family. It would totally be the kind of thing they’d support, but somehow this felt wrong enough for me to keep it to myself. Surprisingly, I had read almost every book in this library. I was a fast reader. 

There was this one book I found underneath one of the dusty bookshelves near the back. It looked like it had seen better days. It looked like some sort of spell book. I couldn’t understand anything this book was saying but luckily there were illustrations too. The only thing I could understand was on the cover of the book, which was covered by a decoy jacket; a step-by-step guide to mastering what the book called it as “the miracle”. I thought this would be similar to magic and maybe reignite that passion. What I never would’ve anticipated was how much more it would do than that. 

My mission from long ago suddenly became more possible.