"Oh my god, Trey he's got your eyes!" My mother, Honesty Anderson, told my father, Tre'Deverick Anderson, as my brother was born. "Looks just like his brother..." my father said tearing up. I sat in the delivery room... quiet, obedient... simply the golden child they knew would be one in a million. My new little brother, Jordan, came out with a vengeance, peeing on everyone in the vicinity.
"Mom, is that good? Is he being bad already?" I asked, able to talk nearly since the age of one... already capable of decent speech. My mother smiles sweetly at me while shaking her head. "No sweetie it happens all the time. You want to hold him?" I look at her with pure disgust in my eyes, "EWWWWWWW!! He just peed everywhere!" Despite my protests, i ended up holding him, he is my little brother after all.
My name is Zay, the 3 year old prodigal son of a prolific serial killer and angelic social worker hiding his secret. We live in Chicago, living out my dad's friend's dream, something about O'Block, which is where we currently live, apparently his friend died and he wanted to have housing in this area for the unfortunate souls such as us...
By the time my brother got home with my mom from the hospital, I was already back in school. The entire class bullied me, mostly because my mom is a CPS Investigator, but also because we live in O'Block, and I'm autistic with an isekai hyper fixation(just like the author but you didn't hear that from me, I'm just made in his image).
CELESTIAL INTERLUDE
Meanwhile in the Celestial Space, where divinity proves its imperfection. The God of Reincarnation and Fates, Ritorai, becomes distracted while weaving a certain fate string connected to a certain child's soul dipping it into the cup of trifles. "Oh fuck... who's was that... oh he's just a kid, damn it. Well kids, let's see how this goes for you, if you make it interesting i'll fulfill a few wishes for you," Ritorai says with a mischievous smirk, clearly unashamed of his mistake. Unaware, the world keeps turning, but the universe shifts its trajectory slightly, this timeline merging with another... let the implications fly in your mind.
Somewhere in a different world, where humans oppress elves, dwarves, and demihumans, while preparing for the demonic threat, the world becomes desperate for divine intervention. Illegal slave trade lurks in the shadows, those in power monopolizing the industry.
===
By age four, people had stopped calling me "advanced" and started calling me "concerning."
I didn't cry when kids pushed me. I didn't yell when teachers raised their voices. I just… watched. Listened. Filed things away like entries in a ledger no one else could see. Patterns were comforting. Humans were not.
Jordan, on the other hand, was loud. Alive. Normal.
He cried at night. I didn't.
He threw tantrums. I asked why tantrums worked.
He was loved effortlessly. I was loved carefully.
Dad was… present. Too present sometimes. He smelled like aftershave and iron, like copper buried under soap. When he hugged me, his heart rate never changed. Not once. I learned that early- pressed my ear against his chest and counted.
One-two.
One-two.
Never faster. Never slower.
"Zay," he'd say, kneeling to my level, voice warm and practiced, "you're gonna be special. I can feel it."
I nodded, because that was the correct response.
What I didn't tell him -what I couldn't tell him-was that sometimes, when he smiled, I saw something else layered underneath. Like an image burned into the back of my eyes. Red. Screaming. Stillness.
The kind of stillness that comes after something ends.
School didn't get better.
Kids whispered words they didn't understand-cop kid, block baby, weird. One boy told me my dad probably killed people. I corrected him automatically.
"Statistically," I said, adjusting my glasses, "most serial killers are white males aged 30-45 who exhibit narcissistic tendencies and-"
He punched me in the stomach before I could finish.
Worth it.
That night, as I lay in bed staring at glow in the dark stars my mom insisted helped with sensory overload, something else stared back.
Not with eyes.
With attention.
The air felt heavier, like the world was buffering.
CELESTIAL INTERLUDE II
Ritorai leaned back in his seat -if a throne made of folded timelines could be called a seat- and squinted.
Huh. That's early.
The string trembled in his fingers, vibrating with potential it absolutely was not supposed to have yet. Mortal souls weren't meant to resonate like that until trauma, death, or divinely sanctioned nonsense.
"This kid's… anchored," Ritorai muttered. "Two narratives. Same axis. That's not supposed to-"
He paused.
Then laughed.
"Oh. Oh that's bad. And interesting."
He reached for the Wish Ledger, flipping it open with casual irreverence.
"Fine. New rule. If the kid survives to the first convergence point, he gets three. If not…"
Ritorai shrugged.
"Entropy's hungry anyway."
Back on Earth, I sat up in bed, heart pounding for the first time in my life.
Because somewhere far away -but not far enough- I heard something crack.
Not glass.
Not bone.
A boundary.
And for just a moment, I understood something I definitely shouldn't have:
This world was not the only one watching me.
The night my father was arrested, the house didn't fall apart.
It went still.
The knock was measured, professional, like the city itself had finally decided to collect a debt. My mother opened the door without hesitation. Honesty Anderson had spent her life walking into danger wearing a badge and a clipboard; she recognized the look on the agents' faces immediately.
My father was at the table, hands folded, breathing even.
Tre'Deverick Anderson didn't fight. He never would have. Resistance implied chaos, and chaos offended him. When the cuffs closed around his wrists, I watched his pulse in his neck.
Perfect.
Unbroken.
In time.
The trial was a spectacle. Chicago loved a monster when it could cage one. They called it The Symphony of Malice—each killing a movement, each victim a note struck precisely when it would hurt the most. My father never denied it. Never defended himself. He listened like a composer hearing his work performed by an orchestra that finally understood the sheet music.
Death penalty.
At visitation, he cupped my face and searched my eyes like he was looking for something familiar.
"You hear it too," he said softly. "The rhythm underneath everything."
I didn't answer. I didn't need to.
The execution was efficient. The state mistook silence for victory. When his heart finally stuttered out of rhythm, I felt something loosen in the world—like a conductor stepping off the podium and leaving the orchestra unsupervised.
That was when the tempo slipped.
Without my father, the neighborhood shifted its gaze.
My mother became visible.
Honesty Anderson wasn't just a CPS investigator—she was someone who took kids away from gangs, away from cycles, away from men who promised protection and delivered graves. Names circulated. Looks hardened. Warnings came in the form of silence where greetings used to be.
kept working anyway. She believed that if she did enough good, the universe would eventually correct itself.
The universe shot her in the chest on a Tuesday afternoon.
Broad daylight. Rival colors. A gang member Jordan had already been circling, already testing boundaries with. My mother died on a sidewalk she'd tried to protect, eyes open, hand still clutching her phone.
Jordan found out before I did.
By the time I reached him, he was already gone—already moving with purpose instead of grief. Three days later, the man who killed our mother was dead in an alley, shot execution-style.
Jordan didn't run.
I did.
I walked into the precinct and confessed.
I knew how investigations worked. I knew what details mattered, what inconsistencies to smooth over. I learned from the best without ever meaning to. The gun vanished. Timelines blurred. Motive rewrote itself neatly.
They believed me.
Jordan cried when they cuffed me instead of him.
"You're throwing your life away," he said through the glass.
"No," I replied calmly. "I'm buying yours."
I took the charge. Manslaughter. Youth, trauma, history. A sentence that ended before it was supposed to. One year inside.
Jordan stayed out. Asia graduated. When I got out, thinner and quieter, he was waiting with Asia. The apartment was small. Loud. Alive.
Jordan worked part time. I could only work construction, early mornings, blistered hands, predictable labor. Asia held us together with stubborn optimism and coffee that tasted like hope. Her little sister Lexi was around constantly- too often, really. She watched everything with sharp eyes and a smile that never quite reached them.
Jordan finished school. Cut ties. Cleaned house. The gangbanging dried up not because it was forgiven—but because it was buried.
Lexi moved in, subtly showing signs I didn't understand. I could tell she hated how Asia looked at me, how Jordan listened to me, that I was the axis everything quietly turned around.
At first it was little things. Comments. Comparisons. Jokes that cut just a bit too deep.
"You ever notice," Lexi said once, laughing, "how everyone just orbits you?"
Asia brushed it off.
Jordan didn't notice.
I did.
I proposed on a night when the city felt almost kind. 6 karat ring. Rooftop. Asia cried and said yes like she'd never doubted it. Jordan clapped me on the back hard enough to bruise. Lexi put on a fake smile I noticed but ignored. Tight. Calculated. Overlooked.
The night before our wedding, the world fractured in a single heartbeat.
Asia never made it to the altar. A knife, a shadow, a rival who had lingered too long—stabbed her through the heart in the dim light of the city streets. She gasped once, whispered my name, then fell. I arrived too late, screaming her name into emptiness. The paramedics tried. I tried. Nothing worked.
The grief that followed was a tidal wave I couldn't swim. Lexi stepped in seamlessly, her smile wet with tears and purpose. "I'll help you," she whispered, and she did. She whispered, she cajoled, she turned my despair into dependence. She wriggled into the gaps Asia had left behind, a serpent wearing a sister's face, feeding off the space in my chest that Asia had owned.
A week later, I married Lexi. The ceremony was quiet. Almost empty. Jordan was there along with close friends, watching, silent, loyal, a witness to the final act of manipulation. None of their family was there, no one cared. I tried to tell myself I still loved Asia. I tried to tell myself Lexi was only holding the pieces together—but the grip on my heart was complete.
I enlisted soon after. The military offered structure, something clean, something detached, from Lexi's difference from Asia, from reality. Lexi and Jordan stayed behind.
Letters came sporadically. Updates. Photos. Lies dressed as casual affection. I tried to ignore the gnawing sense something had shifted—something dark threading between them. We tried for a baby prior to my first deployment, sending me to Saudi Arabia, and I got a call I returned during my off hours. "BABY GUESS WHAT!!" My eyes light up as i see the red lines, "Holy Shit! I'm so glad my love! I can't wait to get back." I checked the time on my flights as the days got closer, warning but not manifesting tardiness to the delivery room.
I came home on a perfectly timed furlough, believing in the fragile illusion of my family.
It was gone.
Jordan, my only remaining blood, the only person alive that isn't a replacement for a liveI had, the only person I had an unconditional love for, looked at and held what I thought was my child in a way that made my blood freeze. The delivery room smelled of betrayal, of perfume and smoke and deceit. My hands trembled. My heart beat in a rhythm I had learned from my father—steady, precise, cold.
I killed them both without hesitation. Jordan fell first, clutching the air as I grab the baby girl, smoothly replacing her with my pocket knife, eyes wide. Lexi screamed, but there was no one to hear her. I spared nothing, nurses, patients, guards, nothing but me and the baby remained.
The baby... no now that I think about her, small, perfect, untainted, was now mine as originally thought. I carried her with shaking arms through halls that had already witnessed too much blood. The police were waiting outside the hospital. Guns drawn, lights flashing, sirens screaming.
I stepped into the night anyway, heart drumming the rhythm of the Symphony, knowing the final movement had arrived.
I died there, outside the hospital, the baby cradled in my arms, bullets tearing through us in a chorus of inevitability. The city swallowed my body as quietly as it had swallowed everyone else I loved. And as I fell, looking at the baby one more time, she reminded me of my first, "Asia?" I questioned as the baby looked at me with a look no newborn should know, longing... contentment? I die confused, falling. But I fall into a different plane of existence... "Welcome kiddo! I'm Ritorai, and you have entertained me so well...I never thought you'd release your inner Trey, outstanding."
• • •
"WAIT WHAT?"