The road stretched out like a darkened vein, trees lining its sides like silent sentinels, while shops kept their eyelids half-open to welcome the stray student finishing late.
The night carried whispers sharper than wind, and Ogdi Num walked with the heaviness of a mind too congested for sleep.
They speak, he thought, his gaze fixed on the pavement, but they never listen. Words are loose like falling leaves, yet they pile up to shape everything. If thoughts had echoes... they'd call me mad. If only I could have my wishes granted. I have so much I want to build, so much I need to fix, but I am limited by the crushing weight of this reality.
It wasn't just a lack of funds or talent; it was the suffocating laws of the mundane. The world demanded he accept things as they were—fragile, final, and dull—while he felt the burden of a responsibility he couldn't share.
The street was cold. Cars bled past in streaks of white, their drivers unaware of the silent storm raging behind the young man's eyes.
A voice rippled with an amused, questioning tone—not aloud, not within, but beneath thought.
"So you seek freedom... through wishes?"
Ogdi stopped dead, his breath catching in his throat like a fish on a hook. Every muscle locked; every nerve ending screamed. There was no sound around him, yet the air tensed, vibrating as if it had heard something sacred.
"What the hell... hallucinations again?" he mumbled, dragging his feet faster beneath the flickering streetlamps.
But the voice followed. It did not travel through sound waves; it arrived as a presence, a cold breath against the back of his mind.
"Power, mismanaged, is rot disguised as a miracle. You wish for liberation. But would you wager truth to gain it?"
The world didn't break—it bent. Not visibly, but Ogdi felt it in his inner ear, a vertigo like space itself had just leaned toward him. He spun around, eyes darting wildly, searching for the speaker in the shadows of the alleyways.
"FUCK! What was this? I thought I was losing it. I have to stop relying on coffee to keep me awake."
He spoke the words aloud, grounding himself, and took a firm step onto the road.
Hoooooonnnnnnnnnk!
"Get off the road, you shithead!"
Ogdi jumped back, heart hammering against his ribs. "Sorry! I really shouldn't cut my sleep time... I need to get better at time management."
He hurried the rest of the way, the adrenaline fading into exhaustion. Back home, he didn't bother undressing. He collapsed onto the mattress, and sleep came not as rest, but as surrender.
...
A week passed.
In a small but comfortable room, the young man slept, a fragile peace draped over him.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The sounds tore through the silence—gunshots, dry and cracking, knifing the calm of the night.
Instinct punched through Ogdi's sleep. He sat up, gasping, sweat already cold on his forehead. He's out there.
His hands fumbled in the dark, knocking over a glass of water before finding his phone. His fingers shook so hard he mistyped the code twice. Pick up. Pick up, you idiot.
The line clicked.
"Yo?"
The voice on the other end was maddeningly calm. Carefree.
"Where are you?" Ogdi choked out, gripping the phone until his knuckles turned white. "I heard shots. Near the campus perimeter. Are you safe?"
"Relax, Ogdi," his brother laughed, the sound warm and utterly unbothered. "I'm just grabbing a late snack. It's miles away. Why are you always hyperventilating? I'm fine."
"Just... come back. Now. Please."
"Alright, alright. Only because you sound like you're about to have a stroke. I'm coming."
The line went dead. Ogdi lowered the phone, but his heart didn't slow down.
"I just want him safe," Ogdi whispered to the empty room.
A cold dread settled in his stomach, the same parasitic fear that had gnawed at him for weeks. He was the protector. That was his role. He had tried everything to guarantee safety—prayed to every deity, checked every lock, tracked every schedule—but nothing felt like enough. The world was too big, and luck was too thin.
"Would you rather ensure it yourself?"
The voice returned. Disembodied yet oddly resonant, it slithered into the cracks of his panic.
There it was again. Familiar, yet different. The voice had roots now. It didn't float; it stood. Like it came from somewhere true.
A shiver ran down his spine, sharper than the night air. Was he finally losing his mind? The stress, the sleepless nights, the grief he refused to name—they were all taking their toll.
He turned slowly. No one. Of course. His apartment was empty, just as it had been for months. He was alone.
Utterly, terrifyingly alone.
"Don't look for me. It's useless. You remembered me; that's enough."
The words echoed in his head, clearer now, almost as if someone was speaking right beside his ear, their breath ghosting over his skin.
Ogdi felt it then—the edge of something enormous. A veil. It was as if the world he knew, the mundane reality he clung to so desperately, was tearing apart at the seams. A strange, almost forgotten sensation stirred within him, a memory of stories read in childhood, of magic and impossible happenings.
But this felt real. Or was it?
"Am I dreaming?" he asked himself, his voice barely a whisper in the gloom. He pinched his arm, hard, twisting the skin. The sting was sharp, immediate. Real.
This wasn't a dream. It couldn't be.
"You can consider it as such if it makes it easier for you," answered the voice, a dry amusement in its tone, like a teacher watching a student struggle with a simple equation.
Skeptical, but cornered by the impossible, Ogdi asked, "What type of power is it?"
He braced himself for a grand revelation. He expected a complex explanation of arcane forces, alignment of stars, or ancient bloodlines. He'd read enough fantasy novels to know how these things usually went.
"Three wishes," said the voice. The amusement dropped, replaced by a hint of malice—or perhaps just the dangerous weight of absolute freedom. "But choose wisely. Each holds your truth, and your consequence."
His thoughts spun. Three wishes? The classic. The impossible. His mind reeled, sifting through every cautionary tale, every twisted genie myth where the wisher ends up dead or cursed.
"Who is this? A Djinn? A Trickster? A Guardian?" He scoffed at the last one. "I doubt I'm a guardian's chosen. I'm no villain—but I've done nothing remarkable either."
He was just Ogdi. An ordinary man trapped in an extraordinary nightmare, holding a phone that had connected to... where?
What could he possibly offer a being of such power? And what did it want in return?
A cold knot of fear tightened in his gut. This was too good to be true, and anything too good to be true usually came with a price tag written in blood.
"Who are you?" he asked, the words tumbling out before he could truly consider them.
His heart hammered in his chest. Was that a question? Was this the first wish? Was he wasting it already?
"Is that your first wish?" The voice's question was laced with a chilling, predatory delight.
"No! Wait... It's just a question!" Ogdi stumbled back, hitting the wall. His mind raced. He felt like he was walking on a tightrope over a canyon, with endless possibilities above and terrible pitfalls beneath him.
This was not a game. This was real power, and he was completely unprepared.
"Then ask again. And wisely." The voice was firm, unforgiving.
Every word became a spell. Every answer, a gamble. He had to be careful, agonizingly so. One wrong word, one poorly phrased desire, and he could lose everything. Or worse, gain something he'd regret for the rest of his life.
Ogdi's mind danced between fear and fascination. The possibility of saving himself, of finally ending this nightmare of constant worry, was a tantalizing whisper.
But the cost… what would it be? He pictured the countless wishes he'd made throughout his life—the fleeting desires, the desperate pleas for better grades, for money, for safety.
Now, three of them held ultimate power.
"What can I wish for?" he stammered. "It's not like I don't have any... in fact, I have way too much I wish for. I need more time to decide."
He thought of a thousand things, big and small. A cure for his mother's illness—wait, she was gone too, wasn't she? No, focus. A world without suffering. An end to his own nagging anxieties.
But none of those felt right, not when the stakes were so incredibly high. He needed to think. To plan. To strategize. This was the most important decision of his life.
"Can I postpone them? I need time to decide." He hoped, against all reason, that this being, whatever it was, would grant him this small mercy.
"Time is yours to take—at least for now. But some clocks tick even behind silence."
The voice was a chilling reminder that even in stillness, the inevitable approached.
He asked for time, but something told him the countdown had already started. The air around him felt heavy, charged with unspoken power.
He was now a participant in a game he didn't understand, a game with rules he was only just beginning to learn, and the clock was ticking.