Zahran's POV
For centuries, silence had been his companion.
The vessel was a cage forged not of bronze but of will. Every rune that etched its surface was a chain of fire, coiled around his essence, pulling tighter with each passing decade. Time meant nothing inside the vessel. There was no night, no dawn, no stars to guide him. Only darkness—and memory.
And he had many memories.
The screams of kingdoms that had fallen when he answered wishes twisted by greed. The laughter of queens who once summoned him to whisper their heart's desires. The faces of mortals—thousands of them—who had looked upon him with terror, awe, or hunger.
They all blurred together.
All except the boy.
The mortal who had found him by accident on a night where storm and silence bent to his will.
Zahran remembered the first glimpse of him clearly: damp hair clinging to his brow, sapphire eyes wide with terror, lips parted in a whisper that wasn't a wish but an instinctive denial.
I don't want this.
It was the first thing the boy had said to him.
Most mortals begged. Even those who claimed fear—always, eventually, begged. They wanted wealth, beauty, power, revenge. They wanted the world to bow. They wanted what their fragile hands could not hold.
But Asher… oh, Asher's voice had cracked with something rarer than fear. Refusal.
That refusal had hooked him.
Zahran drifted now through the thin veil between form and smoke, watching the mortal trudge home with the vessel in his satchel. His essence coiled around Asher's shoulders like invisible chains, tugging him closer no matter how far the boy tried to run.
Every heartbeat was a drum. Every breath, an invitation.
He had expected Asher to shatter quickly—to break like porcelain under the weight of temptation. But instead, the boy resisted. He clenched his jaw, tightened his grip, walked faster, as if sheer willpower could silence the echo of Zahran's laughter in his ear.
Fascinating.
"Little mortal," Zahran murmured from the shadows of smoke, though Asher could not hear him, "do you even know what you carry?"
He could see into him—the threads of his soul, the cracks in his walls. Loneliness like frost, settled deep into marrow. A hunger so carefully buried even Asher himself hadn't yet named it. It glowed inside him like an ember waiting for breath.
Zahran's fingers itched. How easy it would be to fan it into flame.
When Asher reached his little room above the cobbler's shop, Zahran followed. He appeared only when the boy turned his back, delighting in the sharp spike of fear in Asher's chest when he heard his voice.
You.
Ah, the venom in that word. The tremor behind it. Delicious.
Zahran leaned against the window with feigned laziness, though his essence strained at the chains of the vessel hidden in the boy's satchel. The closer Asher kept it, the stronger Zahran's form became. It was almost as though Asher wanted him near.
The thought made Zahran smile.
"You don't want me here," he teased. "And yet you carried me home."
Asher's denial burned hot in the air. Zahran circled him like a wolf, savoring every twitch of his muscles, every heartbeat thrumming at his throat. There was a strange sweetness in his resistance, a defiance Zahran had not tasted in centuries.
Other mortals cowered or obeyed. They gave in, whispering their darkest desires. But this one? He dared to shove the vessel away, to slam drawers and order shadows to stay silent.
Zahran should have been furious. Should have punished the insolence, tightened the chains around his heart until Asher choked on desperation. That was what he had done before, with every mortal who dared spit in the face of his power.
But instead, he found himself smiling.
Intriguing.
What Asher did not see, could not see, was the war inside Zahran's own chest.
Djinn were born from fire and smoke, made of hunger and desire. They were bound to answer wishes, twisted or pure, and to savor the ruin that followed. It was what he was. What he had always been.
Yet…
Zahran remembered the centuries in silence, the way the vessel suffocated his essence. Mortals had forgotten him, stories of his name reduced to whispers and myths. To be unseen, unheard—that was agony for a creature like him.
Now here was a boy who saw him. Who spoke to him not as a master or savior, but as an intruder. A curse.
And that sting of rejection… oh, how it burned. How it made Zahran lean closer, desperate not for worship, but for acknowledgment.
Perhaps that was why he lingered in the room even when Asher shoved him away. Why he appeared again on the bed, lounging as though he belonged there. Why he whispered truths Asher wasn't ready to hear: the loneliness, the hunger, the secrets that made his shoulders slump when he thought no one noticed.
Because Zahran noticed.
And he wanted to peel every layer away until the boy was bare before him.
When Asher demanded, Why me? Zahran almost laughed. He could have spoken of fate, of curses, of ancient bargains. He could have told him that mortals never chose—Djinn chose them.
But the truth?
The truth was simpler.
"You are not like the others," he whispered.
The words slipped out before he could stop them.
He masked it quickly with a sharper smile, but it was true. Something in this boy's defiance pulled at him in ways centuries of kings and queens never had. Zahran wanted to see him break—but more than that, he wanted to see him choose.
As the night deepened, Zahran's essence coiled tighter around Asher's soul. He could feel the boy's exhaustion, the weight pressing on his chest. He could feel the pulse of temptation in his silence.
All it would take was one whisper. One desperate plea.
But he did not force it. Not yet.
Instead, he leaned close enough to let his words slip into Asher's bones like smoke:
Your heart is my cage now. And sooner or later, you will open the lock.
When he vanished into the curl of smoke, it wasn't because he was bound away. It was because he wanted Asher to sit with that silence, to feel the echo of his presence long after the room was empty.
He wanted him to miss it.
Alone in the endless void of his vessel, Zahran smiled to himself. For the first time in centuries, silence did not suffocate him. It thrummed with anticipation, thick and electric.
Because Asher was different.
And whether the boy knew it or not, he was already his.