Chapter Four – The In-Between
The Burden of Years
I have walked long enough to know that nothing changes, and yet everything does.
The faces are new, the names shift, but the pattern repeats. Every soul stands at the same edge, trembling between shadow and light. They believe themselves unique in their trial, yet to me they are echoes—variations of a song I have heard sung for centuries.
The man who wrapped his charm around cruelty and thought himself untouchable. I remember the stench of his aura, black tendrils that clung to him like rot. He laughed at others' pain, saw women and men as objects for his grasp. I gave him a choice. He chose himself. In the end, it was his own corruption that devoured him.
Then the woman who had all but lost herself. Her child bore the brunt of her bitterness. She spat curses at the world, fists raised even against the only soul who still loved her. Yet buried under the ash of her rage, there was a spark. She let me touch it, and for a moment the room was filled with a light that made even my jinn-fire bow. She will struggle, she will stumble, but she has begun to rise.
And the self-righteous man, whose grief had hardened into pride. He wore his virtue like a mask, demanding reverence from others, though inside he was hollowed by loss. With him, I extended my hand. When his fingers finally closed around mine, he trembled, and his pride cracked like dry clay. His grief poured out, and in the flood he found mercy again.
Three souls, three thresholds. None the same, and yet all alike.
I have seen thousands. Some believe themselves righteous while sowing ruin. Some live in open wickedness yet harbor a hidden tenderness. Others, like brittle branches, snap under the weight of grief and anger. And still others rise, though no one believed they could.
It is not only in those I confront. I have seen it in the streets, in the markets, in the temples. A priest thundering about purity, while his eyes lingered where they should not. A merchant who sold moldy grain to the poor but donated coins in public to be praised. Neighbors who smiled by day and beat their wives by night. Lovers who swore eternal devotion, yet betrayed one another when the desire cooled.
And yes, I have seen the rare ones who gave without thought of gain—who clothed the naked, who sheltered the orphan, who forgave when no one would have blamed them for vengeance. Those lights shine so brightly they hurt my eyes. But they are few. Too few.
I did not only learn from others' sins, but from how they treated me.
I was fatherless, and everyone knew it. My mother whispered to me of fire and power in my blood, but to the rest of them I was only a boy without a name worth respect. They looked at me with suspicion, some with pity, many with disdain.
Children mocked me for being different, for the strange glow in my eyes when anger stirred. Women pulled their skirts aside as if I carried infection. Men dismissed me, called me bastard, cursed my mother as a whore who dared to touch forbidden things. Even when I kept silent, their scorn spoke loudly enough.
From them I learned cruelty is easy, and kindness is rare. From them I learned that most hearts are quick to condemn what they do not understand. From them I learned that the world does not need demons to sow misery—humans manage it well enough on their own.
Yet I also learned strength. To be disregarded is to be invisible. And invisibility allowed me to see what others hid. I learned to watch. To read the tremor in a hand, the falseness of a smile, the way an aura flickers when a lie is spoken. I became what they named me: different. But in difference, I found clarity.
Now, when I look at them, I do not see saints or monsters. I see sparks. Some dim, some blazing, some smothered under ash. My task is only to hold the mirror steady. What they choose to do with their reflection—whether to ignite or be consumed—that is theirs alone.
And so the burden of years presses on me. To witness. To amplify. To stand in the place where no one else stands: the in-between.
Memory
I remember being small, before my voice had settled, before my steps carried weight.
The village children played in the dust, chasing one another with laughter that rang like bells. When I tried to join, the game stopped. Their eyes turned sharp, their mouths crooked with disdain.
"Bastard child," one spat, and the others chorused it like a song."Witch's boy," another jeered, clutching a charm against his chest as though I were a curse come to life."Fatherless," they hissed, and that was the deepest wound, because it was true.
They ran from me, but not before one boy hurled a stone. It struck my cheek. The sting was less than the shame, less than the heat in my eyes when I felt the blue fire stir for the first time. I had not yet learned to master it, and the faint shimmer frightened me as much as it did them. They screamed and fled, calling me demon.
Later, when I passed the well where the women drew water, they lowered their voices and raised their brows. Some pitied me, others looked at me as though I carried plague. My mother's name on their tongues was not kind. They said she had opened herself to darkness, that she had birthed an abomination. I carried their scorn like stones in my pockets.
No one told me then that suffering could become strength. I only knew silence. I kept to the edges, invisible when I could be. And in invisibility, I began to see.
I saw how those same children who mocked me grew into men who struck their wives when no one watched. I saw the women who scorned my mother steal bread from one another. I saw the priest who would not look me in the eye drink deeply from the temple wine and stagger home reeking of shame.
And I saw, too, a few who did not join in the chorus. A girl who gave me half her loaf when no one watched. An old man who touched my shoulder gently and said, "Do not fear what is in your eyes, boy. Fire can warm as well as burn."
Their kindness did not erase the cruelty, but it taught me to measure both. To weigh light against shadow. To know that every soul carries both, and that a single choice can tilt the scale.
It was in that furnace of mockery and disregard that I was forged. I am what they made me, and what I chose to become.
There are nights when I feel the war in my blood more sharply than others. Nights when the air itself seems to whisper of the two halves within me, locked in quiet combat, and I am reminded that I am not wholly one thing nor the other.
From my mother I inherited flesh, heart, memory, and the aching gift of empathy. It is her face I see when my hands tremble at someone else's pain, her voice that taught me to recognize cruelty even when it wears a mask of necessity. She gave me humanity, and with it, loneliness.
From my father—if that word even fits the one who forced himself into her life—I inherited fire. A seed of blue that has burned in me since the first stone struck my cheek in childhood. It is not warmth, but hunger. It detaches me from those I watch, demands neutrality, whispers that I am above them. From him came exile, for no human can look upon the shimmer in my veins and truly call me brother.
And yet neither world has claimed me. The jinn do not know me, save in the distant echo of their blood within mine. The humans barely tolerate me, suspicion shadowing every glance. I walk between them like a ghost, half-welcome in both realms, fully belonging to neither.
My mother carried the burden of that truth before I could even understand it. She was a witch of quiet power, clever with herbs, prayers, and the hidden words. She was also a victim, broken open by a being who saw her as nothing more than a vessel for his whim. Her coven helped her through the nights she wished to end it all, though some of them, too, whispered that she had invited it by daring to call him forth. When they looked at me, I could feel the confusion in their eyes: am I miracle, or curse?
She raised me alone, carrying her pain like a second child. There were days she held me close as though I were her salvation, and others when she could not meet my eyes for what they reminded her of. I grew used to her contradictions, as I grew used to the contradictions of all people. The same lips that blessed can also spit. The same hands that heal can also strike.
When I close my eyes now, I sometimes feel the faint presence of the one whose blood runs with mine. Not as a father watching a son, but as a shadow behind me—alien, cold, hungering. I do not know if he thinks of me at all, or if I am merely a forgotten flame he left in the ashes of a ruined woman. But the power he gave me is real, undeniable. It courses through me when I stand at the precipice with another soul, when I amplify what already lies within them. It makes me an arbiter, though I never asked to be one.
Some nights I wonder whether this power was meant to be a curse. A way to burn me from within until I am ash. Other nights, I believe it is the only reason I endure—that I was born to stand in the In-Between, not by choice but by nature.
There is a strange kind of freedom in exile. When you belong nowhere, you can walk anywhere. When no hand claims you, you are claimed by the thresholds themselves—the doorways where choices are made, where light or shadow devours what lingers too long. I have lived most of my years in those spaces. I am the silence before the answer, the reflection before the decision.
And yet… I remain divided. Part of me longs for the warmth of humanity: love freely given, trust not earned by fear, the gentle touch of a hand that does not recoil. Part of me longs for the endless fire of the jinn: power unchallenged, detachment that never aches, the cold clarity of watching without being touched.
I live in neither. I live between.And perhaps that is why I see so clearly the in-between in others.
I am neither one nor the other, neither fire nor flesh. I am the space between them, the silence before the choice. Perhaps that is why the door always finds me—because I was born to stand at its threshold, waiting.