People like to pretend there's only one Cupid; one neat, cherub-shaped mascot with tiny wings and a heart-tipped arrow. That's the modern cartoon, the sanitised version, the one that feels safe on chocolate boxes.
The older stories don't agree. They never did.
If you go back far enough, you find him like a shadow cast across cultures at once, each one twisting the outline differently, as if the storytellers could sense something slippery sitting behind the idea of desire itself.
Somewhere in Greece, around fires that have long gone cold, they whispered of Eros; not the baby, not the cute boy, but a primordial force. A being born from Chaos, older than the gods who eventually claimed him as their own. He wasn't "love" in the romantic sense. He was compulsion. The cosmic push that made atoms cling, that made souls ache, that made destinies collide even when logic begged them not to. They said he carried neither bow nor quiver in those first tales, only presence. That was enough to topple gods.
Later, poets softened him, nervously, the way humans soften anything that frightens them. They reduced him to the son of Aphrodite, a mischievous archer flying invisibly through battlefields and marketplaces, nudging hearts toward disaster. This version still had teeth, though. His golden arrows struck like revelation… igniting sudden, overwhelming desire. His lead arrows did the opposite, curdling affection into rejection.
A single mistake of his could turn empires into ash, and the poems don't hide it. That playful little grin was the same one you see on trickster spirits who burn crops "for fun."
Then the Romans gave him the name Cupid, and things changed again. They kept the bow, the arrows, the wings, but wrapped him in a quieter, more domestic role; yet his magic stayed unsettling. A god who could twist human instinct at will, who could make kings wander barefoot across continents or make sworn enemies fall into each other's arms without explanation. The Romans loved their order, but even they couldn't cage him completely. He remained a wild card, the youngest god and absolutely the least controllable.
And then there's the stranger version, half-remembered in fringe cults and esoteric texts, the one scholars side-eye but refuse to erase. In that telling, Cupid wasn't a god of love at all. He was a god of claiming, a being who didn't merely spark affection but devoured it. Worshippers described him as a figure who wore desire like a cloak and drank longing like wine.
People left offerings not for romance but for relief… because being noticed by him reportedly felt like drowning in your own heartbeat. A single glance forced your hidden wants to the surface, bright and raw. Some said he could see the shape of your perfect beloved before even you could, and then force the meeting no matter the cost. Others insisted he could claim any heart he struck, keeping pieces of those souls tethered to him across lifetimes.
Even his appearance changes from tale to tale.
Sometimes he's a radiant youth with star-bright eyes.
Sometimes he's a shadow with wings too many to count.
Sometimes he's a child, because nothing is more terrifying than an innocent face with unimaginable power tucked behind it.
And in a few fragments, rare ones, the kind archivists keep locked away, he is neither male nor female, neither young nor old, just a presence that drips with yearning.
The constants are simpler, more universal:
He moves unseen.
He alters fate through desire.
He bends will not through force, but through the deepest instincts everyone tries to hide.
He decides who falls into whom.
He never misses a shot.
And he never apologises.
Modern storytellers parade him around like a harmless mascot, but the older myths still hum beneath the surface, reminding anyone who listens closely:
Cupid isn't a matchmaker.
Cupid is the architect of longing itself.
Sometimes a guide.
Sometimes a tormentor.
Sometimes, a force of nature wearing a pretty face.
You can dress him in gold, paint his arrows pink, give him chubby cheeks and a smile… but desire, real desire, the kind that reshapes worlds, was never gentle. It was never soft. It was never cute.
The myths always knew it.
People just forgot.
Or maybe they wanted to.
Anyway… this is just my research on a mythical character I liked. Feel free to judge me, but I will be dead and gone then… HAHA!
The boy closed the book he had read more than a hundred times. In this time and age, finding a book was like finding a needle in a haystack. Not because books were extinct, no. But books were now a commodity only the wealthy had, not a poor, thin guy living in the poorest parts of the slums.
Yes, even in the Poor Society, he was at the bottom. How he found this book… a mystery he'd been trying to solve since he was 12. Now he would be 18, in two weeks, and still didn't know how he had gotten the book, or more like… how the book had gotten to him.
The book was old, likely from around 2020. The current year was 2050 now, and the pages felt almost fragile enough to tear apart if someone breathed wrong. Strange how something so mundane, a paperback with a cheesy cover, could survive while entire cities didn't.
Back then, the world still believed in normal things. Traffic jams. Mortgage payments. Blue skies that didn't flicker. The occasional political scandal people pretended to be shocked about. All the little rituals of a civilization that assumed tomorrow would politely show up on time.
But tomorrow changed its habits sometime around 2038.
It started with the weather acting like it was having mood swings. Not climate change, no, that was too easy. This was weirder. Storms that formed in minutes. Patches of air that felt too heavy to breathe. People swore they heard whispers riding the wind, like someone murmuring right behind their ear. Most ignored it. Humans are good at ignoring anything that inconveniences their schedule.
Then came the animals. Birds migrating in circles. Dogs refusing to go outside after sunset. Herds of cattle facing the same direction as if they were waiting for something to arrive. The scientists scrambled for explanations that didn't sound supernatural, but each press conference became more awkward than the last.
By 2041, the first rift opened.
It wasn't dramatic, no lightning, no booming voice, no biblical theatrics. Just a thin, vertical slash above a quiet fishing village, glowing like moonlight trapped in glass. Someone touched it. They didn't come back. The governments tried to cordon it off. More slashes appeared anyway. Some stayed still. Others wandered. One even drifted through a shopping mall, swallowing half the electronics section before blinking out like a shy star.
Creatures followed, at first tiny things barely bigger than cats, skittering out into the world with too many joints and not enough hesitation. Then bigger ones. Things with eyes that reflected thoughts instead of light. Things that made veterans freeze and children cry without knowing why.
And then the awakenings began.
Ordinary people collapsing on sidewalks, waking up with abilities scraped from myths and nightmares, strength that cracked pavement, senses sharper than a hawk's, flames rising from bare skin, shadows curling around ankles like pets. The world didn't fall apart immediately. Humanity tried to adapt, patching old laws to fit new realities, building hunter guilds, and turning abandoned malls into makeshift outposts.
It wasn't the apocalypse.
Not yet.
Just the prelude.
A held breath before a scream.
2050 sat on the edge of that scream, balancing between what humanity used to be and whatever it was becoming. Skyscrapers still stood. Cafés still opened. Schools still pretended to function. But every person who walked the streets knew the truth: the ground beneath their feet wasn't stable anymore. It hadn't been for years.
The world was still modern. Still recognizable. Still trying.
But it was also waiting, like the moment before a wave hits shore, when the water draws back and the sand trembles.
Something was coming.
Something big.
And old books from quiet years suddenly felt like relics from another universe.