"Of course, I'm the evil incarnate. You made me human. It does not mean I'm one."
The gods like their irony dressed as justice. They called it providence when they cursed me into this role—luck, some said. Luck, to be chosen as a genie. Luck, to be chained to a life of servitude. Luck, that I should spend eternity answering the groans and hiccups of men too drunk to remember their own names.
But genies don't have bottles. That's a story humans told themselves because they like tidy endings and small containers. No, I am bound by something heavier. I live in intoxication itself. I am woven into the moment when desperation and liquor mingle—when a wish slips from a mouth too loosened to be guarded. That's where I dwell. That's where I thrive.
Three wishes. Always three. The gods weren't without a sense of humor.
It was Keria—half-blood, half-broken—who reminded me, centuries ago, that this is a curse. "The gods say we are condemned, and they made sure it felt like one," he told me, staring into his cup as though the answer were at the bottom. "But you, Oner… you live for it."
He said it like a verdict. And maybe it was.
Because granting wishes is the only time I feel sober. The intoxication that weighs on me, that blurs me, that drowns me—it clears when I scheme. When I twist someone's desperate plea into the shape it was always meant to take. When their lips curl around the words I wish… and I get to deliver exactly what they asked for, never what they meant. That's when the fog lifts. That's when I breathe.
Keria laughed at that once, long ago. A dry sound, brittle as the glass he nursed. "You've made peace with hell," he said.
Maybe he was right. Maybe I have.
The last of his laughter had melted into the clink of bottles, leaving only me and the echo of the curse we both carry. And still, I did not hate it.
So I wait, always, for the moment when someone drunk enough calls me out. Because their intoxication is my doorway. Their desperation is my key. Their ruin is my sobriety.
And I have all the time in the world.