Elias wasn't extraordinary.
He was one of those people you'd pass on the street and forget moments later. Average height, slim build, dark hair that fell into his eyes no matter how many times he brushed it back. He didn't dress to be seen—hoodies, worn jeans, old sneakers—and never raised his voice, even when he had something worth saying.
But he noticed things.
He noticed the sadness in someone's laugh. The way the sky turned a softer hue just before rain. How certain songs made his chest ache for reasons he couldn't name. And he noticed Lucian.
Always Lucian.
But that's getting ahead of the story.
For now, Elias was twenty-one. A university student with a quiet soul and a head full of stories. His room was a small rented box above a bakery that smelled of yeast and warm sugar at all hours. The walls were lined with books—some classics, some cheap paperbacks with cracked spines. His desk was cluttered with notebooks, pens, crumpled drafts of stories he never finished, and cold coffee cups.
He liked routine. Mornings were for reading. Afternoons for class. Evenings spent either working in a dusty corner of the campus bookstore or wandering aimlessly through the city, earbuds in, letting the music drown out the static of existing.
Elias had a mother who lived in a town hours away and called once a month, always beginning with, "Are you eating well?" and ending with, "You should come home more."
He rarely did.
His father was just a name now. A ghost. Gone long before Elias had learned how to understand the difference between presence and absence. They hadn't spoken in years. He doubted they ever would again.
Still, Elias didn't resent his life. It wasn't miserable. Just… empty.
He had friends, sort of. Classmates who knew his name. Coworkers who joked with him at the register. People who would notice if he disappeared, maybe, but wouldn't look too hard for him.
Lucian was the exception.
Lucian was light.
Golden-haired, confident, unpredictable. He was the type of person who never asked for attention but always had it. The kind who could charm professors, start conversations with strangers, and walk into a room and shift its entire atmosphere.
He was also Elias's friend.
Kind of.
They met during their first year of university, assigned to the same group project. Lucian had smiled at Elias on day one like they were already old friends.
"You look like someone who writes poetry," he'd said. "Do you?"
Elias had blinked. Then shrugged. "Sometimes."
Lucian had grinned. "Cool. I want to read it."
He never did. But from that moment on, they sat together in class, grabbed coffee between lectures, and sometimes wandered the city late at night, talking about everything and nothing.
Elias didn't know when friendship turned to infatuation. Maybe it was the night Lucian spun barefoot in the rain, laughing, drenched, and unbothered. Or the time he lent Elias his hoodie and said, "It looks better on you anyway."
Elias tried to fight it. Tried to bury the feelings under layers of denial.
But they bloomed anyway.
Every glance, every brush of shoulders, every casual joke layered with something deeper made Elias ache. Not just with desire—but with longing.
Longing to be seen. Known. Loved.
And he was terrified.
He had never said it aloud—that he was gay. Not because he was ashamed. But because silence had always been his shield.
He had grown up in a town where boys like him kept their voices low and their hopes lower. Where queerness was either whispered or erased.
So Elias carried it inside him. Quiet and burning.
He channeled it into writing. Late at night, he would sit at his desk and pour himself into stories—about boys who kissed under city lights, about stolen glances and trembling hands and unspoken truths.
He posted them anonymously online. His words found readers. Strangers who commented things like, "This broke me," and "I've never felt so seen."
It helped. A little.
But not enough.
Because in the end, Elias was still alone.
Still a ghost in his own life.
The day everything changed was unremarkable at first.
It was a gray morning, sky heavy with unshed rain. Elias woke before his alarm, heart thudding for no reason he could explain. He made coffee, black and bitter. Pulled on his hoodie. Stepped outside without checking the time.
He didn't have class that day. Didn't have anywhere he needed to be.
But something called him.
He walked the streets aimlessly, music in his ears. His playlist was titled "Soft Endings." Songs about goodbyes, about aching quietly. His footsteps matched the rhythm.
The city moved around him. Buses hissed. Horns blared. People passed, all moving toward something.
He stopped at a crosswalk.
The signal was red. A crowd gathered beside him—students, workers, strangers.
He looked up at the sky. Felt the first drop of rain land on his cheek.
Then another.
And another.
He smiled.
It wasn't a happy smile. More like a soft resignation.
For some reason, he thought of Lucian.
He reached for his phone. Opened the messaging app. Typed:
I think I—
He never finished.
Because the light turned green.
And Elias stepped forward.
And the world erupted.
A scream.
Brakes.
A horn splitting the air like a knife.
Pain, sharp and sudden, blooming white.
Then—
Darkness.
But it wasn't the end.
Not yet.
Elias floated.
Weightless.
There was no sound. No time. Only a sense of being pulled—through something vast and unknowable.
Then came the pressure.
Heat. Constriction.
He couldn't breathe.
His skin burned. His mind reeled.
And then—
Light.
Too bright. Blinding.
Voices.
Hands.
Crying.
His crying.
Someone was holding him.
"It's a boy," a voice said. "An omega."
The word echoed through the room.
Omega.
He knew that word.
Had read it in fiction. Worlds where people were born not just with gender, but roles. Alphas, Betas, Omegas. Hierarchies of scent and instinct. Of power.
And now, it was him.
He was a newborn.
Small. Fragile.
And an omega.
He tried to scream, but it came out as a baby's wail.
The woman holding him—his mother, he guessed—was beautiful. Pale skin. Cold eyes. She looked at him like a prize, not a person.
"Well," she said softly. "Let's hope he doesn't shame the family name."
Elias blinked.
His chest heaved.
Tears spilled down his cheeks.
This can't be happening.
But it was.
He had died.
And been reborn.
In a world he didn't know.
With rules he didn't choose.
As something he had never wanted to be.
He cried himself to sleep that night.
Not from hunger.
Not from fear.
But from the crushing weight of beginning again.
In a body too small.
In a world too cruel.
But even then, something inside him stirred.
A spark.
A promise.
I won't be caged.
I won't be silent.
This time, I'll write my own story.
No matter what it costs.