Samael blinked. "Excuse ?"
"There is only one thing I hate more than narrators who drag things out," the Lord of Stories spat, "and it’s an unreliable narrator!"
The golden-haired man knitted his brows. "Wait, wha— unreliable?"
"Yes!" the boy jabbed a finger at him. "Ye talk about fond mories and happy monts, but the pages tell a different tale. Ye are altering the essence of the story. I asked for yer autobiography, and yer giving nostalgia."
Samael took yet another slow sip of scotch before replying. "That’s because... it is nostalgia."
The Lord of Stories grunted. "You are completely impossible."
"Thank you?" Samael said unsurely.
The boy-god made a gesture like he wanted to strangle sothing. "I am serious! Ye gloss over the important parts. Ye smooth the edges. And ye wrap tragedy in jokes and sentint!"
Samael rolled the glass between his palms, the faint clink of ice the only sound for a mont. "Sure. Maybe."
"Maybe?" the child repeated, incredulous.
"Yes, maybe. But tell this one thing — why do you want to listen to soone’s retelling of their story when you already know them all yourself?"
"...Why?" The boy’s voice carried a hint of curiosity beneath the irritation. "Well, because hearing a story from the perspective of the character who lived it... it’s more interesting."
Samael nodded. "Understandable. And when soone recalls their life... do they recall it like a ledger of suffering?"
The Lord of Stories said nothing.
The mortal man continued in that window of silence, leaning back and resting a hand on his knee.
"They don’t. Because that’s not how it works. When people look back on their past, they don’t tally their tragedies. They rember the people who stood beside them."
The god scoffed loudly. "Very touchin’. But if ye can’t work around yer author bias while narratin’ a tale, then yer not a narrator. Yer a liar. And I don’t like liars."
Samael nearly chuckled upon hearing that. "You hate liars? You? Do you realize you’re literally the first liar? You’re known as The Boy Who Told the First Lie."
The Lord of Stories huffed, the sound almost like steam escaping a kettle. "Lyin’ to create a story and lyin’ about a story are two completely different things, Samael Theosbane."
"Okay, hey, that’s going too far!" the golden-haired man scowled. "I never lied about the story. I’ve recounted the events as honestly as possible. Sure, I may have exaggerated so things, maybe painted myself in a better light than I deserve, but I never changed what actually happened."
The boy kept looking Samael dead in the eye. When he spoke again, his voice lost all its childish playfulness. "Didn’t ye? Okay. Then how would ye explain this?"
Imdiately, the scenery around them shifted.
Gone was the endless hall of parchnt and ink.
Samael now found himself standing next to the boy-god, with his mismatched socks and crown of quills, inside a room that felt both familiar and alien.
"Do ye rember this?" the Lord of Stories asked.
But Samael didn’t answer. Because his chest tightened at the sight before him, even though he tried his best not to let it show on his face.
The two of them were inside a modest yet well-kept ho.
Samael let himself absorb the lost warmth of the space, letting the mories settle unbidden.
The Lord of Stories floated a few inches above the floor, as if his divine feet were too pristine to step down onto the dirty mortal plane even in mory.
"Rember this?" he asked. "This was yer ho in yer last life."
The boy-god began walking and Samael followed, keeping himself completely calm as they entered a sunlit living room.
There, at the edge of a sofa was a little boy with his fists clenched and face flushed red with anger. He looked young, around seven to eight years old.
And Samael recognized him instantly.
That young boy was Noah.
That was him in his last life.
Noah’s father was there too. Disheveled and reeking of cheap alcohol, he had just scolded his son for hitting the neighbour’s kid in the leg with a baseball bat.
Little Noah was throwing a tantrum. He had a habit of doing that whenever things didn’t go his way.
Even at such a young age, he’d lash out, get into unprovoked fights, and just start scratching and bruising anyone who got too close to him like a feral animal.
The doctors had diagnosed him with Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Intermittent Explosive Disorder — basically a combination of ntal and behavioural conditions that made him volatile with sudden episodes of impulsive, aggressive, and violent behavior.
His outbursts were typically grossly out of proportion to the situation and occurred with little to no warning.
The Lord of Stories floated closer, letting Samael watch without interference. "See this? Look into that boy’s eyes. Does he look like soone who ever waited quietly for life’s misfortunes? No. That is the boy who struck first and hurt those closest to him without thought. That temper, that cruelty... it started young. Learned from the man who should have taught him better."
Samael’s jaw tightened. "I don’t need a reminder of all this. I’ve already... accepted it."
"Accepted?" the god murmured wistfully. "Ye call this acceptance? Ye left scars and refused to acknowledge them. Instead, ye painted yourself as so tragic boy who was bullied by the system. If ye had accepted it, ye wouldn’t have lied about it."
The scene shifted again, faster this ti.
•••
Years passed and Noah had grown up a lot now.
He was in college.
His long black hair fell in ungrood bangs over his forehead, and though he was thin and lanky, he was still quick to pick fights.
He still had that perpetual scowl on his face and carried that sa simring anger that had never left him.
That day, dressed in ripped jeans and a baggy black shirt, he was walking through the campus when he spotted a young man harassing a girl.
Noah knew that guy. He was in his class. His na was Brad. But that wasn’t why he knew him.
He knew Brad because Brad was the type of douchebag who liked to show off his daddy’s money and ca to college in an expensive BMW, strutting around like the bigshot everyone knew he was.
And Noah... had always been jealous of him.
So using the excuse of helping the girl Brad was blatantly harassing, Noah approached them and then punched the young man square in the face.
Not once, but again and again, catching him off guard. He didn’t stop pumling when Brad cursed him, and he still didn’t stop when the poor boy started crying.
Noah just kept hitting until the young man’s face was red and swollen and bloody.
Later, it turned out that Brad was actually a politician’s son. Noah was arrested and locked up for months. Eventually, he was expelled from his college.
Samael’s hand tightened around the glass he hadn’t even realized he was still holding in this vision.
"I—" he began, but the words stuck in his throat.
"Don’t even try to make an excuse," the Lord of Stories said flatly.
As if on that cue, the world shifted once more, this ti collapsing into a cramped and unkempt apartnt.
•••
The air was pungent here with the nose-wrinkling stench of food that had clearly begun spoiling and sheets that hadn’t been washed in ages.
Noah was sitting on a chair with a single TV screen dead in front of him. The TV wasn’t even switched on, but there was a ga controller clutched tightly in his hands.
On one of the two beds behind him, his father lay coughing and vomiting on a stained mattress. His fra was skeletal and sickly, nothing but bones and skin. His voice rasped. "Water... N-Noah... please..."
Yet Noah did not move. His glazed eyes stayed fixed on the empty TV screen. His hands clenched the controller so firmly that his knuckles had turned white.
His father’s gasps grew weaker and pleas more desperate. And by his last breath, he could only manage a whisper, "I... I am... sorry... for not being a good father, N-Noah..."
Noah’s grip on the gaming controller still did not falter, even as his father’s heartbeat stopped.
A few tears fell down his cheeks, but the rest of his body stayed anchored. The TV remained dark and the apartnt kept reeking.
And Noah... continued sitting there motionless.
"What were ye even doing?" the Lord of Stories asked. "Ye hadn’t fed him for four days. Ye didn’t move when he asked for water. Did ye really want him dead? Was he really such a burden on ye?"
Samael averted his gaze.
The scene changed again.
•••
This ti, the setting was a downtown restaurant with polished interiors and a bustling crowd.
Noah, now in his early twenties, was moving between custors with a serving tray in hand.
Internally, he was both bored by and jealous of the rich bastards who could afford casual fine dining in a place so expensive.
It was then that he saw a woman who closely resembled his mother. And upon a clearer look, it indeed was her.
She seed radiant and poised, surrounded by her new husband and a young daughter from her previous marriage — Noah’s little sister.
Noah tried to slip past and vanish into the crowd, but they saw him.
Concern imdiately etched into his mother’s face. She caught him and bombarded him with questions: Where had he been? What had happened after she paid his bail? Where was he living now, and why hadn’t he inford her? Had he been attending the therapy sessions the court mandated? Why couldn’t she reach him on his phone? Why had he simply vanished?
All the questions were already so annoying.
But then she said sothing that numbed Noah.
She said that... he should take the money from her that he had been refusing all this ti.
In hindsight, he understood what she had ant.
He had been a problematic child all his life. So when his mother remarried, she couldn’t take him with her to her new ho the way she had taken his sister.
Over ti, she tried sending him money but he flat-out refused. He cut her off and pushed her away, only contacting her when he had no one to bail him out.
But in that mont, hearing her say that sounded like she was flaunting her money, like she was laughing at him after abandoning him all those years ago, like seeing him in a waiter’s getup was now below her standards.
It just snapped sothing inside him. His hand moved before his mind could stop it and he struck her across the face with a sharp slap.
Her new husband imdiately grabbed Noah by the collar and shoved him back in disbelief and fury.
anwhile, his mother just stood frozen with a cocktail of shock and sadness and anger brewing in her tearful wide eyes.
She denounced him then, saying he was no better than his abusive asshole father. She called him embarrassing. Then she turned and left.
Though she refused to press charges, the damage was done.
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