In the early days of humanity, a child was born. His birth traveled through the town like wildfire because, for the first time in their history, a mother had died giving life to her child.
Everyone had a theory, and rumors spread like wildfire.
The most popular belief was damning.
It was speculated that the child killed his own mother.
Clara named him Zefar a month before he was born,
but the whispers behind his back gave him a different name:
Slayer.
Historians still argue how anyone could blame a newborn for his mother's death. Even Zefar, years later, couldn't understand it.
Yet the name stuck, and the town treated him as if he were a natural-born killer.
His father, Cain, never helped.
Cain never called him "son."
It was he who coined the name "Slayer."
Some say the pain of losing his wife got to Cain's head.
When Cain's wife, Clara, died giving birth, something twisted in him. It wasn't grief — it was a sick revelation of how fragile and vain human life really was. This inspired the man to mold his son into an assassin.
Cain branded Zefar with the infamous title "Reaper of Death." Zefar's terrifying reputation spread as he was unleashed on anyone who dared to call Cain his enemy.
Zefar hunted his father's foes for ten years. He began this life when he was only fifteen.
Killing — or "Slaying," as Cain preferred to call it — became the only way Zefar could drown his self-loathing. The shame of a crime he never committed never left his side. The guilt of being blamed for his mother's death gave him a rage he couldn't control.
And Cain didn't build just one killer. No — he adopted orphans, forged them into his legendary Slayers, and raised an army of children turned into weapons.
As I narrated all this out loud, Zefar cut in, voice low:
"Rose… you believe what the legends of Babel say too much. Their tales make me sound like some heartless killer."
He paused. His hands slowly closed into fists.
"I wasn't a Slayer back then," he said. "I was just a boy no one loved."
He looked at me with a calm but firm resolve.
"Let me tell you the true and painfully personal story of Zefar — the so-called Slayer."
"That kid," he continued, "grew up with nothing but hate and self-loathing. He became a teenager who was taught murder to control his emotions. A young man who fought his father's enemies so he would never face the real enemy inside."
Cain became feared, famous, worshipped by those who valued power over humanity. His Slayers were his pride, and I — his son — was his masterpiece."
"I killed men," Zefar said. "Some fierce women too. I've heard people scream in ways I still hear in my sleep. But even then… I believed there were lines we should never cross. The day those lines shattered was the dawn Cain sent me after a widow and her child — Lamech."
"I had already killed the husband weeks earlier. Now Cain wanted the family wiped out completely. I couldn't," Zefar said. "I had already ruined their lives. How could I murder them too?"
He shook his head.
"Everyone I'd killed, even the ones who deserved it… they haunted me. But the innocent? No. That was one sin I could never wash off."
That day, he said, "I discovered the one thing my father never had: a caring soul."
He was even called the Father of Murder, the first human to wield death as a weapon. He predictably exploded into rage at my defiance. He declared me his worst enemy and sent every Slayer to butcher me, the widow, and her son."
"They came at me with everything they'd learned," Zefar said. "But they weren't born killers. Cain made me believe I was."
"I fought them all — protecting the widow and Lamech at the same time. One by one, I defeated the Slayers, but not by killing them."
"I broke one bone in each of them," he said. "Just enough to make sure they'd never fight again. Never again would they enjoy taking a life."
I didn't know Cain had come with them. Exhausted from the battle, I lay on the ground recovering when Cain came in, expecting an easy kill. And, as always, he had to give a speech.
"Zefar, you ungrateful brat!
You took the love of my life from me, yet I turned you into a legend!
And this—" Cain spat, "is how you repay me?
You betray me for the wife and child of my dead enemy?"
I stayed still, listening.
"You could've been free once they were dead," Cain continued. "You could've left and made a name for yourself. But now? You die by my hands. I should've never let you exist. Your mother would still be alive if you were never born."
"I didn't need to describe what those words did to me," Zefar admitted.
He was visibly shaking as he continued, "They unleashed everything I had buried for years.
With a speed he didn't expect, I swung and beheaded him."
There was a cold and sad aftertaste to those words. I could see the regret in his eyes.
"I turned back to the widow and Lamech.
The boy approached me slowly. I thought he would thank me.
Even hug me.
Or at least cry."
Zefar let out a bitter smile. "Lamech did none of those.
The boy pulled out a blade and slit my throat. What could make a ten-year-old child do this?
Was it because I made him a grieving son? No. A mere child couldn't deliver justice the way he did."
Zefar relaxed in his seat as he concluded,
"So you see, Lady Rose… my life ended
not with glory,
not with redemption,
but by the trembling hand of a child who believed I deserved it.
As I lay bleeding out on the ground,
I heard Lamech's mother say,
"You did well, Lamech. This is just the beginning.
We must avenge your father and kill all his killers.
Quick, help me slaughter the remaining Slayers.
Today, we end the Reapers of Death."
Hearing this made me wish I could die quicker.
What kind of sick world were we living in?
Lamech was about to be turned into another killer by the very person who should have taught him love and care.