The hospital room was silent except for the slow, mechanical breathing of a ventilator.
On the narrow bed lay a boy named Michael. His body was thin to the point of fragility, skin pale and stretched tight over bones that had never known strength. Transparent tubes ran into his arms, IV drips hanging above him like quiet witnesses to a losing battle. Blood cancer had consumed most of his short life, leaving behind a body too weak to resist and a soul too tired to hope.
Michael was an orphan.
He had been unwanted from the moment he entered the world.
His mother died giving birth to him. His father, drowning in grief and hatred, blamed the newborn for her death. Before Michael could even open his eyes, he was thrown away—left at a garbage dump like something broken and disposable.
A nun found him.
She carried him away from the filth, gave him a name, fed him, clothed him, and for six brief years, she gave him something dangerously close to love. Then she died too, claimed by age and exhaustion.
After that, Michael stopped speaking.
A year later, the cancer came.
For eight years, he endured hospitals, needles, pain, and prayers that never reached heaven. He never cried loudly. He never screamed. He learned early that the world did not respond to suffering.
On the night he died, a woman sat beside his bed. She was not family—only someone who refused to let him be alone at the end. She whispered prayers to a God she was not sure existed.
"Oh God," she murmured, voice shaking, "if you are real… please be kind just once. Give this child a better life next time. He has suffered enough here."
She placed her hand on Michael's head.
"You were a good boy," she said softly. "You deserved more than this."
The monitor beside him let out a single sharp sound.
Then silence.
Michael died without fear—only exhaustion.
There was no darkness after death.
There was drifting.
Michael's soul floated beneath an endless night sky, weightless, shapeless, and alone. Time lost meaning. He wandered without direction until a distant emerald light appeared—soft, pulsing, watching.
He drifted toward it.
Years passed. Or centuries.
Then a voice spoke—not loud, not gentle.
"Why does your soul ache so deeply, child?"
From the emerald glow emerged a goddess. Her form was beautiful in a way that felt unnatural, her eyes glowing green with ancient awareness. She did not radiate kindness or cruelty—only certainty.
Michael answered simply.
"I was born, and the world punished me for it."
He told her everything. The mother who died. The father who discarded him. The nun who loved him and vanished. The sickness that consumed his childhood. The fight he lost.
When he finished, the goddess was silent for a long moment.
Then she spoke.
"You were not meant for that world," she said. "It devours the unloved."
Hope stirred painfully inside him.
"You'll give me another life?" he asked.
The goddess nodded.
"Yes. Because you were born to be loved—and never were."
She raised her hand, and the void twisted.
"There exists a world shaped by my will: Sinflare Augustiland. It is a land of magic and steel, where desire is not restricted by guilt, law, or moral chains. Affection is free. Bonds are formed and broken without shame."
Visions flooded his mind—cities overflowing with people, cultures unburdened by restraint, intimacy treated as something natural and unquestioned.
"But the world is unbalanced," she continued.
"For every one man, there are a thousand women."
Michael felt the weight of that truth settle into his soul.
"You will be reborn there as Lucifer," she said. "Immortal. Enduring. Carrying a presence that draws love naturally—not through force, not through command, but because the world itself will respond to you."
She stepped closer.
"You will increase that world's population by forty percent—by yourself."
The words crushed him.
"And your descendants," she added, "will be born male and female in equal numbers. A correction. A balance the world cannot achieve on its own."
Michael trembled. "What if I lose myself?"
The goddess placed her hand over his heart.
"That is the trial," she said softly. "In a world without moral limits, will you still choose meaning? Will you value love when it is endlessly offered?"
She leaned close and whispered:
"This world will love you without restraint.
But it will never teach you how to survive that love."
Michael closed his eyes.
"In my first life," he said quietly, "no one chose me."
He opened them again.
"If this world will… then I accept."
The goddess smiled—not in triumph, but in something resembling relief.
She kissed his forehead.
"In five minutes," she said, "your soul will be woven into flesh. Live fully, my child.