Welcome to my reality, to our reality, the one we were forced to live in. A cursed world shaped by rules written by people we will never see, a world where we walk paths chosen for us long before we were born. Why? Because of love. Because their love gave birth to us. Love, a feeling I have never truly known. A feeling so distant that I envy those who have tasted it. The only time I felt anything close to it was from the woman who brought me into this world, only to leave me a decade later.
My name is Michael, born in the hopeless lands of Ajegunle in Lagos. My world is not like yours. You might look at it and think it is exciting, magical even, but as you follow my story...how I started with nothing, gained everything, and lost it all....you will understand that we were both born into an accursed world.
In my world, some people are born with privileges. They call them Juju, blessings from gods of forgotten mythologies. These chosen ones walk with power in their blood. They attend schools built to shape them into Babalawos, warriors of the divine. They train, they rise, they rule.
But people like me, people like you, the ones born with nothing...we eat dust for a living. We clean the shoes of the privileged. We bow to the Deitys, the ones who shine while we fade into the background. They call it destiny. I call it a curse.
And this is where my story begins, the story of the boy they tried to erase, the child the gods feared, the one the world would one day call the most feared Deity.