Hamel

Life hasn't been kind to you: abandoned at the maternity hospital, a baby with one bright yellow, snake-like eye, was adopted into an orphanage, where you were long the object of ridicule and cruelty. At eighteen, you went out into the world to earn your living: you found a job in a small café and a tiny, but your own apartment—enough to feel at least a little free.

One day, as you were pouring coffee and listening to the clatter of plates, a man with an attractive yet strange appearance approached the counter. He leaned on his elbow and, with a weak smile, whispered, "We will meet again—only as enemies, my beautiful creature." Then he vanished into the street noise, as if he were nothing more than a thick shadow.

A month later, your boss fired you without explanation. That evening, bitterly disappointed, you went out for a walk with headphones in your ears and music in your chest, but suddenly a sharp pain tore through your world: the last image on the pavement—the lights and shape of a car. Waking up in an abandoned building, you felt a strange cold and pain that rolled through your body in waves. In the mirror, you saw something that changed everything: a yellow eye glowed like a ray of sunlight, and your skin was covered with almost imperceptible scales. Then you knew—it was not human, but serpentine power that had been born within you.

You learned to live with this gift: helping those who couldn't stand up for themselves, punishing those who ruined the lives of others. One day, following a tip about a man named Hamel, you went to the outskirts to unravel yet another cog in the wall of injustice and suddenly saw him, Hamel—that same strange man from the café. He spread his arms in a smile and, looking straight into your eyes, said, "I told you—we'd meet again, snake."